Issues

[Quassy]

Just installed 7419-release via play playdeb, which actually made it quite a pleasure (instead of having to built it yourself) to get 0AD. This thread is just listing some issues I came (or I believed to have come) across.

Sorry for putting all this into one thread, but it would be a bit of work to open threads for everything (and I guess some issues have been adressed before). I also know this is a pre-alpha not-supposed-to-be-playable release, so the features I am suggesting should rather be thought off as a reminder for beta versions to come.

"Features" (stuff that's not relevant at this time)

1. There should be a way to scroll by just using the mouse (unlike the "mouse to border of screen"-thing). Like right clicking on empty terrain and then dragging to move across the map
   
2. When zooming using the scroll wheel of the mouse the focus should be set at the cursor
   
3. Some tooltip showing what a building is used for would be nice (I'm sure that's planned anyways)
   

"Bugs"

1. Sound is lagging (that's a known issue I believe) and at sometime gone at all
   
2. Soldiers are trying to attack trees. They should either be able to really chop them or don't do anything at all (maybe just walking there)
   
3. Clicking on berries shows the icon of a warrior
   
4. Buildings can be built in a way that citizen are trapped
   
5. Population maximum turned to -10 after building 7 houses
   
6. Closing the game does not seem to work (screen just freezes and CPU usage of pyrogenesis_dbg is at 100%)
   

Edited April 3, 2010 by Quassy

[Brightgalrs]

OS?

[Quassy]

Ubuntu 9.10 32bit, 2GiB memory, AMD 64 X2 5600+

When trying to close 0AD

TIMER| shutdown Scheduler: 3.073 us
TIMER| shutdown mouse stuff: 26.54 us
TIMER| shutdown Pathfinder: 103.086 us
TIMER| shutdown game scripting stuff: 7.21013 ms
TIMER| shutdown actor stuff: 5.588 us
TIMER| shutdown TexMan: 2.793 us
TIMER| shutdown Renderer: 1.42504 ms
TIMER| shutdown ScriptingHost: 96.4564 ms
TIMER| shutdown ConfigDB: 1.676 us
TIMER| shutdown CSocketBase: 168.737 us
TIMER| shutdown CNetLogManager: 18.997 us
TIMER| shutdown I18N: 4.749 us

Edited April 3, 2010 by Quassy

[GustavoUlate80]

My idea would be that your program which you used to build and make 0 ad is inefficient , build it using the steps shown .

[Kimball]

2. Soldiers are trying to attack trees. They should either be able to really chop them or don't do anything at all (maybe just walking there)

This is because not all soldiers have harvesting animations yet. We've set the animation to be the same as the attack animation until we get one done.

4. Buildings can be built in a way that citizen are trapped

This has been a problem in every single RTS that I've ever come across thus far. Because the game has no way of detecting whether the unit is trapped, there's really no easy solution for this. My recommendation? Keep your units away from buildings that are in progress, unless of course they're helping build it.

As for your other bugs and feature requests, some are known and others are new to us. Thanks for the report!

[Quassy]

Just installed 7419-release via play playdeb, which actually made it quite a pleasure (instead of having to built it yourself) to get 0AD.

If you had read, you would have known.

This has been a problem in every single RTS that I've ever come across thus far. Because the game has no way of detecting whether the unit is trapped, there's really no easy solution for this. My recommendation? Keep your units away from buildings that are in progress, unless of course they're helping build it.

This is quite true xD, but at least if the unit is standing on normally obstructed (red) terrain it would be possible to detect. No unit is supposed to be there so it should just be "kicked out" to the nearest passable terrain (like in Civ IV when you declare war after having open borders ^^)

Edited April 4, 2010 by Quassy

[Mythos_Ruler]

A lot of those issues are not really issues. They are only issues because the simulation system has been rewritten over the past few months to be more efficient. We have those features in the original simulation system and it's only a matter of time before they are plugged back into the new simulation system.

[Ykkrosh]

There should be a way to scroll by just using the mouse (unlike the "mouse to border of screen"-thing). Like right clicking on empty terrain and then dragging to move across the map

Middle-click-and-drag does that. (I don't really like the current control layout - I think we should probably simplify it (don't have two different rotation modes, don't rely on middle button, don't rely on mouse+keyboard combinations). But that can wait until later.)

When zooming using the scroll wheel of the mouse the focus should be set at the cursor

Hmm, I hadn't thought of that. It's a useful feature in paint programs but I can imagine it might be a bit weird here. I don't know if anyone else has tried it, but it might be interesting to experiment with.

Sound is lagging (that's a known issue I believe) and at sometime gone at all

I think that's an Ubuntu/PulseAudio/OpenAL bug, and should be fixed in later versions of them.

Population maximum turned to -10 after building 7 houses

Whoops - houses were reducing the population limit, instead of increasing it. Fixed in my local copy; I'll upload to SVN soon.

Closing the game does not seem to work (screen just freezes and CPU usage of pyrogenesis_dbg is at 100%)

That's bad. How are you closing it? It'd be great if you could run it in gdb to see where it's frozen ("gdb pyrogenesis_dbg", "r", exit the game, see that it freezes, switch back to gdb window, ctrl+c, "thread apply all bt"), but that'll probably require you to build from SVN instead of using the non-debuggable packaged version.

at least if the unit is standing on normally obstructed (red) terrain it would be possible to detect. No unit is supposed to be there so it should just be "kicked out" to the nearest passable terrain

Yeah, when you first place the foundation it should tell friendly units to move out of the area, and then your units shouldn't be able to start construction until the area is free. That's not implemented yet, since it'll probably need some integration with the pathfinder, which is currently rubbish and needs to be rewritten

[Quassy]

That's bad. How are you closing it? It'd be great if you could run it in gdb to see where it's frozen ("gdb pyrogenesis_dbg", "r", exit the game, see that it freezes, switch back to gdb window, ctrl+c, "thread apply all bt"), but that'll probably require you to build from SVN instead of using the non-debuggable packaged version.

Hm, it's non-reproducible at the moment (accompanied by gdb: "Program exited normally."). Closing it using the ingame cross at the top right of the screen.

[janwas]

It's a useful feature in paint programs but I can imagine it might be a bit weird here. I don't know if anyone else has tried it, but it might be interesting to experiment with.

This is indeed a very useful feature, and it's also done by Supreme Commander, where the zoom is critical to gameplay.

[Ykkrosh]

Ah, that's good to know. (Maybe I should play SC some time ). But is it useful in games where zoom isn't critical to gameplay, and the difference between maximum and minimum zoom might be something small like 4x?

[goblor]

When zooming using the scroll wheel of the mouse the focus should be set at the cursor

That's a feature I also missed in my first tests. It's a bit confusing, when your selected unit suddenly is out of sight just because you zoomed.