On the cusp...

[kimmitt]

I put this in the patch discussion, but I figured it merited a note of its own:

Okay, I'm interested in the game, but I'm going to wait until the patch hits, to see if I buy it. The deal-breakers for me:

1) Long times for map generation and turn processing.
If you can't come up with a random map generation algorithm which is both fast and good, generate a couple hundred or so templates using your slow map generation algorithm and bundle them with the software or something. I don't want to have to choose among the maps, as that takes away the fun, but it's boring to wait for the map to generate.

The same thing applies to the turn processing. I don't know if you're drawing every battle before it starts or if the AI is hopelessly bloated, but I'm running a machine which is can guide a rocket to the moon. More to the point, I'm running a machine which is more than capable of guiding fifty rockets to the moon simultaneously. Graphics are one thing, but work with me here. Figure out where the bottlenecks are and get some damn optimization done.

Not deal-breakers, but likely to influence my decision as to whether to purchase the game and/or recommend it to friends:

1) Pretender generation. This should all be one screen, simple as that.

2) The map. I'm sorry, but the icons and such are still ugly. When it was ugly and minimalist, as in Pretenders II, that was cool -- it was what it was. But this intermediate level of ugly is atrocious. At absolute minimum, make the part of the map that flashes when I click on a province less enormous, and get rid of that absurd arrow extension. I don't need to see a sizable chunk of my screen flashing every time I click an area, and I don't need the game pretending that it's dynamic in an area where it isn't. Plus the arrow is ugly.

3) Menus in general -- get a dang GUI expert to go through and clean house, making all of the backgrounds get along with all of the sprites for the various units, et cetera. This isn't an enormous task, and it would vastly improve playability.

4) Various report options. Let me know how many x's I've killed or gotten killed. That's called flava, and it makes games fun. Let me know how many people died in a siege or assault. If a commander was killed in a battle, let me know which one. Those suckers are expensive. If critters which cost more than 100 GP per were killed in a battle, let me know. Don't make me watch every battle to see if it was my Sorceror or my Water Mage who ate it, because I can't remember who all I committed. When I whack a Pretender, throw up a summary screen of the Pretender's accomplishments (units created, etc.) and a couple of paragraphs on how I threw my enemy down before me. If you're feeling clever, tune the paragraphs to what kind of unit killed it -- if a militiaman finished the job, emphasize ignomy. If it took Joe Stoic, Holder of the Sacred Flame of Badassery, emphasize the heroics. But something. Seriously.

The game still has its overall amateur feel, which isn't a terrible thing; the idea that it is the creation of people who love gaming to give to other people who love gaming is fine. I feel the love. But you gotta take away the un-fun parts, or I can't get at the delicious nougatty center underneath.

Finally, now that Dominions 3 is out, you should totally start selling Dominions 2 for some ridiculously low price on download. Think of it as the first hit being free.

[Arralen]

Go, shut up, play Half-life.

Enough said.

[coobe]

Illwinter is not Blizzard, Valve or EA. And thats very good!

I agree with Arralen

[WraithLord]

Agree with Arralen and Coobe.

You have enough high production value games out there.

Dominions is a unique game with tons of content and flavor and frankly, I like it just that way.

[MythicalMino]

ok....maybe Dominions just isn't for you. Illwinter took care of a lot of the things that the fans of Dominions 2 (not Pretenders 2) disliked....

That being said....

1. Random Map Generation works just fine in my opinion. That it takes a few extra minutes to make one really isn't that big an issue. If they didn't have a RMG this time around....then I would have a problem. But the generator works pretty good, I think.

1.2 Pretender Generation. Not sure why you want it all on one screen....That would be a lot of info on just one screen. Physical appearance, what magic and levels of magic, dominion and scales...all on the same screen? ok....

2. there are short cut keys to get rid of the troop movement arrows (if that is what you are talking about). Actually, there are short cut keys to take away a lot of the map icons. 1 = toggle off flags and forts; 2 = toggle armies; 3 = toggle dominion icons; 4. toggle resources/income; 5 = toggle temples/misc; 8 = toggle neighbors; 9 = toggle province names. It is pretty customizable as to what information and icons you can see at any time.

3. I can agree with, I think. There are still hang ups with the UI here and there....but it is better than it was.

4. Would be interesting....maybe you are looking for something that Stardock is doing with their story generator feature in their expansion for GalCiv2. Something about that though....it is interesting, but Brad Wardell (I am sure I have read) has said that if he didn't already commit to it, he would not be adding it. It takes a lot of time to do. I know I have read that in one of his dev reports on the game....Like I said, it would be interesting, but not sure if it is really viable for a dev team of 2 who works other jobs elsewhere.

Overall, the game is a big step up from Dom2 (and Dom2 was a step up from Dom1). There are things I wish that they did...like movement orders that would take more than one turn. BUT, I did notice last night, that there is a small icon that lets me know where my stealthy units (scouts being one of them) are located at. That really helps. I also wish that they would have added mouse roll-overs of some sort on the map screen when I put my mouse on one of the commander icons to let me see what he is holding, and what units are in his army. The RMG is something that I really like with the game....I love hand-drawn maps and all....but I also love the idea of random maps. To me, that really expands the single player games. It really didn't bother me too much with how long it takes to load it, though (honestly, it didn't).

One thing though about the game....the manual is really more a reference guide. It hearkens back to the day when the strategy guide was more included inside the manual. I remember my Civ2 manual from years ago...this manual reminds me so much of that one. The manual really does make the game easier to play and understand what is going on.

I am not saying that your complaints and gripes are not worth anything....but I think overall, IW did a great job with Dom3.

Chris

(Edit: At least you didn't complain about the price...which is the #1 problem ppl seem to have for some reason)

[Chazar]

...when I created my first random map with the demo, I was surprised by the long time it took (due to graphics problems, I can only run Dom3 on a 6 year old 700Mhz desktop). I immediately thought to myself: "Wow, they really spent some thought about how to generate usable maps - the result might really be usable!"

My Dom2 games with 4-6 players usually lasted 5-10 months. Most time was spent to adjust taxes and waiting for other players to submit their turn. I could not care less about turn processing times or random map creation. 3 hour turn-processing on turn 20 would be perfectly fine with me, since it is truly insignificant for the time scale of an MP game!

And although I am a follower of the MP-only faith, I also bet that many of those heretic SP-players would welcome one hour turn processing if the AI would act accordingly clever.

[Nerfix]

I just realized I haven't touched the tax during the time I've played Dom 3. At all. D: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[thejeff]

I agree about the maps. Even an SP game is likely to last many hours. Waiting a few minutes on start up is no big deal. If it's a concern about demonstrating it to new players, who might be turned off before getting hooked, start with an existing map.

I do think the animated map arrows are silly. Turning them off isn't an answer. You need to see where the troops are going, but there was no need to animate them.

More detail in battle reports would be nice. Being able to see at a glance which commanders died and whether you lost any good troops or just the arrow fodder.

And I do still touch taxes. Mostly because the minimum (50%) is too high. If a province has high unrest, say 50+, I want taxes to 0, to get it back up quickly.

[Ballbarian]

1) Long times for map generation and turn processing.



There are already existing random maps being provided by Gandalf, and alternative random map generators exist and another is in develpmont.

As for the turn generation, Dominions is a game with tremendous depth and with that depth comes complexity. I am actually impressed that Johan has managed to keep the turn processing as streamlined as he has.


1) Pretender generation. This should all be one screen, simple as that.



Eh. I could care less one way or the other on this one. Might be nice, but I don't mind it as it is now.


2) The map. I'm sorry, but the icons and such are still ugly. When it was ugly and minimalist, as in Pretenders II, that was cool -- it was what it was. But this intermediate level of ugly is atrocious.



Huh? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif


I don't need to see a sizable chunk of my screen flashing every time I click an area



Sounds to me like you are zoomed all the way in. (Either that or you are playing on a cell phone screen.) You can zoom out via page up/down keys or by the mouse wheel.


3) Menus in general -- get a dang GUI expert to go through and clean house, making all of the backgrounds get along with all of the sprites for the various units, et cetera. This isn't an enormous task, and it would vastly improve playability.



The developers have included the ability to mod the gui backgrounds to your own tastes and several users have already done so and made them available here on the forums.


4) Various report options. Let me know how many x's I've killed or gotten killed. That's called flava, and it makes games fun. Let me know how many people died in a siege or assault. If a commander was killed in a battle, let me know which one. Those suckers are expensive. If critters which cost more than 100 GP per were killed in a battle, let me know. Don't make me watch every battle to see if it was my Sorceror or my Water Mage who ate it, because I can't remember who all I committed. When I whack a Pretender, throw up a summary screen of the Pretender's accomplishments (units created, etc.) and a couple of paragraphs on how I threw my enemy down before me. If you're feeling clever, tune the paragraphs to what kind of unit killed it -- if a militiaman finished the job, emphasize ignomy. If it took Joe Stoic, Holder of the Sacred Flame of Badassery, emphasize the heroics. But something. Seriously.



The game is already loaded with "flava" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif
Overall I am satisfied with the reports that I get, but I will never complain if I get more verbose reports as long as they don't become spam. If I have an important commander in a battle then I watch it unless it is a sure win scenario. But if the report shows that a commander died then I watch the battle replay closely to see what the heck I did wrong. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


The game still has its overall amateur feel, which isn't a terrible thing; the idea that it is the creation of people who love gaming to give to other people who love gaming is fine. I feel the love. But you gotta take away the un-fun parts, or I can't get at the delicious nougatty center underneath.



I hope you can get past the things that are un-fun to you, because it is delicious. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



Finally, now that Dominions 3 is out, you should totally start selling Dominions 2 for some ridiculously low price on download. Think of it as the first hit being free.



This has been discussed in other threads, thus no comment.

When I first read your post, my first impression was to post a reply similar to Arralen's. I think it was something about the tone or choice of words that came across as "I won't buy this game because it does not have enough wizbangs ."

[MythicalMino]

Can someone explain to me why the animated arrows are such a problem? I must be missing something, because they do not really bother me at all.....

[Ballbarian]

I like them. Makes it much easier on a large map with many commanders on the move to see what is going on. Try to take away my arrows and you will draw back a nub. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Endoperez]

Can someone explain me why this post was met with such hostility? All of these changes, AFAIK, are something that we won't have, but what I at least would LIKE TO. I don't think these changes are small enough for a patch, that's true. Starting a new thread for the suggestions was perhaps a bit too much; in the "patch wish list" thread this post was just one amongst many. Many suggestions have been seen before. "Better GUI" or "Improved GUI" are very common, better battle reports as well, and everything in this post was very precisely said. It's much easier to go to the game, check if his point is true and perhaps look for a way to improve than to do it from "GUI could be improved" post. What's wrong with you guys? Really?

[Nerfix]

I think it was kimmitt's, hmmm, how do you say it, way of presenting the things. And suggesting price drop and not knowing the name of the previous game of the serious will gather a wee bit of agro around here. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Cainehill]

Frankly, I agree with some of what the guy says. Not map generation - that should happen rarely enough that even for SP it should be acceptable (although it seems that more maps shiped for Dom2, and it would have been nice if the _fixed_ versions of the old maps had shipped).

But turn processing : yes, it's okay for MP games, at least for non-blitz games. But if the turn processing gets longer and longer as games go on (and more battles take place with larger armies, etc), the SP game may have yet another nail in its coffin.

Frankly, I'm not sure _why_ it processes turns so much more slowly now - I don't see Dom3 doing much more than Dom2 did in going from turn to turn, except possibly for performing that @#$* aging check. Wouldn't be surprised if updating the graphics isn't the problem : I worked on some map processing software that took as much as 20 minutes to perform one operation, on a multi-processor minicomputer. Discovered that optimizing how the progress bar was drawn allowed me to knock it down to less than a minute, as it was recalculating and redrawing the bar even if the percentage of progress hadn't changed. Hundreds of times a second, it was redrawing an identical progress bar. Looking at the flickering display during turn processing, I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't the same thing. (And the smooth fade-in when viewing battles also gets irritating and time consuming, since there seems to be no way to skip it.)

Then the battle reports : for two years, players have been asking for at least the same battle report on sieges that we get on other battles. No good excuse for the lack of proper reports on them. And people have asked for more detailed reports, since #1, finding out _which_ 5 commanders out of 24 is tiresome yet sometimes vital. #2, finding out which troops died, same issue : it adds a layer of tedium and irritation to the game, since it's often difficult to even remember what troops exactly went into the battle, so looking at what remains isn't always helpful.

And as Endoperez says : the hostility of at least one response seems unwarranted. Maybe he's catching some blowback from the real idiots who were *****ing about the game, but still....

[Unwise]

It was met by hostility because although it theoretically offered some constructive criticism (I too would love to see something like the GalCiv "Epic Generator" to post turn results on a web site), his overall tone was that of a spoiled brat who demands that the game conform to his needs or else he will (*gasp*) Take His Business Elsewhere.

If looked at point-by-point, none of the requests is unreasonable, nor is his tone massively objectionable if looked at dispassionately. But to people who surf this forum because (a) they love the game, (b) they respect a two-man company that can create something with such depth as a part-time hobby, and (c) already have a great deal of time invested in the product, the tone rankles.

It's like you just bought a new 2006 Mustang Convertible, and you absolutely adore it. Then some stranger comes up to you on the street and says "I was going to get one of those, but the chassis is the same as the 2000, the interior is cheap-looking and the manual shift is tough to get used to. Until Ford fixes these problems, I'm not buying one."

None of the points are false, but by making them, the stranger implies (whether by design or not) that you have made a grave error by buying the product. Moreover, you get the impression that he is boasting that he is far more intelligent than you are because he can see the faults for the deal-breakers that they are while you are blind to them due to some (possibly genetic) defect.

[upstreamedge]

I actually really like his idea about more interesting battle reports. I think that would get tiresome for hardcore players, but now I think I will start posting how I kicked *** in the multi I am playing on the forum! I would like to know which of my commanders died, but I like watching battles, and my commanders don't die much. I think it is really good that the turns take a long time to load because I do my homework while the turns are loading http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif And who cares about how long it takes for a random map to generate? I mean I can generate a medium map in under a min so I see no problem

[dirtywick]

There are some good points there, the map generator is really slow even on my computer. The battle reports could use some work as well in my opinion. Turn generation isn't too bad, maybe you're not sending that many rockets http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

About the map, zooming out makes life easier.

[Agrajag]

kimmitt said:
I'm running a machine which is more than capable of guiding fifty rockets to the moon simultaneously.


That doesn't say much, consider the computers on the earlier spacecrafts.


Now, without reading all of the thread (I'm a bit busy on time right now, sorry :\)

1) I don't know what kind of CPU you have, but hosting and map generation both run fine on my computer.
You haven't even told us what kind of CPU you have.

2) I like it the way it is, but I can see how it could be more comfortable for some if it was in one screen.

3) Yeah, a coupld of guys making the game as a hobby are going to get a proffesional to do their work, that sounds like a bright idea http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

4) Not high on my priorities, but I agree that it could be cool.

[JaydedOne]

Unwise, you nailed it in one. A very thoughtful, and accurate I think, analysis of the situation.

[JaydedOne]

For what it's worth, turn processing for massive games in single-player is majorly off-putting and really has me at a point where I refuse to play the single-player game beyond, say, 8-10 players. It's still long processing at that point, but if I'm, say, also playing my PS2 and/or working from home, I can use most of the processing time to do other things. However, it does keep me from completely immersing myself in the game the way I'd like to and really takes away the fun, chaotic elements of a full 17-18 player map.

If there's any way to further streamline/optimize turn processing, that'd be a major wish for me in a patch downt he line.

[Daynarr]

Unwise said:
It was met by hostility because although it theoretically offered some constructive criticism (I too would love to see something like the GalCiv "Epic Generator" to post turn results on a web site), his overall tone was that of a spoiled brat who demands that the game conform to his needs or else he will (*gasp*) Take His Business Elsewhere.

If looked at point-by-point, none of the requests is unreasonable, nor is his tone massively objectionable if looked at dispassionately. But to people who surf this forum because (a) they love the game, (b) they respect a two-man company that can create something with such depth as a part-time hobby, and (c) already have a great deal of time invested in the product, the tone rankles.

It's like you just bought a new 2006 Mustang Convertible, and you absolutely adore it. Then some stranger comes up to you on the street and says "I was going to get one of those, but the chassis is the same as the 2000, the interior is cheap-looking and the manual shift is tough to get used to. Until Ford fixes these problems, I'm not buying one."

None of the points are false, but by making them, the stranger implies (whether by design or not) that you have made a grave error by buying the product. Moreover, you get the impression that he is boasting that he is far more intelligent than you are because he can see the faults for the deal-breakers that they are while you are blind to them due to some (possibly genetic) defect.



I think I agree with everything Unwise said here. However, it only points to reason for such reactions but none of this is actually excuse for it. First of, think about it; by responding like some of you guys have you actually have given wrong impression of this forum, people who play this game and game itself. We are not a bunch of angry adolescents who snap on anything we don't like. This forum is not like that. Even if original poster came out a bit blunt with his post, take a deep breath, calm down and then kindly point to posters mistake. Just by doing that you will show him that this game has great community and great community is a result of great game. By doing what you did, you did exactly the opposite.

Need I mention that there are lots of people who visit these forums but don't post here? Many potentional customers and fellow gamers who could add greatly to this community? Many of them may change their minds and leave when they see posts like you can see here.

A little self control and kind words can go a long way. Let’s keep forums civil and friendly place. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Gandalf Parker]

Personally I dont want some of those things fixed. Everything has its pros and cons.

Faster map generation leads to fuller map directory which leads to a need for the game to offer file cleanup without any chance of "oops" which leads to less features while thats getting added.

Usually "fixing" the GUI creates a game that wont share window space with other programs. That means I cant check my work screens.

Faster turn processing would get me in trouble. Im a solo player and I can see the desire but PLEASE dont speed it up. That slowness is a major feature for me. It makes sure I check the work screens, feed the pets, check on the kids, crap, and even notice that its dark and Im tired and should go to bed now before my wife kills me.

[Arralen]

Endoperez said:
Can someone explain me why this post was met with such hostility?


Because he posted THREE times on the forum - 1st some points on the Dom3 Wishlist in the Dom2 forum (28/06/05) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB74&Number=362307&Forum= ,All_Forums&Words=&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=3042 59&Search=true&where=&Name=7150&daterange=&newerva l=&newertype=&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#Post3 62307).

Then a post into the Dom3 patch improvements thread ... (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=dom3&Number=458718&Forum=, All_Forums&Words=&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=45286 6&Search=true&where=&Name=7150&daterange=&newerval =&newertype=&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#Post45 8718).. and finally, 8 minutes lates, posting the very same text to this new thread: Stating that he wouldn't buy the game unless his wishlist (the one from the Dom2 forum) is fullfilled.

It's just too annoying - I really don't feel like making the effort to show that
A) some of his wishes are already in the game in some way (but he didn't notice, or maybe couldn't because he only played the demo)
B) a good part of his suggestions simply do not fit into Dominions and that the devs deliberatly decided not to handle things like he likes to see it and finally
C) that some of these 'issues' simply are none.

If he had asked why those suggestion are not in the game. Or what the other players think 'bout them. Or taken part in any discussion here...
But posting a wishlist and coming back >1 year later to issue 'extortionary' (is that the word?) statements ... trollish, at least IMNSHO ...

[dirtywick]

Gandalf Parker said:
should go to bed now before my wife kills me.



Now that's a good point http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Endoperez]

Oh, and only noticed two posts. That's a bit too much, and a third does give a slight "I'm more important than you" feeling. Still no reason to lash out.

[Boron]

JaydedOne said:
For what it's worth, turn processing for massive games in single-player is majorly off-putting and really has me at a point where I refuse to play the single-player game beyond, say, 8-10 players. It's still long processing at that point, but if I'm, say, also playing my PS2 and/or working from home, I can use most of the processing time to do other things. However, it does keep me from completely immersing myself in the game the way I'd like to and really takes away the fun, chaotic elements of a full 17-18 player map.

If there's any way to further streamline/optimize turn processing, that'd be a major wish for me in a patch downt he line.


Yeah the turn generating times are long, but i love big games in SP. Usually i play the full era on glory of gods mp version, so 18-20 AIs. I usually take impossible or mighty AIs.
After turn 40 it takes several minutes for the turn to generate. But because Dom3 runs in window mode this doesn't bother me much, i always do something else then like reading forums and posting or playing another game meanwhile.

I gues that the turn time cannot be speed up much more because the AI builds huge armies and thus it takes a while to calculate the 50+ battles with 100-500 troop armies which occur past turn 40 on a huge map nearly every turn.
So i think the large AI armies cause that slowdown.
But the large AI armies are fun for sp, so the turn times are just a necessary evil probably.

[Foodstamp]

Someone dropped the post count bomb. I got news for ya, post count does not mean anything. I have been lurking these boards forever. Forever, meaning literally for the past 5 years or longer since I found the site googling for a TBS engine or something.

I watched all you guys post through the entire life cycle of dominions 2 without making a post. My point is, post count means nothing.

This guy has some good points, and some bad points IMO...

1) I have mixed emotions about the RMG. I have written an RMG before and I am amazed at how organic illwinter's implementation is. The initial map generation time does not bother me because I know that I am going to be rewarded with a nice long game.

Pretender design on one screen, excellent idea considering you use a set amount of points to make the pretender. Would save a small bit of hastle.

Turn generation is just too slow on this game. It should not take as long as it does. I find myself spending more time surfing the net than making my moves. Not such a big deal for MP players I imagine, but I am primarily a single player guy and it is annoying. The only fix being to play smaller maps with less AI players, which is a let down.

2) This game keeps a team of 2 people, it is a bit unrealistic to ask for state of the art graphics using 3dstudio max or maya ffs. That being said, the castles atleast could be fixed, they are ugly and take up way too much space on the map, covering the nation flag normally.

3) Yeah, a two man company can afford to "pay" a GUI expert to come "clean house" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

4)Your turn report ideas sound good for the most part, most importantly give me a battle report from a storm the castle event or from "so and so was the victim of an assassination attempt."

5)Selling dominions 2 cheaper. I find it weird also that this game series does not seem to follow the laws of economics, atleast from the consumer's perspective. From our side of the field it does seem like some poor business choices have been made. That being said, we as consumers cannot say that with 100% certainty without knowing the full scope of production costs, and other various aspects that go into publishing the game. (Even with those things at an extreme, it is probably still a business flaw because the publisher has not found a way to optimize that process over the years, or found a better cheaper way to implement it).

[Sindai]

Foodstamp said:
Someone dropped the post count bomb. I got news for ya, post count does not mean anything. I have been lurking these boards forever. Forever, meaning literally for the past 5 years or longer since I found the site googling for a TBS engine or something.

I watched all you guys post through the entire life cycle of dominions 2 without making a post. My point is, post count means nothing.


It's a good thing he also explored the content of the three posts or this would be a valid criticism.

I do agree with him about the UI (obviously hiring somebody else would be impractical, but there's plenty of books on UI design out there) and battle reports, plus the inexplicable un-fixedness of a handful of things like siege battle reports.

[curtadams]

Most of the changes would be nice ... but DEAL BREAKERS? Having to wait a few minutes to start a game that will last hours or days? Having to go through, what, four screens to generate a pretender? Seeing an arrow on the map? This is deal breaking? What would serious problems, like gruesome bugs or obvious dominating strategies, merit? Bomb threats to the developers?

[curtadams]

Cainehill said:
But turn processing : yes, it's okay for MP games, at least for non-blitz games. But if the turn processing gets longer and longer as games go on (and more battles take place with larger armies, etc), the SP game may have yet another nail in its coffin.

Frankly, I'm not sure _why_ it processes turns so much more slowly now - I don't see Dom3 doing much more than Dom2 did in going from turn to turn



Probably the spellcasting AI. Man, what an improvement! Casters pitch at the front row of the enemy army - until yours gets close and then they fire one row back. And they sometimes surprise me with spells I wouldn't think useful - but they are. Missle fire has improved, too. That kind of AI takes time and I'm not surprised that battles with a dozen spellcasters and a hundred archers can take, gosh, several seconds.

[DominionsFan]

Lads, some old users here should moderate themselves. I find some replies a bit too harsh. I think that there is a more intelligent way to discuss in this thread.

[kimmitt]

Yeah, my tone was a bit grumpy; I was disappointed by the demo for Dom3.

I agree that the map generation is probably not a big deal; it just shocked me with the 3 minutes it took to do so. But the turn processing time means that I just can't justify buying the game to myself. I spent more time watching turns process than playing them, and this on the first few turns of a 5-person game in the demo.

My machine's a 2 GHz with 768 MB of RAM; my graphics aren't the best, but my problem isn't with graphics processing.

Anyways, I played the heck out of Dom2 and probably will continue to do so. I'm even enamoured of the "no save" aspect. I just can't justify shelling out for (or recommending to friends) a game that I won't end up playing due to the fact that I won't want to wait for turns to process. I figure Ilwinter deserves to know that.

[Nerfix]

I don't have any notable problems with turn processing, and when I get slow turn it's mostly thanks to having Ermor and Dreamlands R'lyeh on the same game.

Might be that I lived through Dom I turn processing speed where it could slow to the point the comp hang...

[WraithLord]

DominionsFan said:
Lads, some old users here should moderate themselves. I find some replies a bit too harsh. I think that there is a more intelligent way to discuss in this thread.


Well, I tend to agree, but as for myself I can attest that I felt somewhat offended by the general tone of his criticism. I think Unwise has analyzed it quite accurately. And again, I do agree its important to be patient and civil especially to new ppl on these forums.

Also, I really do like dominions the way it is and not being another warcraft clone.

[MythicalMino]

I remember a high profile game some years back....

This game had horrendous turn processing times. In fact, as far as I know, it was never fixed. And this game was made by a big company.

Guess which one it was?

Civ3. That game was so bad at turn processing, after each turn, I nearly had to reboot the pc due to memory leaks. I know when I stopped playing it a year or so later, it was still doing that....

So Dom3 really doesn't bother me at all....

[Foodstamp]

kimmitt said:
Yeah, my tone was a bit grumpy; I was disappointed by the demo for Dom3.

I agree that the map generation is probably not a big deal; it just shocked me with the 3 minutes it took to do so. But the turn processing time means that I just can't justify buying the game to myself. I spent more time watching turns process than playing them, and this on the first few turns of a 5-person game in the demo.

My machine's a 2 GHz with 768 MB of RAM; my graphics aren't the best, but my problem isn't with graphics processing.

Anyways, I played the heck out of Dom2 and probably will continue to do so. I'm even enamoured of the "no save" aspect. I just can't justify shelling out for (or recommending to friends) a game that I won't end up playing due to the fact that I won't want to wait for turns to process. I figure Ilwinter deserves to know that.



There is something else going on here. If it is taking a while for a 5 player game to process there is something wrong not related to the game. My system is a little better than yours, but not too much better to where I should get drastically superior turn load times, but I do.

Now in games with medium+ maps, 15+ AI players, I get anywhere from 2-5 minute load times which are frustrating.

@curtadams: I think even you would agree that "several second" turn load times is a bit of a stretch for the normal single player game.

[Unwise]

My system is a little better than yours, but not too much better to where I should get drastically superior turn load times, but I do.



Not necessarily. A 2GHz Intel (especially if it's a Celeron) might be struggling to process all the battles on even a modest map. There is a lot of data being crunched.

On the "Glory of Gods" map (a big one) with all Early Era races represented, I have seen processing times of about a minute and a half and I am running a fairly beefy rig.

[Foodstamp]

Yes, but a 5 player map in the demo? I think there is something else going on with his system.

[Ozymandias]

Cross posting the same article three times stinks of troll. It is a natural that many readers would want to flame kimmett just on that ground. I prefer to starve trolls, but here I am posting anyway.

[Archonsod]

kimmitt said:
1) Long times for map generation



To be honest, I can live with that. At least you only need to do it once at the start of the game.My only complaint regarding the map generation is the lack of options. Not that the maps it usually generates are bad, but it would be nice to be able to generate a land only map, or lower the ratio of mountains to plains and similar.


The same thing applies to the turn processing.



That's probably your system I think. I'm looking at less than a minute to process 10+ player games, and this isn't exactly a fast machine.


1) Pretender generation. This should all be one screen, simple as that.



Personal preference. I like the different screens. Besides, I'm not sure how you could fit all of the magic paths plus the dominion setup and the pretender choices onto one screen.


2) The map.



Again, your preference. I happen to like the map and the little arrow.


3) Menus in general



Haven't seen any problems there?


4) Various report options. Let me know how many x's I've killed or gotten killed.



Not something I would use, but it shouldn't be too hard to track. Would be interesting fluff for commanders and the like though - see just how many foes your hero has personally dispatched and the like.


Let me know how many people died in a siege or assault.



Agree there.


If a commander was killed in a battle, let me know which one.



I can see how this might be useful. Thing is, if it's a battle I didn't intend to view in which he was killed, I'm not likely to be expecting a commander to die, so I'll end up watching it anyway just to see how some pathetic independents or similar managed to take out one of my hero's.

[alexti]

kimmitt said:
But the turn processing time means that I just can't justify buying the game to myself. I spent more time watching turns process than playing them, and this on the first few turns of a 5-person game in the demo.

My machine's a 2 GHz with 768 MB of RAM; my graphics aren't the best, but my problem isn't with graphics processing.



It doesn't sound right. I thought you were complaining about sluggish turn processing on turn 80 on a huge map. I've marginally better computer and turn processing in similar setup takes maybe 1-3 seconds...

[Ballbarian]

My only complaint regarding the map generation is the lack of options. Not that the maps it usually generates are bad, but it would be nice to be able to generate a land only map, or lower the ratio of mountains to plains and similar.



You already can! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
From the main menu, select 'Game Tools', then select 'Random Map Creator'. From there you can set map:
width/height
province count
sea%
mountain%
ruggedness
rivers(not pretty)
impassable mountains
and finally antialiasing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Archonsod]

Heh, one of these days I'll get around to actually reading the manual...

[Foodstamp]

Don't feel bad at all! I didn't know you could customize the RMG either until someone pointed it out to me here.

[Daynarr]

Archonsod said:
Heh, one of these days I'll get around to actually reading the manual...



Murphy's Law:

- When all else fails, read the instructions.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[thejeff]

alexti said:

kimmitt said:
But the turn processing time means that I just can't justify buying the game to myself. I spent more time watching turns process than playing them, and this on the first few turns of a 5-person game in the demo.

My machine's a 2 GHz with 768 MB of RAM; my graphics aren't the best, but my problem isn't with graphics processing.



It doesn't sound right. I thought you were complaining about sluggish turn processing on turn 80 on a huge map. I've marginally better computer and turn processing in similar setup takes maybe 1-3 seconds...



How long are those turns taking? I've never seen it take longer to process than to play. Even when it's taking 10-15 minutes on late turns on a huge map, I'm taking hours to set up the turn.

My system's around the same, 1.8G Athlon, but 1G of Ram, which makes me wonder if the memory is the difference. If you're hitting the swap file, that can make a huge difference in speed. Check your memory usage while it's processing.

[PDF]

kimmitt said:
Yeah, my tone was a bit grumpy; I was disappointed by the demo for Dom3.

I agree that the map generation is probably not a big deal; it just shocked me with the 3 minutes it took to do so. But the turn processing time means that I just can't justify buying the game to myself. I spent more time watching turns process than playing them, and this on the first few turns of a 5-person game in the demo.

My machine's a 2 GHz with 768 MB of RAM; my graphics aren't the best, but my problem isn't with graphics processing.

Anyways, I played the heck out of Dom2 and probably will continue to do so. I'm even enamoured of the "no save" aspect. I just can't justify shelling out for (or recommending to friends) a game that I won't end up playing due to the fact that I won't want to wait for turns to process. I figure Ilwinter deserves to know that.



kimmuit,
What the heck do you expect when you state "I won't want to wait for turns to process" ?? /threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif It's like my 6-old son who claims he doesn't like soup ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif
So IW ought to know they'd better make an instantaneous turn process (good luck to them!) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif, but you that you seem to behave like a spoiled brat ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

[Foodstamp]

I think his point is the turn waits are excessive. Which in the scenario he described they should not be. But they truly are a bit too long with larger games imo.

[MythicalMino]

but if you figure the amount of information that the game processes each turn....and not just turn orders....what about the battles. I noticed that it processes the battles during the turn (on the turn processing screen, it says what it is processing).

Go back to Civ. Civ has a very long turn processing time...and doesn't have half the amount of detail that Dom (take any version, but especially Dom3) does.

I really do not think the turn processing is too bad, considering the amount of detail the game has to trudge through every turn. Even with 5 AI's, once they get into battles, and then you join in....it will take a while. This game simulates attack, defense, weapon damage, weapon length, repel, magic (everything in magic in just that one word)....really, there is a WHOLE lot that the game processes.

To be honest, I am shocked that the game doesn't take longer to process the turns.

[curtadams]

An interesting idea for SP would be to have the computer pre-compute the turns with background threads. First plan the AI turns. Then, once that's done, calculate all the battles as the player sets them up. Because the turn calc time is small compared to the playing time it should be pretty easy to stuff most of the work into the background from a time viewpoint (the programming, admittedly, isn't so easy).

[Gandalf Parker]

Background processing would be difficult for a game that is built on PbEM. Turn processing is often done on a different machine than the person is playing on.

MODERATOR WARNING
Discuss the SUBJECT and not each other!
Otherwise you endanger this thread.

[Foodstamp]

curtadams said:
An interesting idea for SP would be to have the computer pre-compute the turns with background threads. First plan the AI turns. Then, once that's done, calculate all the battles as the player sets them up. Because the turn calc time is small compared to the playing time it should be pretty easy to stuff most of the work into the background from a time viewpoint (the programming, admittedly, isn't so easy).



Actually this is not a bad idea. It is usually not a good idea to put something like the AI in a seperate thread, but in a TBS it should work fine. I am not sure how cpu intensive playing the background music is, but I think it would be a good candidate to receive it's own thread as well since it only changes during combat it seems..

Using a method like you describe, all that would have to processed between turns is the battles. You could even process most of the battles before the end of the turn as well, and reprocess the battles that include the human player/players during the space between turns.

[Lasu]

curtadams said:
An interesting idea for SP would be to have the computer pre-compute the turns with background threads. First plan the AI turns. Then, once that's done, calculate all the battles as the player sets them up. Because the turn calc time is small compared to the playing time it should be pretty easy to stuff most of the work into the background from a time viewpoint (the programming, admittedly, isn't so easy).


Now there's an excellent idea (though it indeed might be a bit hard to program). As for the PbEM issues, perhaps it could be done the old way in PbEM games (since the turns last so long anyway)? Of course, if the majority of people play PbEM, it might not be worthwhile to spend too much time on this matter (though I doubt that is the case http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif)

[Sindai]

Gandalf Parker said:
Background processing would be difficult for a game that is built on PbEM. Turn processing is often done on a different machine than the person is playing on.


Well, it's not an issue in MP in the first place. He was proposing the change specifically for SP.

But I bet it wouldn't help very much in SP anyway. GalCiv 1 and 2 are suited for background processing because most of the work is in the AI and it's igo-yougo, so it can "think" during the player's turn. Dom3 is wego and most of the turn processing seems to be spent in battles, which can't be calculated until you know whether or not the player's orders will disrupt or change them in some way, so it's very ill-suited to background processing.

[thejeff]

Not so much that the majority of games are multiplayer, but that the majority of the developer's interest is.

This would require a very different model for turn processing and probably use up a lot of memory, since so many things would have to be done conditionally.

About the only thing that could be done ahead of time is planning the AI orders. Once mages start casting spells, pretty much anything may change based on the results of ritual attack spells, new globals etc. Everything preprocessed would have to be held in memory waiting it's turn to actually happen. I doubt you'd get much time savings in any moderately complicated game, which is where you'd want it.
Nor would it be a simple programming task.

[PhilD]

curtadams said:
An interesting idea for SP would be to have the computer pre-compute the turns with background threads. First plan the AI turns. Then, once that's done, calculate all the battles as the player sets them up. Because the turn calc time is small compared to the playing time it should be pretty easy to stuff most of the work into the background from a time viewpoint (the programming, admittedly, isn't so easy).



Yeah, I think making this kind of change would be a major reworking of the code - and from what I've understood, the skills in the mammoth "Illwinter development team" may not be that specialized in multithreading an AI (time to get Brad Wardell on the team http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

[curtadams]

A couple of comments -

Yes, I know the programming is complex. A plan - which doesn't require changing the basic model - is for "turn end" procressing to go in the background. The catch would be allowing changes to turn orders - the background process would have to figure out what to back out and redo for each change. Because of "wego" AI choices could be precomputed as is but that seems a relatively trivial amount of time. A crude start would be to precompute and cache each possible battle and redo if anything would change the battle setup. When the background thread finishes, it jumps back to the beginning and reruns the whole turn (if the player has changed anything), consulting its cache of prerun battles. In the most complicated games I suspect there's a lot of AI-AI interaction which would not be affected by most player action - so the turn processing would shorten dramatically. If the player's last action is to pitch a global, oh well, that turn may last a while.

Obviously the change is only relevant and possible for SP.

[Lasu]

Exactly.

[Taqwus]

Er, "every possible battle" would be insanely numerous.

Think about 800 units neighboring 800 units. *Any combination* of those 1600 units could be involved... AND summons and fliers, AND the gems could be changed, AND commanders may or may not have been killed through earlier spells...

[Gandalf Parker]

I think that background processing is fantastic. Many games use it. But I dont think it will work here. Personally I feel it would be moving in the wrong direction.

In a way, we are background processing. The game allows you to do your turns and send them to a server. The server processes everyones turns and sends them back. This allows for larger maps, larger armies, more nations, more events. I would rather see it move farther in that direction. Make MORE use of basically unlimited processing time. Id be fine even it took turn processing up to an hour or more.

And thats with me bing a solo player. I easily play Dom games where doing one turn a day is fine with me. Taking months to finish a game is fine with me. It allows me to do other things and makes dominions the game that lasts forever on my machine. Changing it into something that plays faster might be ok but its not anything I will push too hard for.

[NTJedi]

kimmitt said:
Yeah, my tone was a bit grumpy; I was disappointed by the demo for Dom3.

I agree that the map generation is probably not a big deal; it just shocked me with the 3 minutes it took to do so. But the turn processing time means that I just can't justify buying the game to myself. I spent more time watching turns process than playing them, and this on the first few turns of a 5-person game in the demo.

My machine's a 2 GHz with 768 MB of RAM; my graphics aren't the best, but my problem isn't with graphics processing.


Well it sounds like there's something wrong with your system. The first few turns on a very similar system my brother owns typically takes about a dozen seconds to process the early game stage turns and this is with 500+ provinces and 10+ AI opponents.
The more complex a game becomes the longer it will take to process a turn within a TBS game. Honestly the issue is definitely your system running the game slow.


kimmitt said:
Anyways, I played the heck out of Dom2 and probably will continue to do so. I'm even enamoured of the "no save" aspect. I just can't justify shelling out for (or recommending to friends) a game that I won't end up playing due to the fact that I won't want to wait for turns to process. I figure Ilwinter deserves to know that.


Dominions_3 is vastly more complex than 99% of the TBS games which currently exist. I suggest you try fixing your system since that's the main issue. I figure you deserve to know that.

[curtadams]

Taqwus said:
Er, "every possible battle" would be insanely numerous.

Think about 800 units neighboring 800 units. *Any combination* of those 1600 units could be involved... AND summons and fliers, AND the gems could be changed, AND commanders may or may not have been killed through earlier spells...



Every possible battle that gets set up that turn by the AI orders and the current state of the player's orders. No, not the factorial abstract possibilities.

[Cainehill]

NTJedi said:

kimmitt said:
My machine's a 2 GHz with 768 MB of RAM; my graphics aren't the best, but my problem isn't with graphics processing.


Well it sounds like there's something wrong with your system. The first few turns on a very similar system my brother owns typically takes about a dozen seconds to process the early game stage turns and this is with 500+ provinces and 10+ AI opponents.




Which again leads me to suspect that Illwinter needs to look at filtering how often they update the graphics during turn processing. The graphics queue can wind up taking more time (and CPU time) than the actual processing - I looked at something by a professional colleague of mine (he'd been doing graphics programming for 15+ years, X-Windows for 5+), and in less than half a day (counting debugging & profiling) had the program doing in 30 seconds what used to take 15-25 minutes. All because of the way he implemented a visual progress bar.

On my machine (64-bit Athlon, 3500+ Mhz, 2 gigs ram), turn 2 for a 6 player game with 45 provinces takes two seconds. A turn for year 5 of another game takes 32 seconds. I'm guessing that my Radeon 800GT video card is slowing things down a bit, but not nearly as much as a slower card (possibly with worse OpenGL drivers) would do.

IMO, 2 seconds to process turn 2 with 5 normal AIs and 45 provinces is excessive. Not that I can't live with 2 seconds - it's the way the turns keep taking longer and longer, and _either_ it's the graphical status chewing up the time, or (my favorite gripe/peeve) calculating the age on each troop (including independent troops) and its fleas is.

Similarly, getting to view battles takes way too long now - 7 seconds for the black screen to go away, province fades in, fades to battlefield, etc. Since there doesn't seem to be any way to skip the graphical fade in, that's 7 seconds wasted _every_ battle, or worse - multiple viewings of the same battle waste 7 seconds every viewing.

And since you can't pause the battle until _after_ that fade-in is complete, even trying to watch a scout scripted to retreat to spy out indy strength can take 2 or 3 viewings. *mutter*

[kimmitt]

Cainehill's got it on both issues; I cranked down my graphics settings, and turn processing massively improved. They shouldn't be related. My understanding is that this is the sort of thing which is commonly fixed in patches; optimization issues often don't come out in playtesting.

Certainly, Civ4 was unplayable on most machines before its patches. I'm hoping Dom3 follows the same pattern -- slow on release, followed by patches which take advantage of player notation of bottlenecks.

[Daynarr]

Ok, so if high graphical setting caused slow turn process time then it needs to be reported in bug forum. It may not be noticed in this thread by devs.

[Daynarr]

Cainehill said:
Similarly, getting to view battles takes way too long now - 7 seconds for the black screen to go away, province fades in, fades to battlefield, etc. Since there doesn't seem to be any way to skip the graphical fade in, that's 7 seconds wasted _every_ battle, or worse - multiple viewings of the same battle waste 7 seconds every viewing.




Press ESCAPE to skip fade in.

[Graeme Dice]

Cainehill said:
Since there doesn't seem to be any way to skip the graphical fade in, that's 7 seconds wasted _every_ battle, or worse - multiple viewings of the same battle waste 7 seconds every viewing.



You can press escape while it's fading in.

[Gandalf Parker]

Its also in the options?
At least its in the switches. I have music, fades, animated backgrounds all turned off on the icon that I click to go into Dom3. And on the special icons I have to take me directly into blitz games I also include switches for no sound effects and fast graphics.

Here is part of the switches list....

-w --window Run Dominions 3 in a window
-u --fullscreen Use the entire screen
--bitplanes X Try to use a color depth of X bits per pixel
--zbuffer X Try to use a depth buffer of X bits per pixel (default=16)
-T --textonly Use this with --tcpserver to get graphicless server
--gamma X Set gamma function (brightness) 0.1 - 5.0 (default=1.0)
--opacity X Set gui opacity 0 - 100
-r --res X Y Set screen resolution / window size (default=800 600)
--animback Use animated backgrounds
-a --noanimback Don't use animated backgrounds
--fade Use fade effects
-f --nofade No fade effects
--nopopups No helpful popups
--fps X Aim for this nbr of frames per second (default=20)
--maxfps X Maximum nbr of frames per second (default=50)
--filtering X Quality of OpenGL filtering 0-3 (default=2)
--maxtexsize X Max texture size in pixels 32-4096 (default=unlimited)
--treequal X Tree quality 1-5 (default=3)
--texqual X Texture quality 1-5 (default=3)
--nolightfx No light effects in battles
--partamount X Max nbr of particles 0-8 (0=none, 4=default, 8=max)
--nograss Don't draw the grass
--noarcade Don't draw floating damage numbers
--noglext Don't use any OpenGL extensions
--vsync Enable vsync
-V --novsync Disable vsync
--renderpath X Use different optimizations 0-1 (0=good for low mem cards)
-x --fastgrx Faster graphics (use 3 times for best performance (-xxx))
-p --perftest Run a performance test and exit
******* Audio Options *******
-s --nosound No sound effects or music
-m --nomusic No music

Turning off any features that you dont want is bound to improve the results. I know that Windows people arent used to looking at the command switches but it is a linux-created game so I tend to look there first.

[Cainehill]

Gandalf Parker said:
Its also in the options?
At least its in the switches.

--fade Use fade effects
-f --nofade No fade effects

... I know that Windows people arent used to looking at the command switches but it is a linux-created game so I tend to look there first.



As a *nix and Windoze programmer, I am used to looking at the command line switches. Unfortunately, I'm also used to those switches not doing anything - which is exactly what "-f", "--nofade", "-nofade", and "-f --nofade" all do, at least on the Windoze version.

Similarly, hitting "Esc" is still a PITA, because on Windoze it doesn't accept the keypress until _after_ it's already zooming / fading in : during the 1.5 - 2 seconds of blackscreen, Escape does nothing.