a22 review part 1: retrospective on the a11 bugs

[serveurix]

Hi,

in 2012 I made a list of the things that were bugging me in 0 A.D. alpha 11 ( https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/16534-early-short-review-of-alpha-xi/ ), and I planned to do this for every version released, but I haven't found the time to do it. I'm not going to list all the bugs of the game in this post, I will just give the current status of the ones of that previous post. Then I will make an other post and try to list the new bugs introduced in new features or versions from a12 to a22.

Don't be scared by the amount of text. Since I haven't numbered the bugs in the older post, I have copied or paraphrased them here so you don't have to waste time looking for them in the previous post.

Bugs of https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/16534-early-short-review-of-alpha-xi/ :

• 1: "No sound/notification when the player is attacked" : solved
• 2: "Off-camera sounds too loud" : solved
• 3: "Possibility to build houses above the pop limit" : notabug
• 4: "Military units attack wild beasts by default" : still present. I'm ok with the military units automatically attacking predators (it's very useful with towers helping against wolves), not ok with the auto-attack of the huntable animals (like boars). Boars and equivalents should only be attacked on demand. Edit: this would probably need some design decision and/or new technical features, related to these bugs : https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/3007 https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/3783 https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/3919
• 5: "The scared deers runs faster than the citizen which are hunting them, forcing the citizens to follow. A deer can make a group of citizen following him all around the map, and if you don't pay attention, a group of citizen can end up in the territory of the enemy. (Why don't they hunt deers with arrows ? I think it's the case in the "Age Of" series)" : still present. I still think all citizen should be able to hunt with a bow. I've seen that the slaughter of domestic animals was treated differently than the attack (at least on the animation side), but I haven't seen anything similar with the hunt of wild animals. Why not make the units hunt with a bow ? (Side note : what about other animals ? rabbits are a pain too since they run fast, but using a bow to hunt rabbits would look unrealistic and quite ridiculous. Are rabbits even relevant in this game anyway ?)
• 6: "There is no indication about the place you've clicked to move your units. It would be good to have little arrows or a flag, like in the "Age Of" series." : still present in a22, but waypoint flags have been implemented in a23 svn. A ticket exists : https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/657 (Note: only the arrows animation have been implemented, which is what I wanted, but apparently it's planned to add a target flag as well)
• 7,8: "Units grouping before doing anything bug" : irrelevant since formations are disabled
• 9: "units trapped in angles" : solved. almost never happens now with the new pathfinder
• 10: "When units collect resources, it seems that they carry them to the nearest dropsite, speaking about the distance, not about the length of the path. For example, they would rather carry resources to a dropsite which is behind a cliff, but very close in distance, rather than an other dropsite which is located a bit further, but can be reached quicker." : still present. Don't know if solvable. Edit: probably related to PF work anyway so maybe it's not worth reporting this one.
• 11: "gatherers trying to fish, fishing boats trying to reach a farm or a cc" : solved. land units don't target fish anymore and ships do not target land dropsites. Edit: There's a ticket though, waiting for a design decision https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1437
• 12: "Maybe it would be good to have the ability to transform a wall into a gate before it's built (when you place the underpinning)." : still present https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1772
• 13: "Please give a way to know if a wall will be long enough to be able to be transformed into a gate before it is built. Sometimes you want to build a gate between two cliffs, and you end up with a wall which is too short to be transformed." : still present : apparently we can only turn long walls into gates, not medium or short. I think there should be an indicator that helps differentiating the long walls from the medium and short ones (not just the length, which can be hard to estimate) https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1772
• 14,15,16: "There's no way to know if the wall you've build is close enough to the natural obstacle you want to take advantage of. Sometimes you build a wall next to a cliff, thinking it will protect you, and enemy units go round it. Maybe you should implement the same mechanism as in AoM, where wall "stick" to the edge of the cliff when you try to place them (like currently walls "stick" to other wall edges in 0AD)." :  still present, but less problematic now that walls can be extended into cliffs and water. I still would like to see some sort of "snap to the edge" behavior.
• 17: "No town bell" : solved
• 18: "When a soldier is working on economy tasks, he abandons his work and fight only when he's attacked. I think that in AoM, when a worker was attacked (even by a beast), all workers in a certain perimeter helped him to fight back. Maybe it would be good to provide this option." : still present, not very important, probably a matter of preference. it just comes down to "do we want workers to behave like in AoE2 (micro them all) or like in AoE3 (workers come to help their comrade automatically if they are close enough) Edit: could be related to https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/3919 (assuming the mechanism for humans would be the same than for animals)
• 19: "It would be good to print some more information about objects or events. When you send a unit collect treasures on the map, you would like to have a notification "+100 wood collected" when the unit grabs 100 units of wood, for example. It would also be good to show to the player the number of units in garrison inside a building without clicking on it, with little marks above the health bar, for example." : first one wontfix (Edit: ticket here https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1773 ), but I still think that when you receive a big amount of resources instantly you should be notified about it immediately, as it will have a huge impact on your economic plans, second one partly solved (need to press "Ctrl" though after selecting a garrisonable unit or a building https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1774 )
• 20: "The behavior of the "find idle workers" button is quite disturbing. It's true that every soldier is also a potential worker, but then all the workers do not have the same abilities : citizen can't build military buildings, cavalry can't build, range units are more adapted to hunt while citizen are more adapted to other economic activities, etc. Why not a button (and/or a keyboard shortcut) that focuses only on citizen, an other on military units, an other on ships, an other on priests, etc ?" : still present, don't know how to solve it, don't know if it should be solved anyway. I somewhat got used to it, generally avoiding making citizen cav, and systematically garrisoning all the non-working citizen cav into buildings to avoid polluting the idle worker button.
• 21: "As some units can level up, why not implementing a behavior "go back to the base/the next priest when severely hurt", like in Warzone 2100 ?" : notabug. Really a matter of taste, actually. Artistically is doesn't really make sense either in a history game (not realistic).
• 22: "There's a severe lack of keyboard shortcuts at the moment. The "select all military units", "select all workers", "select all units", "select all units of type X" keyboard shortcuts of Warzone 2100 would be very useful here. " : still present. I still would like to see some more keyboard shortcuts, perhaps not the ones I was talking about back then, but at least the buildings ones (to quickly access buildings). https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1899
• 23: "back to work feature" : solved
• 24: "units stuck around resources" : solved (except when the number of units authorized to gather the resource is bigger than the units who can actually reach it : happens a lot on maps with trees on steep slopes).
• 25: "When a farmer is clicked, it would be good to display which farm he's currently working on. As farms can partly recover each other, it's often hard to know." : still present. Given that we should put 2 units per field instead of the max of 5, that the fields are generally so close to each other that you don't know which field a unit is working on, it would be good to have a way to see which units are linked to which field. For example when you select a farmer make the field he's working on blink for a second, and when you select a field make all its farmers blink for a second. OR, alternatively, get rid of that stupid farming paradigm where 2 farmers are more efficient than 5 on the same farm. https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1776
• 26: "When you send a group of units to grab a treasure, maybe you could make so that only one unit goes, the other stay in place. I propose that because it's the default behavior in Warzone, but note that in Warzone it's justified by the fact that you can send the complete group of units to grab the treasure (simply by clicking next to it). The same behavior would be interesting when you send a group to build or collect resources : just send the units which are able to perform the work, and let the others where they are." : probably notabug
• 27: "In AoE II you can ask siege units to fire at a specific place, to deforest a region or to prepare an ambush. This feature would be useful in 0AD too." : still present. A ticket exists : https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1777
• 28: "It looks like units can't carry resources of different types. If a worker carries 7 units of metal when you ask him to go mine stone, he will lose his metal when he starts to mine stone." : notabug. There's a ticket for that though ! https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/2947
• 29: "As the gates are asymetric, there is an inner side and an outer side, but the computer doesn't know how to turn the building. It causes some weird situations like doors with locks on the side of the enemy. It's not a game bug, just an aesthetics bug. And it would not make sense to add a button "change the side of the gate", as this won't change the game experience of the user, so I don't know what the solution is." : I know how to determine the orientation of the gates now, so when it comes to making screenshots, there's no bug. It's still ugly though, so I'd recommend making symmetrical gate models.
• 30: "Buildings' orientations are always the same. Giving a random position to buildings would make the cities look more realistic. (I think it's already like that in AoE III, not sure)" : notabug. The orientation of the building's door is supposed to be always the same for gameplay purposes.
• 31: "Strangely, when I send units like Baguada (Skirmisher) killing an enemy unit, and that this unit is already dead, my Baguada seem to give a hit in the air. They are not actually launching their javelins, but they begin the move and there is the sound of the javelins being launched." : still present, it might have something to do with how the animations are cycled. Haven't investigated it.
• 32: "A lot of animations are missing. Citizen killing sheep, bears dying, trees falling, buildings being progressively damaged, wind blowing in the sails of ships when moving, etc. The siege machines should also have human operators to move them and make them fire. But I guess you already plan to correct all of these." : still present for most, planned. Damaged building variations are on their way. Would be cool to have it for ships too (falling mast, burning sails, etc.). Falling trees would be **awesome** to have. Edit: ticket for the falling tree animation : https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1017
• 33: "I haven't played a lot with ships yet, but it seems that 0AD fails on the "No more tiny ships sinking other ships with arrows." statement for the moment. I don't know if you plan to give a charge ability to triremes so they can pierce the hull of enemy ships, but if you do, I can't wait to see that." : still present, planned. I know it will take a lot of time to implement ramming.

14 of them were solved or were not bugs, and among the ones which are not solved, some are being worked on or planned to be worked on, and some other would need to be discussed before being solved (or ruled out). What does the dev team think of this ?

(A22 review part 2 is coming)

Edited September 13, 2017 by serveurix

[Lion.Kanzen]

Quote

• 25: "When a farmer is clicked, it would be good to display which farm he's currently working on. As farms can partly recover each other, it's often hard to know." : still present. Given that we should put 2 units per field instead of the max of 5, that the fields are generally so close to each other that you don't know which field a unit is working on, it would be good to have a way to see which units are linked to which field. For example when you select a farmer make the field he's working on blink for a second, and when you select a field make all its farmers blink for a second. OR, alternatively, get rid of that stupid farming paradigm where 2 farmers are more efficient than 5 on the same farm.

This isn't necessary that 2 units per field.

 

Nice feedback. But I'm most worried for lacking of sound or alerts than animations.