What to do with Xconq

[James R. Dunson]

At 07:41 AM 2/5/00 -0800, Stan Shebs wrote:
>"James R. Dunson" wrote:
>> As for what I can do, I'm not a particularly good coder, especially
>> when it comes down to nitty-gritty hardware stuff.
>> I'm reasonably good at game design, and play balancing/testing (I
>> do a lot of playtesting for pen-and-paper RPGs like GURPS); I
>> have some background in HCI (Human-Computer Interaction)
>> and multimedia interface design.
>
>Hmmm, didn't we just talk about how all those games in the library
>are unfinished? :-) Would you like to pick one or two to complete?
>If you need features in the code, let me know and I can add them.

  I am considering adopting "Voyages of Discovery" (voyages.g) and 
"Magellan" (magellan.g), if no one else has been working on them.  
I've enjoyed several similar-concept commercial games, and the 
age of discovery scenario for CivII was one of my favorites.  
It's been a while since I did anything serious with Xconq, so 
it may be a bit before I can really know what can be done with 
the existing stuff, and what will need more work.  

  Some initial comments (based on what I have at the moment, which 
is 7_2_95 precompiled for Windows, running on NT4.0sp6a):

* When you select File/Preferences, the first time, a window comes 
up with various settings.  When you OK it, it disappears.  When 
you later again select File/Preferences, the window comes up *behind* 
the main map window; if you don't happen to notice the extra 
item in the task bar, nothing appears to have happened, which can 
be confusing.  Windows called up via a menu selection, hotkey, etc. 
should pop to the front.  

* There probably needs to be a better way to display wind, which 
when eventually done right will be important for this game.  

* Units may eventually need the ability to build units adjacent to 
them, to handle cases of incompatible terrain types.  Currently 
this seems to be a problem with these games.  There are hacks to 
get around this (e.g., port cities), probably.  

** James **
-- 
James R. Dunson (jdunson@vt.edu)
Network Administrator, Center for Wireless Telecommunications
436 Whittemore Hall, Virginia Tech     http://www.cwt.vt.edu/