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zoot

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Posts posted by zoot

  1. Anyway, I am curious to know if Web Worker is supported in AI and RMS? Is AI muilti threaded already supported? Having muilti-threaded AI could help with performance in late game.

    According to this page, a basic implementation of web workers ("dedicated workers") has been supported as far back as Firefox 3.5. The version of SpiderMonkey we are using (SpiderMonkey 1.8.5) corresponds to Firefox 4.0, I believe.

    Does anyone have any idea why web workers might not be enabled in our engine, even though it is supposed to be supported? I tried accessing the global 'Worker' object that is supposed to be the API for this, but got the error:

    ERROR: JavaScript error: Console line 1
    ReferenceError: Worker is not defined
    @Console:1

  2. I'm quasi-interested in making the engine more moddable (#304). One of items I've noticed in that regard is that a number of system components are hardcoded into Simulation2.cpp: https://github.com/0ad/0ad/blob/master/source/simulation2/Simulation2.cpp#L100

    Wouldn't it be a good idea to factor as many of those as possible out of Simulation2.cpp and into an XML template, similar to "special/player.xml"? Then mods could alter that template in accordance with which components they actually need to use.

  3. A note: It might be my contact (or lack of it) with the accent, but i find it difficult, sometimes, to understand the European English "standard" accent. So if I were to choose one over the other, I'd prefer the American English "standard" accent, which is almost always pretty clear, to me.

    I agree. I'd only use British English if it had to sound particularly distinguished :P (Which it shouldn't, a tutorial is very hands-on.)

  4. About the faces: since the goal is to make the icon easily identifiable, I am not sure it is a good idea to leave out the faces. I can't immediately prove it, but I believe that if you showed me a series images of faceless bodies vs. a series of images of bodies with faces, I would have more difficulty remembering and telling apart the faceless ones than the ones with faces.

    For instance, see this:

    tumblr_ll9oqgJXFc1qfms26o1_400.jpg

    The two images at the top look different from each other, but not hugely so. The two images at the bottom, on the other hand, look very different from each other - even though they are the same images as the ones at the top only 'flipped' upside down. This is the Thatcher effect. It suggests that we have specialized functions for recognizing upright faces.

    People with prosopagnosia or face blindness are impaired in this ability, so it is good to have other cues as well:

    The specific brain area usually associated with prosopagnosia is the fusiform gyrus, which activates specifically in response to faces. Thanks to this specialization, most people recognize faces much more effectively than they do similarly complex inanimate objects. For those with prosopagnosia, the ability to recognize faces depends on the less-sensitive object recognition system.
  5. Looks great IMO. I can't immediately guess which unit it is, but I believe what is most important is that I distinguish it from other icons, so I am able to learn which unit it corresponds to by clicking it. That is, if it looks different from any other icon, and a spearman always comes out when I click it, I will quickly learn the correspondence, and be able to identify it at a glance in-game.

    I believe Yves is right, though, and maybe the shield here is a bit difficult to make out from the background.

  6. This defense proved unbeatable to Aegis Bot:

    XaaeGHD.png

    It did send batch after batch of units towards it, but it seemed to focus most of its firepower - especially siege weapons - against towers. So it had to go all the way around the wall (the red line) before being able to land a blow, by which time the units would already have been killed by the towers.

    Also, when it ran out of metal sources in its own territory, it began sending workers suicidally towards my metal mines, where they would just get killed in the defense shown above. After that point it basically shut down - it was no longer able to build any armies after losing access to metal. It would probably be better if it had just started using traders to gain metal then.

  7. The scaling issue is probably the most important one, but a few additional ones:

    - Will there be other backgrounds made? Solid light blue seems inappropriate.

    - It spooks me out that I can't see the units faces.

    - The two soldier units in the top row seem too passive, they could be more menacing. Maybe you could use posture as an additional cue to distinguish them from each other.

    - The elephant in the top-right icon is taking up too much of the icon's space. The icon is almost all grey skin/flesh.

  8. Grammar nazi:

    The bot's chat lacks punctuation. Here's a patch: https://github.com/zootzoot/0ad/commit/d27c5916212aeda94808288d0951bc376a7e3d45.diff

    Also, is "Starting to attack x" good English in this context? I would only use that form for a slow process/tendency, like "The paint is starting to dry" or "My house is starting to collapse". IMO just cut that line, since the other lines the bot can say seems fine.

  9. Please try the difficulty settings, easy should feel easy but not tooooo easy. Hard should be somewhat challenging to skilled players. Very hard should be challenging. Please report if it is too challenging, or not enough (I use a system of resource cheat: Easy AI gathers 33% more slowly, hard 33% faster, and very hard 66% faster.)

    Any particular maps you can recommend for maximum challenge?

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