I've finally got some free time on my hands to work on Glob2 some more (funny that this always happens during exam periods), and I've fixed all remaining bugs with replays. I can feel that the release date of beta 5 is really coming closer and closer, but before we release it I'd like to bring up one more question:
Which default maps will we ship with beta 5?
There's a few maps that simply aren't worth being distributed by default. The best example is probably "Tower Defense for 2". I may simply not have figured out how it works, but I'm fairly sure that this map is simply broken. There are no scripts, default objectives, and player 3 (the enemy, I assume) has no units. I don't know how this could work.
We should also keep in mind our target public: newcomers who haven't discovered YOG's map section yet. They are most likely not familiar with the game mechanics yet, and would probably get frustrated at the map "stone bases" if they don't realize that nothing on the entire map is fertile, or at "a new try" when they can't stop overgrowth or at "newislands green blue" if they can't find place to put buildings (I can't either, actually).
There are also quite a few new maps made by globulation players, especially Zenfur (http://globulation2.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=313). Some of these maps are little diamonds, and have been treated with much love and attention for detail. I haven't played all of them yet, but looking at them in the editor it's immediately obvious that they're a lot more fun than most maps we currently ship by default. It would be ignorant not to include some of these excellent maps by default, as it takes almost no effort to do so.
Therefore I suggest the following changes:
REMOVE: - "newislands green blue": It's unbalanced, with few resource, no place to build, and generally frustrating. - "Tower Defense for 2": It's broken. Period.
- "A new try" (maybe): It's the same as "newislands green blue", only slightly better. - "The sand square" (maybe): the original goal seemed to be to get to the opponent's sand square, though that script seems broken as well.
- "Scarse supply": Supply is actually not that scarce, and overall it's just a boring random generated map. - "Stone bases": while I like the idea, there is no fertility on this map. Maybe a well around each base would solve this.
ADD: + "Balanced"/"Balanced for 2": Probably the maps that are played most often online. Why not add them? (maybe rename "Balanced" to "Balanced for 4") + "Oazis": it's an 11-player map! Like "playground" but better! It's a little laggy though...
+ "Island of the Renfur": It's different from the other maps, and it looks quite fun. + "Sand river": This is a nice map where you can ally with AI and do 2v2 or 3v3 (or 1v5). + "Mazury": looks like a nice replacement for all the bad 2 player maps I'd like to see removed.
+ "Archipelago": A unique 5 player map, and we don't have any 5 player maps yet.
RENAME: "One on One" -> "Dejan's 1v1": or something else. Just not "one on one", that's no name.
There are a few more maps that I'd like to see included, but these can currently only be played online, either because even the Warrush AI isn't fast enough (in "Blitz", for example) or the AI builds a building he's not allowed to (in "Piranha", for example). But fixing this would delay beta 5, so maybe that will be for another release.