MarkT

Just to point out the work would be solely design at this stage - implementation of the CP AI won't begin for a while yet. There are also a couple of other people who are interested in working on the AI scripts when we get to that point. Also worth considering is the bit in the contract about having to surrender your immortal soul and becoming a puppet minion of the AI div lead, but... anyway... In roughly the same way as JavaScript programming for the web works - the engine the scripts run in present you with a set of objects and functions that you can manipulate. It's just that instead of objects like pages and buttons, our engine includes objects like units and players. You could, hypothetically, do something like some_army.attack( some_players_base ) - part of your job would be (in concert with the rest of us) devising the means you'd use to control things like this.

Yep, but: - The harder you make it, the fewer people will succeed. The fewer hacks there are, the easier they (in theory) are to plug. - You can still absolutely eliminate entire classes of cheats, even if you can't eliminate every category.

I suppose you should get some of the programmers to reply in here... But we'd only make you jealous

Rest assured, we're making it as difficult to cheat in multiplayer as we know how.

Ehm... should you be posting that on the 'net?

Well, pure 2D is relatively easy, but it's generally easier to go full 3D than a 2D-3D hybrid.

It's not just for appearance that we went for full-3D: it's also simpler - allowing, as you mention, us to do other things with our time - it allows things (like changing the perspective) that we couldn't have done otherwise, and a big reason is that 3D models are more compact than a bunch of 2D renders. For a game distributed entirely over the 'net, that's a reasonable consideration

Don, in this context, means to 'take on' or 'put on'.

Why? If you choose to use IE over FF you're denying yourself features, that's just the way it is. IE is behind the times. Why should we have to be? Exceptions made for those who /have/ to use IE (or something else - Lynx, say) for acccessibility or language - but there can't be many such here.

Hehe. Now we've five people on the Tex petition, Tim.

Yes, we'd noticed that. We've fixed that problem, since then.

Idly wondering: At the moment, the bit of Stuart's GUI that bothers me most is the minimap: the square-within-circle just doesn't look right to me.. I was thinking that it might look better if you move the minimap controls outside the orb, and use all the space within it for the minimap. This would allow a minimap that will rotate with the main view, either just top-down but oriented to the view angle, or going a step further and matching the view perspective also. (I think not too difficult, if the minimap is rendered to a texture... Matt?) I'm not sure that this'd work, but I'd be interested to give it a go. Oh, and: should be handled by the mod system (whichever the standard is, we could ship with an 'official' mod that'd switch it to the other)

Actually, sounds quite a lot like programming to me.

Yes! Beware Wijit's unholy hordes of Morris Dancers of Doom!

Welcome, Tim! Just one piece of advice: make sure you don't annoy our webmaster. He's a tyrant.