Premature drag box formation in 'DE'

:arrow_forward: GAME INFORMATION

  • GAME BUILD #: All builds of ‘Definitive Edition’ (and the latest of ‘HD Edition’ that I can check)
  • GAME PLATFORM: Steam
  • OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10

:arrow_forward: ISSUE EXPERIENCED

Have you ever wondered why, many times you can’t select to draw apart a specific unit you want (a badly wounded unit, or a villager in a crowded workplace to build a house nearby) among many moving units, and you end up usually selecting two units, seemingly with one click?

In aoe2 ‘DE’, the drag box forms after holding left mouse click and moving the cursor by 1 pixel, while in vanilla aoe2 (1.0c) it forms only after holding left mouse click and moving the cursor by (approx.) 10 pixels. Those 10 pixels were a distance that helped in blocking the premature formation of the drag box, offering quality of life in micromanagement.

I noticed that downgrade in the control of the units in 2019, when I started playing more aoe2, with ‘DE’, but only recently I understood why. Still, I believe there isn’t any practical/realistic reason to be able to make drag box smaller than a minimum size (approx. 10 pixels per side).

:arrow_forward: FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

100% of the time / matches I play (ALWAYS)

:arrow_forward: REPRODUCTION STEPS

Have installed both ‘Definitive Edition’ and ‘The Conquerors’ (1.0c) and try doing drag boxes in a singleplayer skirmish, to compare.

:arrow_forward: VIDEO

2 Likes

yea I do recall selecting units was never this hard back in AOK

though granted I dont recall the resolutions I use back at the time and that could also play a factor with larger displaying units.

3 Likes

Here I have a footage of this behavior when is actually happening in a match.

While I have previously ordered two villagers to build two farms (using command queue), in the footage I return to select one of the two, to send him to the second farm, in order to finish both farms at max speed. Left-click selection fails to select just one villager, forcing me to use the UI icons, to set one villager apart from the other:

And three key frames…

Frame A, just before I left-click one of the two; barracks is selected:

Frame B, left-click has been just ordered, so barracks is not anymore selected (on the field, UI is trailing); a tiny and useless white dragbox (approx. 1x1 pixels) is visible at the tip of the cursor, obviously because user’s hand is not always 0 pixels steady while clicking, naturally. Steadiness can vary between a few pixels:

Frame C, both villagers are now the new selection (on the field, UI is trailing), not only one of them as wanted; not optimal behavior:

Despite that in my matches (multiplayer) it happens many times (the footage is from a 1v1 multiplayer ranked match), in a singleplayer skirmish I can’t easily reproduce it tho.

In the footage, the drag box is not even that close to the hitbox of the leftmost villager.

Singleplayer skirmish:

Having 3 vills selected while paused, I hold shift and try to add one more vill to my selection; two vills added instead. The needless tiny drag box that makes its appearance at the tip of the cursor seems to create the problem.

1 Like

yes i agree, i had to keep making the zoom closer to be able to select units more accurately. Would be nice to have this fixed

2 Likes

also for example, u want to select 2 vilagers to grab a deer but it selects 3 or 1 because its so hard to just have 2 in the square that is too to the right