Demo 6 Comments and Bug Reports

[axi]

It works fine with me, as demo5 did.

Demo6 is much more playable than demo5.

One minor glitch: when you resize the units window, the sidebar refuses to adjust, so the active area either gets cut-off, or covers only part of the window. If you meant the units window to have a standard 2 unit rows width, why did you put a sidebar in the first place?

I tried to rearrange the windows to fit my 1280x1024 display. I managed to fit the two economy windows on the left and the other ones below the map. When you introduce window position memory, I'll try to find a better scheme.

What I want to see next is the introduction of at least some save/resume functionality.

[Miznia]

I'm going to re-post something I posted in Alt Civ's, because I put it there despite Mark asking numerous times to put it here. So, I hope it's remotely useful.

I'm also having the problem of the game quitting after you select your civ. Here's what I wrote:

I didn't do the installation quite as your webpage says to. This probably limits the helpfulness of my experience... But, after putzing around with putting the JAR in different places, I got the most success from putting it in \jdk1.2\bin, where I would then run "java -jar clashd6.jar." I get the start-up menu, then scenario selection, then player selection, and then it halts, with the console window saying a certain field didn't exist. It was from/about "javax.swing.JDesktopPane," regarding a field... "OUTLINE_something_something" I think. Clash did create two text files, "economy" and "tech," I believe, which convinces me that it got to the point of doing *something*...

There's a method list, I mean a stack trace, but I don't remember what was up. Sorry I can't be more help at the moment; I'm at a lab computer, with no internet from my home computer.


(end quote)

I hope that is of some use. I am using Win98, 2nd ed I believe.

Miznia

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Axi, good to 'see' you!

Glad you found the playability improved, we did implement several of your requesed features, and fixed Lots of bugs.

Gary has already implemented screen layout saves. It will be in a minor feature release just to tidy up a few ends fairly soon.

Full game saves will probably be a few demos down the line.

Hi Miznia:

Well without java 3 you ain't gonna get very far. Thanks for trying it, but to save yourself grief, don't try it further till you get 1.3 one way or the other. If you get SDK 1.3 it should work, or you could just download the JRE as in step 1 of the downloads.

And thanks for putting the reply here!

[axi]

Last Christmas I gave you my heart...

... this year I'll give you something special...

...my comments on demo6!

General comments and old bugs

1. You have renamed demo 5.1 to demo 6, but you forgot to change that in the game window title. Remember to check next time, before publishing the next demo.

2. Bug 59, which I had reported, does not appear in demo6.

3. The movement by tick, mentioned in bug 63 is now apparent on my machine, although the game still advances rather quickly for my taste.

4. The "detailed message" after a battle, mentioned in bug 91, (this is the new version right?) seems counterintuitive to me too. Destroyed units should state to who they belonged and which they were. Keep the cost in that info, it is nice to see what a waste of money war is...

5. I confirm bug 116 - happens on my machine too.

6. Referring to bug 119, I seem to have killed one such ghost unit.

7. Bug 124 is always happening to me too. It's good to have a warning about when to expect a new unit, but this of course is not the solution.

8. Bug 128 confirmed too. I lost a LC but the window said it was only wounded.

Graphical glitches

1. The road graphics do not coincide at the edges of tiles (on the diagonal direction), which results into roads that are not continuous. The roads should also be of brighter color and/or thicker, in order to be more visible.

2. The movement path of the units is drawn on a layer below the units and the power circles, resulting into it being hard to see sometimes. It should be always drawn on top.

3. A unit that is on the top row of squares of the map gets cut-off by the edge of the window. Perhaps you should leave some black margin above the map area.

4. For users that do not use the same colors as the windows default appearance, the area where you can toggle between traditional and market economy bears the color of the window, while the surrounding area bears the color of the windows default appearance. (I am using a blue-gray tone which makes the thing rather ugly).

5. The infraclasses names in the econ orders window which are too long, are partially hidden. Please rearrange the width of the columns in that window.

6. The TF box around a single bowmen unit is too narrow.

Game bugs

1. The Romans took Carthage, so the city is no more Carthaginian, it is Roman. However the citizens are still Carthaginian. Is this a bug, or it is referring to the Carthaginian Ethnic Group?

2. The next button on the events window does not show the events of the turn next to the current, it just vanishes the events window. Then the "show events" button does not function until after the "hide events" button is used.

3. Pathfinding doesn't seem to take advantage of roads.

4. Sometimes, when a TF is on the target square of it's previous path, the red dot is still there and the details window says that the unit "has orders", so they have to be cancelled before a new path is ordered. Perhaps the unit did not have enough movement points and it still "owes" some to complete it's path. If this is the problem, fix by crediting the "owed" points to the next move.

5. Not actually a bug, but, isn't it more sensible that the numbers on a unit path start from 1 instead of 0?

Petty feature requests

1. Please rewrite the manual! Right now the manual is in a mess! It doesn't have to have the fancy look that Chris Wilkinson gave. Just have it so that it is complete and even a fool can understand what's happening.

2. The TF box does not need to have a gray background. In demo 4 it had the flat ground for background. Please bring that back and make it so that the background copies the tile which is currently selected.

3. Isn't there a way to rearrange the TFs that are in the unit box? Units can be arranged at will inside TFs by assigning them one at a time, but when the TF is disbanded, they get scrambled again.

--------------------------------------------

Merry Xmas all!

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Axi, Merry Christmas to you too

Thanks for all the detail bug info and suggestions. I will transfer them over to the lists when I next update them. I went ahead and fixed graphical glitch 5.

It will be a bit before many of these things are fixed. That is because I think its much more important to get tech and government in there than it is to fix blemishes in GUI elements that probably will change radically before the final Clash 1.0 anyway. So we will probably fix the really easy ones and the important ones (like pathfinding not using roads at least sometimes)

The Romans took Carthage, so the city is no more Carthaginian, it is Roman. However the citizens are still Carthaginian. Is this a bug, or it is referring to the Carthaginian Ethnic Group?

There are Carthaginian EG citizens in a Roman city. Do you think there might be some unrest?

On the Manual... sorry but I've been stuck writing them. It is not something I like to do, and it shows. But just saying it sucks isn't going to make it better. What are the specific criticisms that you think are Most important to be implemented for the next go-around?

General Plea:

We could Really use someone to work on the manual. Requires ability to use an HTML editor, and capacity to spell and use grammar correctly . You would get advance versions of the demos, and earn the admiration of fellow team members! Must be able to run current demo.

If anyone is interested in writing a tutorial to go in the manual, that is a stand-alone job that would help out a lot on the learning curve for new players. Must be willing to read existing manual, so you know what things to show off in the tutorial. Must be able to run current demo.

We are also currently without Artists! That's why the new roads aren't perfect, since Gary just threw together a quickie version that would basically do the job. We need people for terrain, unit, and other graphics.

These are things that would Really Help Out! Let me know in this thread, or by email, if you're interested.

[Mark_Everson]

Demo 6.1 is ready for download!

Demo 6.1 adds persistent screen positions of windows, saved in a "settings.xml" files, and better combat reports.

It is now the standard D6 download. If you already downloaded 6.0, you will need to download the zip again to get D6.1

The zip file is still Clash_d6.zip, but you'll know you have the right thing when you see the Demo 6.1 at the top of the main window.

[axi]

Happy new year!

Bug report on the new "window settings memory":

1. The feature works only with the "clashwindow", "econorders" and "econinfo" windows. I was unable to make the game remember anything about the "taskforcedata", "mainmap", "information", "mapdetails" and "eventframe" windows, since the settings.xml seems to get reset at startup.

2. Sometimes not all settings are recorded. I have seen "eventframe" excluded (although the window was altered), I have seen "econorders" and "econinfo" excluded (when the windows are hidden), I have seen all 4 of the other frames excluded (although they were altered). The only window that is always included is "clashwindow".

3. Whenever I altered the settings.xml by inputting my own figures, the game refused to start, unless only the settings of "clashwindow" were altered, in which case the settings were used.

4. This one is a quite serious bug, since it interferes with the functionality of the game. The game spontaneously resets all settings of the "econorders" and econinfo" windows to 0, after using the "Hide economics information" button fot the first time. The first time this happened to me, it took me quite a while to find them and drag them back into shape. All the other times the button is used, it resets the window settings to the previous arrangement in memory. All windows seem to inherit the same arrangement. In order to store any new arrangement, each window has to be closed. I feel this is somehow related with the introduction of the settings.xml file, but I cannot remeber if such things were happening in demo 6.0.

5. Inside the game, I noticed that all econ windows have unique settings each and this is how it should be, since I might want to view them parallelly. In settings.xml however, only one setting for all is saved. Which one is used? Should 3 different settings be saved, one for each economy level?

Other comments and requests

1. You should have fixed the glitch in the units window, since the 6.1 release was all about windows settings.

2. Until now, I hadn't noticed that orders for mines exist only in those squares (and probably provinces) where the mines belong.

3. The reorder button seems to be reordering infraclasses by groups. Perhaps the expandable list idea mentioned somewhere above should be implemented, providing us with a much nicer representation of expenses.

4. I feel that it would be ergonomically better if we could have a merged window for both civ, province and square orders, where we could give orders side by side. Also an option to clear all orders on each level would be swell.

5. Today I saw the victory screen for the first time, as Rome against the Huns!

6. The battle report is okay for now - simple and clear. We shouldn't bother ourselves more until new features are added into combat.

7. Since we can save window settings now, how about adding the general settings (fog of war, hidden map, TF selection and whatever is added next) into that file?

8. Shouldn't there be "back" buttons in all the launch screens, along with the "exit" ones?

9. Have I mentioned that the map on the next demo must be "full", like it was in demos 3 and 4? That means almost all squares have population, are controlled by some civ and belong to a province. Unsettled squares must be settlable too, by combination of military presence and an investment similar to that of roads (infraclass + selection on the map). As it is, the game looks too much like civ2!

[axi]

Wtf?

Where is Mark's post gone?

This has probably something to do with that server move...

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Axi!

I posted this about 24 hours ago, much neater, but the server switch ate it Fortunately I had a crude backup, which I'll post here now.

quote:

Originally posted by axi
Bug report on the new "window settings memory":...

Sorry! You are right, its all screwed up. It was working fine (aside from some possible minor glitches) when we put together 6.1. My guess is that an old file ended up in the release. As you say, #4 is very serious and we will have to fix that one asap. On 5, I guess they could be independently set, although that is less vital than the other issues. When the big issues are fixed we'll put out a patch.

One thing you Can try temporarily due to some insights Laurent had on this bug. Delete the settings file (or save it someplace else) When settings starts fresh make very sure not to move anything very close to the left or top of the main window. It doesn't need to be far, just leave a little border of grey. Let me know if that helps on the worst problems.

quote:

1. You should have fixed the glitch in the units window, since the 6.1 release was all about windows settings.


Which one? You made several requests and bug reports about the Units window. In general, IMO small fixes for GUI issues that aren't Really annoying for many people will generally have to wait a bit. I think 3 and 4 fall under this category.

Right now I think the vital thing is to see if the game models basically work. Until we have Tech, Government and Diplomacy (and AI) in at some small level of implementation IMO our coding resources are best spent elsewhere. So although I'm keeping track of all the requests for future discussion/implementation many won't be solved unless there is universal clamor for them. However, If you state the case clearly there is always a chance that the coder responsible will feel its important for them also, and just do it anyway .

quote:

7. Since we can save window settings now, how about adding the general settings (fog of war, hidden map, TF selection and whatever is added next) into that file?


Good suggestion! But saving a few clicks per game perhaps isn't the essential thing at this point.

quote:

9. Have I mentioned that the map on the next demo must be "full", like it was in demos 3 and 4? That means almost all squares have population, are controlled by some civ and belong to a province. Unsettled squares must be settlable too, by combination of military presence and an investment similar to that of roads (infraclass + selection on the map). As it is, the game looks too much like civ2!


Agree! Most of this (the top half) was supposed to be a D6 feature but because of code architecture changes it was impractical to implement it right then. It is first on my D7 (and beyond) big feature list, that I'll post soon.

Thanks for the detailed report!

[Mark_Everson]

Hi All:

Gary has fashioned a fix for the persistent window position feature not working. I have it, but I can't upload the fix because my FTP access to our web site at Apolyton is broken. Presumably related to the server switch. I have sent it to Axi already (though it may be an old email acct.) If anyone else wants it, email me and I will reply with the zip attached.

-Mark

[axi]

So THAT's what it is!

Downloading it right now...

[axi]

I suggest that you put the fixed version (demo 6.1.1) up in your own homepage and post a link in this thread.

If I knew more about web authoring, I would take the job, but guess what, I'm worthless at it too.

I tried the fixed demo and it works all right for me. Bug 4 mentioned in my post above still persists.

[Mark_Everson]

New version of Demo -- 6.12

Markos was kind enough to put the file up for me. The 6.12 version has a fix to Axi's bug 4 on hiding econ screens.

Download Demo 6.12

Only download this directly if you have read the download page on the web site (url at top of this thread) And Followed The Instructions! (The instructions should also have lead to the correct 6.12 download but they don't because the file got renamed from *.ZIP to *.zip so the case sensitive server thinks its two different urls)

So download this one, not the link off the page until further notice. If this one shows a deadlink, try the one on the page and verify that it contains a file called clash_d612.jar.

Sorry for the confusion, doing the best we can under the circumstances!

-Mark

[Gary Thomas]

How have we jumped from sub-release 1 to sub-release 12? What will people say when subrelease 2 comes out? Then 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and oops.

Cheers

[axi]

Demo 6.1.2 works OK

Bug #4 is history.

Perhaps numbering should be this way:
This version is v.6.1.2, as the previous one was v.6.1.1 The first number represents a new stage of the game design, the middle number represents a new feature, the last a bugfix. Remember how v.6 used to be called v.5.1

I just noticed that Mark has updated his bug list.