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Re: Various bugs


Hi Brian,

On Mon, 2004-05-10 at 02:01, Brian Dunn wrote:
> All in Bellum:

Not surprising. That was my first attempt at making an Xconq game, and I
zealously and naively tried to implement too much without verifying that
each piece and interaction worked as I thought it should. Poor software
development strategy by any other name.

> 1) The help screens say that, for example, a destroyer can hit a sea transport 100% of the time.  In reality the messages say you miss, but you get the red splat, and the transport retreats.  I havn't sunk one yet.

The destroyer would hit the transport 100% of the time, if the
transport's 100% retreat chance wasn't calculated first. To make matters
worse, the unit can gain ACP for the retreat so that it can keep
retreating indefinitely. This is a bug that I have addressed in Bellum
II, which will hopefully see inclusion in Xconq in next few months.

I will probably withdraw Bellum from the official list of Xconq games,
once Bellum II is checked in. In the interim, I may actually try some
quick fixes to the issues you have reported, now that I know someone
actually plays it.

> 2) Sometimes a ship can leave a city or town with a full load of fuel, get 2-3 hexes out to sea, then next turn it suddenly has only half of its fuel at the start of the next turn.

Yes. This is an unfortunate side effect of the way supply lines work
sometimes. I think, I allow ships to refuel (or defuel, as the case may
be) 2 or 3 cells away from a city. This too has been fixed in Bellum II.

> 3) Towns and cities ask for what to do.  I tell them to build something.  Sometimes, tt says it will build the thing, but the shaded partially built thing does NOT appear.  Then the city or town waits for what to do.  I hit the space bar, then the town or city no longer tries to build anything that turn.  

This is a known issue with Xconq, _one that we still need to address.
What happens is that the builder is low on supplies (or ACP), attempts
creation, fails, but still has the failed task assigned to it. Part of
the solution perhaps involves making the UI more intelligent wrt whether
or not the unit can create due to materials and ACP limitations.

> Also related is that it sometimes assumes a 3: prefix to tell it to make three of the item, even though I have been using 1: instead.

This sounds like a Xconq bug that I have not heard of before. I will
look into it.

> 4) The AI seems to be building lots of transports but no capital ships.  I have a fleet of unsinkable enemy transports arriving to attack me, with only a few fighters for assistance.

Beautiful. :-)  I haven't played Bellum since the old movement code went
back in. Hopefully the transports actually have some units on them....

Seriously, I agree that the AI needs to do a better job at balancing its
production. Its not a high priority for me at this point, because of
movement bugs that I need to address, plus the possible creation bug
with the create/build numeric prefix that you just reported. I also need
to finish Bellum II and show the world how improved it is, rather than
just talk about it....

Thanks for the bug reports.

  Regards,
    Eric


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