Hero Selection Brainstorm

So, I want to make a simple hero-selection system type thing. I'd like some feedback on what you like in a hero selection system for a game like an AoS or a hero arena.

What I'm going to do is have all the heroes in a ring and have selector units. Ideally I'd like to have an ability that lets you get details about a selected hero, and then an ability to actually select said hero.

What do you think? What have you seen successful (or not successful)?

The thing I wanted to try in a map I never got around to finishing is a combination of a placed hero (for the visuals) and an invisible destructable on top of it (for displaying a tooltip with all the information when you hover over the hero with the mouse). Then, in order to select a hero, you could simply... select it.

...or, you could always do a fancy, heavily triggered selection system with arrow key selection and whatnot.

I like this idea. Any ideas on how to work it? I'm not sure how you would have a destructible display a tooltip.

Haha, not gonna happen. Those are a pain.

http://www.wc3c.net/showpost.php?p=783703&postcount=27

and

http://www.wc3c.net/showpost.php?p=783724&postcount=30

... really just read the whole thread. It's only three pages.

You just need to make it selectable ingame and set it's name to whatever you want the tooltip to be.

The links Here-b-Trollz provided are helpful, but where is (are) the .wts file and how do I find/edit them and thusly put them into my map? I've got an MPQ tool, but other than that I've no idea where to go.

The last hero selection i was making, looked kinda like this:

Hidden information:

When you hover over a hero, he plays an animation, you hear one of his unit sounds and he gets selected, so you can read his skills at the bottom of the screen. when you click on him, you pick him. (it isnt using rtc, but trackables) however as you can see this was designed for 3 heroes.
if you have more then like 9 heroes you could use two such windows, with the left-hand one showing only the icons and the right-hand one showing the hero you have selected in the left. and when you click the hero in the right, you pick him. i think ToB O will use something kinda like this.
just some inspiration...

Though that looks quite attractive, it looks complicated (to code and create) especially since I have 9-18 heroes, not 3, which isn't quite what I'm going for. I'm looking more for a simple and intuitive design; the likes of which Anitarf mentioned and I'm experimenting with as we speak (still need to find the .wts file).

I don't know about the need for editing the .wts file, in my test I was able to get quite some text there with simple object editor as far as I remember. You could try that first and only look for the .wts file if that doesn't work out.

Man, it has been explaind to me more than one the tricks behind those cool UIs, but I still can't grasp how could I make one :(

Also, HANS' one could support more by making it a slider of sorts. A Carousel, if you will.

Ani: I couldn't get more than 2 1/2 full sentences into the Name box of a destructible before it cut me off, so... How did you do it? CnP from another source directly into the box? <--- Didn't work either. How the heck did you fit more than like, 2 sentences? And no, holding shift didn't work either.

So where's the .wts file...? <--- Found it, was looking in the wrong spot. Now to open and modify it...

Hmm, well, my test text might have been just about that long, so maybe there is a limit and I just barely didn't reach it. Alternatively, I may have actually edited the .wts file and I just don't remember, it was a while back.

Anyway, the file should be in your map, extract and reimport it with a MPQ browser.

Yup, I got it to work. I had to find the .wts file (I feel smart for looking in the MPQ files :P), and after a bit of tweaking and importing it back into the map, it works beautifully. Thanks for the suggestion Anitarf, it works great!

this would be a feature that would be of use for the ObjectMerger...

Just a question about the system itself: wouldn't using hovering destructibles make it confusing if the users wanted to know what skills/what the skills do when picking their hero? Or is this intended and just a short description is available for the heroes being picked?