Vantha

It is, albeit quite short:

Controversial opinion: High latency is not necessarily a bad thing; it adds to the realism. Do you think Julius Caesar would have known about an intruding army any faster than this?

Hmm, another difficulty will be to convince the government to lend us some of their carrier units (the "birds") in the first place...

The title says it all. I hereby officially propose switching all of Pyrogenesis' network traffic to IPoAC. Finally an authentic, period-accurate communication method! Who's onboard?

There is a section in the FAQ about it: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/wiki/FAQ#what-shall-i-do-when-joining-multiplayer-matches-fails-with-an-error-message

On another note, I've actually made some great progress on the map recently: (haven't painted the ocean floor yet) I will upload some screenshots and the files when I'm done; but I want to remake some sections and polish everything up a bit more first. As you might remember, I am using the 'desert_persia' biome mixed with the 'aegean_anatolian' biome. Southeastern Spain is a lot more arid than regions like Italy, Greece, or Turkey and not far away at all from a typical "desert". Honestly, I was really afraid it could turn out looking horrible, but they ended up fitting together quite well in my opinion. The only thing I struggled with was fading between bushy and earthy spots. There are a lot of textures available for empty and dry grounds. And some others full of bushes ( / vegetation in general) - namely 'Desert plants b persia' and 'Desert plants a'. What's missing is something in between to fill this gap. Patches of bushes don't just abpruptly "end" at a particular point; instead, with increasing distance, bushes are becoming smaller and sparser. And it's this transition that I find very hard to replicate with available textures. If someone could create a such a texture that would be amazing. Essentially a sparser variant of 'Desert plants b persia' (and if of 'Desert plants a' too that would be even better!) @wowgetoffyourcellphone maybe?

Oh, I totally forgot about this last post I made here. Regarding icons, I will try to incorporate existing ones (like the resource types), but I don't think there'd be much value in creating new, specific ones, if players don't see them anywhere outside of the tutorial later too. Regarding the instructions, I have spent a good amount of time thinking about it and here's my plan: I want to split up all instructions currently stuffed into the tutorial panel into four different categories (each displayed on their own panel - with only one or maybe two visible at once): - Simple Tasks. Basic instructions like "Left-click on your Civic Center", "Train _____ units", "Order them to build a storehouse". Only the active one needs to be displayed at once. - Basic Information and Tips. Everything that doesn't directly help players progress through the game, but just teaches them how to do something. For example, how to select units, how to build structures, or how to read the minimap. This could still be done in an interactive way, but these sections need to be skippable. - Game Objectives. Larger tasks like "Explore the map", "Repel the attack", or "Capture the Civic Center" that take more time to complete. I plan to add this functionality to scenarios and trigger scripts in general, and not just the tutorial. Objectives can be given, completed or stopped at any point during the game, all of which is announced by fading in some sort of "banner" in the top center. They don't need to be required for ultimately winning the game and could instead function more like "side quests" too by providing other rewards (like unlocking certain units, receiving some resources - stuff that can be done in trigger scripts already) But I haven't really thought about how to connect them to the current "victory conditions" (conquest, wonder, etc. - which are called "objectives" in the game right now) yet. - Plot Points. There is no interface in place right now to tell a story to the player. At all. This would in first instance become relevant at the start of a game, of course. But I imagine it would also be cool to have the possibility of advancing the plot during a game as well, maybe even depending on player decisions... (this interface too could be made available to all scenario scripts, and not just the tutorial) At the moment, I'm trying to come up with good UI designs for each of these. Ideas, design concepts, or UI mockups are much welcomed, as always.

Continuing this.. Currently, new instructions are just added below previous ones. It feels kinda cheap to me. Maybe only the current one should be displayed at a time. Stuff like important hotkeys or game concept explanations could be moved somewhere else (and always stay accessible). What do you think?

Not really. As far as I remember, 20595 is only chosen as the port on the host side and on the first gateway (in the case of CGNAT, your own router). The ISP's router at the head of that second, larger network, should ensure to consistently forward packets over and to the same ports. They just often do a terrible job at this. As soon as this consistency is lost (between contacting the STUN server and the target host) is precisely when STUN breaks. Whether this actually means that STUN would work with an ideal Double NAT / CGNAT: I don't know. It's difficult to reliably test stuff like this.

As I said in the PR, yes, players behind CGNAT are able to join some hosts (who have an open, server-like connection), but not the average one. And that's the frustrating about this problem. It might just be, because CGNAT often goes hand-in-hand with some strange and unpredictable port mapping or blocking performed by the ISP. About a year and a half ago, me and @Norse_Harold did a thorough investigation on this issue. This thread was really only the beginning. The information from my side here is quite superficial and outdated. The FAQ entry is a much better and up-to-date summary of my/our understanding of the issue. @Dunedan I don't know what terms you are on with @Norse_Harold right now and neither what he's been up to lately. But if you want to dig into this issue, I highly recommend you to contact him. He's the real expert on this topic.

Checkboxes... that do what? (So players can enter the tutorial from different levels of experience?)

Can you elaborate? I can't tell from the screenshots what you mean.

Any ideas how to improve the current tutorial UI? (not only visually, but also functionally)

Something like this would be the ideal solution in my opinion.

Alright, I made the PR and updated the FAQ: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/7613 https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/wiki/FAQ#failed-to-connect-to-server-this-is-often-caused-by-udp-port-20595-not-being-forwarded-on-the-host-side-by-a-firewall-or-anti-virus-software @Norse_Harold You've spent a lot of time studying this issue, could you look over them?

What's stopping you from editing it directly? It appears that I at least can do so... I am about to open a PR for a new error dialog (referring to the FAQ) and I've got a pretty clear idea for how to restructure the FAQ entry. If you don't mind, could you let me do all of that first and then check over it afterwards?

Very cool, @wowgetoffyourcellphone. Are you making desert variants of those too? Don't quite understand what you mean... (the cursor changes as intended)

@Norse_Harold @Dunedan We need to provide a more detailed error message. I have talked to numerous people with this problem and I have yet to find a single one who the current one actually helped. Instead, in most cases it actually misled players into believing they would be able to resolve the issue by port forwarding. And, of course, it completely misses the entire situation of double NATs. Ideally, it'd also provide some first troubleshooting steps or at least link to the designated section in the FAQ (which is too brief and technical in my opinion right now too).

@wowgetoffyourcellphone Right now, I'm shorter on time than usually, but I can certainly help with writing some trigger scripts.

Ah, and the economy walkthrough's status doesn't update after completing it? I honestly don't know if and how campaigns are currently supposed to end, but that actually sounds like a bug.

The answer depends on what exactly you mean. If you are referring to scenario maps (games in a predefined historical setting but without a storyline), then: Yes, the game has many different ones to offer. You can select them in the map section when starting a new game. If you are instead referring to full, story-driven campaigns, then: I'm sorry for having to disappoint you here. The base game unfortunately comes with none. @SciGuy42 (https://github.com/SciGuy42/) has made several ones, I personally haven't played them, but they're said to be pretty good. You can find installation guides in the designated threads on the forum. However, they haven't been updated to the latest version of the game yet, so you likely won't be able to play them on A27. However: adding more singleplayer content is a big goal in the game's development and I'm excited to be able to say that we are indeed actively working on a new, four-game-long, narrative tutorial campaign. You can follow the progress here: I can't promise anything, but I hope we can include it in the next release (that'll be version 28 - which in all likelihood won't by far take as long as A27).

The idea was to enable players to switch between civ-specific and more generalized playlists (maybe for those who tend to always play the same few civs)

Just took a look at DE's soundtrack distribution and I gotta say, I like it a lot better than what the base game has. I'm all for it. I'd like the idea too, I might look into it. (Only for scenarios/campaigns or all maps?) I can't speak for everyone, of course, but that sounds like a good compromise.

Yeah, it can be a bit distracting, but it's so inspiring. Would be a really quick change... which civs would you add them to? Gauls and Britons?

Oh man, you're more than right, Tavern in the Mist really is brilliant. It's wonderful. I never got to listen to it in the game, though... it's one of the default soundtracks, which are superseded by the civ-specific ones. I'd love to have it somewhere else too. Maybe for the future German civ?