I find the grey text on blue rather hard to read - and the highlighted red text on blue looks particularly glaring.
I'd suggest a simple black text on white (or at least two colours with a big contrast), and keep the blue theme for areas not involving text.
Incidentally, is the page views figure broken? It shows 0 for all threads.
Also, the text box seems rather small, and with rich-text, ignores line breaks. And if I disable rich-text, the text box becomes so tiny to be unusable (I typed this in notepad, and pasted it in). I'm using Opera 11.50.
The licence proposed in that blog seems contradictory - many Open Source licences allow proprietary uses, but he says you can only pick an Open Source licence for non-proprietary use.
Furthermore, I would be wary of trying to invent new licences - what he's doing is not simply releasing under multiple licences, but adding extra conditions. I think it's much better to support standard licences rather than new ones, as there will typically be lots of uncertainties, vague areas - with standard licences like GPL and the CC licences, there are plenty of places to read up about how they work.
Regarding what you say here - isn't it already possible to say your work is licensed under multiple licences? If you're okay with CC-BY/CC-BY-SA/GPL 2+/LGPL 2+, then one can already select all of those?
If you mean a licence for art that allows it to be used however people want, then the obvious question is, why not CC0?
1. Good point - it should be easy to stop the AI moving Settlers into enemy territory. Coordinating a better invasion force is something the AI has trouble with too, though will take more work to improve (this seems to be something the official Civilization games have trouble with too, in my experience, but it's something to try improving).
2. Unfortunately I don't get that on my machines (including my netbook). My guess would be that although I've switched keyboard to being a proper event based model, mouse clicks aren't, so that's an obvious distinction. I'm now updating the mouse routines to see if that helps.
Even so, it seems odd that the response is so slow only on some machines. What sort of frame rate are you getting when this happens? (Shown in bottom left.)
3. Yes indeed, it's just Yet Another Civilization clone. I'm motivated because I enjoy programming, rather than designing - the same lack of originality would have been evident if I'd been writing Yet Another FPS game ;) But yes, I agree that differentiation is good, and I need to do things if I'm attract new people to my game rather than existing ones.
There are differences, though minor rather than dramatic. I do have ideas for possible new additions to the mechanics - as well as a fantasy style-game based on it, in fact - though I wanted to focus on getting the basics of a working game first, that I could then experiment on later. I've had too many projects in the past where I've started off writing a game that I thought was a cool idea, only to spend months on something that I then realise is unplayable, unworkable, or I just lose focus. To some degree it's also simply a learning exercise / something to develop my game engine with / something for fun - it's been a style of game I've always wanted to try writing.
The fantasty style-game, if I get round to it, would be a separate project, but using the same underlying engine.
4. This is possibly because the AI chooses to use Peasants to build roads (in Conquests, many foot units can do this, rather than just Settlers), but yes, it would be the obvious choice to attack an adjacent enemy unit where the odds are better than being attacked. Should be easy to fix.
5. Both good points, have added them to the TODO list.
6. Oops. If it happens again, it's worth checking in %APPDATA%/conquests , to see if there a file called log_assertion_failure.txt .
Power: Not yet. This was one of those attempts at a new idea that went some way, but then I struggled with. It was originally to be a "win" condition (i.e., basically a Score) - but then I didn't like the idea that player's would basically be building arbitrary things just because that's how to win. I'm tempted to agree with C-Evo's philosophy that this kind of game doesn't really need an arbitrary score, when it's usually obvious to the player by the end whether you're the leading civilization or not. So I added the bonuses effect, but yes, I think it needs something more to it.
Re: the crash without shaders - thanks for the details, I've fixed that now, for the next version.
Ah, thanks for the Tiled link - I'm now currently adding support to maps created using this program to my game Conquests. Whilst there are advantages to writing a custom tool, I think there's a lot to be said for using existing tools rather than reinventing the wheel. It means support can quickly be added, and users can use an existing, supported, cross-platform tool. There's also a lower learning curve if games tend to use existing applications, rather than all having their own custom UI for the editor.
Rather than writing a plug-in, I'm going the route of making my game compatible with the Tiled map format (which is an easy to read XML file).
Regarding the debate about barriers to entry: I think it depends on whether the kind of difficulty is the sort of skill that's necessary for quality. I mean, if we were modding the AI or other game logic, it's reasonable to except someone to be reasonably proficient with scripting - if they aren't, they wouldn't get far anyway, even if we give them a nice point and click interface.
But if we're talking about artists, level designers etc, it's not clear to me that any inability to go delving into editing files means they would be unable to create good quality work. (The converse is true too - being good at editing files certainly doesn't imply you'll create good quality work - do you really want to limit the set of people who can create content, by this criterion?)
Also we shouldn't confuse lack of desire with inability - people may have the desire and ability to create game content, but have better things to do than fight with editing config files unnecessarily (this reminds me of the attitude that plagued Linux in the past; I'm a geek and programmer, but I still have no desire to spend my time editing config files just to get simple things working).
So for my game, modding the AI or creating a new set of game rules means editing the Lua scripts, which I think is fair enough. But for someone who simply wants to create a new map, I want it to be doable using an easy tool.
(Apologies for posting on an old thread - I wanted to comment on Tiled, and then got carried away rambling.)
Thanks for that - so it's good that it allows commercial usage, and seems compatible with CC BY 3.0 AFAIK; one just has to attribute the website as well as the author of the 3D model.
(I don't know if the Artist and License info can/should be updated to make that clear, or if it's clear enough to leave this info just in the comments.)
This looks like something I might want to make use of, but I wanted to clarify the licence. The archive contains roca.png which it says is from http://www.tutorialsforblender3d.com/ - do you know which is the URL exactly for this texture, and/or what licence this texture file was released under? Thanks.
I find the grey text on blue rather hard to read - and the highlighted red text on blue looks particularly glaring.
I'd suggest a simple black text on white (or at least two colours with a big contrast), and keep the blue theme for areas not involving text.
Incidentally, is the page views figure broken? It shows 0 for all threads.
Also, the text box seems rather small, and with rich-text, ignores line breaks. And if I disable rich-text, the text box becomes so tiny to be unusable (I typed this in notepad, and pasted it in). I'm using Opera 11.50.
The licence proposed in that blog seems contradictory - many Open Source licences allow proprietary uses, but he says you can only pick an Open Source licence for non-proprietary use.
Furthermore, I would be wary of trying to invent new licences - what he's doing is not simply releasing under multiple licences, but adding extra conditions. I think it's much better to support standard licences rather than new ones, as there will typically be lots of uncertainties, vague areas - with standard licences like GPL and the CC licences, there are plenty of places to read up about how they work.
Regarding what you say here - isn't it already possible to say your work is licensed under multiple licences? If you're okay with CC-BY/CC-BY-SA/GPL 2+/LGPL 2+, then one can already select all of those?
If you mean a licence for art that allows it to be used however people want, then the obvious question is, why not CC0?
Thanks for your response!
1. Good point - it should be easy to stop the AI moving Settlers into enemy territory. Coordinating a better invasion force is something the AI has trouble with too, though will take more work to improve (this seems to be something the official Civilization games have trouble with too, in my experience, but it's something to try improving).
2. Unfortunately I don't get that on my machines (including my netbook). My guess would be that although I've switched keyboard to being a proper event based model, mouse clicks aren't, so that's an obvious distinction. I'm now updating the mouse routines to see if that helps.
Even so, it seems odd that the response is so slow only on some machines. What sort of frame rate are you getting when this happens? (Shown in bottom left.)
3. Yes indeed, it's just Yet Another Civilization clone. I'm motivated because I enjoy programming, rather than designing - the same lack of originality would have been evident if I'd been writing Yet Another FPS game ;) But yes, I agree that differentiation is good, and I need to do things if I'm attract new people to my game rather than existing ones.
There are differences, though minor rather than dramatic. I do have ideas for possible new additions to the mechanics - as well as a fantasy style-game based on it, in fact - though I wanted to focus on getting the basics of a working game first, that I could then experiment on later. I've had too many projects in the past where I've started off writing a game that I thought was a cool idea, only to spend months on something that I then realise is unplayable, unworkable, or I just lose focus. To some degree it's also simply a learning exercise / something to develop my game engine with / something for fun - it's been a style of game I've always wanted to try writing.
The fantasty style-game, if I get round to it, would be a separate project, but using the same underlying engine.
4. This is possibly because the AI chooses to use Peasants to build roads (in Conquests, many foot units can do this, rather than just Settlers), but yes, it would be the obvious choice to attack an adjacent enemy unit where the odds are better than being attacked. Should be easy to fix.
5. Both good points, have added them to the TODO list.
6. Oops. If it happens again, it's worth checking in %APPDATA%/conquests , to see if there a file called log_assertion_failure.txt .
Power: Not yet. This was one of those attempts at a new idea that went some way, but then I struggled with. It was originally to be a "win" condition (i.e., basically a Score) - but then I didn't like the idea that player's would basically be building arbitrary things just because that's how to win. I'm tempted to agree with C-Evo's philosophy that this kind of game doesn't really need an arbitrary score, when it's usually obvious to the player by the end whether you're the leading civilization or not. So I added the bonuses effect, but yes, I think it needs something more to it.
Re: the crash without shaders - thanks for the details, I've fixed that now, for the next version.
Anyway, thanks for your input.
Ah, thanks for the Tiled link - I'm now currently adding support to maps created using this program to my game Conquests. Whilst there are advantages to writing a custom tool, I think there's a lot to be said for using existing tools rather than reinventing the wheel. It means support can quickly be added, and users can use an existing, supported, cross-platform tool. There's also a lower learning curve if games tend to use existing applications, rather than all having their own custom UI for the editor.
Rather than writing a plug-in, I'm going the route of making my game compatible with the Tiled map format (which is an easy to read XML file).
Regarding the debate about barriers to entry: I think it depends on whether the kind of difficulty is the sort of skill that's necessary for quality. I mean, if we were modding the AI or other game logic, it's reasonable to except someone to be reasonably proficient with scripting - if they aren't, they wouldn't get far anyway, even if we give them a nice point and click interface.
But if we're talking about artists, level designers etc, it's not clear to me that any inability to go delving into editing files means they would be unable to create good quality work. (The converse is true too - being good at editing files certainly doesn't imply you'll create good quality work - do you really want to limit the set of people who can create content, by this criterion?)
Also we shouldn't confuse lack of desire with inability - people may have the desire and ability to create game content, but have better things to do than fight with editing config files unnecessarily (this reminds me of the attitude that plagued Linux in the past; I'm a geek and programmer, but I still have no desire to spend my time editing config files just to get simple things working).
So for my game, modding the AI or creating a new set of game rules means editing the Lua scripts, which I think is fair enough. But for someone who simply wants to create a new map, I want it to be doable using an easy tool.
(Apologies for posting on an old thread - I wanted to comment on Tiled, and then got carried away rambling.)
Thanks for that - so it's good that it allows commercial usage, and seems compatible with CC BY 3.0 AFAIK; one just has to attribute the website as well as the author of the 3D model.
(I don't know if the Artist and License info can/should be updated to make that clear, or if it's clear enough to leave this info just in the comments.)
Hi,
This looks like something I might want to make use of, but I wanted to clarify the licence. The archive contains roca.png which it says is from http://www.tutorialsforblender3d.com/ - do you know which is the URL exactly for this texture, and/or what licence this texture file was released under? Thanks.
Great for a GUI click. Just to let you know I'm using it in my game, Conquests - thanks!
This is perfect for what I needed for an icon to represent an atom bomb in my game, Conquests - thanks!
Pages