Re: Net Game Showstopper (was Re: Net game on Saturday?)

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald at phy dot cmich dot edu>]

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005, Robert Goulding wrote:

> I'd like to join in, but I had a couple of problems with the latest 
> build on Windows, all seeming to do with multiple units in a single 
> cell.  I was playing time.g, and found that when I loaded a third 
> phalanx onto a trireme, the third phalanx occupied the whole of the 
> cell, effacing the trireme.  

Right. My fault for not communicating the unit display changes 
better.

The idea is that if you are a fairly close map magnification, such 
as the default one (cells are 44x44 and units are generally 
32x32), then about the smallest an unit image can be shrunken is 
to 16x16 before it becomes hard to identify. In a transport's 
32x32 grouping box, 2 16x16 images may fit in the lower portion. 
If three units are placed in the transport, then the occupant 
sizes must be rescaled to 8x8, making them hard to see. So, as a 
counter to this, I made it so that one such occupant is the 
current unit, it fills up the transport's grouping box so that it 
stands out more. Similarly, occs did not show up at all in the 
isometric view. To counter this, I likewise made it so that the 
current unit, if an occ, would fill the same region that its 
transport would. I had thought this was an aid to game play to 
make it so.

But, like I said, my fault for not more directly communicating 
such change and its rationale.

Another change that I made was that if a transport is in a cell 
with other units, then the transport will still have a grouping 
box drawn around it, even if its occs cannot be displayed at the 
shrunken view. This is done so that there is still some indication 
that it has occs. Perhaps you noticed this as well.

> When I woke up all the contained phalanxes in a trireme with a W 
> command, one of the phalanxes on board never got the focus; I had to 
> switch to survey mode to manually give it orders.

This sounds odd. If you can attach a saved game demonstrating the 
bug, it would be quite helpful.

> Finally, I had a multitude of phalanxes on the shore, 4 to a cell, all 
> asleep.  When I switched to survey mode and selected one in order to 
> wake it up, the program crashed.

That is not good. If you have a saved game that allows easy 
reproduction of the bug, it would helpful.

  Thanks,
   Eric