(sort of)

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New Stuff

1.) the START TOWN panel now has a second button for LOAD TOWN. Yep, you can save and restore towns.

2.) The START TOWN button asks you for a new name for your town (and warns you if you already have a town of that name.. which you are free to overwrite, of course)

3.) The LOAD TOWN button shows a list of towns you have, and lets you pick one.

4.) The Kiosk has three new buttons: SYSTEM, SPECIAL, and MAPS

5.) The MAPS button isn't really new, it just didn't used to have a picture.

6.) The SPECIAL button shows a couple special buildings you can buy (Stadium and Missile Silo, to give you an idea of what I am talking about). THIS DOES NOT YET WORK, so don't get your hopes up.

7.) The SYSTEM button has several options:

* SAVE TOWN (note, I make you stick with the same name, so no "save as" allowed. Of course, you can work around this, mister hacker!)

* LOAD TOWN (same as on opening panel)

* QUIT TOWN Terminates this town, relinquishes your 'slot' on the server and takes you back to the opening panel (where you could start a NEW TOWN if you liked and a slot were available.)

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OK, that's all basic town management stuff. A headache for me to implement, but overall boring for you. Just something you expect to be there.

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But there is one more entry in the SYSTEM menu, called START NEW WAR.

Only the moderator can do this, and here is what it does:

1.) It terminates any existing war on the server. Abruptly

2.) It brings up a dialog for the moderator where s/he can specify the nature of the war, with rules like:

* keep current city as is
* keep current city zoning, but reset population and devLevel.
* Force everyone to start a new city

* Here is starting money supply

* weapons are allowed

* Play is for this many minutes

* Instant win is this population

* otherwise, winner is person with highest population at end of time period

ANYWAY, you get the idea. The moderator fills in the form and then submits it (and that's what kills the war in progress)

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next, everyone with a city (well, not the moderator) gets a popup dialog which explains the rules to the war the moderator is attempting to start. This has buttons (some of which may be dimmed, depending on rules)

* ACCEPT WAR (accept challenge of war)

* DECLINE WAR (don't accept challenge)

This dialog is non-modal, so you can save/restore cities using the normal kiosk commands. (unless the proclamation blocks that, in which case you have to accept/cancel the proclamation first).

People who have accepted the proclamation of war have 'red' city names in the player list.

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If you refuse the war, then you are not affected by it, and can continue building your city in peace. (your city name appears in green)

As people accept the war, the player list updates to show everyone's state.

The moderator waits until enough people have accepted the war, and then presses the START WAR button on his rules dialog. He cannot change the rules after sending the proclamation without first canceling the proclamation and then starting a new war.

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At that point, the war starts, and all those people who are warring are... at war.

If the rules require any resetting, rezoning, etc, that happens now. Everyone starts at the same time (roughly).

Life then continues as before, except the warring parties can launch missiles (eventually) and will be affected by the 'end of the war' (detected by the moderator automatically when the clock runs out, or whatever the war goal is)

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cool huh? It's a solo game, it's a war game, it's two games in one!

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ANyway, .0005 has all of this, except the actual fighting part :-) Baby steps.

In fact, you can't ignore them, so they could be a nuisance, but that would be a good reason to play in solo mode.

Pop-up = bad

It shouldn't be a window in itself, which would take the computers "attention" (as in, active window attention) from the real game. Instead, it could perhaps have a little ding to signal that something has happened, as well as showing a [menu thing] to click on.

*comes back to unfinished post an hour later*

Yeah.

Ok the problem with moderators not getting money when a new game starts up has been fixed. Anyway.

The war bits that are currently in have been interesting. We havn't had a chance to test what it does to a connection when 8 cities that can have 2mil pop all join a war that only resets population But we have done so with 3 different 2 mil pop cities. The worst that happened is a constant reporting of connection has been lost to all people playing the game...but the person connected to the server. However the connection was not actually lost...and the server was 56k...very high lag basically happened, still be nice if everyone wasn't told they had been disconnected...heh oh well can't have it all.

Ok oddity I noticed. Sometimes the game or server (not sure which) would not pick up when the moderator left the game. If that moderator came back they immediately because moderator again and everybody imideately got the effect that they had quit their current city. And it would of course notify everybody that the old moderator...was the moderator. Nobody would see the leave or join message of the moderator..just see a sudden message that <insert name here> is the moderator. And everybody would be taken to the start city or load city option screen. Any current work..though viewable..lost with no chance to save.

Finally...small suggestion, and I hope its not something I'm missing that you plan to do but.

Canal's are supposed to be like roads right? How about making it so canal's also extend the reach of any lot it is close enough to? (say up to 3 lots away at the most). That is to say the canal could reach from one side of the screen to the other...and that trade at one end will affect the house on the other. Although it might be a good idea for distance to lessen it..maybe make it 1/4 the screen?

And also I think a lot should have a maximum effect. That is even though something is in reach of influence...it won't actually do so...as that objects influence is already taken elsewhere (hey a workplace can only hold so many people..same with fields only feeding so many and supermarkets only hold so many at once). You might already do this..I dunno can't tell.

Oh um..not to be mean...but the little trick you have...where something on the very right edge can affect something on the left edge..vica versa..and same with top to bottom. Has been found. I don't know if you ment to do this or not..but I figured I'd let you know its happening.

I can press the load button, and I can open the load dialogue, and I can see my city on the list, but when I press the load button nothing happens.

Bug? Intentional? Just me?

-Jacius

[Just in case this helps, the city is named 'Happy-Happy FunLand']

[Ok, that Happy-Happy save file wasnt so happy-happy. I made a different city and it worked fine. Happy Land didnt show any stats when you select it for load, if that helps figure out what went wrong]
[This message has been edited by Jacius (edited 01-11-2002).]

I might be allowing one less character at time of load, than at save. (which would be a bug).

Also once you add in the point of some things costing money to keep up..and stuff getting auto destroyed because you can't pay everything. I have a feeling those types of races might go just a bit more interesting.

Oh...just a pet peeve...but I've noticed that housing some building having too much of an influence. Just take a look at some of the cities that have over 2mil population. The amount of canals and food are rediculously small. The workplaces (I think thats the blue buildings, anyway if I'm wrong I mean the blue buildings) also seem more important than trade buildings. Basically it seems to go along the lines of build tons of houses. Then build some workplaces (blue buildings...I'd say about 1/4 amount of houses). Then the rest should generally be somewhere around 100 of the most.

Decided to make my own little patch...starting with Trade Centers. For the sake of full documentation. This is my first alt skin patch for Arcadia...don't have any other on mine.

folder name for patch, sticks (basic idea is the building are just alot of 'sticks' either artistically formed, or clumped to look pretty).

bmp name..so far only one. T1sticks.bmp...of course comprised of 1x1 'sticks' for the tradecenters.

So anyway...made the new folder...coppied over all but the T defaults (both 1 and 2). Found the dropdown..clicked on sticks...and...the tradecenters all just vanished.

So I just took it in stride...tried renaming the .bmp to T1default.bmp seeing what that would do...still disapeared.

Ok...started making checks between sticks and default...no size difference...besides the fact mine tended to be bigger here an there...and the top tended to go to the outer parts of the lot..but never outside..or even as far left/right as it could go.

So I decided..ok lets stick the origional default in there..and just remove sticks..so save sticks elsewhere...stuck in the origional T1...that caused the same results..missing Trade buildings in the sticks directory.

OK....so I stuck back in the T1sticks.bmp without removing the default...suddenly the sticks style showed the T2Color.bmp levels from the default folder.

Removed the default T1 bmp...went back to being blank.

Tried somethin I should have long ago...made sure I had backups of the origional and replaces T1default.bmp in the default folder..with the sticks design...viewed default. Hey it worked! Stuck default back in. It shows only the default...no switching..ok I assume that isn't programmed in yet...or there might be some other trick to that.

Then tried moving both T2 files to my sticks dir (after I replaced the default T1 with the correct file). Showed the T2color.bmp images again, yeah thats nice. Removed both T2..went all blank with sticks.
I havn't tried sticking in other directorys or whatever. However I have tried renaming the H1 and T1 in my sticks..basically switching...the sticks showed just fine as houses...however the trade centers disapeared still.

There seems to be some odd bug with showing trade centers for more than one style.