Speeding up battles

[Sand]

Sly Frog, I agree. I've got a big list of "stuff I'd like to see", and I'm a little hesitant to post it now , but I'm not expecting any of it to show up any time soon. Rather, I'm providing feedback to the developers of such a fine game for them to use as they see fit.

Originally posted by Sly Frog:
See, this is so much more reasonable. I agree, and again, all told, this is one of the best games to come out. All I am saying is this: I think a lot of people think the lack of combat speed or viewing options is a pretty big detriment. I think they should fix it.

On this I 100% agree. And have from the beginning that if it can, it should be fixed. If it can't, then is another story.

I occassionally see people write that, and immediately get shouted down with the "It's not a problem and anyway don't expect them to change it because they are working in a basement and the game is brilliant and we cannot say anything bad or it may disappear into a poof of vapor" speech.

I'm not screaming that it must be done tomorrow. I'm not saying the game sucks. I am saying that every complaint does not need to be shouted down as though it were a fundamental attack on the game, and that at the game's price, I think the complete reliance on the "two guys working in a basement" argument is a little stale. I'm grateful for their efforts, and they seem like decent guys. That does not mean that there aren't some elements that could be improved that, in my opinion, would add a lot of functionality to the game, that probably should have been in there. I do not like to have people posting legitimate problems with the game shouted down. The developers should know if people think something is an issue. Not harassed and hounded with it day and night, but reminded from time to time.

I agree that nudging reminders should be given, and they are for the most part. You see the same threads popping up every so often so it would be hard to miss. Most of the time they usually go into a "Yeah, I agree this ..."

I don't believe that the 'excuse' of 2 guys in their basement with a dog and a fish programming is an excuse, as much as a limitation. I think that while a little zealous people are trying to tell people what they themselves never knew and were frustrated with the game. I agree they could be a little more reasonable though

A reasoned response like yours is a lot more palatable than what I have been seeing (not from the developers, they seem pretty decent too, although I wish they would give more of a commitment or answer to whether they will make the changes).

I think this falls into the classic developer/customer logic. Developers don't want you to know what they are working on, in part for the surprise factor, in part because constant updates take away from their time programming, and Lastly because it spawns so much debate, flames, and other things.

While I feel this forum is mostly free of that, it's probably just another headache of "Why don't you do this, why don't you do that", "How come you are working on x, when y is so much more important" that the developers want to avoid.

[ March 03, 2004, 18:57: Message edited by: Zen ]

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Arryn:

quote:

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Originally posted by RadiantFleet:
I just had pretty much the perfect battle with Ermor. Archangel+defending angel unit+90 temple guards+ark killed 2249 units + 34 leaders with no casualties.

Cool!

I'd be happy with a slider bar that would let me jump around in the battle (like an mpeg).

Me too. It's annoying to replay a battle over and over to see everything that happened. Many people gripe about the replays (due to arrows) taking too long. I'd like an option to be able to slow them down. But, as you suggest, the ideal solution would be to treat the whole thing as a movie, which lets you move forward and back as needed. But I don't think the movie idea would work with the ability to zoom in and out and change the camera angle up and down.

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Well, how much more space would the turn files take (they're already rather large) if, instead of just the battle's initial placement, they included the situation at the start of each turn of each battle? that should let the battle replay "jump" to any single turn of the battle with no additional calculations, which would help a lot with the battle replays (right now, if you want to watch something in a battle and miss it, you have to restart the replay from the beginning!)...

Battles, especially large battles, tend to Last what, 10-20 turns? If the result is to make the turn files 10 times larger, I guess that's not feasible (but I don't know how much of the file is battle placement... I just had a look at my "UlmWorld" game files - World map, about turn 90), and the .trn files are about 360KB, while the .2h files are about 160KB.

Still, there might be another solution, like doing the "battle effect" computations at the start of the replay, and storing the exact state of the battle at the start of each round. Obviously, the complete movement of arrows is just graphical display, and does not need to be stored - it can be recomputed on the fly. It might add a few seconds of precomputation for each battle, but then the battle could be replayed at leisure.

And, adding an option to turn off missile/spell volley would be nice. I like the Spirit Helmet, but since each and every one of them fires in its own time slot, it just makes battles unbearably sllooooooow...


I'm not a (real) programmer, but I really believe an at least partial fix to the battle replay thing should be doable with reasonable effort. I mean, the battle results have already been computed, with no display, and they're being re-computed, with display. There shouldn't be that much of a difference...

[Arryn]

Phil,

I suggested a *separate* file, not one of the 3 current ones. And it should be an option that could be disabled (for those that have small hard drives). Personally, space isn't an issue. Hard disks today are huge, and compared to most games I have, Dom 2 is tiny, and so are the Dom 2 saves. Even 80-100 saved Dom turns don't eat up much space. Not compared to saves for games like CoD, KOTOR, DXIW, etc.

[Pocus]

Arryn, dont forget people with a modem (not me). Perhaps having a turn file of one meg would bother them.
But the position being stored at very start of a round seems to be a good one.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Pocus:
Arryn, dont forget people with a modem (not me).

I'm not forgetting at all.

I have already said, twice, that I suggest SEPARATE movie files, that are not a part of the MP turn system. I don't know how much clearer I can say it.

[Endoperez]

What do you mean by separate? Done from existing files by the game or by manually using that program Gandalf has found? Or a script/ macro/ whatever that uses Gandalf's program automatically with every battle?

Just interested.