Author Topic: Things I want to see - or would like  (Read 5528 times)

Offline blastpop

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Things I want to see - or would like
« on: August 11, 2013, 12:59:47 pm »
Finally starting to get around to playing this and a couple of suggestions and one potential problem.

Either I am getting older or the color choices for the maps - The unit flag that shows what side a unit belongs is hard to see especially for the Blue pieces- It is the Blue-Green combination they are hard to see quickly and makes it more difficult for me at least to figure the over all situation and them make the right decision. Can you add color bases  as an option for a player to choose so its absolutely instantly clear to which  side a unit belongs?

In my first real game I instantly had 999 Deer and I think Clay for at least one of my factions. Not sure why. Seems like a bug, though I freely admit I haven't read any of the boards here or the docs.

I like the game a lot so far. A lot of experimentation going on. Which leads me to another point- which I may have missed- at the battle sites- can you list the reasons why the result occurred- i.e. some bonus, die roll, or anything else that contributed to the final result?

Lastly and not that important in the grand scheme of things- You have battle noises- can you add marching or other movement sounds as a unit moves?
« Last Edit: August 11, 2013, 01:03:12 pm by blastpop »

Offline x4000

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #1 on: August 11, 2013, 05:49:19 pm »
Cheers!

- If you'd like to change the colors of the flags and so forth, you're welcome to do so in the RuntimeData/Images/TileModifiers/ folder.  There are a lot of types of colorblindness, and I was really careful to pick something that would work for most people.  That said, it's hard to get something to work for literally everyone, so fortunately it's super easy for you to change yourself to something you like.  Just an HSV shift in Photoshop, Gimp, or similar.

- In terms of having 999 venison, that's not a bug, it's an infinite resource.  The other two were ale and water flasks.  That number never goes up or down, as it's simply a "do I have access to this or not" sort of resource, not one that is stored.

- In terms of the battle sites having extra details on why a result occurred, that would be super difficult and isn't really in the scope of what I can do anytime soon, if really at all; there are so many circumstantial bonuses that are proximity-based or other reasons, and the way those are calculated is not conductive to showing that in a battle log.  It shows you the stats on units prior to the battle, and I'm afraid that's what you'll have to rely on.

- The unit movement noise is certainly possible, but I think that's at risk of getting pretty annoying unless we had a really good sound effect for that.  We don't have such a sound in any of our sound libraries, and we're not too expert at making our own custom sounds for things like that.  Pablo is mainly a composer, though he's done custom sounds before for sure.

I hope the first two help, at least!
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Offline blastpop

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #2 on: August 11, 2013, 11:09:08 pm »
When the screen is zoomed in, units that shoot at long range may not show the shot destination as the shot goes off the screen. Is there a way to have the screen follow the shot to the target?


Offline x4000

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2013, 07:11:58 am »
That was making folks dizzy and nobody liked it, so we switched the functionality months ago. It hasn't been brought up since until now. :)
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Offline nas1m

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #4 on: August 12, 2013, 08:20:43 am »
That was making folks dizzy and nobody liked it, so we switched the functionality months ago. It hasn't been brought up since until now. :)
Actually I would not mind this being configurable as well.
I am playing on a fairly small screen and currently the options I have are either to:
- Zoom out fairly far to be able to follow what is happening in terms of projectiles - and loose much of the pretty looks the game has to offer
- Zoom in to enjoy the looks but being puzzled often on what exactly is going on

This gets especially an issue when there are enough archery units present to make scanning battle sites after the turn has finished undesirable.
So, in case this is fairly trivial for you to make into a switch - I would likely use it at least at times.
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Offline x4000

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #5 on: August 12, 2013, 10:31:35 am »
A switch in the settings menu, I take it?  I can add it, as I think the code might still sort of be in there somewhere.
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Offline nas1m

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #6 on: August 12, 2013, 11:26:35 am »
A switch in the settings menu, I take it?  I can add it, as I think the code might still sort of be in there somewhere.
Exactly :).
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Offline YoukaiCountry

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #7 on: August 12, 2013, 12:34:21 pm »
- In terms of having 999 venison, that's not a bug, it's an infinite resource.  The other two were ale and water flasks.  That number never goes up or down, as it's simply a "do I have access to this or not" sort of resource, not one that is stored.

Hmm, I'll admit the 999 thing did throw me for a loop the first time I saw it until I realized what was going on. Would it be easy to draw an infinity symbol in that case? That would definitely be more clear.

Offline x4000

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #8 on: August 12, 2013, 02:27:36 pm »
Unforunately that's not in our charset..
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Offline blastpop

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #9 on: August 14, 2013, 10:44:32 pm »
Being new I unlocked the trading post. Cool. How about a tally of the currency on hand and maybe the income per turn?

Offline blastpop

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #10 on: August 14, 2013, 11:14:09 pm »
My second completed game I just lost- now a record of 1 & 1.  I lost due in large measure of the human arrogance? Not sure about the name though. The units move rather randomly and tend to do little on their sabbatical... After I lost, I thought about laying down a Labyrinth to give me the points by random destruction I needed to move into the Age of Monsters, oh well. Too late.

To the point- While I love the Woes and the problems they create, they need to be balanced enough not to lead to defeat for no other reason than bad luck at the wrong time. Until I came up with the possible solution to the above Woe, I felt it was too much of a game changer. Are there woes out there that have done in a scenario prematurely?  Just curious. Seems like bad luck for my second, non tutorial game.

Offline Misery

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #11 on: August 15, 2013, 02:12:06 am »
My second completed game I just lost- now a record of 1 & 1.  I lost due in large measure of the human arrogance? Not sure about the name though. The units move rather randomly and tend to do little on their sabbatical... After I lost, I thought about laying down a Labyrinth to give me the points by random destruction I needed to move into the Age of Monsters, oh well. Too late.

To the point- While I love the Woes and the problems they create, they need to be balanced enough not to lead to defeat for no other reason than bad luck at the wrong time. Until I came up with the possible solution to the above Woe, I felt it was too much of a game changer. Are there woes out there that have done in a scenario prematurely?  Just curious. Seems like bad luck for my second, non tutorial game.

To an extent, many of the difficulties in dealing with woes can be better dealt with simply via practice, experimentation, and learning more about the game.  I dont remember the exact name of the woe you're talking about, the one that afflicts everything with the "vanity" effect, causing the random movement and lack of interest in anything, but I've run into it multiple times, and there's always been a way around it, even if that way is sometimes quirky and funky.    It's actually somewhat tame compared to certain bigger woes, and the units that become vain can still be killed for points.  The real key is to always pay attention to the thing that tells you which woe is coming next and what exactly it will do;  this is pretty much the key to defeating them.  For example a simple way to potentially outdo the vanity one is simply to majorly ramp up military unit production a bit, and even get larger numbers of myth units out there when the effect is finished hitting everything;  this makes it so that there's plenty of active units roaming around killing the vain ones.  Myth units and archers are best for this because they wont have to worry so much about dying due to counter damage (or in the archer's case, getting too close so that a strong vain melee unit randomly walks into them). Dropping lots of siege units around after that effect happens is a good idea as well;  smash up some cities fast for extra points, as you can always undo some of that damage after you hit the score gate.    You could also use something like Heimdall's horn or the Japanese Shinigami token to flatten everyone, or various other tokens and effects that can reduce the overall damage the woe does or generate some extra points.  Or perhaps use something like the Greek Hebe token to simply cancel it.  You could even take a BIG risk and use something like Yggdrasil to dramatically up the unit count and force lots of deaths to happen.

So far, playing mostly on Expert, I've yet to run into a woe that cant be beaten somehow with the tools at hand and careful planning.  The strategies that are possible in the game though can be a bit obtuse at times and it may not always be at all obvious as to just how you can accomplish something.  Keep going though and you'll find it gets easier.



Oh, also, about the currency thing, it's shown over at the right with all of the other resources.  And you can hover over it to see how much you are getting per turn.  And Bazaars are super important if you want lots of it.

Offline blastpop

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #12 on: August 15, 2013, 08:57:45 am »
Thats good to hear, Misery.

Offline blastpop

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #13 on: August 18, 2013, 01:34:46 pm »
What about having woes have no advanced announcement of which one is appearing next? Could be an interesting option that could be added to make the game more difficult or to fit a persons play style.

Offline x4000

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Re: Things I want to see - or would like
« Reply #14 on: August 19, 2013, 07:28:34 am »
What about having woes have no advanced announcement of which one is appearing next? Could be an interesting option that could be added to make the game more difficult or to fit a persons play style.

I think it would be very hard to really play that way, since you can't plan ahead.  The woes specifically work the way they do so that you can plan.  That said I can understand the desire for variety, but I don't want to start placing lots of options in the settings menu.

 At some point, perhaps this would make an interesting soul ability token or something: you place the token and you get lots of points from it for a few turns, but upcoming woes become permanently invisible.  Then you can keep playing this token thereafter for points.  Or something like that.
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