Achievements

[The Great Apple]

These are quite cool but it seems that some of them are quite vague. They also seem a tad buggy. Here's a quick list of my opinions on them:

• "Traded 1000th good" - what does this mean? Does it mean that 1000 units have been traded? This is what I would expect, however I seem to get the achievement far too late for that. Maybe 1,000,000 units? I dunno. That seems an awful lot. Maybe 1000 trades? Something is wrong anyway.
• Muskets/Guns. Most of the game calls them guns, but the achievement says muskets.
• It seems to check them at the end of a turn. If I build a dragoon, and it dies during the turn, I don't get an achievement. A bit odd.
• The achievement screen with the pictures is all very nice, but only having four per page means it's not really a good interface. I'd probably scrap the pictures all together and perhaps have an achieved/not achieved list perhaps with progress bars. This could also pave the way for an achievement victory, which might be quite fun.
• It would be awesome if they acted more like other game's achievement systems - ie. they would be persistent across games and (perhaps) enable unlockable stuff which need not be better, but would be different and something to aim for.

Getting a bit more radical nearer the end there... but the first few points are simpler.

 

[Grimz101]

I also got the 'you traded 1000 goods' on the victory screen it says i have traded over 20,000 at the time.. I giggled.

 

[The Great Apple]

The achievement screen with the pictures is all very nice, but only having four per page means it's not really a good interface. I'd probably scrap the pictures all together and perhaps have an achieved/not achieved list perhaps with progress bars.

I think I might just do this myself 'cos I feel like modding something and this should be fairly easy (I'm off to uni again soon...). I'll post up the changes when I'm done (though don't feel any pressure to use it if you don't like it!).

 

[The Great Apple]

So this is the sort of thing I was thinking of. Might split it so that there are two columns and make the top bar a tad smaller. Thoughts? If nobody is overly keen I'll just keep it to myself. I feel a bit like I'm stepping on your toes Dale!

 

[Dale]

Looks good!

And don't worry about my toes. I enjoy seeing where people take my core ideas.

 

[Zuul]

Nice. But still would be nice to see more achivements in same time (have 3-4 colums). Can the full image be seen if you click on it?

 

[The Great Apple]

Screen space gets tight at low res with more than two columns (see attachment). I suppose I could vary it based on screen X resolution. What's the minimum resolution Civ can run at? I'll sort out clicking pictures in the future probably. Hadn't thought of that.

One thing that I've learned which wasn't quite clear from the original is that "Built 50 crosses" and similar are actually per turn rather than total.

Dale - a question (if you have time!). Why are targets for production of bells & crosses 1 higher than the text says. "Built first bell" for example seems to require two bells to be built, and the 50th requires 51 to be built. Also - can I safely remove the default achievement?

 

[Dale]

Because by default your colony produces 1 cross and 1 bell.

Yes you can delete the default achievement in the xml. It was my template for cut/pasting. You'll notice that bActive is 0 so it's not processed.

In fact, use bActive to check if the achievement is turned on or off.

 

[Zuul]

I like the progress bars.
Nice with 2 columns . Though why having empty space in the bottom and not longer scrollbar?

 

[Dale]

One thing that I've learned which wasn't quite clear from the original is that "Built 50 crosses" and similar are actually per turn rather than total.

Yeah, some of the text leaves a lot to be desired. Some of them really need rethinking.

Those achievements were to mark progress towards industralisation.

Maybe you could break the achievements into groups, industrial, trade, exploration, military and political. I'll add in a new tag for grouping if you want. Then just list by group.

 

[kaibayashi]

Because by default your colony produces 1 cross and 1 bell.

Yes you can delete the default achievement in the xml. It was my template for cut/pasting. You'll notice that bActive is 0 so it's not processed.

In fact, use bActive to check if the achievement is turned on or off.

Which is the default achievement? ATM there's several which are redundant it seems - Discovered Atlantic (I think someone suggested changing to Crossed?), First Soldier (He's one of your starting units, so there shouldn't be an achievement for this).

Yeah, some of the text leaves a lot to be desired. Some of them really need rethinking.

For things like bells/crosses/guns etc you could use 'Produced' instead of 'Built'.

 

[The Great Apple]

Ok - my Civ computer GFX card died and I'm off to uni now. It's all in a fairly good working state - required a few SDK pokes (I tweaked the 51/50 bells or hammers thing by removing global yield). The attached zip contains the AoDII files that I had to change (I think).