[WTP] Feedback, bugs and discussions about "river_merge" [CLOSED]

[Mr. ZorG]

just met a spanish scout. I thought they would appear earlier, but still he came to my territory.

 

[Kaskarn]

I have played a total of close to 1000 turns on the 'river merge' branch last week (at least 'Conquistador' level). Overall, this is exceptional modding work, and I genuinely think that WTP has become one of the best 4x available.

A few points of feedback:

1) The AI currently uses scouts without a doubt; however, looking back, it did feel very easy (maybe easier than before?) to consistently get first native visits and goodie huts. This is difficult to test, and I hesitate to call it a 'bug' yet, since I am so aggressive with scouting and expect to pull ahead on that front; I will keep an eye out for this specifically in the future.

2) Large rivers are a great addition. In the 16th and 17th century, rivers were absolutely central to travel and trade (as recently covered by LindyBeige) , and having major rivers have palpable gameplay effects makes the map come to life. My only suggestion is to have not only enormous rivers like the Mississippi or the Amazon count as 'large rivers', but also have smaller, yet still very important navigable waterways count (thinking like the Hudson, Rio Grande, Colorado ). The end goal would be that each map have several 'large rivers' distributed throughout for balance and fun.

3) Speaking of large river balance, they may currently provide too much food. Food isn't that big a bottleneck to growth in WTP, but it might be still worth dialing down the bonus by 1 anyhow.

4) I have not encountered major bugs, after several hours of gameplay. It is almost a little sad for a beta tester to not have anything broken to report

5) The new rewards from goodie huts are fun, but maybe make exploration too strong. In particular, finding free units on the map might be too strong in the early game (I also feel that way about the free caravels). On a couple occasions, I rapidly encountered a couple free rangers, and was able to bumrush the AI without much difficulty. I think an OK middleground would be for unarmed veterans (and perhaps other precious specialists, like blacksmiths and preachers, or even generals!) to spawn in goodie huts. A different approach might be to give rangers and native mercs a penalty when defending or attacking cities (since presumably, they are smaller units of light infantry, which rely on stealth and knowledge of terrain to defeat larger formations).

6) The new trade quests are fun, but they can be hard to all keep track of. It can be difficult to know which resource to prioritize without knowing how close the AI is to achieving each objective. I have not yet pulled the commit with the increased resource requirements (looks like 500 -> 5000 for most resources based on the commit. Pretty drastic!), and so maybe this feedback is already outdated.

Some thoughts on modding:

a) Adding the DLL to the Github repo might be a way to make this mod branch more accessible to other users, although I understand if the modders would prefer gatekeeping access for the time being. Perhaps an install guide might be a helpful middle ground (basically just instruct users to install Perl, download the compiling tools from the repo, and run the .bat to compile the DLL)

b) A modding guide letting us newbies know 'where' to look in the code to contribute specific changes would be helpful (perhaps one exists already), maybe even broken down by programming language and/or difficulty (XML, Python, C++). I would love to contribute when I get the chance, and specifically could get started on easier components like quests and balance. For instance I think it could be really fun to use the new event system to add interactions between Europe and the colonies, to prevent early player snowball, and further bring the world to life (e.g. on colony capture: 'your king says to stop killing the French for now, but here's a reward for putting them in their place). Another feature I'd like to add would a simple checkbox in the trade menu to toggle imports of all 'luxury goods' up to 50 units, in order to more easily set up the internal market. I could try this out reasonably soon if I knew where to look

 

[Nightinggale]

4) I have not encountered major bugs, after several hours of gameplay. It is almost a little sad for a beta tester to not have anything broken to report

Ahh the pain of beta testing for a team, which has the goal of coding in a bug resistant manner.

a) Adding the DLL to the Github repo might be a way to make this mod branch more accessible to other users, although I understand if the modders would prefer gatekeeping access for the time being. Perhaps an install guide might be a helpful middle ground (basically just instruct users to install Perl, download the compiling tools from the repo, and run the .bat to compile the DLL)

The main reason for the lack of a DLL in the git repo isn't about access, it's about the issue that the dll files are big and will change multiple times a day. We did have the dll included in Medieval Conquest and then after a while I deleted it including in past revisions and it saved up 200 MB of compressed data. This is data people would have to download each time they clone and at the time GitHub had a 1 GB size limit.

There is also the issue of multiple dll types. We have 5 different types depending on task (optimized, assert checks for bug hunting, debugging, performance analysis ...). Right now I'm using debug dlls to read the memory while the game is running and eventually somebody (me or somebody else) will commit a debug dll by accident. People will notice because it can make big games downright unplayable due to lack of optimization.

Yes the guide could be better and ideally we could have a place where people can download the newest DLL. The problem with solutions like that (in addition to some of them not being free) is that I would likely be the one to make that happen and the time spend on that will be time taken from fixing bugs.

I would welcome any help I can get regarding this topic, both in terms of improved guide and ideas for good solutions.

b) A modding guide letting us newbies know 'where' to look in the code to contribute specific changes would be helpful (perhaps one exists already), maybe even broken down by programming language and/or difficulty (XML, Python, C++). I would love to contribute when I get the chance, and specifically could get started on easier components like quests and balance. For instance I think it could be really fun to use the new event system to add interactions between Europe and the colonies, to prevent early player snowball, and further bring the world to life (e.g. on colony capture: 'your king says to stop killing the French for now, but here's a reward for putting them in their place). Another feature I'd like to add would a simple checkbox in the trade menu to toggle imports of all 'luxury goods' up to 50 units, in order to more easily set up the internal market. I could try this out reasonably soon if I knew where to look

Good idea, though it would take time to make. Again time taken from mod development.

If you are interested in getting started with the event system, then I would recommend that you look here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ining-new-modders.663854/page-2#post-16087928
Notice you can sign up a few posts further down.

 

[raystuttgart]

Overall, this is exceptional modding work, and I genuinely think that WTP has become one of the best 4x available.

Thanks, after reading the negative post over at Steam, I was already a bit worried and confused what had happened the last months while I was gone ...

I have not encountered major bugs, after several hours of gameplay. It is almost a little sad for a beta tester to not have anything broken to report

Thanks a lot for this feedback. I really relieves me.
We really want to have this branch be stable so we can use it as base for the coming up development.

Balancing:

• Balancing is currently really almost impossible for me, because I have not yet played a single real game with the new branch.
• And I really want to balance my new features myself but of course I will listen to the feedback.

Large Rivers:

"Large Rivers" is one of the features I tried to explain here.

... as fundamental pillars that many many smaller features are built (and balanced) around.

Its real effects and impact can only be understood once the existing game concepts fully integrate with it. (e.g. Movement, Scouting, Food Production, Fishing Boats, ...)
It is also possible that it will spawn further small feature and changes. Currently this has happened yet only 50% I would say.
The main focus until now was to get it bug free and without negative side effects to other featues.

About "more Large Rivers":
I needed to use my time efficiently and updating the maps did cost me way too much time already.
What is too few "Large Rivers" may already be too many "Large Rivers" for the other ... this is simply personal taste.

The new rewards from goodie huts are fun, but maybe make exploration too strong.

Again a question of balancing.
No time to play ... no realistic way to balance ..

The new trade quests are fun, ... increased resource requirements ...

Please really get the new version with the new balancing.
The old numbers were just pure test balancing to easily test with Worldbuilder
(Nowhere close to what these quests should actually be.)

About Modding Guide / Training new Modders:

Writing guides about all our source code and features would be a fulltime job. And it would be incredibly boring for me.
I personally much more prefer to share knowlege by answering questions, discussing specific examples or WTP Academy or ...
@Nightinggale and others are much better guide writers than myself.

Check this here: WTP Modding Academy
If there is interest, we are trying to help and share our knowledge with new modders.

 

[raystuttgart]

Bug fixed by @Nightinggale

Hm, ok there might be a bug in "Large Rivers" that I consider a blocker. ...
This definitely needs to be analyzed and fixed.

Most likely something again with "areas" used in movement logic of Settler AI as @Nightinggale already suspected.
Similar issues had already caused troubles with Scout AI or Wagon Train AI or ...

Fix will probably not be that difficult though once being debugged.

 

[raystuttgart]

This here is fixed no by @Nightinggale

Thus currently only "open todos" left.
But no actual blocker (or bad bug) know.

@team and supporters:
(@Schmiddie, @Nightinggale, @Mr. ZorG, @devolution, @Kendon, @Fürstbischof, @inaiwae, @Raubwuerger )

I suggest, we continue testin, improving and try to finish all open todos and then release on:
Sunday 16th of May (11 days from now)

Only if we find a "major bug" / blocker we will delay.

There is no point in trying to be perfect and being afraid of releasing.
(After that we simply continue working and everytime we feel we have a package of bugfixes, improvements, features ... ready we simply release again.)

Everybody ok with that?

 

[Nightinggale]

But no actual blocker (or bad bug) know.

There is one related to saving trade route auto export, but my goal is to fix it before next weekend. Actually my plan was to look at it yesterday, but then some settlers got stuck and.... oh well. That had to be fixed as well.

 

[raystuttgart]

There is one related to saving trade route auto export, ...

Correct, I forgot about that one.

... but my goal is to fix it before next weekend.

Great.

That had to be fixed as well.

Yeah, this mod never stops demanding, no matter how much you do, there is always more work waiting ...

 

[raystuttgart]

Ok, will take care of this here myself.
(The Help Request is closed.)

It is also the most efficient to do it myself.
I guess nobody will notice anyways if my "Large Rivers" are not fully geographically correct.

 

[Mr. ZorG]

I suggest, we continue testin, improving and try to finish all open todos and then release on:
Sunday 16th of May (11 days from now)

good plan unless I find a couple more bugs in the game

 

[Nightinggale]

There is one related to saving trade route auto export, but my goal is to fix it before next weekend. Actually my plan was to look at it yesterday, but then some settlers got stuck and.... oh well. That had to be fixed as well.

Fixed, but now new bugs popped up

• soldiers getting stuck on a river ford (looks similar to the stuck settlers)
• Colony yield production going crazy

One step forward and two backwards. At least the getting stuck one can likely be fixed with the same code as was used with the settlers. We just need to find the location in the code.

 

[Mr. ZorG]

Colony yield production going crazy

this is a saved game glitch. not worth your attention.

 

[raystuttgart]

@Schmiddie

There is a bug in Colopedia for "Cocoa Trees".
There is also a bug in Colopedia for "Coffee Bushes".

Could you please check it.

 

[raystuttgart]

@team and supporters:

RAR Americas Gigantic - random
now also has Large Rivers.

I warned you that I can not really create geographically correct Large Rivers.
Because my geographical knowledge is relatively poor.

I tried to add these Large Rivers as I thought or remebered to have once seen them on a map.

• Mississippi
• Missouri
• Hudson River
  
• Amazonas
• Orinoco
• Parana

So better not complain about the result.
I am simply no talented "Map-Maker" ...

 

[Mr. ZorG]

do not shoot the pianist - he plays as best he can

 

[Schmiddie]

@Schmiddie

There is a bug in Colopedia for "Cocoa Trees".
There is also a bug in Colopedia for "Coffee Bushes".

Could you please check it.

fixed.

 

[raystuttgart]

fixed.

Thanks a lot.
(Fix tested and confirmed)

 

[raystuttgart]

@team and supporters:

We had a serious bug reported by @Mr. ZorG but we could not reproduce it and we also can not explain currently.
(Yields in City Sreen were totally messed up. The Savegame we were sent was completely broken.)

Thus to everyone who has already test access to "river_merge":
Please try to support our analysis.

1. Update to newest version of the branch
2. Compile a new DLL (e.g. with the bat provided)
3. Start a new game and play for at least 2 hours (ideally more)
4. Also take saves in between and check if they can be loaded without issues
5. Let us know if you also got a similar bug as described above

 

[Kaskarn]

I warned you that I can not really create geographically correct Large Rivers.
Because my geographical knowledge is relatively poor.

In fairness, you should give yourself credit for at least trying to be geographically consistent. I have been a lot less subtle in my experiments. Forgive me for what I've done:

 

[Kaskarn]

This is a map of the navigable waterways in the Eastern US (sorry Canada, you are now the ocean), which I turned into a 150x100 grid of tiles (easy to convert to WorldBuilder format). I set tiles as 'light blue' if crossed by a navigable waterway, basically mapping out 'large rivers' as they exist in the game.

There's too many of them, especially on the east coast. I would need to pare them down, and I'm not sure what logic/system to use for that yet, so I'd be interested in suggestions on that front!