[Early, short review of Alpha XI]

See the keys.txt file that's in the same directory as the default.cfg file

Mea Culpa, it was right under my eyes and I didn't check. I'll write that bash script to make it up.

There might be a need to add e.g. the é key though, but we have to wait for one of the programmers to answer that.

And the "è", and the "ç", and the "à"...

[Early, short review of Alpha XI]

IMO supporting different keyboard layouts is relatively important as far as internationalization goes. Probably even more important than translation, because you can just look up the few expressions you need and get on with the game, but not being able to set waypoints and the like keeps being a limitation/nuisance/handicap.

My opinion on this is that for the most used shortcuts, games should use the keys that are common to the majority of the layouts. And for less used shortcuts, let the user map them if needed. That's why I think using the numeric keypad is good : the layout is the same for everybody, and the group number shortcuts are often used in a real-time strategy game. And before you lanch a game, perhaps you're going to remap one key or two (AZERTY users are already used to remap W to Z and A to Q in FPS games (I've never figured out why FPS don't re-map WASD keys automatically, basing themselves on the locale, BTW), but you're not going to remap all the 30 [0-9], Ctrl+[0-9] and Shift+[0-9] keys (when it's a config file like here it's not a big problem, a simple bash script could do the trick, but through a GUI, that's painful).

BTW, what is the naming convention of the keys in the config file ? For the ";" I guess I have to enter "Semicolon" in full letters with a capital "S", but how do I set the "1" key of the numeric keypad ? "Num1" ?

If I want to use the "1" key (without pressing Shift, so it's the "&" key) should I write "Ampersand" ? What about the " ' " key (corresponds to "4") ? "Apostrophe" ? "SingleQuote" ? What about the "é" key (corresponds to "2") ?

Edit: If I remember well, in AoM you can create groups of units by using banners at the top of the screen. When a group is not created, the banner doesn't appear completely, only the bottom of the banner is displayed. You click on it, and your group is created : the banner appears with a number on it, and each time you click on it, the group is selected. Thus, the player can manage his groups without using the keyboard. Maybe 0AD could provide the option ?

[Early, short review of Alpha XI]

The period (and the numbers?!) requires a modifier key? That sounds like a pain. Since that isn't common I don't think it's something we can/will support as most keyboard layouts to my knowledge (which I admit is limited) allows for easy access of the period and number keys. There's always the ability to customize the shortcuts though, and we might end up including several keyboard configurations geared towards different keyboard layouts if the need is great enough/it's easy enough to do.

I'm not making it up : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#AZERTY :/

And french people are not the only one concerned, I guess.

Anyway, for sure it's a pain when it comes to manipulate figures or play games, that's why the numeric keypad is useful Please enable at least the use of the numeric keypad.

(Note that the "official" use of the Shift key is ok : "Shift+F5" and "Shift+F8" shortcuts seem to work. Shift doesn't work only when it's needed to enable common symbols.)

[Early, short review of Alpha XI]

I just noticed an other bug : when you ask citizens to build a port, they automatically go collect some resources, no matter where they are. And sometimes you end up with citizens stuck on a coast because they're trying to reach fishes.

The same bug (or the opposite bug, if I can say) happens for fishing boats : when they collect food from fishes, they try to reach the closest dropsite, even if it's not a port. And you end up with fiching boats stuck to the coast (the other way ).

[Early, short review of Alpha XI]

I would say they do this already? (As in: They do stick to the area of the shore they can be built upon, and you will just have to find a place where there is no obstacle.)

If by "stick" you mean that they turn the right way, facing the water and turning their back to the coast, yes, they do this. But if by "stick" you mean that they are "attracted" by the next possible place when they are not far from it (which is what I meant, too), it's not the case, as far as I can tell. When I want to build a port on a coast, I drag the virtual building over it, and let's imagine it's a coast where you can't easily build, the virtual building will be red all the time, except a fraction of second where I will see it normal, meaning that there is a small spot where I can build it. And I will have to drag my cursor back very slowly to find the spot again and click at the right moment. On some terrains you need to be very patient and it's not fun, so a little help from the game, like in AoM/AoE III would be good.

Or do you mean that it would jump to a spot on the map where you can build it?

Yes, when you're not far away from this spot (like a few millimeters). If this helps, think about how, in some of the most modern stacking window managers, the windows are attracted by the edges of the screen and the edges of other windows when you're moving your current window close to them.

I think this borders on being a case where you have to choose between having the game do things you as a player should and being helpful.[...]

I agree with your point of view on houses. That's why I was thinking about giving a simple indication to te player. We could have for example instead of having two numbers [current population size]/[current population limit], have three numbers, like [current population size]/[current population limit]/[planned population limit], with [planned population limit] corresponding to the population limit counting the houses you planned to build (and this number decreases when underpinnigs are destroyed, of course). But it's just an idea.

About rotation of buildings: You can rotate them by clicking the left mouse button and keeping it down while moving it around, then when you let go of it the building is placed (press the right mouse button to cancel).

That's what I do for the moment, but it's not very convenient. When you want to put a building on a place where there's not a lot of room, you want to use rotation and horizontal positionning at the same time. Currently, when I want to place a fortress at the top of a cliff, but as close as possible from the edge of the cliff, I have to guess what the best rotation would be fort that, then click on a place where the virtual building is red, turn it like I want, go back to the point I want to place it, and click (hoping that there's no obstacle that could prevent me to place the building once rotated). So the keyboard shortcuts are often preferable (or the mouse, I think in AoM you can use the wheel to rotate buildings, 'not sure).

Anyway, I will customize my keyboard shortcuts, that's the best thing to do. Thank you for the link.

This could probably be done, but we have to balance the need to use the keys for other things as well As you mention there are a ton of different scenarios, and it's not an easy decision where to draw the line (we don't want to end up with a button/key for each unit after all ). I'm not saying that we can't add more, just that it's not an easy decision to make

Just look at the Warzone shortcuts : http://guide.wz2100.net/keyboard#type (this page is not exhaustive actually, there are more shortcuts than that in Warzone 3.1)

There are shortcuts for combat units, flying units, wheeled units, hoover, tracked and half-tracked. (and in wz 3.1, there are shortcuts for cyborgs, combat cybors, construction units, repair cyborgs, repair vehicles, and shortcuts for selecting all combat vehicles and all ground combat units).

Just transpose that to the categories of units of 0AD (cavalry, infantry, ranged units, priests, citizen, etc.). Of course there will be hard decisions to make (how should we treat siege units ?), but a few dozens of keys with Ctrl, Alt and Shift combinations give a lot of available shortcuts.

There already is a key to select all military units in case you are not aware of it though: just press the . (period) key and you will select all fighting units (including citizen soldiers).

It doesn't work on my configuration. Strangely, it seems that all the keyboard-only shortcuts that need the shift key don't work (on french AZERTY layout you need to press shift to access the period key and the numbers) : I can't select all combat units and managing groups of units don't work either. (But the Shift+Mouse shortcuts work well.)

(Just noticed that I can't manage groups with the numeric keypad either.)

About being able to destroy foundations (and the walls issue is unrelated, that's definitely something that needs to be fixed): To me this is not an issue, but rather a case where you as a player have to either gamble or play safe, something where you have to decide whether you rather want to have it set beforehand what your units are going to build once they get there or be 100% certain that your enemy will not be able to destroy it before your units gets there.[...]

I agree with that too. If I may caricature the view of alkazar-ipse when he says "it's just a project", we should send an architect to place the marks of the underpinning before the builders come. Sometimes we can't afford the game to be too realistic, we must think about gaming first.

And finally, thanks for the detailed report, most of these things are known, but there are certainly things which were new as well Just as a headsup, please read through http://www.wildfireg...showtopic=16534 for the future (Also, I and most others will probably not comment on the things mentioned in that thread which you bring up, so just take those as "ok, they already know about that, let's move on" Also, I'm not commenting on things which are clear bugs etc, so for those feel free to search http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ and create new tickets for the things which doesn't have tickets yet. And don't worry too much about creating duplicate tickets, most are caught pretty soon Just do a basic search before adding a new ticket and you'll be fine )

Thanks for the advices.

[Early, short review of Alpha XI]

Thank you for the answers, I guess most of the bugs I've pointed at are know or correspond to things developers already had in mind. If you are an administrator, feel free to edit my post to highlight the relevant parts, to make the reading faster for the devs. This would also allow me to create the appropriate tickets in the bugtracker (unless you want to open them yourselves).

(for the gates... Its not that hard to see if it's going to be long enough or not (I can only say this for my self of course (played AoE in a very addicted way)))

In AoE II the gates have a fixed size, in AoM and AoE III you have to guess like in 0AD, as far as I remember.

When you're on a flat terrain it's easy to guess, you just maximize the length of the "virtual wall" diplayed under your cursor, then reduce it until you have a full curtain wall with only two towers, and then you're sure that you will be able to build a gate here. But when you want to place a wall in a bottleneck for example, or at the entry of a plateau (typically to defend a city built on it), you can't guess easily what the length of the wall would be. Maybe with the "sticking" mechanism refered earlier, it would be easier because by dragging the "virtual wall" all around to see where it sticks, you could have a more precise evaluation of what the length of the building would be.

If, how ever, you would disagree because one should be able to avoid oponents to build a wall near enemy teritory as it would be in peacefull territory,

then AT LEAST this feature of "sticking wall to edge" should also be featured for wall-to-wall,

because when i start building a multisegment wall and the middle towers get destroyed, i cant remake them(not enough space) leaving holes that make the whole wall useless...

I fully agree with this one. The only way I've found to rebuild the fallen towers of my walls was to destroy the curtain walls which were adjacent to the destroyed tower, and then rebuild the whole part of the wall, starting from the next tower.

[Early, short review of Alpha XI]

(First of all, English is not my native language, so this post might be full of mistakes. I'll do my best to remain comprehensible. :-) )

When Alpha XI came out, I've decided to try it and do my best, as a simple user, to contribute to the growth of this game. For the moment I don't know precisely how the development is planned, which feature will be added soon, which bug is planned to be resolved right now, which one is planned to be resolved later, which one is a bug, which one is a feature, etc., so I've decided to write a list of things I've noticed when playing this Alpha, good things, thing that simply look strange to me, and things that are definitely bugs. If some of the bugs I list here are confirmed, and unknown yet, then I will add them in the bugtracker, don't worry. ;-)

I'm not a developer, and I've played this game only a few hours, so consider this as an attempt of a review early, review often(well, early, at least) process.

The hardware :

CPU : AMD Athlon II X3 445 3.1GHz ; RAM : DDR3 4GB ; GPU (IGP on the mobo) : Radeon HD 4250 aka AMD 880G aka RS880

The software :

Operating System : Ubuntu GNU/Linux "Precise" 12.04.1 32bits, with the LXDE/Lubuntu Desktop Environment, Linux 3.2.0-30-generic-pae kernel and Xorg 1.11.3

0ad version : 0.0.11 from the ubuntu repos

(Maybe I'll try 0AD on other distros, such as *BSD ones, in the next weeks.)

I first tried to play 0AD with the free radeon driver, but after one or two minutes of game it became so slow that it was unplayable. I was starting to think it was the time to consider buying a real graphic card, but then I realised that radeon drivers do not provide hardware acceleration to RS880 yet. If the free driver for RS880 doesn't evolve in the next month, I'll probably buy a card which could provide me hardware acceleration with free software, but for now I've decided to use the catalyst non-free drivers provided by AMD (which provide harware acceleration).

0AD runs much faster with the catalyst driver : it's still a little bit slow sometimes, but it's playable. In fact, it's often fluid at the beginning of a match, and it becomes slower and slower as the number of visible units increases. It becomes really slow only at the end of the match, when I raise a big army to destroy the enemy city. I haven't taken the risk yet to try a match on an island map or with more than two players.

So, performance is probably the main bug of 0AD for the moment (but maybe it's more the fault of AMD than 0AD).

I've tried to play the map "Acropolis 4" with only two players (I was Player 2, Carthaginians), but it seems that when a player is set on "unassigned", it doesn't remove the player from the match, but instead leave his buildings and units on the map, passive. I don't know if it's a bug or a feature, but it's quite surprising.

Some less important bugs now :

• There's no sound/notification when the player is attacked. Edit: Ticket already opened. See comment below.
  
• However, the player hears screams and sounds of fight even when they are off-camera, far away, and hears them as loud as if they were very close. If the sounds of off-camera events have to be heard by the player, maybe they should play with a lower volume. And there could be a fade effect when the player is moving the camera. Edit: Might be a bug in my configuration. I'll check again.
  
• The population is often limited to 300, however, the number of houses is not limited. Maybe it can be useful to build more houses than necessary (to increase the size of territory, for example), but there should be at least a warning like "this house won't give you more population" (even if all the other houses haven't been finished yet).
  
• Military units attack wild beasts by default : bug or feature ?
  
• 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)
  
• 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.
  
• When troops are led to a point nearby enemies, they don't attack until absolutely all units have arrived, and are in position. Which means that if you have a very big army, and if you want to move it in the middle of an enemy city, the majority of the units will remain inactive, be killed without fighting back, while they wait for the last units of the army to come and take their positions. This becomes very critical when you want to fight in a place when there are a lot of obstacles, and when your units have difficulties to place themselves in line, column or whatever position you gave them : the units keep moving, changing their positions all the time, giving more occasions to the enemy to kill them. Edit: I played again and I confirm : even enemy units fail to attack when they try to place themselves. Sometimes they even replace themselves during combat (they attack a building, replace themselves, attack again, replace...)
  
• Probably the same problem : when you have soldiers building, and you want to add other soldiers of the same type to help them, and you proceed in selecting them all then clicking on the underpinning, the units already assigned to the building regroup with the other before going back to work.
  
• Some units are trapped in angles of the walls I've built. I've also had a ballista stuck in a forest, once.
  
• When units collect ressources, 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 ressources 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.
  
• Edit (from comment #9 below): Same kind of bug with ground vs water. I just noticed an other bug : when you ask citizens to build a port, they automatically go collect some resources, no matter where they are. And sometimes you end up with citizens stuck on a coast because they're trying to reach fishes.
  The same bug (or the opposite bug, if I can say) happens for fishing boats : when they collect food from fishes, they try to reach the closest dropsite, even if it's not a port.
  
• Maybe it would be good to have the ability to tranform a wall into a gate before it's built (when you place the underpinning).
  
• 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 beetween two cliffs, and you end up with a wall which is too short to be transformed.
  
• There's no way to know if the wall you've build is close enought 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). If you do the same for the curtain wall, this mechanism would also be helpful to avoid a builder to be trapped between the edge of a cliff and the wall he has just builded (and as the walls will be close to the edge of the cliff, it would look better and more realistic )
  
• The bug above applies also to coasts. BTW, it seems that walls can't be extended in shallow water. Enemy units can go round a wall by walking in water, too bad. :/
  
• This could also apply to ports : if the ports stuck to a place they can be build when we try to place them, the player would spent less time to search for a place where he can build his port.
  
• Maybe it would be good to have a bell to ring in the city centres to put the villagers in garrison when attacked, and let them go back to their respective work when the menace is gone. Edit: Ticket already opened. See comment below.
  
• 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.
  
• 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.
  
• 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 ?
  
• 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 ?
  
• 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. Some shortcuts are also not very accessible, such as "[" and "]" to change the orientation of the building to construct : a shortcut like Ctrl+Mouse Wheel would be more accessible (but I guess pressing the keys "[" and "]" are not a big challenge on a qwerty layout).
  
• Maybe give an indication about the status of a worker before he went idle. Sometimes I see idle workers waiting next to a dropsite and I don't remember what was their previous task.
  
• Sometimes units are stuck because of other units. For example, when you send a lot of units to gather some food on bushes, and some time later there's only one bush left, the units that have finish to gather and want to come back to the dropsite will be blocked by the units who come back from the dropsite and form a circle around them. It's a problem because it doesn't happen only to me, but also to the AI. I've played a single match where the AI never attacked me, and after a few minutes of game I discovered that the AI didn't develop its economy, and I think it was because most of his food-gathering citizens were stuck in a similar configuration.
  
• When a farmer is clicked, it would be good to diplay which farm he's currently working on. As farms can partly recover each other, it's often hard to know.
  
• 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 ressources : just send the units which are able to perform the work, and let the others where they are.
  
• 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.
  
• Edit: 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.
  

Aesthetics :

• 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.
  
• 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)
  
• 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 lanching their javelins, but they begin the move and there is the sound of the javelins being launched.
  
• 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.
  
• 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.
  

Now the good points of the game :

• The medias. Graphics are awesome, and so is the music.
  
• The realism, the animations. I really like the fact that the cavalry generates clouds of dust when charging. The animation of the gates, the sound of the gates opening and closing are cool, too.
  
• The fact that every angle of a wall is a tower that fires arrows and allow garrisons. Makes the game realistic and awesome
  
• Historical accuracy. You guys do a very good job on that point. Congratulations.
  
• The ability for certain civilisations (such as Carthaginians) to train mercenaries from other civilisations. BTW, the Naval Shipyard looks great, too.
  
• Ships shooting arrows while they move.
  

To sum up :

• My review is not as short as I expected. Sorry for that.
  
• 0AD has a huge potential, it's definitely going to be a wonderful game.
  
• The peformance issue is the n°1 bug to me. Then come the bugs of the strange behavior of the units, and then the lack of keyboard shortcuts.
  
• Keep up the great work !