Demo 8.1 Goals and Plan

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gary, glad to have you back in this virtual space!

Best,

Mark

[alms66]

Regarding the tutorials we discussed earlier, I have just finalized Dawn to be "rebirthed" as 'Tutorial 1 - Overview'. I fixed a few lines of text, took out an event that fired twice, and played through to check for problems. I didn't see any problems with the scenario itself, so for now (in the testbed), it will be the Overview tutorial. I'll email it to Laurent, Mark & Gary (am I missing anyone?).

However, it became glaringly obvious to me that what I suspected above was true - that the scenario is far out of date of Clash's current development status. When the desert barbarians started begging me for peace - hell, all the barbarians did - that put the nail in it's coffin. Dawn lacks any ability to show the use of map filters, diplomacy, government (ruler panel), social, or technology (well not all the new stuff). This does not a good overview scenario make (as Yoda would say), and I think it would be too much work to be worth trying to work these things in. So, let's just face it - it will soon be time to retire Dawn. It's served it's purpose well in the past, but it is now obsolete. That reminds me, and I don't say this enough, but for adding all this stuff in that has made Dawn obsolete - you are the MAN Laurent!

For the following release, (8.2) I think a better ground for the overview scenario will be the Ancient Aegean scenario, with a few modifications. The only things that scenario can't show is automatic colonization, exploring and bringing settlers out to settle new land, so I'm thinking of removing Persia's army for the overview scenario purpose and having the player explore what is currently Ionia, then explain settling & auto-colonization of that area soon after. That will allow the overview scenario to cover everything that Clash currently has to offer. A few other modifications I'll probably make are to set everyone to peace and make Greece strong enough that no one would declare war on them. Following exploring & settling, a war with Persia will round out the tutorial.

The paragraph above assumes I finish all the other tutorials by the 8.2 release because I'm going to finish those before going back and redoing the overview tutorial. If I don't finish them in time, the current "updated" Dawn scenario will suffice.