Suggestion General Dynamically populated UI VM's

[Jance]

Currently, several screens (CharacterCreation and CustomBattleMenu for example) are populated using hard-coded static fields. Here is an example from CustomBattleData.cs:

public static IEnumerable<BasicCharacterObject> Characters
    {
      get
      {
        yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_1");
        if (!Module.CurrentModule.IsOnlyCoreContentEnabled)
        {
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_2");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_3");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_4");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_5");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_6");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_7");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_8");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_9");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_10");
        }
        yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_11");
        if (!Module.CurrentModule.IsOnlyCoreContentEnabled)
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCharacterObject>("commander_12");
      }
    }

    public static IEnumerable<BasicCultureObject> Factions
    {
      get
      {
        yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCultureObject>("empire");
        if (!Module.CurrentModule.IsOnlyCoreContentEnabled)
        {
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCultureObject>("sturgia");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCultureObject>("aserai");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCultureObject>("vlandia");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCultureObject>("battania");
          yield return Game.Current.ObjectManager.GetObject<BasicCultureObject>("khuzait");
        }
      }
    }

The character creation culture selection VM is populated in a similar fashion, and I wouldn't be surprised if other UI VM's also are populated with static fields.

A simple solution would be making those methods virtual, which would allow for modders to implement their own class inheriting from CustomBattleData which loads whichever cultures/characters/etc. they want without having to use harmony patching/re-implementing a significant amount of code.

 

[MRay]

I'll take a look at these, thank you for the report!

 

[Jance]

I'll take a look at these, thank you for the report!

Thanks for the quick reply. In addition:

- You should add a default brush in MultiplayerLobbyClassFilterFactionItemWidget when there isn't a brush found matching the current query:

this.Brush = this.Context.BrushFactory.GetBrush(this.BaseBrushName + "." + this.Culture[0].ToString().ToUpper() + this.Culture.Substring(1).ToLower());

- The code for populating the culture selection VM is deeply nested in the Character Creation code, so the virtual method approach might not be useful for fixing that. Instead, I would recommend making the culture selection screen scrollable, and add an xml attribute to cultures (eg. is_playable) which can be queried dynamically

 

[MRay]

1. Makes sense, I'll add it to my notes
2. Thank you, will look into this as well