I have never had this experience with Carcassonne either - typically in our games it's more likely that a late-game cloister will be wasted because the player doesn't have the meeples to spare for it.

Even an 8-point late game cloister will be outpaced by a decent sized field, and it will tie up that meeple too.

The other factor that can affect this is experience of the players - experienced folks are wary of creating an easy 9-point-parachute-cloister spot on the board and will avoid it if they can.

House rules to make the cloister less of a game winning tile in Carcassonne?
I have subclassed edit control to accept only floating numbers. I would like to pop a tooltip when user makes an invalid input. The behavior I target is like the one edit control with ES_NUMBER has :



So far I was able to implement tracking tooltip and display it when user makes invalid input.

However, the tooltip is misplaced. I have tried to use ScreenToClient and ClientToScreen to fix this but have failed.

Here are the instructions for creating SCCE :

1) Create default Win32 project in Visual Studio.

2) Add the following includes in your stdafx.h, just under #include &lt;windows.h&gt; :

#include &lt;windowsx.h&gt;
#include &lt;commctrl.h&gt;

#pragma comment( lib, "comctl32.lib")

#pragma comment(linker, \
    "\"/manifestdependency:type='Win32' "\
    "name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' "\
    "version='6.0.0.0' "\
    "processorArchitecture='*' "\
    "publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' "\
    "language='*'\"")


3) Add these global variables:

HWND g_hwndTT;
TOOLINFO g_ti;


4) Here is a simple subclass procedure for edit controls ( just for testing purposes ) :

LRESULT CALLBACK EditSubProc ( HWND hwnd, UINT message, 
    WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam, 
    UINT_PTR uIdSubclass, DWORD_PTR dwRefData )
{
    switch (message)
    {
    case WM_CHAR:
        {
            POINT pt;
            if( ! isdigit( wParam ) )  // if not a number pop a tooltip!
            {
                if (GetCaretPos(&amp;pt))  // here comes the problem
                {
                    // coordinates are not good, so tooltip is misplaced
                    ClientToScreen( hwnd, &amp;pt );


                    /************************** EDIT #1 ****************************/
                    /******* If I delete this line x-coordinate is OK *************/
                    /*** y-coordinate should be little lower, but it is still OK **/
                    /**************************************************************/

                    ScreenToClient( GetParent(hwnd), &amp;pt );

                    /************************* Edit #2 ****************************/

                    // this adjusts the y-coordinate, see the second edit
                    RECT rcClientRect;
                    Edit_GetRect( hwnd, &amp;rcClientRect );
                    pt.y = rcClientRect.bottom;

                    /**************************************************************/

                    SendMessage(g_hwndTT, TTM_TRACKACTIVATE, 
                        TRUE, (LPARAM)&amp;g_ti);
                    SendMessage(g_hwndTT, TTM_TRACKPOSITION, 
                        0, MAKELPARAM(pt.x, pt.y));
                }
                return FALSE;
            }
            else
            {
                SendMessage(g_hwndTT, TTM_TRACKACTIVATE, 
                    FALSE, (LPARAM)&amp;g_ti);
                return ::DefSubclassProc( hwnd, message, wParam, lParam );
            }
        }
        break;
    case WM_NCDESTROY:
        ::RemoveWindowSubclass( hwnd, EditSubProc, 0 );
        return DefSubclassProc( hwnd, message, wParam, lParam);
        break;
    }
    return DefSubclassProc( hwnd, message, wParam, lParam);
} 


5) Add the following WM_CREATE handler :

case WM_CREATE:
    {
        HWND hEdit = CreateWindowEx( 0, L"EDIT", L"edit", WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE |
            WS_BORDER | ES_CENTER, 150, 150, 100, 30, hWnd, (HMENU)1000, hInst, 0 );

        // try with tooltip
        g_hwndTT = CreateWindow(TOOLTIPS_CLASS, NULL,
            WS_POPUP | TTS_ALWAYSTIP | TTS_BALLOON,
            0, 0, 0, 0, hWnd, NULL, hInst, NULL);

        if( !g_hwndTT )
            MessageBeep(0);  // just to signal error somehow

        g_ti.cbSize = sizeof(TOOLINFO);
        g_ti.uFlags = TTF_TRACK | TTF_ABSOLUTE;
        g_ti.hwnd = hWnd;
        g_ti.hinst = hInst;
        g_ti.lpszText = TEXT("Hi there");

        if( ! SendMessage(g_hwndTT, TTM_ADDTOOL, 0, (LPARAM)&amp;g_ti) )
            MessageBeep(0);  // just to have some error signal

        // subclass edit control
        SetWindowSubclass( hEdit, EditSubProc, 0, 0 );
    }
    return 0L;  


6) Initialize common controls in MyRegisterClass ( before return statement ) :

// initialize common controls
INITCOMMONCONTROLSEX iccex;
iccex.dwSize = sizeof(INITCOMMONCONTROLSEX);
iccex.dwICC = ICC_BAR_CLASSES | ICC_WIN95_CLASSES | 
    ICC_TAB_CLASSES | ICC_TREEVIEW_CLASSES | ICC_STANDARD_CLASSES ;

if( !InitCommonControlsEx(&amp;iccex) ) 
    MessageBeep(0);   // signal error 


That's it, for the SSCCE.

My questions are following :


How can I properly position tooltip in my main window? How should I manipulate with caret coordinates?
Is there a way for tooltip handle and toolinfo structure to not be global?


Thank you for your time.

Best regards. 

EDIT #1:

I have managed to achieve quite an improvement by deleting ScreenToClient call in the subclass procedure. The x-coordinate is good, y-coordinate could be slightly lower. I still would like to remove global variables somehow...

EDIT #2:

I was able to adjust y-coordinate by using EM_GETRECT message and setting y-coordinate to the bottom of the formatting rectangle:

RECT rcClientRect;
Edit_GetRect( hwnd, &amp;rcClientRect );
pt.y = rcClient.bottom;


Now the end-result is much better. All that is left is to remove global variables...

EDIT #3:

It seems that I have cracked it! The solution is in EM_SHOWBALLOONTIP and EM_HIDEBALLOONTIP messages! Tooltip is placed at the caret position, ballon shape is the same as the one on the picture, and it auto-dismisses itself properly. And the best thing is that I do not need global variables!

Here is my subclass procedure snippet:

case WM_CHAR:
{
    // whatever... This condition is for testing purpose only
    if( ! IsCharAlpha( wParam ) &amp;&amp; IsCharAlphaNumeric( wParam ) )
    {
        SendMessage(hwnd, EM_HIDEBALLOONTIP, 0, 0);
        return ::DefSubclassProc( hwnd, message, wParam, lParam );
    }
    else
    {
        EDITBALLOONTIP ebt;

        ebt.cbStruct = sizeof( EDITBALLOONTIP );
        ebt.pszText = L" Tooltip text! ";
        ebt.pszTitle = L" Tooltip title!!! ";
        ebt.ttiIcon = TTI_ERROR_LARGE;    // tooltip icon

        SendMessage(hwnd, EM_SHOWBALLOONTIP, 0, (LPARAM)&amp;ebt);

        return FALSE;
    }
 }
 break;

