Unoccupied helmsmithy animation contains a person

Example of unoccupied helmsmithy.

You have a very discerning eye, Hans! :)

Well, I could "split hairs", as we say in English, and say that the building may be occupied but the WORKER isn't. ;D

I think the animation is entertaining and is a great indicator for when the building is not producing, but I admit it can be confusing for the brief period between completing its construction and when the worker gets there for the first time.

At this time, production sites like the helmsmithy have basically two states, working and idle. So the alternatives that I see we have are these:
1.) Remove the worker from the idle scene and lose its humorous entertaining quality.
2.) Create code for a third production site state to cover the brief period between completion of construction and the time the worker arrives from HQ.
3.) Leave it as is and interpret it maybe as a landlord waiting for his tenant to arrive. ;-D

I would place your request on the Wish List now for future consideration.

"You have a very discerning eye, Hans! :)"
Thank you. :)

As for the alternatives:
2 is probably closest to what I imagined, though I assumed idle and unoccupied were already different states. This probably makes it slightly harder to change than what I first imagined.
When it comes to 1, it think it is better to keep it as it is than to remove it. Both because I like the animation, but also because I gather the time where it stands unoccupied is way less than the time it is occupied.

Chuck:
Actually you are not completely right that this is only for a short time: It is only true if you have enough worker.

In my opinion is is important to see if a building is occupied or not. Currently you have to switch on the statistic overly to see this. So I am for adding a state unoccupied for all buildings. This is even true for military buildings. They can stay unoccupied for quite a while sometimes and currently you have no chance to see this without switching on the overlay. Productionsites could have the tools and utilities outside of the building removed. Military sites could have something like a flag outside if they are occupied. That could be used to differentiate military buildings from other ones too.

conclusion:
I think unoccupied is a state which is important to know about. So it would be nice to show graphically.

I set this bug to opinion instead of confirmed. So we can decide if we want to introduce unoccupied graphics.

+1 for a new state, and I like the name unoccupied. The worker listing is using 'vacant' as worker missing and noone wants to take the place and 'coming' for worker missing and one is coming. Both states are nicely summed up as unoccupied.

+1 also because I want to ensure that chuck does not run out of stuff to do :P.

@Timowi: Thanks for your comments and expansion regarding the condition of no worker being available. I like your thoughts about visual indicators for production (and possibly military) sites that would preclude the current need to activate the status comments to determine occupancy. The more information that the graphics can communicate to the player, the less time he'll have to devote to looking for it. I agree these changes would enhance the player experience and not detract from it.

@SirVer: Thank you for your concern on behalf of filling my idle hours. :D I am all for making the visual experience as rich and rewarding as possible. This would be fun to tackle.

The same topic was discussed in the graphics forum. It was about the new barbarian well and the missing idle animation. There obviously are some people who want that unoccupied state.
Just have a look here: http://wl.widelands.org/forum/post/4416/ and the following posts.

As our animation efforts are becoming more and more visible and we have people willing and able to lend their talents, I have targeted this effort for Build 17 RC1. We'll keep it on the "Wish List" for now, but remember to give it some consideration maybe the next WiHack. after Build 16 is released :)

I assume this is also the underlying reason for the Debian bug I linked to.

implemented in revision 5949.

The unoccupied state is played if a building is already built up complete, but no worker has yet entered the building. We should further keep in mind to restart the animation once a building is unoccupied again in future Widelands versions with "throw worker out of building" feature ;).
I alread added unoccupied states for the barbarian helmsmithy, bakery, donjon, sentry and barrier - all other buildings without unoccupied state play the idle state per default.

As the helmsmithy is fixed + unoccupied state is implemented, I mark this "Fix committed" :)

Peter, you ROCK! :D (Even if this does mean more graphics are now needed.) :)
Thanks!

Sorry to ask dumb questions , Peter.
But I most likely cannot expect someone else to do so :)
Did I understand correct that the "unoccupied state" needs a code modification for each bulding separetely?
What I'd like to know, is whether now all building can discern "idle" from unoccupied, or only those that you fixed?
Can we put in some building_u_??.png and all houses will know when to use it?

@#11 Chuck: It was quite a fast written code for me, therefore I am quite sure, that more than 95% of the credits will go to the graphicians - who spend much more time to create new graphics for this feature - once this feature is really used. So these are just my 2 ¢ :).

@#12 Astuur: You know, there are no dumb questions, only dumb answers :) - and especially in this case there are no dumb questions, if something is unclear - just because it's obvious for me, does not make it clear to everybody ;)

So a fast answer on your question:
You can create an "unoccupied" animation for every available building. The only "code change" you have to do, is to add an [unocupied] section (with picture and hotspot data) to the building's conf file.
Best take a look at the changelog of revision 5949 -> http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~widelands-dev/widelands/trunk/revision/5949
that should hopefully explain the use of the feature.

Yes, you're right -- no dumb questions - but I _do_ feel dumb when everybody seems to understand, and I don't !
In any case, thanks, Peter from my side, too, not only for the extra explanation, but also for the new feature :)

Released in build17-rc1.

upsy, my script went a little beserk. Sorry, debian people!