BETA 54C BETA 54C: DANIEL VERSUS SCROLLBAR CODE

Discussion in 'Clockwork Empires General' started by Nicholas, Sep 26, 2016.

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  1. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    Mainly bugfixes; a key one here is the fix for modules suddenly stopping working, which I know has been plagueing everybody forever. Also, Daniel is basically in scrollbar hell now.

    construction assignments will always be prioritized over other work assignments
    scrollbar track clicks are now more useful (sorry track clickers, we never do it, didn't realize what a sorry state that was in)
    changed more incidences of the term "work crew" to overseer
    reduced thought icon size so at high populations they're not just basically everywhere.
    improved nametag code, incorporated alert icons into nametags
    made interactive objects like rocks and trees have tooltips that are anchored and show up instantly rather than being on the cursor and having a delay. Some new players weren't seeing them at all, so this should improve their visibility.
    all instances of "work crew" have been changed to "overseer" to make difference between LC/MC chars clearer
    updated/improved costs of all gun lockers (can now build "Improvised Muskets" in Carpentry Workshop, can build "Ceramic Tripistols" in Ceramics Workshop)
    you will now be alerted if you build a building with no door
    naturalist now requires musket locker to hunt
    added additional safety checks to Rogue Stahlmarkian start
    hunger emote now more expressive
    building quality display improved
    "Rally" command now works (from Barracks ui)
    "Explore" command now works (from Naturalist ui)
    Naturalist's Office can now do targeted "Survey" and "Hunt" commands
    FIXED: increased range of Naturalist survey for minerals job so they wouldn't get stuck in the middle of the map doing nothing
    FIXED: a number of buildings that displayed the wrong cost in the buildings menu have been fixed
    FIXED: long-standing issue with wrapped text
    FIXED: janky scrollbar movement while the game is unpaused
    FIXED: wacky QoL tooltip offset
    FIXED: workplace limit display not being reset properly on save/load
    FIXED: scientists will now only use equipment inside their own laboratory
    FIXED: added check so traders won't leave and never come back, forever
    FIXED: Pub did not stock booze until ordered to
    FIXED: added check for scripterror when bandit group self-deletes
    FIXED: modules would suddenly stop working until demolished and rebuilt
    FIXED: crash in stamp area designation mode when an interactive object in the area is deleted (such as, say, setting fire to a mushroom)
    FIXED: misc other crashes
    FIXED: discrepancy of carpentry icon in command button vs. module category
    FIXED: Larch farms would grow orange cubes
     
  2. Mikel

    Mikel Waiting On Paperwork From The Ministry. Forever.

    If my computer is still acting up when I get home I may have a long wait before I get to taste this fruit.
     
    Exile likes this.
  3. Mad_Ludvig

    Mad_Ludvig Member

    Oh cool, this fixed a lot of the stuff I was having issues with (mainly scrollbars and that pesky Public House restocking thing).
     
  4. Unforked

    Unforked Member

    Yes, the smooth scrollbars have improved my QOL by 50 points and I'm no longer in a state of despair.

    And no more accidentally trapping colonists in doorless buildings? At least we can still intentionally do it.
     
    dbaumgart likes this.
  5. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    Heh, now it seems the big thing isn't just getting your hands on guns, but actually supply your people with enough ammo (at least when things get Too Real)
     
  6. It seems Flatten Terrain has been moved to the very bottom of the priority list for job selection. This really didn't cause any issues once I realized it was going on, I'm only mentioning it in case it wasn't intentional.
     
  7. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    It should have the same priority as any other stamping job or assignment. What makes you say otherwise? I'll check...
     
  8. When I started my colony, I assigned enough jobs for each present overseer (beginning with a Flatten Terrain order where I intended my stockpile and initial farm to go) plus 3 additional smallish ones so I wouldn't have to watch as closely to make sure everyone was always doing something until the stockpile was up and hauling could begin. No one picked up the Flatten Terrain order at all at the start, and when the first task they were doing was complete, they again would ignore it in favor of one of the additional 3 (one forage, one chop wood and one clear terrain). Only when it was the only available job did anyone touch it.

    Edit to add: If this would make a difference in their decision making, I always have the game paused while I'm tagging the initial jobs.

    Edit 2: Successfully reproduced it happening the exact same way on 2 new maps. I'll try and keep a closer eye on this next colony and see if it only happens at the start that way, or each and every time there are more jobs available than overseers.
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2016
  9. Mad_Ludvig

    Mad_Ludvig Member

    Crash when I clicked to remove Ceramics workbench.

    Unfortunately, I loaded the autosave and tried to recreate it but didn't have any luck. Hopefully there's something here you can use.

    *Edit: The blue "floor" of the workshop did disappear when I tried to re-place the module though.
     

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    Last edited: Sep 26, 2016
  10. OddProphet

    OddProphet Member

    Rad, the public house fix! Time to dive in.
     
  11. Bluebird

    Bluebird Member

    Could we get a way of setting tasks as high priority in the outstanding tasks list perhaps? Would allow us to boost a particularly important work order that might be holding up other plans disproportionately (like flattening terrain or emergency fungus run!).
     
    mrclint, jotwebe and Samut like this.
  12. jotwebe

    jotwebe Gained the People's Ovation and Fame Forever

    I really like this version; either you upped the event frequency a bit or it's just luck, but my 54C colony is having lots of interesting times, bandits and reps and Novorusian bombing runs (it's how they show their love, they're a bit rough and tumble).

    Some small niggles that came up over the last few games:

    Naturalists: should use the same order for the mode it's in and the stamps, as it is hunt and surveying have different places. It's also rather annoying to see something I want to stamp, have to pause, find the building, scroll back over half the map with the stamp activated... would be nice if they showed up with the other stamps (woodcutting, mining, etc) if the colony has a naturalist up and running (with the inactive function greyed out?). Also do animals have tooltips? If they do, they don't work for me.

    Workshop UI: I find myself scrolling down to the "unassign" button more than any one other position, yet it needs the most scrolling. Put it at the top please?

    And a mini bug report: the workshop menu for making bureaucrat's desks thinks they need normal planks and red-backgrounds it when you're out of planks (but correctly uses lacquered planks to make them).
     
  13. Mad_Ludvig

    Mad_Ludvig Member

    Odd, I had the opposite experience. Other than the occasional group of bandits, I didn't have any other events happen.
     
  14. Unforked

    Unforked Member

    Same, still not many events, but I'm keeping despair low. Not sure that's been adjusted yet though.
     
  15. jotwebe

    jotwebe Gained the People's Ovation and Fame Forever

    Guess I just got lucky then. And I suppose being in a desert slowed my usual expansion down to where bandits were more of a problem...
     
  16. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    • Order of commands in Naturalist: fair point, logged as OC-5648. Showing the commands alongside the stamps is interesting, logged review of that idea as OC-5649.
    • Animals don't have fully functional tooltips (as part of the process of redoing all the tooltips in the game), this is known and logged as OC-5139.
    • Unassign position in list: we've debated the positioning of this internally. Reviewing the position logged as OC-5647.
    • Bureaucrat desk cost: logged as OC-5646.
    Some event "costs" have been adjusted by quite a lot. ... I wouldn't mind at all if you sent over your console.txt so I could have a look, would be nice to see that everything is working as intended.

    There's a huge trap here in the "water finds a crack" sense - ref to this classic game design post: http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=369 ; If we give players the ability to optimize assignment priorities, then CE could become a game about sticking your nose in a spreadsheet of all the assignments and tweaking them slightly to optimize efficiency. If we give a tool to prioritize only one thing at a time, then the same problem exists but we're funneling player action through exactly one even more tedious button. Perhaps the solution is to have a brilliant UI that's beautiful to use and allows setting policy vs. making individual decisions? Perhaps - but such a scheme comes at an enormous development cost.

    So I think you're describing a legitimate problem: wanting flatten terrain to happen. But the solution of adding an explicit control scheme would introduce huge number of unintended consequences to the entire game and/or would be extremely expensive in terms of development cost to make it work well (vs. at all). ... which is why I get all Dire Portent when the subject comes up.

    All that said, we have some more ideas about how to solve this problem that we shall investigate.
     
  17. Mikel

    Mikel Waiting On Paperwork From The Ministry. Forever.

    In the past, particularly during singing grass events, I have paused other tasks to get the ones I wanted taken care of.
     
  18. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    (Yeah, the terrible secret is that we actually DO have some controls for assignments. It's just that no one really uses them for some reason?)
     
  19. Mikel

    Mikel Waiting On Paperwork From The Ministry. Forever.

    I suspect the major complaint against those controls is that they require the user to actively unblock previously paused operations. People want to push tasks to the top of the list and be done with them.
     
  20. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    I actually used to be constantly deleting and then remaking tasks before pause was added.

    I actually still just delete them anyway.
     
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