What I as a beginner of 0 A.D. am missing most

[civilis]

I have played thousands of hours SimCity, PanzerGeneral, Civ I-IV, Imperialism, Pharao&Emperor ... but was reluctant so far with RTS. (So please have mercy with me, if you think, my suggestions are weird. )

1. I found Tutorials by mistake and too late, because of finding out its contents already by try & error. Appearing at the Entry Menu (in "Single Player" or maybe "Learn to play") as explicit item would help Newbies looking for a Tutorial.

2. I would like to have access to quicksave~ (the quicksave before the last). So in case I detect an playing-error in quicksave, I could start again from quicksave~ (and have always 2 valid quick safeties to choose from, eg. Shift(F7 and F8)). Ideally those two would also appear in the normal list of savegames. (Helpful to see which save is the latest.)

3. I suggest a "normal" Load button next to "Save" in the F10 Menu giving the normal list of savegames. This Load shouldn't change the gameSpeed. (Now it is a lot of clicking: exit, continue, Load, restore speed ...)

4. GameSpeeds 0.01 and 0.00001. The first to actually WATCH sometimes and look at this beautiful virtual world, not just playing the game. The latter for having the game functioning normal, but securely remove ALL hurry between any inputs. Ideally speed could be in- or decreased by key pairs like PageUp and PageDown or Shift(+ and -). Maybe for Single Player the speed definition numbers could be in a modifiable configuration file?

[sanderd17]

For your first question: the tutorial is outdated and incomplete (because the game is till in active development). That's why it's not featured when you start playing.

[Palaxin]

Welcome @civilis,

regarding number 4: edit this file in your installation folder and you are done  Ideally put your edited file in a separate mod (it's always better to leave the public folder untouched, especially for multiplayer). If you need a more detailed explanation just ask me.

Edited May 5, 2016 by Palaxin

[civilis]

Thanks a lot! Works great. (I use now speeds less extreme than intended: 0.01 / 0.05 / 0.10 / 0.25 / 0.50 / 1.0 / 1.33 / 2.0)

Speeding up & down with PageUp & PageDown would be perfect.

 

I moved the "Default": true to 0.10, but this seems to be ignored: the game starts and reloads always with speed = 1

[jonbaer]

I actually have a patch that will set game speed on -autostart but I was also trying to figure out how to accomplish this w/ hotkeys, something like:

<object hotkey="speed5"><action on="Press">Engine.SetSimRate(5);</action></object>

It would seem like this would be possible.  +1 for hot keying speeds.  Edit: attached a small working mod for #4 (POC) ...

0ad-speed-mod.zip

Edit: also adding the -autostart patch, was rather interesting watching this situation unfold as a test ...

pyrogenesis -autostart="random/continent" -autostart-speed=1000 -autostart-ai=1:petra -autostart-ai=2:petra -autostart-aidiff=1:0 -autostart-aidiff=2:5

0ad-autostart-speed.patch

Edited May 6, 2016 by jonbaer

[GunChleoc]

20 hours ago, civilis said:

2. I would like to have access to quicksave~ (the quicksave before the last). So in case I detect an playing-error in quicksave, I could start again from quicksave~ (and have always 2 valid quick safeties to choose from, eg. Shift(F7 and F8)). Ideally those two would also appear in the normal list of savegames. (Helpful to see which save is the latest.)

Maybe a rolling autosave would be nice here, e.g. have the latest 5-10 saves available?

[civilis]

Thanks jonbaer. Unfortunately you seem to be too far ahead for me. (I had tried already to lay the Pause-function on the easy accessable Space-key with local.cfg, but  with no success: so far this only works with a "dirty" default.cfg patch - something I'm doing wrong here, but for now I don't want to investigate further)

Meanwhile I found out, that the normal Save-function doesn't "kill" the quicksave (only the normal Load-function does this, ie. the exit before the Load). So I always make now a quicksave & a normal Save immediately thereafter and have all I want.

(@GunChleoc: not for my taste 1.) I want the control, when a save is done 2.) 5-10 saves ... and the "exit, continue, Load, restore speed" sequence to find out which save I want to use for continuing the game??!!!)

 

Right now I'm missing most for buildings under construction a permanent bar or simply the %-number of completion above the building (not only when selected or mouse-over)

For CivicCenter, Barracks & Corral the same, permanent %-number of completion of the active production, and the already triggered (paid) production-queue.

Well, if this seems too "ugly" it could be toggled on/off. (I'd like it on all the time )

Last I like to suggest a list of units, with status, what they are doing, where they are (option: select unit, center camera on it), their health (absolute and/or relative to the standard value). Ideally this list could be sortable chronological (time of production), by unit type, their health or distance to a sign on the map. This sign could be a simple flag, ankh-symbol or so.

Edited May 8, 2016 by civilis
added a bit to list of units

[civilis]

Thanks A LOT jonbaer for your marvelous 0ad-speed-mod.zip!!! Finally I got it running ... I have no idea what was going wrong, but it all boiled down to DELETING OR RENAMING ~/.config/0ad/config/user.cfg and COPYING OR RENAMING it back (while game running).

I changed its local.cfg to:

[hotkey]
session.speedUp = "Home"
session.speedDown = "End"

and its speed.xml to:

[...]

    <object hotkey="session.speedUp">
        <action on="Press">
            Engine.SetSimRate(Engine.GetSimRate()*2);

[...]

    <object hotkey="session.speedDown">
        <action on="Press">
            Engine.SetSimRate(Engine.GetSimRate()/2);

[...]

and now I LOOOOOVE it. Thanks again for your great help ... (We only can look so far, because we are standing on the shoulders of giants.)

[civilis]

1. Today I found out, that it is possible to lay down the initial structure of eg. a barracks with a male far away (and returning him immediately to his former job, so he hasn't to come the long way at all) and then actually build the military building with a group of females by assigning them to the construction site ... ??? (At least, i hadn't expected that.)

 

On 5/6/2016 at 8:00 PM, civilis said:

Right now I'm missing most for buildings under construction a permanent bar or simply the %-number of completion above the building (not only when selected or mouse-over)

For CivicCenter, Barracks & Corral the same, permanent %-number of completion of the active production, and the already triggered (paid) production-queue.

Well, if this seems too "ugly" it could be toggled on/off. (I'd like it on all the time )

Last I like to suggest a list of units, with status, what they are doing, where they are (option: select unit, center camera on it), their health (absolute and/or relative to the standard value). Ideally this list could be sortable chronological (time of production), by unit type, their health or distance to a sign on the map. This sign could be a simple flag, ankh-symbol or so.

2. Have I posted this in the wrong place?

Edited May 17, 2016 by civilis

[sanderd17]

You can hold the TAB key to see all status bars (which would also show the building progress),

I don't know what you mean with that "list of units" selection.

(btw, there's no reason to put that much in bold, it defeats the purpose of highlighting something)

[jonbaer]

Oh man that TAB key is super helpful, I thought I missed something in the game manual but that hotkey is not even mentioned in-game or online (http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/HotKeys) ... 

[Imarok]

20 hours ago, sanderd17 said:

I don't know what you mean with that "list of units" selection.

I think he means adding a button/hotkey to show a list with all of your units and some details like health, current task, type etc..

Which imho is a great idea

[civilis]

On 5/17/2016 at 8:55 PM, sanderd17 said:

You can hold the TAB key to see all status bars (which would also show the building progress),

Thanks for this new, helpful info! In this case that is the Health status bar. I suggest also another / additional one: Production Progress status bar (maybe in black & white). For finished buildings the progress of what they are producing: improvements like basket, iron ax or sheep, Hoplites ... Also units have this one, the progress of their food, wood etc. harvest. Could use shiftTAB (if unused).

 

Yes, Imarok is right, I mean a window, which might be kept open all the time (in windowed mode, not FullScreen). It could consist of columns for units and associated details and should be sortable by every column, which means it can be sorted by type giving an easy overview how many units of any type you have (maybe subcriterium: invisible production timestamp or a visible generic unique number, eg. Hoplite #12), or sorted by current task (idle, garrisoned/healing, moving to somewhere, (fighting?), producing food, wood, stone, metal) giving an easy overview how many units are doing what ... Sorted by health (relative to standard value) could be used for example to select the most injured (and move to next temple or so).

Sorted by location could use own, neutral or enemy territory and additionally the sphere of the CivicCenter ("district") in which they are currently to show units sorted together, which are on the map "together". Another possibility would be the option to place a flag or Ankh symbol on the map and to sort units by the (concentric) distance from this symbol to select easily the nearest units (absolute or relative to their speed) ...

In general the units should be selectable like files in the filemanager (drag and modify with shift / ctrl). Also clicking on a unit could simply center the camera on it.

Selections in this list could be also used to group units (instead of picking them on the map).

[Loki1950]

That would need am almost compete rewrite of the GUI code not going to happen soon

Enjoy the Choice

[sanderd17]

That production progress bar seems easy enough. If you want to work on that, I can give you some pointers.

The other GUI thing you propose will indeed be hard. The GUI design alone will be hard: everything needs to fit on the screen. So I don't expect someone doing that soon.

[Imarok]

I think the list could be pop up on press of a button/hotkey and just be some kind of overlay on the top left corner. (So you won't need to change the whole gui)

And if the team agrees to this feature, I think nothing speaks against opening a ticket and see If anyone takes the time to implement it

[Loki1950]

It's that pop-up that needs new code as it means a floating canvas(plane for text) and an overlay would just be confusing.

Enjoy the Choice

[civilis]

Well, before starting to implement, I'd like to finish (for myself) brainstorming and making up my mind, what to do, for example WHICH columns should be added to this window / list ... Is it a good idea (for experienced players), to have a "target flag" symbol and the ability to call "all near (concentric, relative to their speed) this flag, GOTO it"?

For me, it feels like "cheating" to use females for construction of military buildings ... their menu for starting buildings, their bad military parameters, their absence in the barracks list of trainable units seem to imply this - so it shouldn't be possible to assign them to military construction sites?!

I don't like it at all, that task switches between food, wood, stone, metal always waste already gathered resources. To avoid it is micromanagement from hell. So I would prefer a switch mode, which finishes the current transaction (until delivery to storage yard) and then begins the new task. The current behavior ("abort task") I would like as possible alternative to it in case of emergency.

[feneur]

6 hours ago, civilis said:

 

I don't like it at all, that task switches between food, wood, stone, metal always waste already gathered resources. To avoid it is micromanagement from hell. So I would prefer a switch mode, which finishes the current transaction (until delivery to storage yard) and then begins the new task. The current behavior ("abort task") I would like as possible alternative to it in case of emergency.

You can use the shift-key to queue up the gather commands, then the unit should drop off the gathered resource before moving on to the next. 

[civilis]

Really? Can't wait to come home and try THIS out.

If this works, You are my HERO of the day!

[I think of a situation, in which a unit got long ago a "Build Apothecary" and thereafter collected wood from selfchosen trees ... and now shall gather stone. Can I now repeat the "gather wood" with any tree nearby and follow it with "gather stone" (tied together with shift-key) without waste? Amazing.]

[jonbaer]

Man I didn't even know that, just cut my idle workers down to 0% ;-) Is there a way to determine to tell what the workers plans are?  That would actually be a nice addition to the TAB key if it could be implemented, to see a resource pathfinder for a worker, etc.  Just a thought.

[sanderd17]

There are plans to show waypoints on units, similar as how they're shown on buildings.

I don't know what the status of that is though, but there should be a ticket on Trac.

[civilis]

Yes, would be helpful to check paths, on TAB could the selected worker show its path between deposit (on map: highlighted as on mouseover and number of remaining goods) and dropdown building.

The shift-key to queue up the gather commands is object_oriented, i.e. is good to order "deplete this tree, then this, then this and so on", not so useful with quarry or mine.

What I had in mind, was a hard task switch, as it is now: "Abort current task immediately (and waste current inventory)" and as other option a soft task switch "Continue the current task until your capacity is full and deliver the current load (eg. 10 wood), i.e. finish the current cycle and then start the new transaction (eg. cycles between given fruit and farmstead)".

[Imarok]

On 23.5.2016 at 8:19 AM, sanderd17 said:

I don't know what the status of that is though, but there should be a ticket on Trac.

Here it is: #657

Edited May 24, 2016 by Imarok

[jonbaer]

When you hit Alt+D to bring up the Developer Overlay there is an option "Unit Motion Overlay", however it goes away when you select another unit.  Also it won't show queued paths (ie the cycle as you put it), what I would think would be nice is on TAB to highlight the overlay but a ) do it for all units and b ) show the queued path as well.  (I think that is different from #657) ... (these are just suggestions)