Current and Future Developments

I haven't been overly active on the forum either because I haven't had much to say. I'm working on getting full support for Russian and it turned into adding support for all single byte codepages listed here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964654

Middle East and Far East languages needs a different font file, but apart from that it seems to be working. I'm going to write a new XML interface to set up IDs for GameFont as we will need one, which can tell which unicode IDs goes with which GameFont IDs.

There are also some bugs and exe limitations, which needs to be worked out. For starters windows sets which codepage to use, which might not be the one we want. This is actually a vanilla bug as GameFont is hardcoded to windows-1252. Functions to change which codepage to use was added in vs2005, but we have to use the 2003 edition :cry:
I'm thinking of adding a guide on how to change this setting in windows or tell people to use AppLocale. Also I think that most people will not suffer from this problem as usually windows is set to use the local language meaning if you depend on getting Cyrillic, your windows is likely set to Russian and you will get the right codepage. The problem is that relying on windows to set the right codepage is unreliable and what if it sets it to windows-1250? None of the translations will look right in that one, though basic A-Z looks right in all of them.
 
Please don't misunderstand me, but is this really worth all the trouble, effort, possible bugs and other implications ? :dunno:
 
raystuttgart said:
Please don't misunderstand me, but is this really worth all the trouble, effort, possible bugs and other implications ? :dunno:
Click to expand...
It would be silly to stop now that it's 95% complete. Besides the end goal for this feature is now a BTS modcomp as there are a number of people out there who are quite interested in this and have requested such a modcomp.
 
Kailric said:
Hey gang, not much noise has been coming from this forum in a while. I am still and always will be around.
Click to expand...

Yep, I'm also around. I've been translating in a "not a day without a line" mode and then the grave news came from Ukraine, Russia got sanctioned yet again, and I think I kinda took it somewhat too personally and went for holy war in the off-topic subforum... still better than a real war. Now that dust comes down there and I'm cooling down too, things will gradually get back on track again, more or less, and more with time. Mourn for the deceased, life to those alive...
 
I have been playing the latest version and I like the changes. I’ve tried the wily trader working at the stall and the auto sell option and it is more realistic for me than the trade routes.

But I also finish my games with CTD. I need to play more to try and find a pattern.

By the way, Medieval Conquest Development 2.6 has been removed from atomic gamer. Only 2.6.1 can be found there.
 
Thanks for feedback. You know how to work the sourceforge version right? That one will be the most up to date. The one at automic gamer is behind, as I posted a patch in the bug forum. It may fix your ctd.

You mean like more realistic than sending ships to the trade screens, like spice route?

Yeah, I remove the previous up load to automic gamer when I upload the new one to save space.

Link to patch post.. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13519579&postcount=488
 
Kailric said:
Yeah, I remove the previous up load to automic gamer when I upload the new one to save space.
Click to expand...
This brings us back to how to release. We can use SF where we have unlimited disk space and don't have to remove old versions. However moddb is the place people search for mods, which mean more people will find it. Releasing both places will not be nice for download statistics and hence mod activity. Seems to me whatever we do, it will be wrong :p
 
Nightinggale said:
This brings us back to how to release. We can use SF where we have unlimited disk space and don't have to remove old versions. However moddb is the place people search for mods, which mean more people will find it. Releasing both places will not be nice for download statistics and hence mod activity. Seems to me whatever we do, it will be wrong :p
Click to expand...

Well, the Automic gamer one is specifically for Lib' as he has issues with getting the sourceforge version at the moment. The most up to date version is on sourceforge, the LimitedResource branch.
 
Kailric said:
So, what you are saying is we can upload files to sourceforge for download?
Click to expand...
Yeah. We could do as most projects on SF do and add files here. Take a look here to see how it can be made to look like:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/scummvm/files/?source=navbar

I'm not saying we should copy scummvm, but it was one of the first projects, which came to my mind when I wanted one with a long release history and file organization. It shows what SF is able to handle.
 
Kailric said:
You mean like more realistic than sending ships to the trade screens, like spice route?
Click to expand...

What I mean with more realism is that the market stalls are a good first step to real demand. I didn’t really like dumping my goods onto three “Nowhere’s” where they will always pay you for no matter how much of them. Market stalls are the possible connection, in my point of view, to create Lib.Spi’t’s world trade spots like Rotterdam, Singapore or Hong Kong, with several stalls in their markets. Then, there is the case that goods really do something into any city’s population demand.

About Sourceforge files, I can say this idea is marvelous. Unfortunately, I have recently had my system down, and I needed to reinstall everything from scratch. I have now a working vanilla version of colonization, only that. I lost all the mods. I have been able to salvage the limited resources branch I kept on a pen drive, which I installed. But I lost Smart Git and MS Visual C++ Toolkit. I’ll need to follow again those great guides of Night and yours to install everything back. So for a long time being, I’ll have to rely on uploaded compiled mods.
 
As a counter argument, I for one really like the trade screens. They are one of my favourite features of the mod.
It is probably the key component that has kept me loyal to this mods development, as far as I know this is still a unique feature of this mod, and for me, one of the best.

I don't really buy into the 'unreality' of the 'nowhere' and 'unlimited market'.

Particularly in M:C. these are the hubs of the world unknown, connecting to the massive and rich middle and far east, the Great Orient.

In the later game, the taxation system tends to majorly reduce the income from these places, so you have to run a lot of shipping for it to continue to have a solid impact on your treasury, and this to me represents the birth of the renaissance merchant empires, venice, hanseatic league, etc. These powers could punch above their weight because of the riches they gathered from trade.

As to the 'unlimited' sales thing, I just view this as a sense of scale. The Medieval Kingdoms you control could never produce a product to a level that would outstrip demand from those great Hub routes. So it simply becomes about how much of a market share can you take advantage of, and that is a combination of production and transport capacity, both of which come at a cost and diminishing return as the game progresses.

I also find the 'opening' of these routes quiet well timed, I find myself 'almost ready' to take advantage of the routes when they become available, but still have to work carefully to get to the place where I am taking full advantage of them to accelerate the growth of my still fledgling empire.

In short, I love it.

There was a reason why new trade screens were my first question when approaching the WH concept.
 
Yeah, I really like the trade screens as well, they are here to stay. However, they could be made more dynamic in that they have simulated demands. We have also implemented a system of diminishing returns for each trade screen. So, that as you continue to dump a certain good into a trade screen the prices will continue to fall. So, that is a good start to adding a living feel to the trade screens.
 
I think its nice to have both; ie have much of your trade opportunities exist in actual cities where prices respond to citizens' demands, and still being able to launch expeditions to a few "special" off-the-map trade screens. Although with more realistic supply/demand/trade happening in cities you might not need an abstract Trade Fair.

Cities and tradescreens should stay a little differentiated from each other to both stay relevant. In cities the role of supply/demand in determining local prices could be larger creating a wider range of possible prices.

Tradescreens that take a long time to travel to could represent large foreign nationwide markets, where prices will be somewhat less supply/demand sensitive but will drift downward over the course of the game if you continue to sell a yield heavily there, similar to the vanilla europe screens. (With the ease of production rising throughout the game, falling prices and rising taxes are overall a necessary balancing element). Tradescreens could act as a balancing "safety valve" where if you cannot find enough nearby demand to absorb all your production profitably, you can launch a special trade expedition although this will take longer and the price may not be as high as if you had found a map city where there was a great deal of unfulfilled demand for your goods. They can also sell you special units or yields (like Spices) that are hard to find elsewhere.

As a follow-on to the post about expanding the role of Events, another cool concept could be an Event XML tag that temporarily adjusts the local price or demand for a given Yield in that city up or down. You could use this with the existing tag for Global Event trigger message, so all players would get a message like "Warehouse fire in London boosts demand for Spices - prices soar" and the race would be on to see who can quickly put together a shipment of the right goods to that city to take advantage of the temporary spike in Demand. :gold::goodjob:
 
Yes, good points, I made a post a while back asking should the Trade Fair Screen be removed as is and instead add some benefit to the new Market System. This would be a unigue Building perhaps that can only be built once per player, as Trade Fairs only happened in a few places.
 
Lib.Spi't said:
Yeah, I think the trade fair should go back to a one off building, like a national or world wonder.

Or if we got real technical, a travelling event, that jumps from city to city, giving a short oppurtunity to cash in :D
Click to expand...

Ahh, an Event, I like that idea. As it wasn't really a building, but rather a place where all these merchants gathered. A trade tech could start the Trade Fair event and then every so many turns it happens again, interesting.
 
I think we should have a thread for trade screens rather than talking about it here.

We have a few ideas here. Maybe it would be a good idea to implement all (if it isn't too much work) and then use XML to tweak how they work. That way all it takes to alter the setup is a bit of XML editing and then people can playtest multiple solutions and figure out what works and what spoils the game. In time it might turn into game settings if we decide to keep multiple solutions.
 
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