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[Rasunadon]

Some things that I find during first game (Alpha 3, Ubuntu). I trust this is the correct place for such ideas.

I know this is only Alpha version. In known tasks I also found that enhancements of garrisoning, gates and animal animations are in progress.

1) When you select a War dog (Celts) and he says: "Yes, sir?" something is really bad. Talking ships and siege units are OK but dogs?

2) Killed sheep are still standing although killed deers were lying. Some animations are missing.

3) Units weren't able to immediately reroute their way to the drop place after I destroyed some of my walls and so made their way shorter. They used the shorter way only for their next way.

4) Some buttons in the right end of the panel were sometimes being placed halfway out of the screen.

5) I would appreciate some START button in the loading screen so I would be able to read all information posted there. Now it was to fast for me to be able to read anything.

6) Game wasn't able to minimize itself with the Alt+Tab shortcut.

7) Garrisoned units were unloaded outside the walls. That was actually not so bad because I didn't find how to open the gates and, before I find this error, I had to move my units outside the city with fishing boats.

8) Buildings with garrisoning enabled should have somewhere number how many units can be stored in. (for example "garrisoned 4/20" - 4 unit are inside, maximum is 20.)

9) Ships and other units (I think maybe the siege ones), which can't be garrisoned, shouldn't have the button GARRISON in their menus.

10) Ships are moving too tightly and because of that their pictures are strangely mixed together into one supership. It looks awful.

11) One of my ships went so near to beach that she wasn't then unable to go back. That shouldn't be able to happen.

Edited January 30, 2011 by Rasunadon

[Rasunadon]

I recognized that next theme under mine just after the posting of this. So number 6 is OK, Alt+Tab could be used; but only in windowed (Alt+Enter) mode. So I should change it:

6) How to turn a building placement? I didn't find any list of hotkeys in the game but I think that walls and other buildings should be able to be build in other directions than the preselected one.

[Kimball]

I'll address the ones that I can. Some of the programming-related questions (pathfinding, GUI etc.) will have to be answered by someone who knows what they're talking about.

1. LOL, I hadn't noticed that.

2. Yep. Working on getting the animators to finish up animal animations. Many units still do that, but it's not permanent. Don't worry.

7. I don't know if there's a way for the game to detect which side of the wall is "inside" with our current tower system.

8. Agreed.

10. I bet increasing the footprint size on them would solve that issue. Not a priority, but really simple to do.

11. Ships can currently sail from water to land, but not vice versa. This will change eventually.

Edit: Your new #6. Simply click and drag around in a circle to rotate a building.

Edited January 29, 2011 by Kimball

[feneur]

Some things that I find during first game (Alpha 3, Ubuntu). I trust this is the correct place for such ideas.

I know this is only Alpha version. In known tasks I also found that enhancments of garrisoning, gates and animal animations are in progress.

1) When you select a War dog (Celts) and he says: "Yes, sir?" something is really bad. Talking ships and siege units are ok but dogs?

2) Killed sheep are still standing although killed deers were lying. Some animations are missing.

3) Units weren't able to immediately reroute their way to the drop place after I destroyed some of my walls and so made their way shorter. They used the shorter way only for their next way.

4) Some buttons in the right end of the panel were sometimes being placed halfway out of the screen.

5) I would appreciate some START button in the loading screen so I would be able to read all information posted there. Now it was to fast for me to be able to read anything.

6) Game wasn't able to minimize itself with the Alt+Tab shortcut.

7) Garrisoned units were unloaded outside the walls. That was actually not so bad because I didn't find how to open the gates and, before I find this error, I had to move my units outside the city with fishing boats.

8) Buildings with garrisoning enabled should have somewhere number how many units can be stored in. (for exmple "garrisoned 4/20" - 4 unit are inside, maximum is 20.)

9) Ships and other units (I think maybe the siege ones), which can't be garrisoned, shouldn't have the button GARRISON in their menus.

10) Ships are moving too tightly and because of that their pictures are strangely mixed together into one supership. It looks awful.

11) One of my ships went so near to beach that she wasn't then unable to go back. That shouldn't be able to happen.

1. Most, if not all, sounds should be considered placeholder sounds at the moment, we hope to add more appropriate sounds and ensure that the units/buildings etc use the correct sounds during the course of this year.

4. Could you please show a screenshot of that? (Use the F2 key to take a screenshot)

6. I was about to say that there is a list in the in-game manual, but that's only in the SVN version There is a list here though: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/HotKeys You can also press the mouse button and move the mouse while placing the building to rotate it.

Also, Alt-Tabbing should work in both Windowed and Fullscreen mode, might be a bit slower in the latter perhaps, but it works for me, so if you can't get it to work we'll have to find out what's stopping it from working on your machine.

[Rasunadon]

1, 2, 6B, 10 and 11 closed.

4) It happens only for war buildings; the women ones are OK. It happens both in fullscreen and windowed mode. So all building icons should be protected from floating out of the screen as the not-war-ones are. Three screenshots (bad Epiteichesma, bad Gymnasion and good Agora) are uploaded here.

6A) I waited 10 seconds while holding Alt and slowly tapping Tab. Still it is not doing anything (only in fullscreen, in windowed mode it swaps immediately).

7A) It shouldn't be so hard - the tower (or other garrisoning building) will unload units on that side which is nearer to the rally point. In tasks there was one concerning some line from a building to its rally point. And I think these two things could be done together. So you will place rally point on that side of your wall system in which you want them to unload.

7B) So is there any way now how to open gates?

[Jeru]

7B) So is there any way now how to open gates?

Right now, only deleting them AFAIK.

[Rasunadon]

@Jeru: That's really good - 7B closed.

@all:Thanks for fast answers.

I think I will write my new findings here too. By the way is there any way to change the name and/or description of the topic?

12) The name of Celtic gate in Celtic language is "Insert name here".

13) Celtic gate has a building place twice larger than the final building

14) Units are unable to use the rampart of Celtic wall like a hill. It's really good place to hide them under its texture so enemy can't see them. Unfortunately, the builders of that wall will stay there after its completion, too (so you tell some units to build the wall and after some time there is a wall and no (visible) builders).

15) It is really hard to make your units to move from an enemy one once they see it. Every second they try to go back and attack him.

16) Units are unable to continue in building of next building once they complete the first (you told them to build five towers and they complete only one). Nevertheless, when cutting trees, they succeed in continuing to the next tree.

17) You can't place the rally point on resources (metal mine), on some garrisoning-able point (neither building (tower) nor unit (ship)) nor on place in FOW/SOD. But all of these things would make the gameplaying better.

18) I get an error "Unit with actor 'wall_turret' launched a projectile but has no actor on 'projectile' attachpoint" when my Celtic towers were firing at enemy. A standard F2 screenshot didn't show the warning so I had to use the system one. Is this error known?

[feneur]

4. Aha, it is the tooltip that is displayed in a place where it goes outside the screen. I think that's a known issue, in either case it should get fixed eventually.

7A. What should happen when you don't have a rally-point set?

17. That's something that hopefully will be implemented eventually, but small things like that will probably have to wait (or get fixed when a developer is bored with a bigger task =) ).

[Jeru]

By the way is there any way to change the name and/or description of the topic?

The mods definitely can, not sure if you can. Try editing the topic post, if that doesn't work then just post what you want the name and description to be and one of us will do it.

[feneur]

By the way is there any way to change the name and/or description of the topic?

The mods definitely can, not sure if you can. Try editing the topic post, if that doesn't work then just post what you want the name and description to be and one of us will do it.

As far as the settings say it should be possible, so yeah, as long as there's no bug in the forum software you should have no problem editing the title/description.

[Rasunadon]

4 and 17 closed.

@feneur, 7A) The same thing it does now. Or how about this: units will be unloaded (if not specified otherwise) in the direction of your Civic center/the center of territory?

@Jeru & feneur: OK, thank you, I found it (full edit of first post).

[Pureon]

14) Did the builders get stuck there, or did you just not see them? The obstruction values for those walls do not include rampart depth, possibly due to the root position offset required.

18) Some of the 3D models are missing a projectile node from where the building is supposed to fire arrows. It's not limited to the Celt towers either.

[Rasunadon]

@Pureon, 14) Becuase of 16 they only stood there; I was able to select and move them. I only wasn't able to see them under the texture of that rampart. I thought they will appear on the rampart, after completing of wall, not hidden under it.

[Pureon]

I don't have an answer to 16), but thanks for all your feedback Rasunadon

[Rasunadon]

@Pureon: I only wanted to tell you all about some of my ideas and maybe do some work, too. RTS games are my favourite ones and I really enjoyed playing of OTTD so, IM(NSH)O, the mixture of both of them, an open-software RTS game for which anybody can prepare new enhancements, is like the finding of new level of heavens.

@all: I will continue in testing the game and feedbacking and, if time permits, maybe set to work, too.

[Ykkrosh]

3) Units weren't able to immediately reroute their way to the drop place after I destroyed some of my walls and so made their way shorter. They used the shorter way only for their next way.

It's not really feasible to reroute immediately - we can't tell which units could now have a shorter path, except by recomputing every unit's path every time a building is destroyed/created (or locked/unlocked for gates) and seeing if it's much different, which would not be great for performance. Maybe we could do something like recompute paths every ~10 seconds (staggered across all the units) so they'll reroute eventually, but we probably need to make pathfinding as fast as possible before deciding how much more to use it.

5) I would appreciate some START button in the loading screen so I would be able to read all information posted there. Now it was to fast for me to be able to read anything.

Hmph, we've spent a lot of effort trying to make the game load as quickly as possible, and now you're complaining it's too quick

6A) I waited 10 seconds while holding Alt and slowly tapping Tab. Still it is not doing anything (only in fullscreen, in windowed mode it swaps immediately).

What OS? In Win Vista/7, is alt-tab doing the Aero Flip 3D effect, or an old-fashioned 2D switcher? (When I try in Vista, alt-tab is the 2D thing and works, but win-tab is the 3D thing and doesn't work; maybe you have something similar but slightly different.)

15) It is really hard to make your units to move from an enemy one once they see it. Every second they try to go back and attack him.

I think the problem is they always fight back when they get hit (e.g. by an enemy who is chasing them). What's a good way to let players order units to retreat, without units abandoning all attempts at self-preservation while walking? (Maybe they should ignore attacks for 5 seconds after a direct order from the player, before enabling self-defense counterattacks, or something like that?)

16) Units are unable to continue in building of next building once they complete the first (you told them to build five towers and they complete only one)

If you shift-click to make a single unit build multiple buildings, they should do so. The shift-click order queuing is broken for groups of units though (since the units split out of the group when reaching the first building and then the group's order queue is no longer tied to those units), and needs to be fixed, so I'd guess that's what you're experiencing.

[Pureon]

15)

I think the problem is they always fight back when they get hit (e.g. by an enemy who is chasing them). What's a good way to let players order units to retreat, without units abandoning all attempts at self-preservation while walking?

A move command that removes any self-defense controls? So a Ctrl + Click command or something similar that's still undefined?

(Maybe they should ignore attacks for 5 seconds after a direct order from the player, before enabling self-defense counterattacks, or something like that?)

That would help, especially when trying to micro-manage a small group of units in a big battle, which is quite difficult with current setup.

[Ykkrosh]

Hmm, if I remember correctly most games have separate "move" and "attack move" commands, where "move" is the default and "attack move" is ctrl+click or something like that. Does "move" mean they should never attack, even in self-defence if they run into an enemy unit who is blocking their path and slaughtering them? Does "attack move" mean they should only attack in self-defence, or should they attack anything that enters their line of sight? Should we support both commands, or just have one command that's context-/time-sensitive? I don't play RTS games enough to know what behaviour would be helpful/irritating for players, but if someone can say precisely how it should work then I could probably implement it easily.

[Shield Bearer]

In AOE units when tasked to move somewhere attack only when the reach the spot, regardless of the enemies around it or if one of them attacks it.

The Attack Move option would quite a handy one for two reasons, one it could act as the default move when the unit is in aggressive stance and two it would allows us to us different animations for the unit when he's gonna attack.

[Pureon]

Hmm, if I remember correctly most games have separate "move" and "attack move" commands, where "move" is the default and "attack move" is ctrl+click or something like that. Does "move" mean they should never attack, even in self-defence if they run into an enemy unit who is blocking their path and slaughtering them? Does "attack move" mean they should only attack in self-defence, or should they attack anything that enters their line of sight? Should we support both commands, or just have one command that's context-/time-sensitive? I don't play RTS games enough to know what behaviour would be helpful/irritating for players, but if someone can say precisely how it should work then I could probably implement it easily.

Move - units walk to the designated spot - No attacking. This is the default move command.

Attack Move - units walk to designated spot but attack anything on the way (In LOS?). Usually Alt-click or Ctrl-click

Most RTS games employ at least those 2 options. The default Move command normally does involve running into a big enemy force and getting slaughtered. No self-defense actions while moving, only activates when units are stationary again.

[Shield Bearer]

what he said

[Rasunadon]

3) Yes, 5 or 10 seconds delay would be sufficient. What about rerouting affecting only units in the sight of the building (that green circle)?

5) Of course I don't mind quickly loading games. Maybe some switch in settings like "to start game immediately/to wait for any click" would solve it. So for several first you will have it ON and read through infos about buildings and units. Then, when you don't want to read it anymore, you switch the option "waiting for click" OFF.

6A) As is told in the first post, Ubuntu.

15) Yes, it really happens only when being hit. I send a horseman to do some reconnaissance and he found an enemy tower. He wasn't then able to return for reinforcements because he was killed while trying both attacking and returning at once. So it would be good to have something to order (for example) your scouts to retreat. Either different stances or more types of move order (or both, and formations, and 5sec delay... ).

16) Yes, for only one unit it is functioning. Maybe it could be solved together with correct group building options (which now depends on the first selected unit).

15 and 16 closed.

[Rasunadon]

18 closed and the third bunch is here.

19) Spearmen and javelinists (and maybe all range units with minimum distance too) have problem when being attacked by some melee unit (f.e. swordsman). They turn, go back a bit and then turn again to attack. But the enemy unit goes too near to them again while they try to attack. So they turn for the second time and whole loop starts again from the beginning.

They are faster than the melee unit so they are able to do this loop for some time but when they get in some corner they are doomed.

Problem is in the animation showing attacking range unit so it seems there some attack was but that never happens.

I think it could be solved with the lengthening of time for which this range unit goes. So it would be then far enough to attack and run again and not only to prepare for attacking and then run.

20) One of my infantry javelinists wasn't affected by the problem from number 19. He discovered how to throw javelins backwards - that could be second solution for 19. Here are two screenshots, second one taken 1 second after the first one.

21) So multiplayer is now possible only when somebody gives me his IP or I give him mine? Is there any stipulated place for such exchanges?

[Pureon]

19) Will be fixed when Ykkrosh implements the move commands we discussed for 15)

1) I've asked one of our sound effects applicants to record some bark sounds for the Celt dog, so this should be fixed soon too!

[Ykkrosh]

19) Will be fixed when Ykkrosh implements the move commands we discussed for 15)

It won't, it's a separate issue - units have a minimum attack range, and if they're too close then they'll automatically pick the nearest point at that distance from the target and move to it (which takes some time) then will stop and prepare to attack (which takes some more time), and by then the enemy will have moved closer than the minimum range again.

It'd be possible to make the attacker move to a point further away, to compensate for the amount the target might move, but that sounds either complex (if we compute the distance dynamically based on the units' speeds (which can depend on terrain) and attack-preparation times) or fragile (if we hard-code a larger-than-minimum distance they should aim for). Not sure how best to deal with it.