Re: [glob2-devel] feedback on Globulation 2 (long, with many topics)

[Kai Antweiler]

I reply only to some points.

I think we should put this mail in our wiki so that we can mark
everything when it is done.  But most of this won't be implemented
in the next years - unless we get a lot more support.

> Documentation:
> 
> The documentation (this is mainly the Wiki pages) inconsistently uses
> "globuls", "globules", "globs", and "units".  It would be better to
> use just one of these words throughout to reduce user confusion.

True.  The usability guys said something similar last year - about
the tutorial I think.
I prefer "units".  But "globs" is good too.


> I've seen mentions of the "fog of war" option on the Wiki, but I can't
> find any place to turn this option on or off.  Help?
> 
> I have seen a mention of a "discovery" option.  What is this?

Do you mean our todo page?
http://www.globulation2.org/wiki/Todo

Well, to answer your question  for of war is always on.
And I don't know of any discovery option.


> Quitting the map editor with unsaved changes should prompt for saving
> them.

That sounds very important to me.


> Overall, it
> seems that it could be much better for human players to be based on an
> AI with human intervention at key points.

Yes!  I think I proposed this a couple of times.
This is my absolute favorite glob2 wish.
Finally someone who agrees with me.


> (simultaneously with all other displays).  This could be done by
> adding another column at the right for the graphs.

I would like different movable windows as in freeciv, that you can
place wherever you like.


> It would be nice if there were also graphs for the percentage of
> globules at each skill level.

Maybe we could allow the user to decide what statistics he wants to
see in that little space.


> It would be nice to have animations of globules inside buildings
> eating, studying, being trained, etc.

Yes, but someone has to do them.  And artists are much rarer than
programmers.


> When a globule's destination changes (e.g., because something has been
> forbidden or used up), the old path continues to be shown on the
> screen.

The shown pathes are just a hack.  We don't know the pathes when a glob
starts working.  We just know how the glob can get closer to his aim
in this turn.  I think we have to live with that, partly because of
cpu resources, but also because of changing environment and traffic.


> Building walls and supplying defense towers doesn't seem to use up
> stone, and clearing flags don't allow specifying to clear stone.  I've
> got one that reports as Stone 2/5 and it just stays that way no matter
> how many walls I build.  If stone doesn't get used up, then why does
> each stone resource have a number like "3/5" or "4/5"?  This number is
> confusing as it seems to imply that one could clear away the stone by
> using it up.

Yes, I remember that I thought the same once.


> It would be nice to make a building which will be automatically
> upgraded as quickly as possible to top level.  Right now, if you don't
> notice a building has been completed right away, then some globule
> might start training in the building before you can mark it for
> upgrading to the next level, and then you have to wait for that
> globule to complete its training course (which is anyway a waste of
> time as it will just have to repeat the course for the next level).

We have thought about directly constructing higher level buildings.
Might be a good time to do this.


> It would be nice to be able to have buildings be automatically
> upgraded to the next level as soon as there were enough workers with
> the skills to upgrade it.

One worker is enough.


> It would be nice if starting or upgrading a building would
> automatically place a clearing area for the needed space, instead of
> forcing one to do this by hand.  Right now one can not pick a building
> site or ask for a building to be upgraded until all resources are
> cleared from the necessary area.

Yes, Leo thought about this.  This would be really nice.
But not with clearing area, because they perform poorly - or have they
improved?


> It should be possible to set the number of workers for upgrading a
> building while waiting for the globules inside to exit.  Currently,
> the control for the number of workers disappears while waiting for
> globules to exit.

Yes.


> It would be nice to be able to copy an existing building/flag with all
> of its settings.  It would be nice to be able to copy the settings
> from one building/flag to another.

I proposed something like that a while ago:  Allowing you to save
and load from a set settings for different situations and locations,
like in freeciv city management.
May the copy/paste is simpler to implement.


> There are many difficulties when using the checkerboard pattern for
> making forbidden areas for farming.  Placing the pattern correctly is
> quite delicate.  If one accidentally uses the pattern one location
> away from where one should, the pattern gets completely messed up and
> one has to make several mouse trips to the right area selecting
> different tool options to clean up the mistake.  What would be better
> would be to use solid patterns but have an option that caused turning
> the area _on_ for locations whose x and y coordinates summed to an odd
> number and _off_ otherwise.  Then one would could quickly drag the
> tool across a large area to set up the checkerboard pattern.

True.  So when we place one pattern next to another one it will not
stupidly be set, but set aligned to the former - ensured by differencing
between even and odd fields.  We should do it.


> I need an area that means "clear this if it is forest, protect this if
> it is wheat".  Otherwise I spend too much time micromanaging the
> areas.

User set area traits.  Ok.  We have enough colors.


> It would be nice to have areas that are forbidden only for harvesting
> and that if empty can be moved through.

Yes.


> BUG?:  Clearing areas appear to override forbidden areas.  Is this
> correct?

No, this would be a bug.


> It would be nice to have clearing areas/flags which made their
> resources preferred for building purposes rather than caused the
> resources to be chopped down and thrown away.

No, this sound like micromanagement.  The globs should know which
resources they want.


> When a building is set to X workers, and X is more than the number of
> resources needed to finish construction/repair/upgrading, then it
> seems that some worker effort and resources often ends up wasted.  It
> is very tedious to have to micromanage the number of workers assigned
> to a building as the building nears completion to keep this from
> happening.  It seems like it ought to be possible to auto-reduce the
> number of workers assigned to a construction site so that the number
> of workers is limited by the amount of resources still needed for the
> construction.

I think our goal is to not having to tell a building how many workers
it should use for construction, but to give it a priority value so that
it can negotiate this with the other buildings.


> Explorers summoned to distant exploration flags tend to not have
> enough smarts to know when to go back for food, and thus frequently
> die when this is done.

We should solve this.


> Workers seem to know where to find resources that are in unexplored
> areas that are not yet visible.  It seems inconsistent that workers
> can see things that the player can't.

Yes, but it is necessary to keep things simple and reduce micromangement
and allow maps to be less strict about the start positions.


> BUG:  If the disk is full, glob2 will happily save a game as an empty
> file on the disk without warning the user at all that the saving
> failed.

One note:  I think there is no stable defragmentation for any unix
           filesystem.  You must always leave enough space free or
           your filesystem gets heavily fragmented.


> glob2 (version 0.8.22) uses 1.2 gigabytes of memory just to edit a 512
> by 512 map!

Is this with cached memory, or only what is really used.
Try to use the "free" command to estimate how much is really used.

-- 
Kai Antweiler