for discussion: remove the area's

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Ogorter
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for discussion: remove the area's

Post by Ogorter »

This might be a hairy subject for some, but personally I dislike the area's (forbidden, guard and clear). Mostly due to the interface, the ugliness and the difficult way to control them.

We already have flags, which are pretty useful, except that they prevent warriors or workers from getting education and training.

I would suggest replacing the area's with flags, but then more suggestive flags, like hints.

Such that it would mean to globs: if you have nothing to do, then come here ...

especially for the war flag this would be helpful, this means you warriors would get training, but you can still move the flag around to have them guard different places ...
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Post by AppleBoy »

nah, the areas are quite helpful. well, the clearing when is iffy, but the do not go zone and guard ones are quite helpful.
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Giszmo
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pro-areas

Post by Giszmo »

i see areas need an improvement, but i also see how all of them are pretty handy in some cases:
  • guard: actually i often use this to attack, often to keep my warriors out of the way and barely to defend (massive attacks need warflags. guard-areas don't influence the warriors as long as they are allready at a guardarea.)
  • clearing: if a way has to stay free, i use this. three wide on a frequented road and this road never closes. removing the 2 wood that are in the way when i want to upgrade my pool stinks. that should definitively be done automatically.
  • forbidden: what i mostly do with this is keep ressources regrowing. but it is annoying to always misplace it somewhere in the fog of war to have to remove it afterwards. i would want some "make it checkerboard/behave ressource-friendly" brush i can easily draw with in a way it only gets aplied to areas ressources can grow on. also this area should not block globs from walking on if there are no ressources. (Question: are tiles where ressources should grow but can't grow due to a glob walking on it sheduled to have the ressource grown as soon as the glob disappeares? guess no.)
Greets, Giszmo
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Post by Andrew sayers »

While I agree that flags and areas are conceptually inelegant, they work quite well in practice once you get used to them. Although I'd be very interested to hear ideas for a complete rewrite, there are a lot of non-obvious constraints any new system would need to have, like the ability to support farming for example.

- Andrew
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Post by Elvish Pillager »

Clearing area: Pave roads with this. it's ONLY good for areas that are frequented and would cause difficulties in the case of overgrowing. But it's good.

Forbidden area: Good for preventing the harvest of enemy-controlled resources, for farming, and for influencing the movement of idle globs. The first two are very important and any replacement would need to fulfill them. The last is evil and exploitable by very canny player, AI or human.

Guard area: The most convenient attack order in the game. It's still totally awful. War flags need to be made to work like clearing flags. Other than that, Guard Areas are only good for warrior micromanagement and should be ditched, or at least changed so they are restricted to one glob per square of guard area. It would be kind of nice to have a guard area for which each square contained a single warrior, standing still, just guarding :)
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Post by AppleBoy »

that's something we should create, some sort of road you can create, but can also put a building on, to keep from having to always have a clearing flag/area created.

As for the guard thing, you're just wishing :P

I think in another game I might check that out a bit more, because I want to see if some of the bugs I found in previous versions still exist
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Donkyhotay
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Post by Donkyhotay »

AppleBoy wrote:that's something we should create, some sort of road you can create, but can also put a building on, to keep from having to always have a clearing flag/area created.

As for the guard thing, you're just wishing :P

I think in another game I might check that out a bit more, because I want to see if some of the bugs I found in previous versions still exist

I dont' know if anyone remembers warcraft1 but in that game you had to build roads to build up the city. If you didn't pave roads you couldn't build. It was one thing I really hated about the game but in this case it would be nice. A simple "paving" that units can walk over but prevents resources from growing at that spot. If you made it difficult (impossible?) to kill then it could potentially be used offensively to hit the enemies resources. Simply sneak in a worker and "pave" over his wheat field. Then they are either unable to grow resources in that area (if it can't be removed) and eventually if the game goes long enough they won't have much space to regrow whatever resource was there.
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upgrading buildings

Post by Einarin »

The idea of automatic clearing areas around upgrading pools, racetracks & inns (and any other buildings that I forgot) would be a huge improvement. Maybe make it so that when you tell it to upgrade it tells the units to clear any obstructing resources? You would have to rewrite the upgrade size checking, but I know it puzzled me that I sometimes couldn't upgrade my pool.

Code: Select all

if obstruction = true
if allobstruction <> building
allow upgrade
tell globs to clear area before making build site
^or something like that^
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Post by Coch »

I think the philosophy is: "if you meant your building to no get sorrounded by resources you would have placed a clear area around it". But I also see something like an automatic clearing area put when I enlarge a building quite natural in the game play, similar the automatic forbidden area used where some glob stays in the area selected for new building contruction.

For the road thing: the idea really appeals me (since I enjoy most the 'urbanistic' side of games like this) even for its strategic side, however thinking of a road as 'indescrutible' (that is even stronger than defensive walls? :roll: ) sounds strange to me.
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Post by Elvish Pillager »

Clearing area doesn't work well in this case. If the building is up against some trees, no glob will be going around that side of the building, so no one will clear it. I usually use a clearing flag.
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Post by Coch »

D'oh! that's true :( I didn't take in account the 'passiveness' of the clearing area
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Giszmo
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Post by Giszmo »

we should make clearing areas active (1 worker per ressource to be cleared) and abandon clearing flags.
Einarin
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Post by Einarin »

I think we should make the clearing area's for building upgrade/construction active, but leave the normal ones passive. Passive clearing areas allow for busy areas to be kept tidy without using up workers. If you need something cleared NOW, use a clearing flag. A passive building upgrade field won't work though, so it needs to be active in some way, perhaps just make it special, or treat it as a rectangular clearing flag.
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Post by NoSpin »

Donkyhotay wrote: I dont' know if anyone remembers warcraft1 but in that game you had to build roads to build up the city. If you didn't pave roads you couldn't build.
I never built roads in warcraft 1. Are you sure you are not mixing games?
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Donkyhotay
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warcraft1

Post by Donkyhotay »

Warcraft1 MANDATED roads, your probably thinking of warcraft2. All buildings had to be touching a road and roads themselves could only be built touching another road so you couldn't build outposts unless you built a really long road to it. Roads were built by the town hall (not the peon/peasents) too so ultimately everything connected to your town hall and once the enemy found one of your buildings they just followed the roads back to your homebase. There is a picture and synopsis of warcraft1 at this site http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/game/140
and you can see those roads I'm talking about in the picture.
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