This is what I'm hoping we can have every fortnight or two when we don't have a release build - a progress report of sorts. Maybe it'll focus on a specific aspect sometimes, maybe it'll be general like this one. But it'll be a high-to-mid-level view of what's been going on.
14 Items Done in 14 Days
14 items have already been done since the Preview 2 release, and while most of these are small, that's about twice the rate we had since Babylon.
In no small part, this is due to our new contributor kright, who joined just in time to have one item ship with Preview 2.
I've also been knocking out a bunch of small items, mostly polish or small features.
This rate isn't likely to continue unless more contributors arrive or previous ones return (which might happen), but the flurry of activity is nice for making the milestone move along.
All Roads Lead to Carthage
kright has started work on the Road feature, the first Worker Job to be added. So far, this consists of:
- Reading and displaying road/railroad data from BIQ/SAV/JSON files
- Generalizing our pathing algorithm and making it more efficient at the same time
- Letting human-controlled workers insta-build roads
There's still more to add to have everything be fully built out, but it's a great start and the game feels a lot more alive with roads. This also bodes well for future worker jobs, as roads are both one of the most complex of the jobs, and it's always harder to add the first one.
Tile Visibility/Exploration
Preview 2 featured tile visibility for the AI, but not for the human. As a player, it's a lot more useful to have it for the human.
The first iteration of this is now ready for review. While there are certainly future improvements to be made, what's already there essentially adds the "eXploration" part of 4X to C7, a significant step forward.
Fixing Long-Standing Graphical Issues
Quintillus has tackled our two longest-standing graphical issues (although one broke his first tackle). The most infamous is the world map "seams", which will no longer be present at any zoom level. The other is the blinking city graphics, which aren't quite 100% fixed yet but whose root cause has finally been determined.
Varies Small Fixes, Mostly Naval
Several small fixes have also been added, with a focus on the naval aspect of the game. Most notably, boats will no longer play defense against land units, and barbarians have learned not to defend their camps with galleys as a result. You'll also have to move them back to port to heal them - no more driftwood in the middle of the ocean!
One step towards adding community units was also addressed over the past two weeks.
What's up for August?
Quintillus will be away for the first two weeks of August, which will likely slow progress, although pcen might be making a return which could counter that.
Roads, tile visibility, and community graphics remain expected short-term areas of progress. AI improvements are a possibility as well. We're still a bit weak on mechanics for the purely-Settler-focused AI to be a major problem - unless there's far more of you spending hours playing C7 than we're aware of - but with eXploration and eXpansion available, and eXploiting the tiles starting to be possible via roads, it will become more important for the AI to try to eXterminate you and thus provide a challenge.
My guess is we may have a Carthage Preview 3 some time in mid-late August, but depending on how close we are to finishing the milestone, we might elect to defer until a full milestone release can be made. We're now at 60% done (from 50% two weeks ago), but if the major features of Carthage are done, some of the minor enhancements or architectural proofs-of-concept that were planned for Carthage may be delayed to Dutch.
14 Items Done in 14 Days
14 items have already been done since the Preview 2 release, and while most of these are small, that's about twice the rate we had since Babylon.
In no small part, this is due to our new contributor kright, who joined just in time to have one item ship with Preview 2.
I've also been knocking out a bunch of small items, mostly polish or small features.
This rate isn't likely to continue unless more contributors arrive or previous ones return (which might happen), but the flurry of activity is nice for making the milestone move along.
All Roads Lead to Carthage
kright has started work on the Road feature, the first Worker Job to be added. So far, this consists of:
- Reading and displaying road/railroad data from BIQ/SAV/JSON files
- Generalizing our pathing algorithm and making it more efficient at the same time
- Letting human-controlled workers insta-build roads
There's still more to add to have everything be fully built out, but it's a great start and the game feels a lot more alive with roads. This also bodes well for future worker jobs, as roads are both one of the most complex of the jobs, and it's always harder to add the first one.
Tile Visibility/Exploration
Preview 2 featured tile visibility for the AI, but not for the human. As a player, it's a lot more useful to have it for the human.
The first iteration of this is now ready for review. While there are certainly future improvements to be made, what's already there essentially adds the "eXploration" part of 4X to C7, a significant step forward.
Fixing Long-Standing Graphical Issues
Quintillus has tackled our two longest-standing graphical issues (although one broke his first tackle). The most infamous is the world map "seams", which will no longer be present at any zoom level. The other is the blinking city graphics, which aren't quite 100% fixed yet but whose root cause has finally been determined.
Varies Small Fixes, Mostly Naval
Several small fixes have also been added, with a focus on the naval aspect of the game. Most notably, boats will no longer play defense against land units, and barbarians have learned not to defend their camps with galleys as a result. You'll also have to move them back to port to heal them - no more driftwood in the middle of the ocean!
One step towards adding community units was also addressed over the past two weeks.
What's up for August?
Quintillus will be away for the first two weeks of August, which will likely slow progress, although pcen might be making a return which could counter that.
Roads, tile visibility, and community graphics remain expected short-term areas of progress. AI improvements are a possibility as well. We're still a bit weak on mechanics for the purely-Settler-focused AI to be a major problem - unless there's far more of you spending hours playing C7 than we're aware of - but with eXploration and eXpansion available, and eXploiting the tiles starting to be possible via roads, it will become more important for the AI to try to eXterminate you and thus provide a challenge.
My guess is we may have a Carthage Preview 3 some time in mid-late August, but depending on how close we are to finishing the milestone, we might elect to defer until a full milestone release can be made. We're now at 60% done (from 50% two weeks ago), but if the major features of Carthage are done, some of the minor enhancements or architectural proofs-of-concept that were planned for Carthage may be delayed to Dutch.
