Demo 7.2 Proposal!

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Everybody:

We had initially planned to go straight from Demo 7.1 to Demo 8. However, Gary who is going to do much of that, has been unavailable due to R. L. issues for some time. Laurent and I thought we should change plans to do a Demo 7.2 that would include a number of bug fixes based on the recent reports, and include a number of new features. I'm going to present here a rough plan of attack for Demo 7.2 so that people can see what's going on, and comment upon it. Since it has been about three months since we've had a new demo, we are going to try for some time fairly early in January to get this out.

Before I start on the details, I want to give some links that will allow people to see the big picture of where we are and where we are going. The current font of wisdom for that is that thread: Reworking our Demo Approach. In D7 we did the first two scenarios in that thread. There are three more to go to get us to our mid-term goal of a pretty decent whole-ancient-history game, as you can see if you look at that thread.

There were also some tentative Plans for D8 made. Those mostly involved discussions of treating a city as a "square within a square".

Proposed Demo 7.2 features (and who does it) are listed below. I've divided the list into core and extras. Core are things we can almost certainly get done by our self-imposed deadline. Extras involve work that we may or may not get done, or things that we need volunteers to take on.

CORE:

1. Fix the bugs that have come to light with the new playtesters (thanks Gabriel and Martin!), and some of the old bugs as practical. Laurent has already done some of this. (Laurent, Mark)

2. Laurent has already implemented militia. Militia now fights for square owner. That is not great, but, if explained, it should be OK with testers. Getting a prefered civ for each ethnic group would help. (Laurent, Mark for ethnic group part)

3. The siege stuff is already partly implemented by Laurent. I think we can handle fairly easily a square-based way for players to build walls using the economy. Until the city stuff (square within a square) is done, we will just crudely have walls enclosing whole squares. The starvation aspects of sieges of course won't be covered with this approach, but at least we can get some playtester feedback on how the model is working. (Laurent, Mark)

4. What I thought I could do is hook back up economic specials and merchants. These were somewhat functional in demo 6,and were turned off as we made the migration to XML-based scenario files. I will enable xml handling of input of these and modify the scenario files appropriately. (Mark)


EXTRAS:

5. Implement simple naval combat model we've started discussing recently. We can work together to put together a model like we did for the siege one. (Laurent, Mark, anyone else interested in doing model?)

6. A more useful merchant system, eliminate merchant teleporting, enable use of merchants as military quartermasters, have areas of the map which are attractive to both civilizations and merchants because of their resources. Perhaps use merchants for tech diffusion. (Mark)

7. Much larger tech tree with more Applications and Activities. (Richard or someone who is game)

8. More/Improved scenarios. We already have, thanks to Gary, a reasonably versatile XML-based scenario design toolkit. I can set up anyone who has the time and interest so that they can design their own scenarios. The scenario toolkit also allows for modifications of the admittedly-primitive AI that we have. I believe some clear improvements in the AI for the scenarios we have already can be made just by using this capability. (Sucker wanted )

9. We have no artist-in-residence, although Laurent has risen to part of the challenge! We could really use a dedicated artist to generate images for economic specials (gold, cloth, etc.), design new unit images, and a variety of other things. (Apply within)

That the plan we have come up with. Providing I have gotten all Laurent's input correct that is...

Comments and criticisms welcome.

Thanks,

Mark

[Nebula]

9 > Why do you not hire a graphics artist? I hired a artist last year for my graphics and I am happy with them. Why rely on a amateur when you can get a pro for relatively little money.

[LDiCesare]

Mark, I just sent you a mail with the code and resources associated to them. If you didn't receive that, please tell me so.
As I said in the mail, I am not sure making an economics plugin for walls is useful until we have squares in squares. Though it certainly isn't a problem.
I thought making a scenario with walled and not-walled cities could be interesting (like "you have X turns to take walled city XXX before heavy reinforcements come in") to adjust the various purely military aspects of walls and decide of their values in terms of economic cost relative to building units instead. It would be a scenario where you start with a small army, and attack two cities, one unwalled and one walled, both with the same defense force.
I would also like to start working on saves unless Gary shows up before and wants to do it himself.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by LDiCesare

As I said in the mail, I am not sure making an economics plugin for walls is useful until we have squares in squares. Though it certainly isn't a problem.

Hi Laurent, either way is ok by me. Lets see what others think. If I'm the only one that really likes the building-wall thing I'll gladly give up on it.

I thought making a scenario with walled and not-walled cities could be interesting (like "you have X turns to take walled city XXX before heavy reinforcements come in") to adjust the various purely military aspects of walls and decide of their values in terms of economic cost relative to building units instead. It would be a scenario where you start with a small army, and attack two cities, one unwalled and one walled, both with the same defense force.

Sounds interesting. Though to balance wall building against mil units it'd probably be better to be able to build the walls also. But if that turns out to be complicated, I'm with you that the wall test scenario could be useful. I'd go with several different quality sets of walls, the last being Very hard to take.

I would also like to start working on saves unless Gary shows up before and wants to do it himself.

Oh, noooo, now you're big on save games. I thought Gary was the only one infected. I guess if that's what you really want to do its ok, but as you know there are IMO a bunch of things that are more important, like real AI. . .

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Nebula
9 > Why do you not hire a graphics artist? I hired a artist last year for my graphics and I am happy with them. Why rely on a amateur when you can get a pro for relatively little money.

Hey Nebula, its an idea. My problem now is that for things in Clash the specs aren't already known. So there is more experimentation that with a clone. But if everything else is moving along such that art is the limiting factor, I'd sure consider it. What did you have done, and roughly what was the cost, if you don't mind saying?

[LDiCesare]

Sounds interesting. Though to balance wall building against mil units it'd probably be better to be able to build the walls also. But if that turns out to be complicated, I'm with you that the wall test scenario could be useful. I'd go with several different quality sets of walls, the last being Very hard to take.

Already done . I have made it with two cities, one without walls and one with. The main problem is that even with huge walls, you can have a big economy and throw lots of armies on the wall so it always falls. This could be changed if building armies was prohibitive, but it is not in what I did. At least that allowed me to plug militia correctly and to remove a pair of bugs.

I guess if that's what you really want to do its ok, but as you know there are IMO a bunch of things that are more important, like real AI. . .

Now you bait me with AI. You know I can't help biting that. Of course real AI is one of my main goals too, but looking at feedback from the demo7, I thought saves were important.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by LDiCesare Already done . I have made it with two cities, one without walls and one with. The main problem is that even with huge walls, you can have a big economy and throw lots of armies on the wall so it always falls. This could be changed if building armies was prohibitive, but it is not in what I did. At least that allowed me to plug militia correctly and to remove a pair of bugs.

I played the Middle Earth siege scenario, pretty cool! It certainly gets the message across about how fortifications change the balance of combat. I didn't try it with out the catapults, but presumably the attack on the wall city would then have resulted in a stalemated siege. I also played delenda, as the Romans, and the presence of walls around Rome made a big difference!

Overall the siege stuff seems to work great, and I didn't have any issues with the militia. I do have some fairly obvious suggestions for what we need to do in this area for demo 7.2. I'm sure you've thought of most of them already. Before I forget, I've also got one question. What happens to walls after they are breached? In other words, if I take a city that has walls, and they are breached, once I eliminate the enemy and establish my control do I get working walls?

When the things we need, which I already mentioned in the graphics thread, is some way to show where walls are. I also had the Carthaginians make a pretty much suicidal attack on Rome in the delenda game. Unfortunately I didn't think the save the log file. But if I recall correctly they have like a 50% larger power circle than I. But of course with the effect of the walls I was actually in better shape, and they really shouldn't have attacked. Have you seen this sort of thing in your tests? Maybe we need some special AI feature that prevents boneheaded attacks against walls with garrisons. One final thing, they should be easy to change, is to know when a siege is happening in the TurnEvents notifications. In the one-line version instead of saying "combat blah blah blah" it should say "siege blah blah blah". That way the player will know that nothing really happened. It should also be noted in the more detailed combat diagnostics that you get from a TurnEvents that a siege is ongoing.

Finally, specifically on the Middle Earth scenario, I would reduce the economic base quite a bit. You can make so many units that it becomes a little distracting. If the economic base were one-fourth as large, and the walls not quite as mean, it would play roughly the same but in a much more streamlined fashion. BTW, how long did it take to put together the scenario?

Now you bait me with AI. You know I can't help biting that. Of course real AI is one of my main goals too, but looking at feedback from the demo7, I thought saves were important.

Sorry, didn't mean to be too evil. My position remains unchanged from before that until a game lasts significantly long, that saves don't get us very much. At least, considering the amount of effort that will go into making saves work, I think we will get much better response from putting that time into AI. I think nobody doubts that we can eventually get save games functioning, but there must be skepticism that we can do so much better at a job with AI than the traditional game in the genre. Maybe we should do a poll of what the next most important thing to do is. Of course if Gary shows back up it would make this discussion kind of irrelevant, since I already promised him he could do saves next. I sure hope he does show back up, because I have no desire to do the economics refactoring myself .

[LDiCesare]

What happens to walls after they are breached?

Well, they remain breached and almost useless. I must either remove them totally or repair them. Which means I should seriously think about coding repair/healing stuff.

I indeed changed the siege scenario a lot since I sent it to you, upping the military units cost, making (almost) sure you see militia on first round and that you will lose if you don't build catapults. I had to increase the wall defense value enormously to do so, but it makes the scenario interesting.
I also improved combat events messages a bit (so you know when walls are breached).
Attackers won't attack a wall unless they have a much bigger strength than the defenders. In your example, however, it is quite possible that the militia made a difference, as Rome has a huge population, and if they raise, it usually changes the outcome of a fight. That means the ai should check for walls before attacking, and check for population and possible militia upheaval. The second part is more easily done with simulation than heuristics. Maybe we can discuss this topic better on the AI thread.

[Mark_Everson]

Between Laurent and me, we've got the core features mostly done (1-4 in top post). Still bugs to fix and things to tweak, but a release early in the new year looks pretty good!

[Martin the Dane]

Well, since Mark invites comments, I'd just as well vent one of my main frustrations as to walls in civ-type games.

As far as I have been able to determine there has been two versions of the same model as to implementing them:
1. Give the defender a fixed defencive bonus (CTP)
2. Give the defender a persentage bonus (CIV)

And to tell the truth non of them makes much sence.

In reality a single troop of archers - with sufficient supply arrows that is - could hold of a substantial force of non-ranged attackers indefinately and slowly wear them down, by picking off anyone stupid enough to enter their range.

What I'm saying is that no force, no mater how large, should be able to defeat a garison in combat if the garrison is protected by walls, unless they have some form of wall (or gate) breaching equipment. They can of cause besiege the defenders and wait for them to starve.

So in order to add reality to walls only certain units, or units with certain abilities should be able to attack walls and the units within.

Weaponds for wall breaching could be:
Ancient:
- Balistas
- Catapults
Middle age:
- Explosives
- Canons
Modern age
- Any artilery or heavy guns

Weaponds for attacking units within walls could be:
Ancient:
- Balistas with fire arrows
- Catapults with burning shots (tar)
- Catapults with "buckshots"
Middle age:
- Canons with axploding amo
Modern age
- Any artilery

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Martin, that is exactly the sort of comments we are looking for on the world models in Clash. The short answer is I think we are not going quite as far as you suggest, but with the Fortifications and Sieges model we are getting much closer to reality than the other games you cited. However, since yours is a detailed post on the topic, it should probably go in the thread I have linked to so that your points can be discussed, and won't be lost in the shuffle when demo 7.2 is long gone. Would you mind copying your excellent post over to that thread? Then we can discuss your points versus the model in more detail.

[GabrielGL]

I dont' feel strongly how you proceed, but i anxiously invite the move. I, like probably most "users", will go with the flow.

Wrt to walls and it's defensive bonus, the opposite is most true in history as I know it. Walls always fail if resources are available to the attacking force unless formidable geographic elements play a part. Garisons always fall.. mining, shielding, and scaling and etc eventually breaches the wall, bio-warfare always induces illness, and water is a weak point as well.. only primitive attacks with no support fail against walls (hit and run type attacks).. given time, walls eventually just don't matter.. btw, however you implement it doesn't matter to me as I'll have fun anyway.. slavish dedication to history is not required..

[Lord God Jinnai]

9> If you need stuff for small things like icons or whatnot, i can do that.

I don't want to do any land stuff till we go over to polygon movement system.

Send me email at:

lord_god_jinnai@netzero.net

[Mark_Everson]

Thanks LGJ! Do you know how to do the transparent gifs (gif 89a) ?

Demo 7.2 remaining items needing to be done follows, comments solicited on importance of the various items. . .

Things needing to be done, getting more speculative near the end. We will likely not do all before release. Your ideas on what is important matter!

X = complete, at least to D7.2 level needed

X 1. Fix Hannibal AI in delenda. (Laurent)

X 2. Shift cloth image to left like other specials (Laurent, not critical)

X 3. Fix Comod. bug in econ when window open (Mark)

4. Consider putting a special and a merchant in Dawn, and have a tutorial thing about them (Mark)

5. About item on main Header that gives Program/designer info. Link to clash web page and credit to coders, artists, and model designers. (Mark)

Can you think of anyone else that has made a concrete contribution to D7.2?

Coders:
Gary Thomas (Map, Technology, and Much Else)
Laurent Di Cesare (Military Plus)
Mark Everson (Economics Plus)
Alex Zuroff (Overview Map)

Artists:
sas [Stian Stokken] (Terrain)
Fiera [Juan Gonzalez] (Units and Cities)

Model Design:
Military - Paul Krenske, Laurent Di Cesare, Gary Thomas
Technology - Richard Bruns, Lord God Jinnai [Leejay Lockhart]
Economy - Mark Everson
Government (partially implemented) - Rodrigo Quijada

6. Consider putting in Province-wide Merchants (Mark, but probably won't do because of seriousness of code changes that would be needed)

7. Explain new movement ordering options (right and double-click function) in Dawn tutorial (Mark).

8. Consider giving economic orders a standard priority by type. This is to ensure that "Army Supplies" always takes precedence over building more troops, which will then fight ineffectively due to lack of supplies. Issue is only important when orders sum to more than 100%, but comes up often. Right now orders are handled as they come out of the iterator from a HashMap (Mark, mostly done, just one bug away from finished.)

9. Put an Info button on econ orders. The info frame will not come up automatically with the orders, but will be called up only when button pushed. This may be more complicated than I anticipate, in which case I'll skip it. (Mark)

10. I can't get the change provice menu that pops up when right-klicking the main map to work to change province capital or civ capital. Has anyone gotten it to work?

11. Laurent, there's both a Combat Tech and Military Tech in Delenda. IIRC you told me to kill one, but I can't remember which. Or do they both have a function?

[Lord God Jinnai]

Yea, i got photoshop so its not a problem.

[Martin the Dane]

Re: 10. When I use it, it does change the capital, or rename the province, but the popup menu stays open. But I guess that's what you mean by it not working.

[LDiCesare]

Funny, for me the popup disappears, the capital changes but the bug is that the map doesn't refresh automatically (you must select another square, then the new capital).
I strongly dislike the right click interface, though.

[Martin the Dane]

Oh the popup disapears all-right, but it does not close, it moves to the back, so if you minimize the game window, you'll se a stack of popup windows.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Guys:

I see the problem Martin talks about with the right-click menu, but that is not my real problem. I simply can't get it to change the #@%@# capital.

I do this:
Start delenda as Romans
Click on Marsaglia, and verify it is the capital of Gaul
Right-click on Marsaglia, which pops up the menu
Select "Change province capital"
Select a map square, in this case one sq to left of Marsaglia.
Select same square a second time, just to be sure the map had focus...

And the end result is that Marsaglia is Still the capital of Gaul, not the square I selected [3,1].

I agree that to be really useful the menu needs some feedback to the player, but I can't get it to work at all.

Any suggestions? For those of you for whom it works, when you go thru the steps I outline above, does it change the capital of Gaul?

[LDiCesare]

Mark, did you click on the square before right-clicking? It sounds like you expect the right click to act upon the square you click after choosing select capital, whereas it works on the one you had selected when you right-clicked.

[Martin the Dane]

Mark,

If I do as you list it Nothing happends, but try this

Start delenda as Romans
Click on Marsaglia, and verify it is the capital of Gaul
Select a map square, in this case one sq to left of Marsaglia.
Right-click on the square, or anywhere else in the map for that matter.*
Select "Change province capital"

Now the selected square is the province capital, only the Detail frame etc. isn't updated, so you have to select a different square, and then the new capital square.

* Wouldn't it be more logical if right-clicking selected the square under the mouse pointer.

[Mark_Everson]

Thanks Gents, now that I understand the magic it works fine. For Demo 8 we should work out a spec that's more intuitive and gives the player feedback on what has happened. I'm sure Gary just put it in as a quickie debugging aid, but its time to go beyond that.

Anybody have ideas for the best way to do it?

[Martin the Dane]

Well the current way is close to the best, but the text on the popup sould be changed, to make it more intuitive: "Move province capital here" or "Set to province capital"

Furthermore right-clicking should highlight the square under the pointer and open a popup menu, with valid commands, next to the pointer. This will make it more obviouse what's going on. This way the "move capital" will be grayed out if the selected square is already the capital.

[Mark_Everson]

Thanks for the suggestions Martin, I think they're pretty good.

I've improved the set province capital and related stuff a bit today, including the simple "Set to..." change. The detail frame now updates properly, and I fixed some bugs in that code. Some we didn't even know about before

I don't know if I can easily get the popup close to the selected square, or implement the right-click-selects suggestion. Will look at it tomorrow.

Basically D7.2 coding is wrapped up. We did everything on the list but 4 and 6. Hopefully we can get the demo out early next week.

I also tweaked the AI for Jericho a bit. We'll see if its tougher to beat now!

[LDiCesare]

I don't like the right clicking at all. IT should not select another square IMO, and it shouldn't be the only way to do an action. It should limit itself to information gathering when nothing particular is active / cancelling stuff when in a mode (like roads/moves).

[Gary Thomas]

Using a right click to select would be a giant step backward. It will lead to inconsistent behaviour.

The problem described is a coding problem - the new capital should be selected after the right click, but using a left click. The way it works now arises from my rush in trying to get too many things to work.

Cheers

[Martin the Dane]

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
Using a right click to select would be a giant step backward. It will lead to inconsistent behaviour.

I guess it's to late to implement that now, and my wote does not count enough anyway, but the way I'd preffer it was: Right-click would allways bring up a menu to maipulate the object being right-clicked. No mater what is being right-clicked, eg. if you have a TF selected and rightclick a different TF or Unit the menu would let you

• add that TF/Unit to the currently selected TF, display information on the Unit/TF being right-clicked (not the currently selected TF/Unit),
• disband the Unit/TF being right-clicked,
• Split the TF being right-clicked,
• etc. etc.

To make this available to users with only a one-button mouse, the same behavior should be available when holding down some function key while clicking.

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
The problem described is a coding problem - the new capital should be selected after the right click, but using a left click.

Then it should not be done by right-click at all. Standard program behavior on Windows and XWindows (Unix/Linux) is that right-click brings up a menu to manipulate the object being right-clicked, in this case a map square. Only exception is when right-click cancels or ends previouse left-click eg. in setting a path or drawing a line.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi All:

Once I saw Laurent objected to the right-click-selects I didn't do anything about it. I just made it so the popup comes up near the selected square. That will have to do for D7.2.

[Gary Thomas]

Then it should not be done by right-click at all. Standard program behavior on Windows and XWindows (Unix/Linux) is that right-click brings up a menu to manipulate the object being right-clicked, in this case a map square. Only exception is when right-click cancels or ends previouse left-click eg. in setting a path or drawing a line.

There are some menu entries which do not manipulate an object. Moving the capital of a province is one such. There are others, though I cannot remember them offhand.

The present system is a hybrid, and not the result of a carefully worked out system. For example, Mark originally wanted all the menu operations to be key clicks. That system really was not workable. I introduced the idea that a left click selects and a right click brings up a menu. However, I did this by coding, not by systematically designing the way in which mouse clicks work. You must also remember that there are state variables in action - behaviour changes when you are moving a unit or building a road. This is coded in an OOP manner. The basic paradigm, insofar as there is one, has been borrowed from the game Space Empires IV.

Personally I would accept any user-friendly and consistent system - I am not blindly committed to the present one.

Cheers