Brit

If your ship is in a city with a shipyard, it should be repaired and the "sentry until repair" button should be working. However, I've had a couple people report that units aren't repairing as they should. I'm doing some tests to see if I can repeat the problem.

You should be able to open the game manual pages directly in a browser (Data\GameManual). I should add that some html pages have variables in them that are changed on the fly by the application. The application does some extra things (like it will automatically include any downloaded rules into the manual's hyperlinks). That's why, if you open "/Data/GameManual/Contents.html" in a browser, it will show "<%ExtraUnitsetsListForGameManualContents%>" under the Rules category.

I've heard a couple people mention this problem. It seems to be uncommon, and I haven't seen it, but I'll be looking into it.

I'm going to tackle these memory problems in the first update. They seem to be a problem with larger maps and multiple AIs.

Got the files. I'll look into it.

Yes, you can play LAN-only multiplayer. No internet connection is needed.

Thanks. I'll definitely look into this problem.

Thanks, guys!

Fair enough. Some of the additional stuff that you aren't seeing in the demo version: - Ability to play games on random maps and custom-built maps/scenarios, on a variety of map sizes. - Ability to create and save your own maps, scenarios, and rules. - Ability to load other people's maps, scenario, and rules in the editor. - Ability to upload your work (your custom built maps, scenarios, rules) to the game-server for other players. - Ability to download other people's work (custom maps, scenarios, rules) from the game-server. I'll also be uploading some new stuff for players. The voting system should help the best work rise to the top, and the download system allows you to sort these files by their popularity. The file-comment system is temporarily shut-off because of some interface changes, but it should be up and running soon. This will allow players to comment on each other's shared files. - Get updates to user uploads. (For example, if someone makes a map, scenario, or ruleset, and you download it, then they update the file to make the game more balanced, you can automatically get the new and improved update to that file.) - Create a user-account - which gives you a reserved chat name; a username that's linked to your uploads; and tracking of your wins, losses, turns played, time played. - In the next update, the game will tell you how many people are available to play online, and allows you to tag people as friends, and tells you if they are in the chat-room. In the longer term, I see more features being added, including expansion of the game system to allow for other units, city-improvements, historical periods, rules, game-variations.

Yeah, we could've printed out a manual. The major question was whether or not a printed version was better than a hyperlinked manual. I prefer a hyperlinked manual to a printed one, and didn't quite understand how a printed version would add to the package.

Great. Glad it's working properly now.

Yeah, either the terrain goes directly inside the ruleset, or the terrain ruleset would add-to a specific ruleset (e.g. "this terrain-ruleset is linked to "Official 1900-2030"). The reason terrain-files can't be completely disconnected from rulesets is because units have terrain movement modifiers and combat modifiers. So, the infantry might move through "jungle" with a movement-modifier of 75%, but it might be impassible to vehicles. Those kinds of modifiers have to be stored somewhere. The original ruleset won't have the data, and the names of unit-types can change (not all rulesets will have an "infantry" and "vehicle" movement types; some could have "soldier", "horseback", and "chariot" movement-types). The scenarios remember what ruleset (and ruleset version) they're using. So, if you make a scenario using the "Official 1900-2030" ruleset, the scenario remembers that. And if you create your own ruleset - e.g. "My18thCenturyRules" - the scenario will remember. (In fact, if you upload your scenario to the game-servers, it will automatically upload the corresponding ruleset as well. And when people download your scenario, the servers know about the dependency, and other people will automatically download the ruleset along with the scenario.) I didn't want to put the rules directly into the scenario because it makes the files a lot bigger, and it's harder to switch rulesets. (Currently, the scenario remembers what version of the ruleset they're using. If a newer version is available, it will ask you if you want to upgrade to the most recent version of those rules.)

I actually hadn't thought of changing out the music tracks. As far as the other issues, I'll break up the question into parts. When creating your own ruleset, you can start from an existing ruleset or start from scratch. * Units The attributes of all units are changable. The attributes include things like: their name, movement rate, movement range, damage, attack/defense values, how does terrain affect movement rates/defense values, what units they can contain, and how much space the unit has. If you take a look at the Official 1900-2030 ruleset, then ask "what varies between these 100+ units?" All of those variations are modifiable. You can also define that a unit can only be built in a city if it has a particular city improvement (eg. you need to have a shipyard in order to build battleships, or a uranium refinery to build nukes). All units can have 0 or more tags. The tags are used to for containment and view details. So, you can say that a "transport" can contain all units with an "infantry" or "vehicle" tag. But a "transport aircraft" can only contain units with a "paratrooper" tag. This allows you to setup some complicated containment rules. The tag system also allows you to define visibility ranges. So, an aircraft might have a default view range of 100, but it's view-range for all units with the "submarine" tag is 25, and its view-range for all units with the "aircraft" tag is "200". The rules allow you to define your own "Movement Types" and "Combat Types". In the Official 1900-2030 rules, I define two types of ground-units: "Infantry" and "Vehicle". They have different modifiers for terrain-based movement rates, and terrain-based maintenance costs. The ground-units are split into two combat types: "Soft" (infantry and non-armored vehicles) and "Armor". The combat types are used for setting up the entrenched-defense bonus, and terrain-based defense multipliers. All units have combat values against each combat type. This means that a particular unit might have very good attack values against "Soft", but very bad attack values against "Armored". Inside the ruleset editor, you can makeup whatever movement-types and combat-types you want. So, you could create one movement type and one combat type for all ground units (for simplicity), or you could make-up a dozen different combat types for units, and name them something like "infantry", "lightly armored", "medium armored", "heavy armored", etc. The game has a bunch of unit images already, and you can use any of the pre-existing unit images. There is not currently any way to add your own unit images to the system, but I'd like to add that, and add it to the game's upload/download system that currently allows players to share maps, scenarios, and rules with each other. You can define which units are available to players at the very beginning of the game, and define which units are only available after a particular technology has been researched. * City Improvements You can define which city improvements are available in the game. You can name them, set their construction cost, and setup their effects. The city-improvement effects are not completely open-ended. There's a bunch of things to can change (like how much does a factory improve the production value of a city), but you can't come-up with completely new effects. Right now, the images for city-improvements are the seven buildings you see in the "Official 1900-2030" rules. You can pick any of those images, but there is currently no system for adding new images. (If you look at the file-system, you can see that's it's actually trivial to add unit or building images to the system, but they won't get shared with other players. Like the unit-images, I'd like to add building-images to the upload-download system in the future. Until that happens, I'm saying that you can't actually add unit-images to the system -- if you added your own images and tried to play multiplayer with rules that use your new images, and those other people didn't have the images, it would crash their system.) Like units, you can define which city-improvements are available to players at the very beginning of the game, and define which ones are only available after a particular technology has been researched. Here's an image of the city-improvement editor page: * Technology You can construct your own technologies. You name them, set their cost, and setup the their prerequisites. Then, you can arrange them into a technology-tree. * Unitsubsets There is also a "Unitsubset" system in place so that certain players have access to certain units, technologies, or buildings. This means that, theoretically, someone could create a system where a rules-system has a "German" unitsubset (which has Tiger tanks, V2 rockets, etc), a Japanese unitsubset (which has Zeros and Kamikazis), and an American unitsubset (which has Sherman Tanks and atomic bombs). Thus, certain players would only have access to certain technologies in the game. The rules-editor is not a scripting system. It's a system with a bunch of variables, and it allows you (in some cases) to define your own keywords. * Some things you can't do in the rules-editor: You cannot add your own images or animations. (But, I'd like to add this.) You cannot makeup your own resources. The game is limited to money, oil, food, and iron. You cannot, for example, add "water", "aluminum", "diamonds", or "uranium" to the resources. It would be nice to expand on this. You cannot add resource-improvements (like investing in oil-fields to improve oil-production). You also cannot have resources become exhausted over time. (So, you cannot simulate some sort of 'peak oil' situation.)

No, no. The game does need patching. I'm just not quite sure how this happened, how to reproduce it, or how to fix it. I have one idea about how it might've happened, but I'm only 50% sure about it. I'm going to look around a little more and see if I can find the cause. But, I also thought I'd offer to give you the repaired files in case you wanted to keep playing.

I can see what's wrong with the file, but I'm not sure how it happened. I can send you back a fixed version of the file if you want to keep playing, but I don't know that it won't happen again.

Darn. I meant to get that fixed before the update. I'm looking at it now.

No. But, the full version will be available very soon.

- Changed the 'Updates and Downloads' system - better interface + some people had problems getting it to work on their computer - Fixed a variety of issues with the AI, making it smarter - Fixed Scenario Editor bug: FreeTechnology is not working right - Fixed Scenario Editor bug: Scroll problem with the Player-Restrictions window - Fixed Scenario Editor bug: Forts can now be named - Fixed an AI bug that could cause the AI to run slow, hang - Fixed a crash - Added a hotkey (Z) that steps through the idle units. It begins with the top-most idle unit in the reports window and works down. - Fixed Bug: units building an airfield showed up on the "idle units" list - Fixed display glitches with airfield-build indicator

Okay, in the next version, there's a hotkey (Z) that steps through the idle units. It begins with the top-most idle unit in the reports window and works down.

I sent you a private message with the email address.

If you have any save-games that crash the application, let me know. It's really easy for me to track down and fix crashes when they are consistent.

Currently, the terrain types are not modable - you can't add new ones. As for future changes - this is me thinking out-loud: I'll have to think about what complications new terrain would add, but off the top of my head, I'll say this: there are three different effects that terrain-types have. The first two effects is that they adjust movement rates and defense values (for ground units). The third one is that they add a little variety and accuracy* to the visual display of the map. (*I can certainly see the importance of adding the accurate terrains to real places.) I think I could figure out some good way to handle this, but if you wanted to play the Official 1900-2030 rules with a few new terrains (marsh, jungle), it would be a little complicated because the ruleset does not define the movement rate/defense modifiers for those new terrain types. (I might be able to cook-up a rules-mod system that would allow players to pick a pre-existing ruleset and then attach additional attributes to it.) If, on the other hand, new terrain-types are included inside a new ruleset, that's not a difficult problem to solve. You would define the unit movement/defense modifiers along with the new terrain. The different elevation settings are used simply to adjust the map image. It adjusts the brightness/darkness of the elevation variations. If you have a small map, the elevation variations make things look more realistic (it looks like hills and valleys). But, if you're playing a world map, it looks strange to see hills/valleys on a global scale. Elevation variations are very slight on a global scale, so you should turn-down the elevation setting, and it looks like a more realistic world map.

Hm. When you say it "froze", do you mean that the turn-processing stopped (the display said "7%" but the game was otherwise responsive - tooltip appeared, etc), or the whole application froze (the application was completely unresponsive). In the past, there were times when the turn-processing would get caught-up in a loop and would get stuck at a processing.

(nod) What about a key that jumps to the next unit needing orders? In this case, it would use the left-panel queue (units at the top first, then working its way down). It would sort of be an automated way to step-through the "needs orders" queue.

Thanks. Not sure how much I should say, but the full game will be available before the end of November.