@jonpfl Gimp is one freeware program.

The one I use is Paint dot net. If you are familiar with windows programs it is FAR easier to learn and use.

You can also just hijack unit images from other games that have more distinctive unit images. The difference between the three units in TWW is quite dramatic...

2_1535908303178_americanDestroyer.png 1_1535908303178_americanCruiser.png 0_1535908303178_americanBattleship.png

@cernel But I'm really undecided here, since when you are dealing with a map made by someone else, it is really handy to use edit mode (in remove units mode) to be sure about what is in that territory, now that units may be hidden.

I'm thinking units supposed to be never drawn should be allowed not having an image assigned (of course they should like in the case of all territories having a combat infrastructure), but, if editable, the engine should not give any errors for missing images when editing, if the unit is not to be drawn.

@alkexr As @Cernel mentions, there is a map property that when 2 territories have multiple canals between them whether units have to control all or just one to pass. Here is the property:

<property name="Control All Canals Between Territories To Pass" value="true" editable="false"> <boolean/> </property>

The default is 'false' meaning you only need to control one not all but you can look at the newly released Red Sun Over China to see how I set this to 'true' and have essentially 'serial' canals for trains.

Great conceptual idea!

@redrum I actually think it is not needed or logic (assuming all players of a same alliance always winning or losing together) to support talking to single players of a same alliance, but only to alliances, as long as at least one player (meaning the country/power) of such alliance is played by a human player, except that:

if the game has only 2 alliances, then you can talk only to the alliance you belong to; when you talk with any alliance, the message is always also sent to any human players part of an alliance you have a player assigned to yourself (your teammates always know everything you say).

The above would mean that if only two or less human players are part of the game (either playing a regular 1v1 or with some AI), you have only the option of the general chat (nothing of this feature).

For example, you can have any World War II games, but v3 and Global:

<alliance player="Germans" alliance="Axis"/> <alliance player="Japanese" alliance="Axis"/> <alliance player="British" alliance="Allies"/> <alliance player="Russians" alliance="Allies"/> <alliance player="Americans" alliance="Allies"/>

In this case, beside the general chat, your only option would be talking with either "Axis" or "Allies", but only the alliance you are currently using a player of, while at least another player of the same is assigned to another human player. This is because I believe in a 1v1 you never reasonably want to talk to the enemy alliance only; so there is no reason to have that option (there is no gameplay related reason to do that).
Of course, if you are playing a 1v1 with two human players, each taking all the players of a same alliance, your only option is the general chat (there is no reason talking to your alliance, since it is only you, and there is no reason talking to the enemy alliance only, because it is a 1v1, as said, thus you are substantially already doing that when using the general chat).

As a pure FFA case, you can have Feudal Japan:

<alliance player="GameSetup" alliance="GameSetup"/> <alliance player="Otomo" alliance="Otomo"/> <alliance player="MinorClans" alliance="MinorClans"/> <alliance player="Miyoshi" alliance="Miyoshi"/> <alliance player="Ryuzoji" alliance="Ryuzoji"/> <alliance player="Shimazu" alliance="Shimazu"/> <alliance player="Chosokabe" alliance="Chosokabe"/> <alliance player="Mori" alliance="Mori"/> <alliance player="Urakami" alliance="Urakami"/> <alliance player="Yamana" alliance="Yamana"/> <alliance player="Hatakeyama" alliance="Hatakeyama"/> <alliance player="Asai" alliance="Asai"/> <alliance player="Asakura" alliance="Asakura"/> <alliance player="Oda" alliance="Oda"/> <alliance player="Takeda" alliance="Takeda"/> <alliance player="Uesugi" alliance="Uesugi"/> <alliance player="Hojo" alliance="Hojo"/> <alliance player="Satomi" alliance="Satomi"/> <alliance player="Date" alliance="Date"/>

In this case, beside the general chat, you could talk with any alliance played by a human player that it is not you (this condition is not actually necessary, as you are never meant to take players across different alliances, but just in case), that is the same as talking to that player, as FFA (if correctly coded) assign 1 player per each alliance (and usually you define both the player and its alliance with the same name).
However, once only 2 human players remain in game (normally, the others have surrendered/raged and have been turned to AI), your only option is the general chat.

As a case of a game with the traditional multi-players alliances, but more than two alliances, you can have Domination:

<alliance player="British" alliance="-Am.P.J.Br"/> <alliance player="Americans" alliance="-Am.P.J.Br"/> <alliance player="Japanese" alliance="-Am.P.J.Br"/> <alliance player="Portugese" alliance="-Am.P.J.Br"/> <alliance player="French" alliance="-Sp.It.R.Fr"/> <alliance player="Russians" alliance="-Sp.It.R.Fr"/> <alliance player="Spanish" alliance="-Sp.It.R.Fr"/> <alliance player="Italians" alliance="-Sp.It.R.Fr"/> <alliance player="Germans" alliance="D.A.O.G.C"/> <alliance player="Austrians" alliance="D.A.O.G.C"/> <alliance player="Ottomans" alliance="D.A.O.G.C"/> <alliance player="Dutch" alliance="D.A.O.G.C"/> <alliance player="Chinese" alliance="D.A.O.G.C"/>

In this case, beside the general chat, your only option would be talking with "-Am.P.J.Br", "-Sp.It.R.Fr" and "D.A.O.G.C", except that if there is no other human player than yourself controlling any players of an alliance you are playing, you don't have the option to talk to that alliance (cause you would be talking with yourself).
So, for example, since "Domination" is usually played with 3 human players, each taking all the players of a same alliance, if I'm currently playing "-Am.P.J.Br", then I will have the three options of the general chat, the "-Sp.It.R.Fr" and the "D.A.O.G.C". If "D.A.O.G.C" is eliminated from the game, and the games turns into a 1v1, because we reload, assigning all "D.A.O.G.C" players to AI (maybe "Does Nothing"), I will have no options at all, since I cannot talk with "D.A.O.G.C", because it has no human players assigned, nor to "-Am.P.J.Br", because it is all me, nor to "-Sp.It.R.Fr", because, since the game is now only between my alliance and that alliance, there are no reasons for secretive talking.

If we would be playing "Domination" with 6 human players, each couple sharing an alliance, then we would have the 4 options of the general chat and all the 3 alliances available (your own alliance would be for secretively talking with your teammate, and the other alliance options would be for secret diplomacy). As said, in this case your teammate should be able to see whatever you say (so, when you select someone else alliance, you are practically selecting both that alliance and your own).

p.s.: In the remote past Wisconsin (or maybe someone else; I'm not sure) actually tried to make a private chat for FFA games, but Sean Bridges (not sure either) refused it; I asked Veqryn about it and he told me that the code was not sound because of some technical reasons, so it was refused, and Veqryn himself wasn't interested in the idea.

p.p.s.: Since automated hosts are moderated (and a mod is judge, jury and executioner), that is to be taken into due consideration, enabling anyone of mediocre intelligence to understand what was going on and make a judgment upon it, or limiting this feature to private hosts only.

wow thanks for the posts. I will look into TWW

@cernel I would suggest to add an infinite=true flag.

eg:

<option name="attemptsPerTurn" infinite="true"/>

I think most, or at least some, would have preferred the EV column being fixed as to display what engine version that host is using, rather than removing it.

I think the status column should aim at telling anyone that they are welcomed to join your host to play in it, without you having to chat in lobby to tell people so or put a redundant comment in notes inviting people to join your host, that the status column should already do.

So:

I think the current "Waiting For Players" is good enough.

I think "Waiting" only is not a good pick, since that doesn't communicate that you want other users to join your host to play the game you are proposing; it's too generic and it may mean you are waiting for technical reasons, like loading times.

"Awaiting Players" shortens it a bit, keeping the same info as "Waiting For Players" (number 1), but is sounds a touch formal, so it makes me think that you are specifically waiting for someone, you had an appointment with, rather than just being open to anyone willingly to join, that should be the actual message.

"Open" may be good, as it should be much better than "Waiting" (number 2) in communicating that the game can be joined and it sounds rather immediate to me, as you can think to a Host as being a Room, basically, but it has the drawback of being scarcely consistent with the status itself, as games in progress are not closed, but still open for observers to join them.

"Open For Players" is a little shorter than "Waiting For Players" (number 1) and solves the drawbacks of just "Open" (number 4), also maybe being the most effective in giving the message we want, but it sounds a touch awkward.

"Need Players" may be the best if we want to focus on noob friendliness, but it has the drawback of being scarcely consistent with the status itself, as the status would be just that of a host whose game is not yet started, that doesn't necessarily mean you actually need players, except for bots, since they automatically start when all players are taken. The issue could be solved by having different status for not started games depending if all in-game players (the countries) have been taken (so, you can have three statuses: "Need Players", "Ready", "In Progress").

@cernel Ah, ok, couldn't have guessed that from your initial question that I read as rules question.
Searching for sort of analogies in the rules we have the "Sea Units starting in hostile seazones" rules, that allow to move from a hostile seazone, simply to escape combat or to initiate combat elsewhere.

So concerning land units I would tend to let the player decide to let them either stay and engage the enemy troops or to move to an adjacent territory during combat move phase.

In case the territory has become hostile due to the player's proximate action, I would allow two steps. (Analogy: Load transport in hostile seazone exception, when the seazone has just become hostile due to proximate DOW by the transport's owning power).
In case the territory has become hostile at some time between the power's turns, I would only allow one step in analogy to the 1914 rules.

Just some ideas of course.

@cernel Note that Ultimate World uses a size of 50% for units, which is too small for good legibility. 75% for units and 125% for that map would probably be good.

@lafayette I confirm it gives very little value. When it was made, I opposed veqryn, saying that it was not good to make an additional column for no good reasons, but I was the only one not liking it, even tho now I'll admit it is not as totally useless as I thought. I cannot give the link to the discussion where veqryn presented this feature to the community, since it was in the old WarClub.

A minor thing to take into consideration is that, without that, I could feign my host to be a bot, by calling it with a name starting with "Bot" and putting "automated_host XX" in comments.

@cernel
I understand what you are saying. I would be nice if the selection was read from the player selection menu.

I know that using the userActions is a 'hack', then again a lot of hacks are used. And in five years, if the AI is changed, another 'hack' may need to be developed. @Frostion asked how I accomplished the task. It just gave him some quick feed-back to his question.

But then again as you have stated, there are times that I think that the AI should be using the userActions for some things as in IW to give aid to another ally. So I agree and to some point disagree.

Cheers...

@alkexr much better way then I've been doing it. This is all i can find on "gameProperty" in POS2. gameProperty values: can be set equal to the exact string of any boolean game property option, including custom made up ones.

Maybe it could be updated with your example for uneducated people like myself

@crazyg
Here is the properties file:
0_1531246712359_unit_icons.properties
And here are the icons (courtesy of @Hepps )
0_1531246998068_unitIcons.zip

I have made some slight changes to my xml (testing ideas) and you may need to edit the properties file (I combined Pikemen and Musketmen into a single condition) there may be other name differences but mostly it should work. (I changed the file name in there to House_of_Habsburg_0.7 which is what I think you are calling it)

Hope this gets you started!!

Cheers...

@rogercooper Yeah, that is one of the other conditions to retire it. Essentially creating a 'semi-random' version of FastAI (not just a really bad AI that's actually trying).

@cernel This option sounds potential the most straight forward:

1- Having a default pointless (always passable) canal and closing/opening it, with triggers.

TBH a more rigorous inspection of the code would be needed to really weigh each option. It looks like given the options we could do something if we committed to it.

@cernel said in I Get it, I got it, I know its good. The experience I got you wish you could.:

Also, let's not forget that how it works is not how it should work, by intended rules (casualties are supposed to be agreed amongst all defending players or chosen by the attacker).

We aren't creating a Larry Harris game anymore. The intended rules are whatever the mapmaker wants.

@beelee NO Features for U! 🙂

@hepps said in Add Unit Count and Damage Display Outline:

@redrum It all looks so good I can hardly bear it.

As far as a default it hard to say... I normally use between 16 - 24. But now with the outline making the numbers more distinctive I might be inclined to reduce them down.

I've it at 24 most of the time, as I said, and I actually think that after the addition of the outline it is even more opportune to have it at 24 or so. Since the outline has to be 1 pixel, having the size smaller than 24 makes the outline on the number look dirty (to me), in some cases, because of the much too visible pixellated effect.
So, just wanted to say that I like this change, but it surely doesn't push me to use smaller numbers, since the outline evidences the pixelated effect, you inevitably have when getting too small (but 24 looks great).
However, as far as distinctiveness goes, this is an improvement anyways.

@wirkey It would be a burocratic nightmare to use edit for this system.