It's an awesome project, but I found a bug. I wanted to build a storehouse, but serfs didn't deliver stone to it, only wood, but I had stone in the stone mine. I tried to build it to another place, but it was the same. When I enabled serfs to store stone in my old storehouse, they delivered it to the construction.
That bug has been reported already and will be fixed, thanks
We will be making the deliveries more intelligent which may improve this a little bit.
If something needs to be picked up and delivered, how does the game select which serf will do it? The most nearby, unoccupied serf?
I've always refrained from making extra large cities out of fear that serfs will deliver stuff to the other side of the map. Is this fear ungrounded?
At the moment it works like this: When a serf completes a job he looks in the list of deliveries and takes the best possible one given his current position. If there are none available, he goes to sleep for 10 seconds and then checks the list again... so as you can imagine this does not give the most efficient results as it is matching the best delivery for the serf rather than the best serf for the delivery. We will be changing it so that it keeps track of available serfs and allocates jobs to the closest ones. (I think, I need to talk through that with Krom) So no it's not ungrounded, but something to keep in mind is that a village with slightly too few serfs will be much more efficient that a village with too many in the current system.
- Win conditions (I don't think the original win conditions will suffice as it is still possible to rebuild your town without a storehouse, school and barracks if you have serves and labourers. All barracks, schools, vehicle workshops, town halls and serves or labourers will do. And soldiers of course. This requires more debating though as I can understand people disagree. Not destroying storehouses seems strange to me as well.)
We can add a lot more flexibility to the script for this as well, the mission could define exactly what conditions must happen for you to lose. (such as a certain type of building being destroyed, or even a single specific building defined in the script)
- Balanced fighting (Archers and crossbowmen seem to die too quickly when attacked by melee units. They often die in just one hit and that is by far not enough, especially for crossbowmen.)
I seem to remember both bowmen and crossbowmen in the original dying from a single hit all the time... Please create a comparison mission (e.g. a long line of militia killing a long line of bowmen) and we can test it properly if you think it's not right. I've made hundreds upon hundreds of test missions like this over the years to measure things from KaM...
- In my opinion the 'moving briefing screen' is really annoying. I'd rather see it how it originally was: on the right side, and only on the left side if the mission you are about to start takes place on a location that would otherwise be hidden underneath the briefing
- The images of the campaign map seem to be in low quality
- The red dots on the campaign maps are placed in wrong positions or not placed at all (TPR)
- The red flags on the campaign map have a background that is not fully translucent.
- A possibility to save the game between missions would be nice. Loading a save from such a point should restart the briefing.
But I think it's nice to be able to see what's under the briefing. We were planning to make it fade from one side to the other rather than jumping which might improve it. Also, you need to be able to see things under it at any time as you can click on the flags to chose to re-play a mission you have already won.
Ah, the quality is probably because we're using the image from TPR and its menu was only 800x600, so they'll be stretched to 1024x768. We can use the 1024x768 image from TSK, but there's not much we can do able TPR except for making the image smaller or forcing people to use a lower resolution. (neither of which are a good solution)
Red dots haven't been placed yet. We're going to improve the campaign system by placing them all in a folder Campaigns so people can make their own. (including the map with flag and dot positions) When that happens you can help by typing up the list of dot coordinates if you like
We'll fix the flag transparency, thanks.
You can go back to any completed mission by clicking on it.
- Possibility to see which map is selected by the host in a multiplayer lobby or which map is being played if the game has already started
- Possibility to sort the servers on aspects like number of players, lobby/game/none, server name, etc.
- Possibility to look at the server list with all the information that goes with it while being in a room already
The first two are planned, (we'll also show the time the mission has been running for as well as the map name) but looking at the server list while in a room is a bit more complicated, how should that work from an interface point of view? The server list takes up most of the screen so it would have to hide the room you are currently in and I think that would be confusing... I usually run two windowed copies so I can keep an eye on the server list at the same time so I understand why you asked about this
- Scroll bar for map description (if needed)
- A somehow lengthened bar for map names as mine doesn't fit! Razz
- A 'closed' player 5, 6, 7 and 8 when the map is only for 4 players, and closed 7 and 8 when it is for 6 players, etc. (Or the people who join after the possible slots are taken should become spectators automatically.)
Scrollbar for the description has already been added.
If you can suggest a way to make the map name wider I'll do it. We're planning to redesign that UI a bit so we might be able to make the dropdown wider then.
Closed slots are planned.
- Fast forward and rewind option for replays
- Slider for replays showing the total game time and the progress of the game. By moving the slider you can move from the start of the game to, for example, a moment halfway so you do not have to wait/fast forward to get there
- Option to name and save a replay.
I don't think you quite understand the complexity of a replay... Our system works like this:
A replay is two files: a save of the mission at the very start from before the game began (.bas file) and a record of the user input during the game. (.rpl file) This is very similar to the way multiplayer works, all computers start with the same game state and then exchange user input before executing it. (multiplayer is like a live replay)
This is good because a replay is small, the record of events is small and a snapshot of the game takes between 500kb and 1MB. However it means you cannot treat it as a video, and just skip backwards and forwards. To reach a point in the file you have to execute every command before it from the start and simulate every event of the mission, meaning the fastest it can go forwards is the maximum speedup your CPU can cope with. Going backwards is pretty much out of the question because we don't have a way to undo user input and simulate the mission backwards! The only way I can think of allowing skipping would be to include a snapshot (save) of the mission at 5 minute intervals, then allowing you to skip to one of these (will require loading the save taking the same amount of time as loading a regular save) then you could play it from there and skip to other points. The problem is that a save game is usually between 500kb and 1MB, (although it can be more or less) depending on the size of your map and the number of units/houses you have. So to store one of these every 5 minutes would take maybe 20MB per hour and skipping positions would still take a few seconds to load and only give you 5 minute precision as to where you skipped to. We can't save an actual video of the game because that would only show you the player's perspective, (right now you can view the entire map and look where ever you like as it is a full simulation) the file would be massive and a lot of people's computers can cope with recording videos using something like like FRAPS anyway.
So at the moment I can't see a good way to make replays do what you suggested. Naming and saving the replay will be possible of course when we have a replay manager (you'll probably save the replay from the Results screen)
Thanks for your suggestions.
Lewin.