Re: Developer release of knightmare.g

[Lincoln Peters <sampln@sbcglobal.net>]

On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 14:48 -0800, Elijah Meeks wrote:
> I opened up knightmare.g and received an error
> reporting that 'The unit type form has no property
> named size-min' which seems to relate to the various
> cities.  Was that meant to be a size-max?

No.  "size-min" is the minimum size that an advanced unit is allowed to
be (e.g. a metropolis of size 1 would be a bit too weird).

It didn't give me any errors.  When did you last update your copy of
Xconq?

> 
> Category 1 - Relatively Serious
> 1.  The AI builds ships in land-locked cities.

Sounds like a bug in the "don't build ships without a shore" code,
although I can't really be sure without studying that part of the AI.

> 
> Category 2 - Relatively Frivolous
> 1.  There's a trident.gif wagon that looks better than
> the b/w one.

So there is.  I'll change it.

> 2.  The image for the Roc is Godzilla.  My Monster
> Manual says its a giant bird, not a radioactive,
> fire-breathing lizard.

It is supposed to be a giant bird (and is implemented as such), but
there aren't very many images of giant birds in the image library.

At least for now, I'm more inclined to use unique images for each unit
if possible, even if it doesn't look right, rather than assign the same
image to two or more unrelated units.


(Of course, if you want to find a monster that looks like nothing in the
image library, try looking up the otyugh in your Monster Manual!)

> 3.  There's a thing called a 'thorp'.  What the heck
> is a 'thorp'??

It's a populated areas that is even smaller than a hamlet, usually with
a population less than 100.

I suppose I should document the game more thoroughly before I upgraded
its status to anything higher than "developer release".

> 
> As you can tell, not too many serious issues yet. 
> I'll keep hammering it.  Is there any particular
> aspect that you'd want testing on?

Nothing particular, but I wouldn't be surprised if one or two game
balance issues were to come up (e.g. maybe high-level units can be built
too rapidly, or not rapidly enough).

And, of course, I'm hoping that you and a few other game developers can
have some fun while helping me to test this thing more rapidly...

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln@sbcglobal.net>

The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
with a large fortune.