wraitii

Okay, some progress report... A javascript A* is either too laggy, or way too slow to finish to be any purpose on a large map, even with serious optimizations. I'll likely keep it to detect islands and things like that, but I'll have to use something else for Chokepoints. As soon as Philip as finished the Pathfinding work, it'd be really useful to have access to some sort of C functions in that regard.

Adding on the Idea;.. Perhaps these skirmish maps could have a few "variations", abit like how Oasis has 10 versions. You'd make 3/4 slightly different versions on Atlas that would get loaded randomly, just so that it's not too boring.

The players' starting zones are too spherical. Make them a bit more jagged (a setting of about 0.05 gives good results and you can keep the whole thing pretty spherical). Perhaps you should consider a different terrain for the bottom of the canyon, even when there are no roads (something more dry, or more lush). Perhaps adding a bit of variety in the heights of the canyon sides, and by adding rocks for beautification on the sides, it'd look more natural.

Okay, I'm back on this, I'll give a look to water stuff, but now I'm implementing a basic optimized A* for path calculation.

Okay, so I've fixed the chicken and "trees in mines" issues, also made the whole thing more symmetrical (there were a few things different between the two islands that should not have). I tried many things to fix the shore blending, but nothing was satisfactory. Download link in the OP. Unless there is any specific problem, it should be addable to alpha 9.

I may have a way to make that look a bit smoother. I'll have to test, but yes, it'll remain imperfect. edit: oh, and no problem putting this into Alpha 9 as long as I've managed to fix the few real issues remaining, which I shall do this afternoon.

I could try to add waves, if it's possible with the rm generator, it might make the blending look a bit smoother. I'll look in the chicken/tree issue, should be an easy fix.

Fixed. I missed a " " ". I wonder if the beaches should be a bit greater still... I'd like a balance of "able to build a harbor" and "hard to invade".

Allright, I've tried following most of your suggestions... Here is an updated version: -more room for construction -more mines, and bigger mines -streamlined texture integration, though it's not perfect since the engine afaik doesn't support very good blending -made the cities have "city tiles" around, looks cool since I made them blend with the grass well. -Added fishes -Beaches are a bit more straightforward and a bit bigger. Download link in the OP. New Screenshots:

Very interesting tool, I'll playtest this a bit when I get time.

Getting the trees farther away from the player would not be a huge pain. However, it would kinda break the "forest all over the place" effect... Perhaps I could leave some more room, and then make the top level plateau have less trees, so players would develop there. I'll look into that. Stone and Metal mines can certainly be added, I'll have to give a look at the balancing of those (the placers are a bit dumb, so sometimes it doesn't work as expected.) Fish, I forgot about. It's ready to be implemented, I simply didn't add it in the rush or releasing the map yesterday evening... As for a bit more variation, I guess it can be done. @Pureon: I guess now I've finished this, I'll start working on Marilyn again. I think water stuff will be my short-term priority, as it's nice to be able to play on water maps.

A new map script! It took me quite a few days getting everything to work as intended, but it should be allright now. My original idea was to make a very cliffy island, a bit like Corsica, with a very jagged coast that would be hard to take over... In the end, I did two so that the sea gameplay would actually have a purpose. It might be a bit too forest-y on very small maps, but it's not too much of a problem. Screenshots: Corsica.zip

Updated version This should fix trees from spawning into mines, and should also make the trees be spawned a bit less into the water.

I've been working on a Corsica vs Sardinia map for the past two days, it's fairly hard to do correctly, so not much for now since the March 1 update. I believe I've made Marilyn attack the strongest enemy and that's about it.

Added beautification: lilies and reeds near the shores, small rocks. Also made the sand wet around the "starting water holes near the forests", but no on the oasis (possible, but I'm not sure it's interesting). Download link

My opinion is that it is nowhere near good enough to be the default bot, since qBot is really efficient, and I'm not sure it's ready to be an "additional" bot yet, though I don't know when Alpha 9 will be released. Also, Mythos: some persons read the IRC logs . But yeah, the name sucks.

Yes, I should likely try to add that. I forgot to talk about the "animals and trees spawning in water" issue. I think it's not so bad: they're spawned in accessible areas, and it looks quite cool I think.

Okay, I did a few updates and used a little bit of "rule of cool" for a sunset effect, which I can backtrack depending on your opinion... New screenshots (click to enlarge): Added water patches to explain the forest, added sand blows on top of hills. More wood in the oasis. Download Link

I just found a rather major -and- idiotic bug: Marilyn didn't build female villagers before starting to farm, which can cause resource collecting lag. Fix this by going in economy.js, and putting the line (791 or192) this.trainMoreWorkers(gameState, queues); out of the if condition.

Allright, newer version here, that should fix bugs with the economic aspect of things. Download link A few screenshots, not related to the actual update:

Is there any way to detect the AI level? Perhaps using that I could give more/less wood. I'll try to implement your suggestions.

This version should be better, I've given more starting resources and more maps. Though I think on Oasis part of the fun is that wood must be collected from the oasis, so the amount is still not huge. Also, more mines. Download Link (screenshot updated in the first post, showing me, not doing anything, the AI Marilyn, absent-mindedly surrounding a mine with houses, and qBot, plotting to win the game.

That's a weird problem, but I have reasons to think it's no more, because I changed a few stuffs and mainly made units depositing their resources before changing task much better. There's also a rare pathfinding related bug where units can get stuck around a tree, or around a unit if there are too many workers, but I'm unsure how to fix that... Last but not least, it appears she didn't build enough workers... I tweaked priorities, and now she's much better at resource gathering in the early game. Will playtest a bit and release a newer version.

Yeah, I'm having economic problems for some reason, I'm looking into this. I'm not sure at which point I failed that, but it happened. Thanks for the report anyway, I'll look into that.

That seems to indicate I have forgotten some code somewhere, which is likely. Hopefully I'll be able to find out, thanks.