Re: your CVS and testing culture?

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald at phy dot cmich dot edu>]

Andreas,

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Andreas Bringedal wrote:

> didn't play it more than a few times.  Serious rewamping of the game
> interface are needed as are some standard game parameters(way to many cities
> which creates monster games with too many units that has to be moved to the
> front).

Personally, I have many hopes for the new SDL interface, which I 
hope to contribute to once the 7.6 release cycle is underway. Some 
other things can be done to the Tcl/Tk interface, such a unit 
creation dialog window, and an occupant display window, as you 
suggest below.

> screen with focus on getting a better overview and easier control over one's
> position it would be a far far better game.

>From what I've seen and heard, the Mac interface is superior in 
this regard.

> cities.  Units produced should only be placed inside the city but there
> should also be an option to set a gather point for the units a city
> produce(ie for instance near the front or another city).

This feature already exists.

> There should also be a warning if you attempt to fly beyond your fuel range
> that you could turn on or off in preferences.  Ie a "Do you want to
> continue?" warning when flying beyond fuel range.

In the Tcl/Tk interface, the SupplyLow indicator gets set, and 
automatic movement is interrupted when it reaches this point.

> There were a lot of other
> things I though about that would imo make the game better but the developers
> seemed very busy so I didn't say anything before now.

Please do not hesitate to give _constructive_ feedback. We may not 
be able to address everything at once, but we are certainly 
willing to discuss ideas. You may find that we share many of those 
same ideas, but just have not had time to work on them yet. ;-)

> However I found the Morghulsoft breath comment quite amusing as you do have
> a rare and underappreciated combination of being obnoxious and condecending
> ;-)

"Underappreciated"? Surely you meant "unappreciated".

> Now I remembered my most important improvement idea.  Cities should be able
> to transfer their production points to other cities.  This would simulate
> naval construction yards, factory areas or soldier training schools/camps.

This can be simulated in a game module. I considered this approach 
in Bellum Aeternum, and briefly tried that when I was developing 
it. I may yet go back to that, but not before the 7.5 release.

> which makes it extremely much leaner.  I think the easiest would be to have
> a central pool of all production points and then allow the player to choose
> a city and decide how much resources it want to extract from the pool per
> turn(either in percentage or plain numeric values). As many cities as you

Again, this is largely possible with Xconq. One would need to make 
use of side treasuries (global supply pools).

> lot of tedious management chores that you didn't like. National standard
> build profile would be fun! Let's get this for Xconq!

Your feature request has been filed for future reference.

  Thanks for the ideas,
    Eric