Bug Fix Discussions

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by LFS
I find the concept of building roads outside of your control to be pretty wacky. I can't really think of any real civilsations that just plonked down proper roads beyond their control - where does the labor come from.

It will Eventually be done some other way, like with an engineer unit, but for now I think we should allow it. Otherwise we have the micromanagement of needing to connect two far-flung settlements with a string of colonies just so you can have a road for defensive troop movement!

my personal 2p worth is I see no problem with crsh road building courses in you land (the romans did it) but NO road buildng outside your control.

thousands of km in a month? It is as a play balance point. Otherwise you can flash-build a road in a turn with a big economy and move very far. But I'm flexible since it'd require work to implement.

Regarding the road cost bug, I have played around with the fix and have not seen a problem (but their may be one), I agree with the other post, their shouldbe more work (maybe more methods) to seperate the 2 concepts of cost - but that is fair a bit more work.

I did some playing around too, and on at least cursory inspection it seems to work out ok. Good stuff! I don't think any more is necessary if the fix turns out to work fine. If not, Im' sure we'll find out about it soon!

Thanks everyone for all the fixes!

[LFS]

both maybe. building certainly - you may lay road, then lose control of the area, so the building logic would have to prevent it.

I suppose you could plan road beyond your control, expecting to take control by the time it is built. so maybe the UI allows the order, but only the building logic prevents building beyond your control, would it then remove the order or leave and retry ?

[LFS]

It will Eventually be done some other way, like with an engineer unit

wayhay - figured out the quote bit.

Engineer units building roads seems like far more micromangement than a few mouse clicks. Also early roads were not built by engineers on the whole, but forced labor(or similar) or army units.

thousands of km in a month? It is as a play balance point. Otherwise you can flash-build a road in a turn with a big economy and move very far.

If you have a big economy and nothing else to spend money on then i see no problem. the play balance could be dealt with other ways - e.g class of road (early packed dirt, stone , asphalt etc) or upkeep - roads do require upkeep (to darn much judging by the amount of road works I see on the way to work) - or limiting how many per turn based on some econ factor ( representing how much labor is available for public projects, after all the 'tax' income represents income that may not be in form condusive to large scale labor projects - artisans generate cash tax, farmers pay in food for army, etc - having piles of money doesn't build a road in itself)

Thinking about it that last point was something I liked about CalltoPower - there was a certain amount of 'labor' that accumlated and that you parcelled out on labor type projects, no building engineers, moving them half way across the empire then taking a few centuries to link 2 cities !!), as long as you had sufficient 'labor' you just placed the roads/forts etc where you wanted.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by LFS
Engineer units building roads seems like far more micromangement than a few mouse clicks. Also early roads were not built by engineers on the whole, but forced labor(or similar) or army units.

Populating deserts and high mountains just to have a road? But anyway we could go back and forth for quite some time with issues like these. . .

If you have a big economy and nothing else to spend money on then i see no problem.

The military time scale, which I think should be used for road building, for a turn is one month. I see big problems At least the best we've been able to do in terms of realism vs playability is to have a separate time scale for military and movement issues, and a different one for the other parts of the game. So one turn of game corresponds to one month of military stuff and a variable amount of other activity. There is a thread on it back a ways. Of course we're open to a better way to handle it, but its the best we've come up with so far. Its discussed in a thread called Time Scales and other places that are linked to in that thread.

after all the 'tax' income represents income that may not be in form condusive to large scale labor projects - artisans generate cash tax, farmers pay in food for army, etc - having piles of money doesn't build a road in itself)

Actually money doesn't build road points, its done with the relevant sectors of the economy. But at least for now we allow that labor and goods to be magically teleported to build the road anywhere we want just to keep things manageable in game terms.

Thinking about it that last point was something I liked about CalltoPower - there was a certain amount of 'labor' that accumlated and that you parcelled out on labor type projects, no building engineers, moving them half way across the empire then taking a few centuries to link 2 cities !!), as long as you had sufficient 'labor' you just placed the roads/forts etc where you wanted.

That's the way it works in Clash. We are just talking about how its done Outside the ordinary bounds of the civ. For now we are just using the kludge that the inside-civ way can be used outside. Anyway, sounds like we need to discuss this someplace in a dedicated fashion or just put it aside for now. I personally don't think its a critical issue for for now. But if you want, Lee, we can find where the old road discussions are (so we can look over what's already been said, and don't repeat it) and start it up again.

My problem is its too easy for me to get sucked into design issues when I should be coding.

[LFS]

I'm not going to try and alter something that has gone through a couple of years of discussion.

Are there any other bugs/urgent features that you want looking at, or shall I just get on with the road building delay?

[Mark_Everson]

I've got Atilla saved from the econ bugs it was getting shut down by. I'll send the code around along with everyone else's fixes after I test it a bit.

Hey Lee:

Originally posted by LFS
I'm not going to try and alter something that has gone through a couple of years of discussion.

This stuff hasn't all been discussed to death, just here and there over a period of time. So its by no means chiseled in stone. I'm sure we can find a good way to handle it, and it most likely won't be exactly either of our current positions. But its not urgent, so I'm happy leaving it for somewhere around Demo 10.

Are there any other bugs/urgent features that you want looking at, or shall I just get on with the road building delay?

Given you don't believe in the importance of the delay, unless we get strong support on it, I'd say its time to move on. If you'd thought it was a good idea too, then it probably would have been worth trying out. One thing that would be good is prohibiting road-building orders in the black. If that is easy to do I'd go ahead with that, and then move on to something else.

I'd say give a look to the bug and features lists and see what catches your interest. I have put priorities on them, so it'd be best to look at the higher-priority things. And let me know when you get sick of bug fixes and small features, and want to move onto something more concentrated.

Thanks for all the hard work!

[Mark_Everson]

This comes from the guestbook thread. I'm copying it here because its a serious issue, and I wanted to see if anyone has ideas for what might be going on.

Originally posted by Jeremy Buloch
It wont work corectly with my Windows 2000 pro. comp. I will test it on Linux soon when I get the chance. It wont let me right click on the units and wont let me move or do anything else. I have read the help in the game and the graphics look cool. Overall its good. I only wish I could play it.
-J.B.-

I am especially concerned because I have a new Win XP comp coming in about a week from now, and as I understand it the two OS's are quite similar.

Thanks,

Mark

[LFS]

I've just fixed a vouple of things that were annoying me with the change province dialog.

1) in move mode right clicking to remove a road segment does not also bring up the province capital menu.

2) The change province popup now disappears properly if you click outside it (no more popups piling up behind the Window !

if either of these are undesirable (no1 maybe ? ) let me know

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Lee:

I can certainly get behind #2, but Why would you want the change prov menu to come up in road mode? At least that is what I think you're saying you want. If that is what you want, why is it a good thing to have?

Road mode is for building or not building roads, and I don't think it should have menus for any other purpose. In the far future we might have a more versatile GUI, but for now I advocate sticking to the dedicated modes being just that, and all the miscellaneous menus should be obtainable only in the normal default mode.

[vovan]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
I am especially concerned because I have a new Win XP comp coming in about a week from now, and as I understand it the two OS's are quite similar.

Mark,
I think it must be something specific about that person's computer. I am running the game on my WinXP laptop, and it works without any of the stuff described in the report. Though my version is XP Home, so I don't know if making it XP Pro would make any difference, but I wouldn't think it should matter. Like I said, it must be something about his computer. Maybe an old version of the JVM?

[LFS]

1) in move mode right clicking to remove a road segment does not also bring up the province capital menu.

Sorry i meant move mode - the menu was coming up when right clicking to remove roads - i fixed it to STOP that ( clicking several times to remove multiple roads and getting the province popup appearing was seriously annoying.

[LFS]

I Don't believe the same typo again.

Sorry i meant move mode - the menu was coming up when right clicking to remove MOVES- i fixed it to stop that ( clicking several times to remove multiple roads and getting the province popup appearing was seriously annoying.

[vovan]

Another bug that appears in demo 7.2.1, which I think wasn't there in demo 7.1, but I am not sure about demo 7.2.0, is when you select the Carthago delenda est scenario, it says image not found twice, and then whatever you do with the window, it prints out a bunch of debug information in the command prompt. Maybe find which images are missing, and put them there? Or at least turn off the debug switch to make the rest of the game a little faster?

[Mark_Everson]

BTW, I've updated the bugs and features lists. I added a few new bugs at the bottom too. Please let me know if I forgot to X out something! You guys have made really good progress on the bugs!

Originally posted by LFS
Sorry i meant move mode - the menu was coming up when right clicking to remove roads - i fixed it to STOP that ( clicking several times to remove multiple roads and getting the province popup appearing was seriously annoying.

Great, Lee, we're in agreement. It was something about the tense in what you posted that made me think the other way. That popup was indeed annoying!


Vovan, thanks for the suggestion. No matter how many times it happens, I still foolishly think people will FOLLOW the D/L instructions. But its possible Jeremy didn't. I've PMed him to suggest your fix.

Good to hear about no probs on win XP!

[vovan]

Ummm, LFS, you can edit your posts with the Edit button. No need to repost something three times, if you've made a simple mistake like that.