Re: What to do with Xconq

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

"James R. Dunson" wrote:
 
>   I am considering adopting "Voyages of Discovery" (voyages.g) and
> "Magellan" (magellan.g), if no one else has been working on them.
> I've enjoyed several similar-concept commercial games, and the
> age of discovery scenario for CivII was one of my favorites.
> It's been a while since I did anything serious with Xconq, so
> it may be a bit before I can really know what can be done with
> the existing stuff, and what will need more work.

That would be great!  Search through doc/PROJECTS, there are some
ideas in there.  I've been tinkering with the online view
painting a bit; it would be amusing to make the recorded view
slightly different from reality, so coastlines aren't always quite
where they seem to be initially.  The food and water handling
probably needs the most work though, since crossing the Pacific
is not as dicy a proposition as it should be.

>   Some initial comments (based on what I have at the moment, which
> is 7_2_95 precompiled for Windows, running on NT4.0sp6a):
> 
> * When you select File/Preferences, the first time, a window comes
> up with various settings.  When you OK it, it disappears.  When
> you later again select File/Preferences, the window comes up *behind*
> the main map window; if you don't happen to notice the extra
> item in the task bar, nothing appears to have happened, which can
> be confusing.  Windows called up via a menu selection, hotkey, etc.
> should pop to the front.

This one makes me crazy, seems to be a limitation of tcl/tk.  I suppose
if nothing else, it should be possible to make a direct Windows
call.

> * There probably needs to be a better way to display wind, which
> when eventually done right will be important for this game.

I'm open to suggestions here...

> * Units may eventually need the ability to build units adjacent to
> them, to handle cases of incompatible terrain types.  Currently
> this seems to be a problem with these games.  There are hacks to
> get around this (e.g., port cities), probably.

It's currently possible for units to build adjacent to themselves,
see building construction in ancient.g for example.  There's a bug
still, where sometimes the adjacent location will be chosen randomly,
even if the player designates a specific cell.

Stan