Demo 6 Comments and Bug Reports

[colorrr]

Originally posted by axi


These numbers on the paths are there for a reason; they show you in how many turns the unit will be on each tile. This is the whole point of setting a unit's path: to give orders to the unit for many turns to come. This is an advancement over civ2 already established in the genre (It was in SMAC and CtP and I guess in Civ3 too)

That's good.
I like this feature. Should be in any game with respect for itself if you ask me.
However my question is if the unit is supposed to be drawn at the middle of the path like this :
0 - 0 - 1 - 1 - Unit - 2 - 3 - 3 etc.
(or maybe it was 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - Unit - 0 - 1 - 1 etc .. can't remember)

The unit was drawn in the correct physical position (judging from where it was last turn), but it was like old orders stayed behind.

Jorgen

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Colorrr:

Sounds like a bug to me. Unfortunately finding what causes it will be tough since I expect its not reproducible. I'll put it in the bug report. If you see a Kind of circumstance in which it tends to happen, please let me know.

Alternatively you can run the game from the command line using the -seed command line option to make the random number generator start with our pre-set seed. If you can say what every move was leading up to the bug, then it can be duplicated. Probably not very practical unless it shows up quite quickly...

[axi]

Nothing fancy to report, just some feature requests, that I had forgot to post:

The government window should open only once and each consecutive click on the government button should bring it on top.

Citizens in the details frame should be rounded to the nearest integer for obvious reasons.

Roadbuilding should have an undo option just as troop movement has. Roadbuilding could use the same code as pathfinding to show on the map the number of turns in which each road segment will be built, with priority based on the order with which the orders were given. Cancelling an existing order should alter the numbers for all consecutive orders.

There should be an option to make visible all friendy TF paths on the map. It would also be nice to have a preview of where each unit should be next turn, if nothing intervenes. This is in anticipation of future major wars.

All edit options in the government window should be removed or disabled for the demo. They belong to the Clash Editor, if and when we will have it and in the testbed only.

[Mark_Everson]

Just to make sure others know, there Is no govt stuff in D6, Axi is talking about a crude pre-d7 version we call the Clash Testbed.

Hi Axi:

Some good points on the govt gui. The govt stuff clearly isn't ready for prime time yet...

Originally posted by axi
There should be an option to make visible all friendy TF paths on the map. It would also be nice to have a preview of where each unit should be next turn, if nothing intervenes. This is in anticipation of future major wars.

I like this a lot, although how soon this is likely to be done would depend on how much effort it would take. I think it would be Really cool to step in turns through an entire offensive and check the timing.

[Gary Thomas]

The government gui has been scrapped - it wasn't written for this purpose anyway - and is being replaced by a version that is almost working.

Cheers

[Gar]

Moved this from a different thread...

My demo 6 experiences so far...
5 plays of it, one abbrreviated get some feel trying the small start (third option.) 4 Rome vs. ones. First one I stopped halfway through feeling confused and wanting to read the documentation.

Second one I goofed with stuff on the economics screen never sure where and what effect anything I was changing was doing with much "Dang, I just really want a unit to be made." I got the ROI somewhat from reading, but wasn't sure what its real effect was and when I just wanted some unit produced and the barbarians are at the gates.

Third time I tried not to goof with economics as much, but ran into alot of resource reduction messages and wasn't sure what to do about those, I got a few units to pop out and got crushed. Eventually down to one city and couldn't get any troops to be made there, and the enemy was stocking up many many units on my other two cities.

Fourth time I realized that I didn't seem to get much effect (as in numbers other than 0 to the right of unit % spend) unless my taxes were 9 or 10%. Not sure I understand what I was taxing or why some numbers would go up and others down when I changed tax rates. Eventually I got some different units to pop out and sent them off to battle and explored and conquered and won. About halfway through no more units were popping out and don't know why.

Rather than try to assert my own analysis or suggestions on top of these, I'll leave these my pretty raw experiences here.

Oh yeah, control things that I got frustrated with here and there. When exploring couldn't figure out why sometimes I could go deep into the black areas and others couldn't get anywhere but an adjacent square. I found myself clicking on map stuff alot, not sure why I wasn't selecting a unit.

All in all, pretty cool, lots more I wish to understand with what I was doing, but combat and sense of development and exploration were all present. Definitely left me saying : "More"

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Gar
Oh yeah, control things that I got frustrated with here and there. When exploring couldn't figure out why sometimes I could go deep into the black areas and others couldn't get anywhere but an adjacent square. I found myself clicking on map stuff alot, not sure why I wasn't selecting a unit.

All in all, pretty cool, lots more I wish to understand with what I was doing, but combat and sense of development and exploration were all present. Definitely left me saying : "More"

Hi Gar, thanks for the input. As you know we're working on clarifying and adding important features to the econ interface, so I won't comment further here.

On the not being able to move into the black sometimes... The issue is terrain prohibitions for units, the most obvious being that land units can't move into water squares! So if in the black there is a water square, well, you get the idea. Any time a path doesn't exist, you can't move there! In D6 there are also some prohibitions on horse and chariot movement. These are being scaled back for D7. Glad to hear some of the right things seemed to be calling .

[Mark_Everson]

If you complained about the econ in D6...

For all those who thought the econ gui in D6 was confusing, and lacked important features, we are reworking the gui for D7!

Please stop by in the thread Working out a new Economy GUI for Demo 7+ , and especially check out my proposal of today.

I'd really like to hear opinions from as wide a variety of people as possible!

Thanks,

Mark

[stickdude]

Demo 6 impressions (from someone who hasn't seen Demo 5, 4, etc). I haven't read the previous Demo 6 comments in depth, so I may be repeating things that have already been pointed out.

First, I double-click the ClashD6_12.jar file, and I see the ...

"Select the option" screen
1. No splash screen, or opening movie... That's ok. The opening screen looks pretty good, and it works.
2. I know this is picky, but "Select an option" sounds better to me than "the" option.
3. The logo is a button, which seems odd.

I click on "Select a scenario" and up comes the ...

"Select the scenario" screen
1. Should this be resizable, or a fixed size? I vote for fixed, since it's acting like a dialog box.
2. Again, the logo on the left size is a button. Should something happen when I click it (right now nothing does happen)?
3. "Carthago delenda est" is the title of the first scenario. What does that mean?
4. I can delete all the text from the scenario descriptions. Should they be read-only, or better yet, not text boxes at all (see below)?

Here's what I'd expect to see on this screen:
1. All the scenarios are listed, but in a bigger font, and without descriptions. They aren't buttons, either.
2. The logo is still on here somewhere.
3. As the user moves the cursor over the scenario name, the scenario name is highlighted somehow, or a box drawn around it, or something to indicate which scenario you're about to select; and the description is displayed in a different part of the dialog.
4. If the user moves the cursor off the scenario name, the description disappears (basic mouse-over behaviour).
5. If the user clicks on the name of a scenario, that scenario is selected.

Ok, I click "Select" next to the first scenario, and I see the ...

"Select the civilization" screen:
1. Logo = button...
2. While typing this, I forgot which scenario I chose. It would be nice to have the selected scenario and the description displayed here so I can make an informed civilization choice.
3. It would also be nice to have a short description of the differing goals of each civilization in the scenario. Again, this should be a roll-over type effect.
4. If I selected the wrong scenario, there's no way to go back and choose something different. I have to exit and restart.

I click on "Computer Only", and after a little while, up comes the ...

"Clash Demo 6.1" screen
Impressions:
1. The map itself looks very cool. It's not a cool as, say, Age Of Kings, but I can live with that.
2. I'm not sure I like having everything in different frames, like it's set up now. That could be because I'm used to having one main window partitioned into different setions, instead of different windows.
3. On the menu bar, "Options" and "Econ Options" don't have any options below them. They should be grayed out if there's nothing to select.
4. Since the toolbar simply presents the exact options as the menus do, one of them feels redundant.
5. I have to click on a square/unit for them to show up in the Units/Detail Frame windows. It would be really cool for this to happen automatically as the mouse moves over a unit/square.
6. When I click on a unit and it appears in the "Units" window, it's nearly impossible to read the text above the units. Yellow and Green on a grey background doesn't work too well.
7. Also on the "Units" window, scrollbars keep appearing when they aren't necessary.
8. It would be nice to have more information about the units in that window. Simply knowing that the horse icon on the map is really two horse icons doesn't tell me very much. What are the capabilities of the individual units, how healthy are they?
9. Ok, I just right-clicked on one of the units and saw the little pop-up box that lists what I was wondering in the previous comment. It's not intuitive, though.
10. I restarted the game and am playing as a human player, so now I can see how to create/disband Task Forces.
11. I just disbanded a group of 4 units into separate armies. The last unit is halfway out of the "Units" window, but there's no horizontal scrollbar so I can scroll over to that unit; only a vertical scrollbar, which I don't need.
12. I'm getting the hang of giving orders. Pretty cool, once you get the hang of it. I like the "nearest friend/enemy" idea.
13. If I have a number of different units in a square, and I want to form them into two different task forces, is there a way to do that, other than move half the units to a different square?
14. Can we rename the armies?
15. Can we change the "martial attitude"? Does everybody just attack for now?

I clicked on "Economics" and "Civ Econ Orders"
1. Gasp! What is this? Text boxes everywhere!!
2. I can delete/change any of the text anywhere. I don't think I'm supposed to be able to do that.
3. I've read some of the discussion about completely re-doing these screen to make them more user-friendly, so I'll just wait to see the new and improved econ screens before commenting further.

Other thoughts:
1. I don't know how far along the economic model is, but it would be nice to see some highlights in the "Information frame" at the end of each turn, like income, spending, and current cash balance, units to be produced next turn, etc.
2. When I click "Next" in the Events window that pops up, it just disappears. I don't think it's supposed to do that.
3. I'd probably just use round numbers for the army attack/defence/health stats in the "Information frame". It looks kinda odd to see that my armies health is down to 5.2000003. Or better yet, why not just display them as percentages - i.e. "Health: down to 52%"

Ok, I've played 20 turns now, and the bad guys keep capturing my cities, so I'll probably end up losing. That's ok, though, because it's just a demo.

Overall, I'm quite impressed. The game clearly has a ways to go, but I can definitely see the potential.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi stickdude! Welcome to the Clash Project!

Glad to hear your impression is generally favorable We know we've got quite a ways to go!

I think most of the things you mentioned in your post are things we do need to fix up longer term, but IMO there are better things for us to work on short term... IOW, "Gasp! What is this? He's zeroing in on even the tiniest details!!"

Just a few quick comments on your comments.

The scroller on the TF box is IIRC an known bug, and that is probably worth fixing right now since it is a functionality issue.

To add a unit to a TF just select the TF, then rt-click the unit and choose "Assign to selected TF".

6. When I click on a unit and it appears in the "Units" window, it's nearly impossible to read the text above the units. Yellow and Green on a grey background doesn't work too well.

Very odd, its blue for me, and is supposed to be for everyone!

1. I don't know how far along the economic model is, but it would be nice to see some highlights in the "Information frame" at the end of each turn, like income, spending, and current cash balance, units to be produced next turn, etc.

Good point. I'll put this on the feature request list next time I update it. I think a list of units to build might be too much, but maybe a summary would work.

Thanks for the detailed comments! If you get to read the manual it will explain what's going on in the economy among other things.

[Lemmy]

hey there,
i just downloaded demo 6, after some extracting, searching and copying, i finally got it to run (don't worry, there is nothing with the jar, my jre install is messed up) and my first impression is that it looks very good, the first demo i played was demo 4, and this looks much better, great progres
I have no idea what most of the options do yet, but that's because i haven't read the manual yet...but i got one week free, so maybe i'll get around to that.

Well, that's all i can and have to say for now....i'm gonna read the manual and play the demo some more

[Mark_Everson]

Thanks Lemmy, glad to hear you think things are heading in the right direction! Once you read the manual and try things out a little more, I'd appreciate it if you'd let us know in more detail what you like and don't like.

[Shadowlord]

Originally posted by stickdude
3. The logo is a button, which seems odd.
2. Again, the logo on the left size is a button. Should something happen when I click it (right now nothing does happen)?
4. I can delete all the text from the scenario descriptions. Should they be read-only, or better yet, not text boxes at all (see below)?

That's easy enough, the devs could use JLabels instead of JButtons and whatever they're using for the text boxes. (I'm assuming they're using Swing.)

Like so:

//data members.
JLabel background;
ImageIcon backgroundIcon;
//code to make & add the pic.
backgroundIcon = new ImageIcon("background.png");
background = new JLabel(backgroundIcon);
getContentPane().add(background);

Alternately, they can do this to JButtons:
background.setBorderPainted(false);

[Mark_Everson]

Thanks for the comments Shadowlord, and welcome to the Clash Project. Most of the interfaces are still in the development stage, and as you'll see if you downloaded the demo, are pretty rough. We'll get them done right in all the details eventually, but right now there are a bunch of more pressing issues. FE getting the econ interface to the point that people don't barf when they see it!

[Lemmy]

ok, i know i said i would be playing the demo, but i spend most of my time reading about the models
And i like what i read, especially the social model.

But i was wondering, did you make all those models before you started programming?

My week off is over now, so i don't think i'll get any time soon to actually play the demo