Re: Second tutorial map

[The Fox <thefox@xxxxxxxx>]

> > With the new Research event complete (I noticed that it's in the 
CVS 
> > just today) I completed the second map. Please play it and post 
any 
> > suggestions. The messages are not done yet so my intentions can be 
> > not-that-clear. Comments welcome.
> 
> The map is currently broken if you lose one of the tanks in the 
first
> battle. I haven't actually checked, but what happens if you lose the
> infantry and don't have the resources to build a new one?

The map has several loose ends but I wanted to get it in a playable 
state ASAP and haven't treated these situations yet.


> Also, I'm not sure how a newbie would feel with the flood of tanks
> coming out of the enemy shop. Maybe you should reduce the rate a bit
> and only have a new unit each other turn or stop after five or so.
> Would be nice to have a newbie actually play it and tell us what he
> thinks, though...

I'm not too sure about the amount and rate of enemy tanks. Maybe 
changing the production from 20 crystals/turn to 15 c/t would give the 
player more breathing room. I will ask some friends of mine to test 
the map (but don't know when :-( ).


> Overall, the mission feels pretty short to me, but I don't have any
> great ideas how to change that without adding a completely different
> topic.

When there will be all the texts, it will take some time to read, 
understand and practice it. I hope :-).


> Then, you seem to using quite a lot of unnecessary dependencies.
> Several of the events use identical triggers, and additionally 
depend
> on each other. The same trigger means that if event A is triggered,
> event B is triggered as well. The dependency always duplicates the
> result of the original trigger. Now, this doesn't really do any 
harm,
> but checking depndencies is always quite a bit more expensive than
> only checking one trigger, so if there's no good reason for
> dependencies it's usually better to take them out. If you want to
> keep them for the sake of documentation that's okay, but you should
> probably comment them out in the final version. (For a small 
scenario
> like this, the effect of dependency or no dependency is probably not
> noticeable at all, but we don't want to give bad examples, right? ;
-))

Hmm, I could have this done the wrong way. But I did it the best way I 
could. Because there are three events triggered by timer (id 6, 7, 8) 
that are to be executed 3 turns after returning the tanks home, I 
would need three settimer events to enable them all (I think, prove me 
wrong). So I made them triggered by timer (anytime) and depending on 
the single (real) timer triggered event. If you can do this better 
way, feel free to change the map (if you have the time), I will surely 
learn something from it.


> On another note, I'm about to commit yet another incompatible change
> that'll cause crashes with previous CVS levels and saved games. You
> know the drill.

Yeah. Just remake the levels.


 
> I'd also like to start preparations for 0.4.7 soon. Would be nice
> if we could get the second tutorial map in.

That would be great. It shouldn't take that much time to complete this 
mission as the first one did (though I didn't touch it for almost a 
week waiting for a patch that was already done...).

I hereby assign the task of writing the mission texts ASAP to me. 
(When I write it like this I'm less prone to the "yeah, tomorrow" 
attitude. But I'm somewhat short on time. Some urgent work showed up, 
we will see how things turn out.)

Andrej
____________________________________
>>> POZOR ZMENA - KONCERT PRESUNUTY NA 28.2.2005
RAMMSTEIN, 28.02.2005 o 20,00, Bratislava Incheba, 
Info: 0904 666 363, http://www.xl.sk