feneur

Not sure if I'm misunderstanding what you are saying, but we've had random maps which allows the ability to change factions from I think Alpha 4, so it should just be to add a quick function that would pick a random civ and the GUI option

Yes, unfortunately the pathfinding fixes proved too big to be finished in time for Alpha 8, it was delayed enough as it was, so it really wouldn't have been a good idea to wait any longer. They should be included in Alpha 9 though, and with continued development of qBot etc things should improve as well. For now it's probably best to avoid playing on maps with hills/island maps (AIs doesn't support island maps yet anyway).

We are currently working on a new web site which will hopefully include this and more

Yes, we do intend to include a wall system It might take a couple of Alphas though as we focus on more fundamental changes on the one hand, and as new programmers get to know the code better by doing smaller things.

Atlas should work now yeah (as long as it's compiled, the game needs to be specifically compiled to allow Atlas to run as it requires a few extra things). Sound however will not work yet, we are working on a rewrite of the sound system that will make it possible to hear the sounds of the game on Mac as well, but the programmer working on it wasn't able to complete enough of it in time for Alpha 8 for it to be included this time. Hopefully it will be included in Alpha 9 though.

Sound is indeed disabled on Mac for now. We have a rewrite of the sound system underway that should solve that problem. Unfortunately the programmer working on it wasn't able to finish his work in time for Alpha 8. If things go well it should be included in Alpha 9 though and Mac users should finally be able to hear the sounds

I tried yesterday, but the upload took quite some time and my computer crashed. I'll take care of it before going to bed tonight

Thanks for the cool Christmas greeting And Merry and Happy and all good seasons greetings everyone subscribe to =) Hope everyone has a nice time and a good holiday

We do like to choose less commonly known names, to get an opportunity to educate (and to a lesser degree because we've noticed it makes it easier to track news posts etc about the release ). So imho Italia is a bit too common =) We'll see when we get close to the release though, what name seems best I just want to encourage creativity

It's good that you take ownership of them, but I'd say they are our shared burden at least in the sense that they are a part of the game we all work on

Yup, iirc it was Paul who got creative and made it that nice

I would think it would only be active when the unit is "running", i.e. moving faster than normal. Slowly driving a chariot towards the enemy shouldn't do nearly as much damage as a chariot at full speed

I guess that's one way to do things =) (Though, doesn't the "loss music" play throughout the entire game then? Not that it matters much, but anyway =) )

Not on a general basis no, it would take too much time to go through and make sure there is no sensitive information in them. However, specific threads like this should be possible. Though that thread is 18 pages long, so it seems like a lot to go through I'm afraid. I guess we could copy the posts Philip mentioned though

Just saw the "Observer-Oasis" map and decided to see how JuBot and qBot played against each other. qbot won, but it took 40 minutes (I used the warp time feature at times ). I think it would have been much quicker if qBot had used siege weapons earlier. JuBot didn't really survive that long if you look at actually being able to strike back, all its units were lost long before that, so it was more that it took a long time before qBot actually managed to destroy all its buildings (and because it sent a lot of troops after my observer camel instead of finishing off JuBot in the end-game =) ). That it took a while before qBot actually built any siege is probably a good thing in most games as the enemy is likely to be more offensive, but there was another thing that was a bit confusing. Instead of taking down a building completely qBot destroyed it partly, but then moved on to the next, which really doesn't do much harm. Not sure if that's a bug or just a feature gone wrong in this case =) But overall I'd say qBot seems to manage its economy really well, and is pretty good defensively once it gets going. The area that needs some work atm imho is attacking buildings, at least from what I could see in that game

Should be out within this week unless something horrible happens.

I think for Atlas having the ability for unlimited colors is fine. If people can't be reasonable in their color choices it's up to them, I think the benefits are greater. For default skirmishes/random maps I do think the choice should be limited though.

Ah, yeah. It's gotten out of help and feedback and into technical discussion now yeah I will.

Ah, forgot about that one. He went back and forth between a lot of things and I got lost Let's hope the programmers will work it out.

I would guess that it's just one of the new code changes that haven't been added to the tests. So hopefully isn't something to be worried about.

The .exes etc are included in the SVN to help developers and others who aren't able to compile So no reason to worry about them.

I don't think we should/will do specific colors for certain civilizations. The main reason is so that we have as many different colors as possible for each match so it's easy to tell units/buildings from different players apart. Limiting the choice to just a few shades per civilization would really harm maps with more than one player of the same civilization. It's possible to change in Atlas though, so for custom skirmishes it's very much possible to have the colors mean things.

At least nothing to see

Sounds like the best option to me. Sometimes you may want to set up the siege weapons in a certain spot to protect a certain area etc, or to avoid them attacking some certain units/buildings, but sometimes you just want to take down the enemy buildings and could care less for more exact control. Is there really a need for a certain auto mode though? Wouldn't it be possible to just have any direct attack order trigger the pack-->move-->unpack actions? Move orders just move it if it's packed, and pack and move (but not unpack) if you give a move order while it is unpacked. The only thing would be if you would want them to move and unpack, but don't want to direct it to attack a specific building/unit. Perhaps there could be an Alt-key modification where it would automativally unpack at the destination if you gave a move order with the key pressed? (Perhaps Alt+Shift or something if we want ranged siege to listen to attack-move commands )

As long as it's easy enough to use them, perhaps even automatic? And if they are powerful enough to warrant that extra either micromanagement or at least time/graphical change. But if nothing else it can be a good idea to balance things for that matter, to have the ranged siege require some setting up to even out some of the disadvantages the civs have which doesn't have any ranged siege.