Dom III sitll gets some parental attention

[WraithLord]

From progress page:

4th january 2010
* Fixed crash during turn generation.
* Eliminated nations are now also shown in the graphs.

Dom III is content but more loving couldn't hurt :)

[Sombre]

Aww :]

I quite like that second point too. Nice idea!

[rdonj]

Oh cool, JK found my bug already :D I'm really curious as to what exactly was causing the problem, because that was a very non-standard dominions crash. Oh well, better keep that game around and see if it works post-patch.

Eliminated nations still being shown on the graphs is an excellent change. Helps keep the history of the game alive.



Thanks JK!

[Gandalf Parker]

Wow thats fantastic.
And after all my work to write scripts maintaining the games history for my AI tests. :(
Im glad I didnt put alot of time into jpg graphs.

But Id much rather have it this way. Thanks Johan.

[Edi]

I've missed the eliminated nations graphs ever since Dom2. Thank you, Johan! :D

[Fantomen]

I'll chip in here to wish for my most wanted fix: Darkness toggled properly in caves and cave cities.

Edit: and yeah, graph for dead nations is super great!

[Sombre]

I'll chip in here to wish for my most wanted fix: Darkness toggled properly in caves and cave cities.

Edit: and yeah, graph for dead nations is super great!

I think that's more or less everyone's most wanted fix.

I'd certainly love it.

[Gandalf Parker]

Everyone? Wow, I must have missed those chats. That wasnt even on my top 10. I guess I should consider it for abit.

[Sombre]

Yes I clearly meant literally everyone. That's the only possible explanation. And 'more or less' means exactly. And 'I think' means objectively verified fact.

[Gandalf Parker]

Sorry, didnt mean to make it seem personal. I just was surprised it was considered so highly.

The next Dom2 missing thing Id like to see returned is scenarios.

[LDiCesare]

Great. Showing graphs for dead nations is a big plus indeed.

[Foodstamp]

This forum gone gangsta!

[pyg]

I know this isn't the place, but I want to add weight to the idea that caves not being dark is broken.

[Squirrelloid]

As long as we're getting some love from the devs, can we please have a message interface that lets us review and alter sent messages? The lack of this feature is really starting to annoy me.

[Sombre]

I think that's pretty unlikely to be added.

I don't think there have been any GUI changes since release have there?

[Illuminated One]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42443&highlight=amnesia

[Gandalf Parker]

Particularly since this would be another "already in there but not as friendly as Id like" requests. You can delete ALL your messages and start over. And you can restart your turn from scratch. So viewing/editing messages would be a fair amount of adding for what is more improvment in the gui than it is a major problem fix.

[thejeff]

That's a pretty big "Not as friendly as I'd like."

Equivalent to saying all the functionality of a word processor is "already in there but not as friendly as Id like" in a typewriter since you can always throw away the sheet of paper and start again.

[Squirrelloid]

Particularly since this would be another "already in there but not as friendly as Id like" requests. You can delete ALL your messages and start over. And you can restart your turn from scratch. So viewing/editing messages would be a fair amount of adding for what is more improvment in the gui than it is a major problem fix.

... That does not provide the same functionality.

Say I send 15 messages and want to confirm that I successfully clicked the right destination nation for all of them. I can delete them all and do it again, but maybe I made a mistake that time. Still no way to confirm. Repeat ad nauseum, still no way to know if you entered all your messages totally error free.

[rdonj]

Amnesia would help with that.

[Squirrelloid]

Amnesia would help with that.

I'm not sure memory hacking by a third party is an acceptable alternative. I mean, it is the only option now, but that should be depressing rather than exciting.

[rdonj]

All I'm saying is that it's an option. It's a frustrating option, but a workable one at least.

[Sir_Dr_D]

It seems like Dominions III is getting even more parental attention. Here is the latest items added to the progress report.

15th january 2010
* Spell AI improved regarding when to cast Arrow Fend, Gift of Flight, Legions of Steel.
* Description changed for Maggots to better correspond with its true effect.
* Djinn is now a unique monster.
* Could get some kind of mine even though all site slots were full, fixed.
* increased maximum number of messages a player can send on a given turn.


It looks like that messages issue has now been fixed.

[WraithLord]

That list is really nice. Hurray IW :)

[Sombre]

Huzzah!

[Gandalf Parker]

Raising the message limit will only make the problem occur less. But, that is probably much easier than changing the interface to stop allowing messages when it hits the limit or not throw away items/gold that appear in messages over the limit. Appreciative of the attention Johan. Thanks.

[Bananadine]

These are awesome changes. I also would like to throw in fifty more ideas right here but I think that would not be very nice. :) Oh how I wish I could hack the interface code myself, I would stick in so many nice tweaks and hotkeys....

[Gandalf Parker]

Like what? (keeping in mind that this is a Linux game that is ported to Win and Mac so you would need to avoid things that are win or mac only) :)

[Bananadine]

Probably just stuff that's been suggested. I generally find the interface to be just friendly enough that it doesn't get in my way, but there are a few picky little actions I have to do a LOT that I would like to be a bit friendlier than that. I don't care how toxically tangled the code is; I bet it would only take a few hacked-in tweaks by a skilled, careful programmer to safely turn the script editor for commanders into a real editor that'd let you change any of the commander's five spells without messing up the others. ...Unless there's already some secret way to do that that I don't know about!

Also, you know, automatic manipulations of items and gems--putting a worn item into the lab with one click, and fully stripping a commander via hotkey/menu choice without first bringing up that commander's details... a way to move an item from one commander's slot to another commander's slot just by choosing the second slot and the item, and without touching the first commander... plus whatever other things, probably not literally fifty but surely a lot, that I'd inevitably think of while I was in there. I can't imagine that there isn't still room for a lot of nice, superficial features like these to be crammed in around the edges pretty easily. Supposing it's still reasonably easy to edit the code and recompile the program in the first place, which I guess it must be if they're still making patches at all.

I know you've advocated adding some shortcuts like these via external tools, but the operations I want to optimize are just easy enough for me as they are that learning to use said external tools has seemed harder than living with the game in its present state. Maybe I'll still try it though.

[Frozen Lama]

I know one! a key similar to Shift-Z for slaves, but for gems

[Sombre]

Making blood hunts automatically drop slaves right into the vault,...

And so on. But really I just want the devs to do whatever they enjoy doing re: dom3.

[Tollund]

That one is absolutely needed to make blood nations have less insane micromanagement. For the cost of two scouts and about a minute per blood hunting province you currently get exactly the same thing. Just make the slaves get deposited at the beginning of each turn. It would also make ensuring that Mictlan priests had slaves less of a nightmare.

[Gandalf Parker]

Id still rather see the promised scenarios feature restored that Dom2 had and Dom3 broke.
That would provide a far extended life to this game which would be a nice parting shot prior to unveiling the new game.

[Bananadine]

Making blood hunts automatically drop slaves right into the vault,...

And so on. But really I just want the devs to do whatever they enjoy doing re: dom3.

Yeah it's cool enough that they're doing something to make the game better. That is one reason why my fantasy was of fixing the problems myself. :)

Id still rather see the promised scenarios feature restored that Dom2 had and Dom3 broke.
That would provide a far extended life to this game which would be a nice parting shot prior to unveiling the new game.

How did that feature work?

[vfb]

That one is absolutely needed to make blood nations have less insane micromanagement. For the cost of two scouts and about a minute per blood hunting province you currently get exactly the same thing. Just make the slaves get deposited at the beginning of each turn. It would also make ensuring that Mictlan priests had slaves less of a nightmare.

So what happens to the slaves I've got on my blood-hunting mage that I want him to cast Leech, or Life for a Life with, to defend my province from raiders?

[Sombre]

That one is absolutely needed to make blood nations have less insane micromanagement. For the cost of two scouts and about a minute per blood hunting province you currently get exactly the same thing. Just make the slaves get deposited at the beginning of each turn. It would also make ensuring that Mictlan priests had slaves less of a nightmare.

So what happens to the slaves I've got on my blood-hunting mage that I want him to cast Leech, or Life for a Life with, to defend my province from raiders?

If the slaves were already in his inventory, nothing, since the idea is for the slaves from bloodhunts to go directly to the lab, not go to the hunter then be pooled to the lab.

The case where you needed to blood hunt to get slaves to cast scripted spells to defend yourself the very turn you hunted them,.. well that's a marginal case and would be sacrificed in the name of massively reducing blood micro and saving players hours and hours of time.

[Gandalf Parker]

How did that feature work?
Pretty much like most games. You could create a playable map that sets all the game variables including the opponents. It would allow every map to have a variations file that pretty much makes it a game just to play the map.

For Dom2 I had a few even though the options were much less than Dom3 would have allowed.
http://www.dom3minions.com/~minion/Indeps.shtml
http://www.dom3minions.com/~minion/WEvsTHEM.shtml
Ive played Dom3 versions of both of them which are lots of fun in Dom3. They can be setup (with some headaches) on servers for multiplay, but there is no way to package it for download and play without alot of headaches.

[Bananadine]

Come now people, it wouldn't be a clean job if it changed the game mechanics. I'm sure it'd be fine for the slaves to go into the lab when you pressed one button one time per turn, rather than quietly before you ever saw them--so long as it was the same slaves being moved in either case. Something approximately that simple could surely be worked out. What do the details matter, as long as the hypothetical hacker lacks the pearls he needs to stealthily teleport into the developer's home at 3 AM!

[Bananadine]

Pretty much like most games. You could create a playable map that sets all the game variables including the opponents. It would allow every map to have a variations file that pretty much makes it a game just to play the map.

Well it's already a game to play a game on a map. But you're saying it'd be a game that the map creator had an extraordinary amount of control over? Because they would have picked victory conditions and research speed and AI nations and AI pretenders etc. (Although I guess some of those things can already be set in a map?)

[Tollund]

So what happens to the slaves I've got on my blood-hunting mage that I want him to cast Leech, or Life for a Life with, to defend my province from raiders?

Have them be deposited at the very end of turn processing, after all battles are completed. That would be a better point I think.

[vfb]

So what happens to the slaves I've got on my blood-hunting mage that I want him to cast Leech, or Life for a Life with, to defend my province from raiders?

Have them be deposited at the very end of turn processing, after all battles are completed. That would be a better point I think.

I like Sombre's idea better actually, now that I understand it. Having the blood slave income sucked into the lab (just like gems go from sites to the lab) sounds like an awesome plan.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Not just blood slaves. Any time any sort of gem is auto produced , from clams or what not, they should by auto deposited in the lab. This is a simple thing to implement that would improve the game immensly.

[Psycho]

So what happens to the slaves I've got on my blood-hunting mage that I want him to cast Leech, or Life for a Life with, to defend my province from raiders?

Have them be deposited at the very end of turn processing, after all battles are completed. That would be a better point I think.

I like Sombre's idea better actually, now that I understand it. Having the blood slave income sucked into the lab (just like gems go from sites to the lab) sounds like an awesome plan.

The problem is that this makes blood-hunting much safer - you cannot lose harvested blood slaves due to someone attacking your province on that turn. So, in order not to break current mechanics, it would need to be done after the battles phase.

[Sir_Dr_D]

The amount of blood slaves that you make on a particual turn, cannot make that much difference to the game as a whole. If one of your blood income provinces gets invaded, you have bigger concerns then just the slaves that would have been lost that turn. Coding the game so that it remebers where and and how many blood slaves were generated that turn, and then deposting them in the lab at the end of the turn would be harder to implement. It is far easier to just have the slaves be deposited into the lab to begin with.

[Psycho]

The amount of blood slaves that you make on a particual turn, cannot make that much difference to the game as a whole. If one of your blood income provinces gets invaded, you have bigger concerns then just the slaves that would have been lost that turn. Coding the game so that it remebers where and and how many blood slaves were generated that turn, and then deposting them in the lab at the end of the turn would be harder to implement. It is far easier to just have the slaves be deposited into the lab to begin with.

I disagree. I am opposed to all these propositions about changing blood hunting, but if they are done in such a way so as not to disturb the current mechanics, then I don't mind. It is very important to be able to raid your opponent and deny him blood slave income. Blood is too powerful as it is.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Then would a better solution be to not have any gems and slaves generated until towards the end of the turn processing, at about the same time as buildings are built? If you are attacked and defeated that round, you shouldn't be able to have collected blood slaves after all.

But the way the game is set up now it is a major chore to play blood nations. The turns are more work then fun. Having slaves autodeposited in the lab would make all the differnce.

[Psycho]

Then would a better solution be to not have any gems and slaves generated until towards the end of the turn processing, at about the same time as buildings are built? If you are attacked and defeated that round, you shouldn't be able to have collected blood slaves after all.

I don't need to defeat you to make you spend blood slaves.

But the way the game is set up now it is a major chore to play blood nations. The turns are more work then fun. Having slaves autodeposited in the lab would make all the differnce.

I don't find this to be the case, but maybe that's because I prefer smaller maps (8-12 players).

[Sombre]

I don't think the change would 'break' anything currently in the game. Blood hunters can already be scripted to avoid using up their blood slaves while the pd handles your raider. If your raider can beat the PD then then hey you've disrupted their blood hunting anyway.

It would be a small boost in strength to blood, but it's only ever going to amount to an income of 1 turn. That's really a drop in the ocean.

[Bananadine]

What exactly is the most painful thing about slave hunting? Surely something can be done about it. Is it the transferal of slaves from the hunters to the scouts who will take the slaves to labs? That's the only blood-hunting operation that's ever been painful for me, but I haven't yet made a really big slave economy so I don't know. I don't mind pressing Z to drop off slaves when there's a local lab, and I don't mind moving scouts back and forth between slave-hunting provinces and non-local labs.

I think an external program capable of automatically controlling the mouse could easily be made to reduce that from a ~20-click operation per province to a 2-click operation per province. It would just have to be told where the clickable elements were in the gem-transferal UI, within the boundaries of your Dominions window. You'd bring up the details for the commander who'd hold the slaves (one click) and tell the program to give all slaves to that commander (a second click, or keypress). I think it could do the rest automatically, without knowing anything about what it was really doing, as long as there weren't too many commanders in the province.

Drawbacks: I imagine the program entering one or two hundred artificial mouse clicks during this operation, and that might be too slow--I've never written a program that did such a thing. Also you'd still have to move the scouts around.

Would this help a lot? Or is the big problem elsewhere in the blood-hunting process?

[Sombre]

The problem is with moving the scout to the province, moving the slaves to the scout then moving the scout back to a lab. Emptying the scout is a matter of hovering it and pressing ctrl-z, which is a lot quicker, but even taking out the moving one slave one click at a time from each individual hunter to the scout, you're still talking the micro of recruiting scouts every turn, moving them every turn, sucking up blood slaves and depositing blood slaves every turn. Not even remotely fun.

I've heard a couple people talking about mouse macros to do the work for you. Ok, show me. I'd love to know how to do that, but you'll have to show me it actually working before I'll even try, because I'm highly dubious it's as easy as all that.

It's definitely not reasonable to expect people to build a lab in every blood hunt province. Maybe in single player I guess.

[Bananadine]

The problem is with moving the scout to the province, moving the slaves to the scout then moving the scout back to a lab. Emptying the scout is a matter of hovering it and pressing ctrl-z, which is a lot quicker, but even taking out the moving one slave one click at a time from each individual hunter to the scout, you're still talking the micro of recruiting scouts every turn, moving them every turn, sucking up blood slaves and depositing blood slaves every turn. Not even remotely fun.

But moving the individual slaves is the part that takes the most work, isn't it? Maybe not.

I've heard a couple people talking about mouse macros to do the work for you. Ok, show me. I'd love to know how to do that, but you'll have to show me it actually working before I'll even try, because I'm highly dubious it's as easy as all that.

Yeah, that's what I was saying to Gandalf Parker. I wouldn't want to make a macro just for my own use. That would be a small chunk of work done for the purpose of saving a small chunk of work.

But I claim it would be easy for one skilled programmer to make a program that would let anybody else (possibly only on the same operating system) move slaves in the way I described. That would be a medium-sized chunk of work done for the purpose of saving a large chunk of work (the latter spread over multiple people).

I'm not proposing to attempt this myself, because I don't have a lot of time for such things. But I'm trying to find out whether it would be very helpful, so as to determine whether I should spontaneously try it if I happen to find the time. In that case some other interested observer might also want to try it (they probably wouldn't but who knows).

So, would it be very helpful?

[Bananadine]

And actually, the reason why I keep talking about making a program from scratch, rather than using some existing macro-recording program, is that I thought the program would need to be at least a little bit smart in a Dominions-specific way, in order to work well for multiple people without much manual configuration by each person. But it may be that macro-recording programs would be good enough after all... it depends partly on how much the Dominions UI layout varies from one computer to another.

I guess I will look into macro-recording programs, then. That wouldn't take a lot of time.

[Gandalf Parker]

You want to deliver searched blood slaves to the lab from provinces with no lab?
I dont see that happening.

As to the macro thing that would be really hard for what you want. At most, a macro can make Ctrl-z into a single keypress for all gatherers at labs as far as a macro that can be used in every game you play.

A macro could be done for what you describe of course. But it would have to be recorded for every new game and those units. A single-key macro can be created for anything you can do manually. The game should not be running in a small window. The macro would have to start with hitting the HOME (to center the map on your capital) then moving the mouse to a single-pixel starting place such as the far upper-left corner of the monitor screen. At that point all actions of mouse move or keypress would be recordable and able to play back the same way every time so you woul take whatever actions you normally do to go to the province (using # and the province number is fast), then to the commanders in question and do their actions. It probably would have to be separate keypresses for "drop at lab and go to gatherer" and for "collect from gatherer and return to lab" altho it could do multiples of each. And it would be messed up easily by having a new commander in the provinces involved.

WOW even I would have a headache with that. I cant see where it would be worthwhile for gatherers that are more than 1 move from a lab, or maybe 2 moves with a relay. Obviously more useful for nations such as Pangaea and Caelum. And only then on really large maps with really old games where automating the back provinces might be worthwhile. But it would be kinda fun to watch such a macro carry out the full mission really really fast on the screen.

[Bananadine]

Sombre, quite reasonably, would like slave movement between provinces to be automatic. But I'm just talking about one universally effective command that would collect slaves on one scout within one province. I don't want to mess with map-level movement, and I sure don't want the player to have to specially configure the macro even as often as once per game!

I just played with AutoHotKey and although the Dominions developers didn't make it easy, with their centered, variable-sized menus, I think I could probably use that tool to make a single-province slave-collecting script that would consistently work across many different games on my personal, Windows-running computer. Dunno whether I could make one that would work on many people's Windows-running computers. Also I was just making a quick prototype so I didn't bother looking for platform-independent macro-running programs for the Linux folks etc.

[Tollund]

You want to deliver searched blood slaves to the lab from provinces with no lab?
I dont see that happening.

Then the game should also be changed so that all gems must be collected by a commander so that no nation has a micro advantage over any other.

[Sombre]

You want to deliver searched blood slaves to the lab from provinces with no lab?
I dont see that happening.


Neither do I, but I don't know why you mention the 'no lab' part of it. What difference does that make? The idea was just for blood slaves to work the same way as gems - they are just added to your vault unless you specifically take them out. There's no logical problem there.

It does change the way the game would work and it isn't going to be implemented (because the devs don't like to make changes like that in patches) but it doesn't seem like a bad solution to the micro.

A key which pooled commander held slaves within a province to the specified commander would also be very helpful, but it's more like treating the worst symptom rather than treating the cause. You'd still be ferrying scouts around, though it would be far less of a headache.

[Sombre]

Sombre, quite reasonably, would like slave movement between provinces to be automatic.

I guess that's one way to put it, another would be:

"Sombre would like hunted blood slaves to be treated like gem income from sites"

Does anyone think of gems or gold as automatically moving between provinces? Your 'vault' of gold, gems, items etc isn't located in a province, it's just your wealth. You need a lab to withdraw gems, but you don't to deposit them.

[Gandalf Parker]

Gems come from magic sites, and slaves from magic sites are treated the same.
Since blood hunting is a commander action, it goes into the commanders ownership.
I guess you could create a magic site that allows gem collecting by assigning a commander to enter the site.

The comparison with gems came up later. The initial image I had was the problem of having blood commanders in a province that didnt have blood slaves for personal use. Collection was all or nothing. Keeping just some on the commanders was quite abit of micromanagement.

I hadnt actually considered the other option. Generally I just do blood collecting at labs.

[Bananadine]

I'm with you Sombre, I am indeed speculating about a treatment for the worst symptom of the problem! And I agree that a person with infinite freedom to change the game's rules might do better to make slaves go right to the lab in the way you describe, than to make it easier for a person to collect them in the game's current style.

"far less of a headache" sounds good to me, and these macro-scripty-hotkey-programs are more powerful than I thought they would be. I think I will make a single-province slave-collecting script that works as well as possible for me, and then talk about it in a new thread. Maybe it'll be good enough for other people to use, maybe not.

[Sombre]

The initial image I had was the problem of having blood commanders in a province that didnt have blood slaves for personal use. Collection was all or nothing. Keeping just some on the commanders was quite abit of micromanagement.

You think assigning slaves to hunters in the very rare cases where you would actually want hunters to cast blood spells against raiders would be more micro than the current system of a bajillion clicks using scouts to ferry?

Labs where you blood hunt is fine if you're willing to have a huge in game disadvantage to avoid micro. I personally don't think mindless micro should be of such benefit in the game. It's not really an issue in SP though, where the lab in every hunting province idea is reasonable.

[Gandalf Parker]

The initial image I had was the problem of having blood commanders in a province that didnt have blood slaves for personal use. Collection was all or nothing. Keeping just some on the commanders was quite abit of micromanagement.

You think assigning slaves to hunters in the very rare cases where you would actually want hunters to cast blood spells against raiders would be more micro than the current system of a bajillion clicks using scouts to ferry?

I just didnt realize anyone was doing that. The nations I play with tend to use blood as a secondary. I guess with nations that rely primarily on blood such extensive hunting in every province would logical.

Labs where you blood hunt is fine if you're willing to have a huge in game disadvantage to avoid micro. I personally don't think mindless micro should be of such benefit in the game. It's not really an issue in SP though, where the lab in every hunting province idea is reasonable.
Exactly. In my games labs tend to popup on their own often enough. Such provinces often have no other feature going for them so turning them into blood slave factories makes sense. But small maps with many players would make gathering a bigger rush-item I guess.

[Sir_Dr_D]

[QUOTE=Bananadine;726872]

I guess that's one way to put it, another would be:

"Sombre would like hunted blood slaves to be treated like gem income from sites"



I agree with this as well.

[Dimaz]

Don't see any problem with current blood hunt system, since ferrying slaves from 20+ hunting provs takes about 1/10 of the time needed to think what to actually do in current turn and these 2 tasks can be accomplished simultaneously.

[Kheldron]

Well, as an addicted blood-magic user I can only agree with Sombre. This is the *only* boring thing about late game in most of my games.

Additionnally, I often play at night when I can't find sleep after nursing the babies...and I can't count how many times I got a yelling "Stop those ******-****ing clicks please" or the like from my wife sleeping close by.
Not so surprisingly, it seems to happen a lot less when I play a non-blood nation...

Devs, please save my marriage! :rolleyes:

[Sombre]

Don't see any problem with current blood hunt system, since ferrying slaves from 20+ hunting provs takes about 1/10 of the time needed to think what to actually do in current turn and these 2 tasks can be accomplished simultaneously.

You can always think about something else while doing boring RSI inducing tasks. That doesn't excuse them.

[Gandalf Parker]

Well, as an addicted blood-magic user I can only agree with Sombre. This is the *only* boring thing about late game in most of my games.

Additionnally, I often play at night when I can't find sleep after nursing the babies...and I can't count how many times I got a yelling "Stop those ******-****ing clicks please" or the like from my wife sleeping close by.
Not so surprisingly, it seems to happen a lot less when I play a non-blood nation...

Devs, please save my marriage! :rolleyes:
The devs did add a click volume control switch for just that reason.
Whatever you hit to get into Dom3, you can add the volume switch to.
Mention what OS you have and someone can get more specific on how to do that.

And there are some player created files which will tone down some of the more obnoxious sounds such as screams and elephants.

[vfb]

I tried turning down teh click volume to -6, but my mouse still clicks. Stoopid bugs. :mad: Maybe it is my mouse brand: some sort of "Logicool". So I cut a hole in a wool sock and use that as my mouse silencer cover. It's a bit quieter, but I just wish they'd fix teh bug so my hand doesn't get so sweaty inside my wool sock mouse silencer.

[Gandalf Parker]

negative 6? Did you try 0 or 1? I have mine set to 10.
--clickvol 10

[Sombre]

Also, what gauge of cotton was the sock?

I use a sports/heavy myself.

[Ballbarian]

In my experience, a starving cat is the best solution for a squeaky mouse.

[Kheldron]

Errr...I don't understand what you're talking about.

I'm speaking of a *mechanical* sound. When I play at night, I turn off all sound and music I'm not that crazy. Not with my wife 2 meters away.
But I don't see or ever heard of a way to soften the clicking sound of the mouse and don't understand how a software could do it.


The devs did add a click volume control switch for just that reason.
Whatever you hit to get into Dom3, you can add the volume switch to.
Mention what OS you have and someone can get more specific on how to do that.

And there are some player created files which will tone down some of the more obnoxious sounds such as screams and elephants.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ahhh....
you should take a look at the mouse driver (auto load program that runs the mouse).
It should have an option for that.

[Sombre]

Yeah you can change the volume of your keyboard in task manager too.

[Stavis_L]

Errr...I don't understand what you're talking about.

I'm speaking of a *mechanical* sound. When I play at night, I turn off all sound and music I'm not that crazy. Not with my wife 2 meters away.
But I don't see or ever heard of a way to soften the clicking sound of the mouse and don't understand how a software could do it.


You might want to look here:http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2005/10/how_to_make_a_silent_mous.html

Of course, if it's just the sound your Operating System makes when you click with the mouse, aside from disabling the sound in your OS's appropriate location, you could just turn off/unplug your speakers.

[Gandalf Parker]

Depending on his OS. But if its most Windows then Sombre is right.
It probably is Windows since he didnt say. Kindof like being American. :)

[Jarkko]

I think what Kheldron is refering to is the sound the mouse makes by itself, even when not hooked to a computer (the microswitch or whatever (I am for not tech savvy) making the sound). Even the keyboard feels like it makes an awful lot of noise when rest of the house is silent and everybody else are sleeping.

Laptops with their soft keyboards and mousepads are the solution then, even though fan of my laptop is way more noisier than on the tabletop; it's actually a lose-lose situation, but people playing blood nations in Dominions got shortest straw when trying to stay as silent as possible...

[UncleYee]

Errr...I don't understand what you're talking about.

I'm speaking of a *mechanical* sound. When I play at night, I turn off all sound and music I'm not that crazy. Not with my wife 2 meters away.


Hee hee. I feel your pain, and I certainly mean no offense but it is a little funny how you've been misinterpreted. Those of us who play in bedrooms with sleeping girls nearby know well that turning off your speakers does not make your computer silent. I bought a keyboard with very quiet keys, but my mouse makes a racket. There's a reason that the mouse action is called a "click", and Dominions is a very click-y game.

ESPECIALLY if you're a blood nation using scouts to move slaves around. Clickity clickity click.

[Sombre]

I think what Kheldron is refering to is the sound the mouse makes by itself, even when not hooked to a computer (the microswitch or whatever (I am for not tech savvy) making the sound).

You think so huh?

[Squirrelloid]

Yeah you can change the volume of your keyboard in task manager too.

Win. Especially when followed by:

Depending on his OS. But if its most Windows then Sombre is right.
It probably is Windows since he didnt say. Kindof like being American.

...

and here i thought obvious troll was obvious.

[MaxWilson]

I think what Kheldron is refering to is the sound the mouse makes by itself, even when not hooked to a computer (the microswitch or whatever (I am for not tech savvy) making the sound). Even the keyboard feels like it makes an awful lot of noise when rest of the house is silent and everybody else are sleeping.

Laptops with their soft keyboards and mousepads are the solution then, even though fan of my laptop is way more noisier than on the tabletop; it's actually a lose-lose situation, but people playing blood nations in Dominions got shortest straw when trying to stay as silent as possible...

I generally prefer to kill everybody while they're sleeping and stuff their bodies in my icebox. But I guess a quiet laptop might work too. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

-Max

[chrispedersen]

I generally prefer to kill everybody while they're sleeping and stuff their bodies in my icebox. But I guess a quiet laptop might work too. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

-Max

Sheesh man... where do you keep your beer?

[Kheldron]

Hee hee. I feel your pain, and I certainly mean no offense but it is a little funny how you've been misinterpreted. Those of us who play in bedrooms with sleeping girls nearby know well that turning off your speakers does not make your computer silent. I bought a keyboard with very quiet keys, but my mouse makes a racket. There's a reason that the mouse action is called a "click", and Dominions is a very click-y game.

ESPECIALLY if you're a blood nation using scouts to move slaves around. Clickity clickity click.

aaah someone else to share my burden:)
yeah that's why I said I didn't understand how an OS or software could possibly help me...

[Bananadine]

I think I will make a single-province slave-collecting script that works as well as possible for me, and then talk about it in a new thread. Maybe it'll be good enough for other people to use, maybe not.

Okay, I made the script. It's neat. It has certain limitations but it seems to basically work. It is quieter than a mouse!

[vfb]

Some mice have been known to be capable of waking up wives, with their incessant clicking noises. Perhaps you should compare to a wool-sock-ensheathed mouse with dammit-don't-click-so-loud drivers enabled from the Control Panel.

[Bananadine]

The trick is to strike the mouse in the head until it becomes mute. A death blessing helps.

[Kheldron]

Somehow my mouse is a resilient evil. That stupid clicking animal dodges my axe like nothing.
Can't say as much of my keyboard which usually offers a better landing ground for all my frustrations...:hurt:

[Frozen Lama]

more updates!

http://ulm.illwinter.com/dom3/dom3progress.html


30th january 2010
* New monster modding commands: #inquisitor, #shatteredsoul, #banefireshield, #uwdamage, #popkill.
* Units with the uwdamage attribute now actually takes damage from being under water.

[Sombre]

Interesting. #popkill I can imagine getting some use out of. Not sure about the others. If shattered soul has a percent value it could be useful for balancing I suppose.

[Frozen Lama]

I think Nehekara should have a banefire shield unit

[Swan]

more updates!

http://ulm.illwinter.com/dom3/dom3progress.html


30th january 2010
* New monster modding commands: #inquisitor, #shatteredsoul, #banefireshield, #uwdamage, #popkill.
* Units with the uwdamage attribute now actually takes damage from being under water.

That's pretty good, especially the #inquisitor.
I'm still waiting for a command to allow a creature to be recruited only on certain terrain but that's a small issue.

[Burnsaber]

I must say that I'm a bit confused about what #uwdamage is supposed to do. Does the unit take damage per each turn of combat? Or some amount of damage per month, sort of like Naiads outside of their home province?

[Foodstamp]

Darkness in cave provinces before it goes live please :).

[LDiCesare]

I'm much more interested by the #banefireshield
I don't know any unit which has this. I therefore wonder whether there'll be a new unit with it... I think it can definitely be a potent effect, seeing as banefire seems to ignore fire resistance.

[Trumanator]

Anthrax has it, as does the poison golem. Really, its not a particularly useful tag to have access to, since its easy enough to copystats from anthrax.

[vfb]

I must say that I'm a bit confused about what #uwdamage is supposed to do. Does the unit take damage per each turn of combat? Or some amount of damage per month, sort of like Naiads outside of their home province?

This will be cool if it's a new attribute that allows golems to go underwater, or something.

[Gandalf Parker]

Just brainfarting but...
if it allows units to enter water for a short time only; then it might provide abit more balance by allowing a way for many land nations to at least try to take the water province bordering their shores.
If (later) the difference between sea and deep sea was fixed, we might get some balanced water nations out of it.

(at a guess I think Kristoffer is playing water nations more than cave nations)

[Sombre]

The only way what you just said would make sense is if land units were all given poor amphibian and uw damage. Which would be stupid.

It's obvious what it does, the only question is the one Burn posed. Is it combat or stratmap damage?

[Foodstamp]

My guess is Strategic map like #homesick (Which should be added this patch too! :))

[rdonj]

It would be nice if #uwdamage was a tag that allowed ranged weapons to be used underwater... but I have the feeling the tag would be slightly different in that case.

[Foodstamp]

It would be nice if #uwdamage was a tag that allowed ranged weapons to be used underwater... but I have the feeling the tag would be slightly different in that case.

The following line suggests that won't be the case:

* Units with the uwdamage attribute now actually takes damage from being under water.

[rdonj]

Shows what I get for paying attention :P

[Edi]

19th february 2010
* Version 3.24

:)

[Sombre]

I think the change from odd to even numbers was one of the most keenly anticipated. I'm glad they've listened to the fans on that count.

[Foodstamp]

Are you being sarcastic about the version numbers? They always do a preliminary even numbered version before the odd numbered one. Which means we may see darkness in caves before it goes live :).

[WraithLord]

Yoohoo, new patch soon :D

[chrispedersen]

fire creatures, vampires should take damage from being underwater.

[NTJedi]

Kool beans on the new patch. :)

These look interesting from the patch:
New monster modding commands: #inquisitor, #shatteredsoul, #banefireshield, #uwdamage, #popkill.

[Maerlande]

Sombre is just a troll. He has warts on his rectum.

[Sombre]

:lol

Seriously though. Is anyone excited about those mod commands who actually might use them?

[Burnsaber]

Seriously though. Is anyone excited about those mod commands who actually might use them?


Not to sound harsh, but this is right to the point.

#inquistor is cool, but it's nothing that we didn't already have access to through simple #copystatting.

#shattersoul -> Meh. Cool, but extremely marginal command.

#banefireshield -> ditto.

#uwdamage -> as if we need to make accessing underwater even harder?

#popkill -> This is perhaps the single command I could find use for, depends on the range of values it can accept thought.

Not that I'm complaining, new commands are always cool and open a lot of new possibilities, but I *really* would like to see even basic fort modding tools (you know, admin values and so forth), but I'm not an programmer so I don't know if those commands are even possible to achieve.

[Foodstamp]

I would have rather had #homesick and darkness in cave provinces than any of the new commands, but you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I won't use any of them very often but no way I am going to be disappointed in any new modding capabilities.

[Stavis_L]

I've seen several posts from modders looking for insanity mod commands; the shattered soul command is the closest we've got to that for "minor insanity", since all the basic insanity chassis are 50% or have other potentially undesirable attributes.

Also - it *could* be used by CBM type mods --> Tartarians could have 33% SS vs. current 25%, which would be a different way to tone them down without changing access costing.

Also - re: copystatting - personally, I find that to be a very non-intuitive way to go about things, and it does have a few buggy interactions (e.g. with the leadership commands, IIRC)

In any case, yay more modding commands :-)

[llamabeast]

#shattersoul and #popkill are both things I would find useful. I had to to quite a workaround to get access to popkill in my very-nearly-released SC mod.

What does #uwdamage do?

Anyway, I strongly approve of anything which brings the range of options available to modders closer to those available to KO.

[Sombre]

To clarify, I'm not complaining about the commands we're getting. Anything is great. I'm just not doing cartwheels, as a modder. I can't think of a single unit I've made or am planning to make that I'd use any of these on. I guess maybe if popkill gives you specific values you can enter (same with shattered soul) but I wouldn't assume either of those does.

[Edi]

#uwdamage means the unit takes a percentage of total hit points worth of damage each turn it stays underwater. Presumably it also can't heal underwater.

[Sombre]

In battle or on the strat map?

[Sir_Dr_D]

The #uwdamage may make it easier to get underwater and not harder, as it may allow for more units to travel underwater. Instead of banning them outright from going underwater, it allows new units to go underwater for a limited period of time

But if #uwdamage is only given to units that already can go underwater, then this would hamper underwater expansion.