Mac Alpha

[LordLee]

First off, great game, both conceptually and in praxis. Bravo. Very attractive, gritty and vibrant. Also providing tools to examine what is going on in the game is also a bonus as far as alpha goes. If the team goes all the way this homespun project looks very promising. Obviously games aren't ready to be played, but potentialities are present. All testing done on Apple Mac OS 10.6.6 using terminal and Alpha Build III: Cerebrus 8832 Build Dec 21, 2010. I have been watching this game from a distance once in a while, and its looking good.

Bugs

[*]Fullscreen mouse issue [snapping onto resource/unit]

[*]Lack of sound

[*]Windowed mode needs to "trap" the mouse inside. Scrolling becomes impossible. Games often use "alt" to snap in and out of the window.

[*]AI seems quite brain dead (However: The animations and unit intra-action and inter-action is quite brilliant)

Pathing

• Villagers do not join nearest resource construction site if full
  
• Buildings can be built and float on uneven terrain (i.e. Acropolis map, you can build on sheer part of the cliffs)
  
• Boat pathing is not ideal. Non-graphic Boat sizes are obviously still being worked on.
  

GUI

• Holding "shift" does not provide "pathing queue"
  
• No "idle villager" button
  
• No villager indicators (idle, ea. resource, construction)
  
• Hotkeys (Perhaps this is obvious)
  
• UI should be smaller. A good solution is Map on left, Unit info on right with buildables/formations strewn in between.
  
• Either use or eliminate excess bar space on top
  
• Armors/damages/hp should be expressed
  
• Colors are not accentuate enough on the minimap.
  
• button arrangement needs a bit of work, obviously the scheme is Economic, militaristic, specialistic at the moment
  

Gameplay

[*]Placing fortresses and siege pieces together is a bit concerning, because fortifications should be countered by siege.

[*]Terrain is excellent, incredible opportunity for strategy. This can make the game quite good.

[feneur]

Windowed mode needs to "trap" the mouse inside. Scrolling becomes impossible. Games often use "alt" to snap in and out of the window.

Personally I'm not too sure about this, while it would make it easier to scroll (scrolling can be done via arrow keys/wasd keys as well + you can press either the middle mouse button or / and move the mouse, so scrolling is still possible), it would restrict the user too much imho. I'm guessing most of the time one is playing windowed is because one wants to interact with some other application, so trapping the mouse would counteract that imho. As long as it is an option trapping the mouse might be a good idea for those who wants to use it though.

AI seems quite brain dead (However: The animations and unit intra-action and inter-action is quite brilliant)

That's because there is no AI in Alpha 3 There is a basic one in Alpha 4 though, so I hope you'll find it less braindead (It's just a start though, so don't expect too much just yet)

Villagers do not join nearest resource construction site if full

Implemented in Alpha 4.

Buildings can be built and float on uneven terrain (i.e. Acropolis map, you can build on sheer part of the cliffs)

Yep, this will definitely have to be fixed before the game is finished.

Either use or eliminate excess bar space on top

There are more buttons that will go there once the corresponding feature is implemented (things like diplomacy etc)

Armors/damages/hp should be expressed

They are To save space in the GUI this, and a lot of other information, is displayed when you hover over icons in the GUI. These are displayed when you hover your mouse over the icon that looks like a sword and a shield.

Placing fortresses and siege pieces together is a bit concerning, because fortifications should be countered by siege.

Do you mean as in "why do I need to build a fortress to be able to build units which can destroy fortresses"? I fail to see why that is a major problem, after all it's the enemy's fortress/towers/walls/houses/etc you should use the siege weapons to destroy. It might seem a bit worrying to put them in such an expensive structure, but that shouldn't be a problem once trade is implemented I'd hope. Also, infantry and cavalry will be able to capture buildings, so siege will not be the only way to deal with buildings. It will have to be seen in testing whether all buildings should be capturable etc though.

[Ykkrosh]

Thanks for your comments

Fullscreen mouse issue [snapping onto resource/unit]

Should be fixed in the next release.

Windowed mode needs to "trap" the mouse inside. Scrolling becomes impossible. Games often use "alt" to snap in and out of the window.

Hmm, for development I find it very convenient to run in windowed mode without the mouse being trapped, and I'd expect normal players to almost always run in fullscreen, so I think I prefer things the way they are. Does anyone else have preferences here?

AI seems quite brain dead

Alpha 3 has no opponent AI, which does make it pretty useless. Alpha 4 will have the beginnings of AI player scripts, so it should at least build some buildings and send some people to attack, so hopefully that's a step in the right direction

Villagers do not join nearest resource construction site if full

I'm not sure what you mean by "resource construction site". Do you mean resource collection (like too many people gathered around a tree), or building construction, or something else?

Boat pathing is not ideal. Non-graphic Boat sizes are obviously still being worked on.

What would you consider ideal? (It could definitely do with improvements, but I don't currently know what the eventual goal should be.)

Holding "shift" does not provide "pathing queue"

It should do that in the current release - shift+right-click queues movement orders for individuals or for groups of units. There's bugs with queuing non-movement orders for groups of units, but that doesn't sound like what you mean. There ought to be a visual indication of the queued path, but we don't have that yet.

... Hmph, Erik beat me to some of these

[feneur]

... Hmph, Erik beat me to some of these

Most of your replies were more useful than the ones I wrote though

[LordLee]

Excellent support. I'm look forward to Alpha IV. Lots more bugs since my initial play, but maybe I'll just wait for alpha IV.

Boats:

--Graphically: In alpha 3, Trires oars interfere with one another and ships sail flush. Besides being unrealistic (interfering with wind, damage from proximity, and rowing interference) it looks bad graphically (overlapping oars)

--Combat: Realistically, ships are so unwieldy, they have always had more to do with posturing than numbers. Broadly, RTS has handled Naval combat in two main ways: simple and complementary to land combat (the AoE & SC series exemplify this well); or a heavy emphasis on a few units (ala R&F). RaF is an extreme - 2 or 3 ships in the hands of a micromanager can easily demolish a fleet of someone just a little less focused...

Proposed solutions (are not pathfinding technically, but have to do with boat movement):

--Make ships that don't ever "bump" into each other graphically. i.e. their "size" is bigger

--Ramming seems to be an issue, I'm not even sure how 0AD will handle this

--Pentokrator stutters in its movements if matching the slower speed of a Trireme

--Individual ships should be spaced further apart (this goes with the first solution, but they shouldn't sail close)

Window snap

--surely it isn't necessary. Even if the default is not "snapped in" an option would be nice. ex. when I worked on modifications and other applications I used alt+tab, I never wanted to snap out of it with my mouse.

Fortress

--The implication had to do with cost effectiveness. If fortifications are relatively inexpensive and you foresee them being a dime a dozen then it doesn't make much of a difference, but if garrisons are expensive and siege is expensive, then building a siege unit in a garrison will double the expense. That is all I'm driving at. It all depends on hinges on the importance of siege within the game.

[feneur]

Fortress/siege: Well, I don't think it's going to be a problem, but ultimately this and a lot of other things will have to be finally decided in Beta, i.e. after a lot of playtesting.