[glob2-devel] more feedback (many topics)

[Joe Wells]

Dear Globulation 2 gurus,

Here is some more feedback, categorized.

I'm happy to clarify anything that is unclear.  Just ask!

By the way, I'm in the middle of revising my earlier feedback posts to
incorporate the comments I received.  I will send the revised text
soon.

-- 
Joe

======================================================================
bugs in individual globule AI in 0.8.22

(By the way, I've added these items to the bug tracker as
<URL:http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/index.php?19592⦒)

BUG:  I have seen workers bringing wood for construction almost reach
their destination, then abruptly completely forget about being
assigned to construction.  You can see the moment when they forget
about their assignment because they lose the white circle (I keep
pressing and releasing the mouse button on the construction site so I
can watch them).  They will then do something else like harvesting
wheat (throwing away the wood they were carrying).  It is maddening.

BUG:  I have seen workers carrying wood wander around just next to a
construction site that needs wood, but do nothing and instead wander
aimlessly.

BUG:  I have seen 10 workers assigned to bring wheat to an inn.  I
watch what the assigned workers are doing and I see them wandering
around aimlessly, despite plenty of wheat nearby.  If "draw unit
paths" is on, I sometimes see a line going from a worker to some empty
cell (near but not in the wheat field) and the worker moves from cell
to cell near this target cell.  This seems to happen most in
situations of high congestion.

BUG:  I have seen workers right next to an inn that needs construction
and does not have all workers assigned yet, and next to wood that can
be used for it, and with nothing to do, and not hungry yet, and yet
just doing nothing.

BUG:  I have repeatedly seen hungry warriors within direct sight of an
inn (with an unblocked path to the inn) that has both food and places
just sit there spinning (not moving by even one cell) and starving to
death.  This happens after the warriors were summoned into battle with
a war flag.  If "draw unit paths" is on, one can periodically see a
line flash out from each warrior to some sensible destination, but the
line immediately disappears.  The warriors stay in place until they
run out of hit points due to starvation.  Note that when the warriors
initially get into this stuck state, they still have plenty of food
and are unwounded.

======================================================================
visual displays:

The statistics panel tells me there are (for example) 24 level 1 jobs
and 40 level 2 jobs.  The _only_ current jobs are bringing wheat to
inns and the hive.  Why does it say there are 24+40 jobs requiring any
extra skill?  I am extremely confused.

BUG?: The starving map shows something (although the color intensity
makes it hard to _see_ the globules that are supposedly starving), but
the damaged map doesn't show anything at all, even if there are many
wounded globules.

It is hard to find out how many globules are eligible for serving a
building or attending a flag.  Sometimes it is possible to get that
information on the statistics display, but the statistics display is
anyway confusing and hard to read.  So, therefore, I think the status
display of each item should say how many globules (workers, warriors,
explorers) qualify to work on the item, and how many other items are
competing for the same set of globules.  (This is related to the
(closed) bug report <URL:http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?8594>
"workers prefer been iddle than repair/update".)

It would be nice if the lines drawn by the "draw unit paths" feature
(which draws lines that indicate where globules are going and is
invoked by default by "t") appeared even when neither source nor
destination are on the screen.  This is needed to allow tracking a
long line across several screens to try to understand where a globule
is going (and why it is going there!).

It would be very helpful if there were a configuration option to turn
on the "draw unit paths" feature at startup time (or if the feature's
state were remembered in save files).  I generally want this feature
to be on.  I usually forget to turn it back on when I restart glob2
and then I get very annoyed when I later realize I've been playing
without it.

======================================================================
the bug tracker on Savannah:

Duplicates do not seem to be linked (at least not automatically).  It
should only be possible to mark a bug report as a duplicate if one
specifies _which_ other bug report it is a duplicate of.  And in that
case, there should be a link between the two bug reports.  This
doesn't seem to happen (at least not automatically).  This means that
the effort put into a bug report marked as a duplicate is effectively
lost, because one can not find it from the main bug report.  Is there
some way to fix this?

Whether a bg report is open or closed is orthogonal to its status.
This is confusing.  Is there some way to tie bug status to whether a
bug is open or closed?

Comments are listed in reverse chronological order.  This is illogical
and hard-to-read for bug reports.  Is there some way to get the
comments listed in forward chronological order instead?

======================================================================
miscellaneous:

Dragging with the middle mouse button in the main map area to move the
viewport is not documented.  This is a nice feature, but I only found
out about it by reading bug reports!

The log files in ~/.glob2/logs continue to grow even when glob2 is
paused.  I left glob2 running overnight paused and it filled my hard
disk.  Ugh.

It would be useful if the distance from water that wheat and wood
grows could be set on a per-map basis, with the default for randomly
generated maps depending on the map size and type.  For maps with thin
land-masses, often wood/wheat overgrows the entire land-mass.  This
causes big problems for AIs and forces humans to waste lots of their
time clearing wood/wheat.