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

[civilis]

"a ) do it for all units"

You probably thought of only a few units on your shown part of the map ... if dozens of units are displayed, it maybe would simply be too much to recognize anything. Of course, if you only have say 5 units, it is much better to show the cycles of all of them at once instead of having to select one after the other.

Naturally I had also more plans with the TAB: e.g. show also the ranges the selected unit can walk and run in a given (configurable (user.cfg?)) time and more important show the range it can attack with javelin etc. (standard value or maybe even the actual value depending on modifications) ... status bars for all units and several details for the selected.

(After playing long enough, one hasn't to think about such, but I as a bloody newbie am struggling with ranges: how far can slingers shoot without moving (and breaking the formation)? Do the ranges of towers overlap? How much? In the beginning it would help to show the "zones of control".)

Perhaps all the time in a corner a standard square (depending on zoom level and rainbow color coded, say red ?x? ... yellow 100x100m ... blue 1x1m) in the given standard orientation (key R) can examplefy the currently used scale. (How big will be the initial influence of a new CC? etc. etc.)

[jonbaer]

Attack range is a good idea, I am not sure if you can that overlay, the Developer panel seems to show a different type of range, no attack.  At the moment it's a bit difficult to determine the rank of a unit as well ...

[sanderd17]

The range overlay shows all active range queries (these queries are always run and warn the source when an entity came in or out the range).

For units, this range query is their vision range, as when something passes in their vision range, they can react to it and come closer to attack. Only in stand-ground mode, the range is the attack range I'd guess.

For buildings, the range is always the attack range, as the building's can't move, so they don't have to look further than the attack range.

[civilis]

"For buildings, the range is always the attack range"

Great!!! For arranging defense towers this is very helpful for the player ... (finally after sending away all the troops I can see it too ) ... it shows the effective range including modifications like height. (Empty) towers have another very small range, what is that?

Also good to know is that those circles mean the vision range of moving (red) and standing units, bad luck for sneakers. The range of units seems to be independent of their standpoint height? (At least standing on the edge of the acropolis gives the same radius as below.)

Women are designed shortsighted, to save them from being abused as cheap reconnosance ...

Edit: Units in stand-ground mode show the attack range indeed. Comparing a Hoplite, Javelin Thrower and Slinger the blue grid has a width of 32m.

Edited May 26, 2016 by civilis
stand-ground mode, edge of acropolis

[sanderd17]

Vision range is independent of height. It should depend on obstruction to be realistic: you can see the valley from the mountain peak, and you can also see the mountain peak from the valley, but you can't look through the mountain to see the valley on the other side. But as this is quite computationally intensive, it's not done.

[civilis]

Hmm, perhaps it would over all be a smaller error to simply increase the vision range linear with standpoint height (without any LOS calculations. Pretending there is free sight all the time.) It is just intuitive. The earth IS a ball and there distance to horizon depends on height.

(In my 0ad games I always climbed the hills and tried to stay at higher altitude for better sight and now that! )

[civilis]

1. Is the fertility of fields always the same? I.e. is the yield lower or does take more time on some fields (for example farther away from river)? I ask, because one of the fields looks all the time relatively brown and never really green. (Map is Necropolis)

2. Where can I change the camera restrictions? For me with the Player standard values the Zoom In is perfect, but I would like a lot more Zoom Out and also a broader range of inclination (nearly 90°). The unrestricted access available with the Developer panel does not fix that really, because with this I crash often into units or buildings on unintentional "close" Zoom Ins and have also "loopings" during changing inclination ... and find me now switching off and on camera restrictions, and off and on ...

[sanderd17]

1. Fields currently always give the same profit. The difference is purely graphical. Though it it's planned to variate this a bit in the future. Fire now, we have to wait until someone is willing to start on it though.

2. You can change those things in the settings file. Please read http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Manual_Settings carefully to know how to do that. Also note that zooming out far can cause more performance issues, which is one of the reasons why it's limited by default.

[civilis]

In the file default.cfg in the last section, [view], the named parameters are rotate.x.min, rotate.x.max and zoom.max.

Now it works like a charm, thanks a lot!

(I like the pure 'from above view' because it helps me to get an intuitive knowledge about topology and distances. In order to have the whole map of 'Necropolis' on the screen from above it needs much Zoom Out (zoom.max = 2500.0) ... with my first map 'Acropolis Bay' the default values were ok, though)

[civilis]

When trying to place a building (only in the last phase, when the mouse is not moved or slowly?), it would be helpful to show along with the building (in normal colors or red) its rectangle (perhaps in black), which may not overlap and also the rectangles of nearby buildings / obstacles (in black and in case of collision red) as well as a strip (in green), if the distance is broad enough as a passage for units. (Right now I just place it and try out, whether passage is possible and reload if it is blocked unintentionally ...)

[civilis]

... or show just the red rectangle as is now already shown when MouseOver a building, but also when placing the building and in case of collision additionally the red rectangle of the colliding building.

Another small point are the tips displayed while loading a game: in a beta version it would be nice to be able to read the tips on purpose from a menu point ... I did that (after finding them in /usr/share/games/0ad/mods/public/public.zip: gui/text/tips/*.txt)

[sanderd17]

The problem with implementing that now, is that we also want some other changes to the obstruction stuff. Like allowing circular obstructions, or requiring a passable gap on certain buildings (so houses can no longer be used as walls f.e.).

[civilis]

"requiring a passable gap on certain buildings"

I like that one, houses as walls IS too easy. Another point is that I 'thought out' a really compact housing block ... just to see later in the game, that most houses can't be used to train females, because they are created on the "outside", standing at the edge of the acropolis and cannot enter the center. A passable gap would help a lot.

I suggest also for houses or more general for all buildings, which can train (eject?) units, a unique mark for the "creation point" already visible when placing the building. For CC, barracks, corral it is pretty easy to remember, but for the different houses I am helpless when I want to optimize the house orientation for shorter walks.

This mark could also help to avoid to block the "creation point". As I did with a field too near to the CC, which moved the "creation point" unexpectedly in a undesired direction. Unexpected because All are walking through the fields all the time, but not fresh units in the creation process.

[civilis]

For the temples I suggest 'autoeject when healing is ready' as default and option to prohibit that in emergency or to show the health bars of the "garrisoned" units in the temple.

Buildings under construction, when selected, could tell the whole time to build and the remaining time in seconds (constant workforce implied).

 

"we also want some other changes to the obstruction stuff. Like allowing circular obstructions"

I don't know, whether this will help from a players point of view. Right now when I want to set a building, I turn on the obstruction overlay and / or the pathfinder overlay. Nevertheless it is difficult for me to set an Apothe_ in a satisfying  position within the quarry spots - those are overlapping and / or have different distances to each other, different orientations, making it nearly impossible to predict whether a worker will be able to pass when another is working between the spots ... ... I find it interesting to watch the units in slow motion and think about programming the AI behind the moves. But as player of the game, as it is intended, I find it frustrating to watch a slinger to walk around the whole block because a passage was blocked just at the moment he wanted to pass, but is free 95% of the time - or two Hoplites at a mine dancing ballet with symmetric moves forth and back until a third comes and want to pass ... (The question as player is how to overcome the given behavior by setting the Apo in the 'right location' - maybe it helps to purposely let a broad gap between Apo & quarry??)

[civilis]

I suppose, what I wanted to say in my last 4 posts is that I would like to get more WYSIWYG in the Set Building process. More clues what the outcome will be.

[All my comments in this thread are based on the 'Rhododactylos' version (the default one for Ubuntu15.10) and the 'Necropolis' scenario.]

Playing this as red, I have access to a tiny part (in the north) of the large pyramid, while most of it "belongs" to Yellow on the other side of the border. So I need there a lot of precise points for GOTO orders to units - BUT there is a gigantic area _around_ the pyramid in which the cursor is just 'dismantle ruin', so I cannot give these precise goto-orders. (?) The same is valid for (concatenated!) fields: I would like to give goto/rallypoint-orders within (the passable parts of) those very large objects.

[Edit: If the pyramid is in the middle of my territory this 'dismantle ruin' is fine, but Yellow sends now and then single slingers, Hoplites or JavelinChamps which are walking around my gathering units ... all my units there are strictly pacifistic ("passive") most of the time (just removing the most aggressive), because I want only remove the stones from the pyramid as fast as possible and then pull back ... if I attack Yellow massively, he brings more units the more I kill - if I am patient, he is passive too (even kills Blue units, which don't hesitate to hit me there), just attacks sometimes my units, which I simply retreat, heal & send back. In short: it is a pain to manouver my units indirect in zickzack by 'Goto' outside the pyramid area and then (partly back) towards 'dismantle ruin'.]

Edited June 19, 2016 by civilis

[civilis]

Is it possible to display in a easy way the fractions of a second in the 'Game Time Overlay' or anywhere else (maybe even a LOG-FILE)?

I ask, because when I give orders in ultra-slow-motion, they are processed correctly later when the game runs quicker ... BUT those orders are  not included in a quicksave (and missing after a quickload). So I would like to let run the game a specific amount of time / fraction of a second ...

(Ideal would be a "sync" message, like temporarily displayed error messages)

[civilis]

((Just in case anybody wondered about what I meant with "sync" message: could be a simple text (for a quick test implementation) or e.g. a symbol in an overlay which toggles between 2 states ... in the same frequency as the food,wood,stone,metal-quartet is updated or the animation of walking units after a direction change is updated ...)) As far as I found out the smallest entity of "game time" IS a second. And to create _anything_ like a "message" would make it necessary to touch the C++ code ...

I want to append some thoughts to what

On 4/23/2016 at 10:28 PM, causative said:

It sure would be nice if multiple units could be queued up at a production facility without having to pay the unit cost until the unit actually starts being produced.  Other RTS games such as Starcraft allow this.  It would eliminate a lot of unnecessary clicks, especially when it comes to sheep.  This would free players to pay more attention to controlling units in battle, which is more interesting anyway.

and on 5/7/2016 at 7:46 AM, me: I like this idea too. So I propose, to let the normal queuing as it is (left-click) AND to add another queuing mode (invoked eg. with ctrl-left-click & using icons with different colored border or background) with unpaid units. Of course this queues stop when the resources are missing. New queuing mode icons could be appended behind the normal queues with already paid icons.

This new queuing mode would also allow to repeat the selected unit production until stopped (maybe invoked with alt-left-click).

I am aware that this would make it necessary to add attributes to "not yet existing" units, that is to members in the creation queue - but this helps with other aspects already pending: give units in the queue different destination points, give them different stances (aggressive, defensive) ...

In this context it would probably help, to be able to set the creation queue in CCs, barracks ... on HOLD in order to priorize the creation queues in other CCs, barracks ... [in the case of emergency, e.g. being attacked while resources low / Edit2]

[Edit: Another small point: I suggest to allow setting a symbol between units as delimiter between different teams or tasks within the queue, maybe a bar or tiny circle or so.]

Edited June 27, 2016 by civilis

[civilis]

I use now as "sync" message the Change of food units of a selected hunter gathering food _or_ the Jump of the magenta squares of moving units in the obstruction overlay (or is it underlay? Laying hidden under trees, mines etc.) ...

Nevertheless it would be handy, if the displayed "Game Time" could be incremented in 0.2 second steps to reflect, when the screen is really updated (besides animation moves).

[civilis]

The lady coming from the north will be happy tonight. She will successfully deliver wood to the Apotheke and see her boyfriend, who is going to break in right now ... but what about the eastern lady? Can she now deliver too? And will she meet her boyfriend at the quarry or is she out of luck???

[civilis]

I seem to remember reading something about speeding up the development of blacksmith-improvements by garrisoning a soldier at the blacksmith ...

Is this implemented in a18? How big is the speed advantage and must the garrisoned unit fit to the development (for example caval, ranged or infantry, melee)

[greenknight32]

A18 is old, current version is a20.

 

I have no idea if that's implemented.

[niektb]

@civilis: it's not implemented

[civilis]

I would prefer if the sheep's birth would sound different from its death, because for me one is kind of a false alarm with respect to the corral production pipeline.

Also it is nice to have different voices responding to the same commands, but it feels a bit irritating, if _one_ selected unit gets (with shift) several identical commands (say GoTo in rally points or deplete this tree, then this, then this) and answers with _random_ voices. In this case the voice should be kept the same.

[civilis]

I would like to to give the selected Hoplite the order to move straight into the gap between the 2 other Hoplites and further to the pyramid (instead to turn NOW towards east as he does on its own and collide with the stone returning Hoplite [wrong animation]), but this is impossible, because nowhere in front of the selected Hoplite can I do a right-click onto the ground, always the mouse is auto-changing there to either Left Hoplite position or Right Hoplite position or Pyramid position.

(The behaviour of the AI co-controlling my units is one thing - the precision of the User Interface giving me the ability to regain control over "my units" is another ...)

[Lion.Kanzen]

is an old alpha... can be nice get a upgrade.