Lux Wishlist

Game of universal domination. New dice available free upon request.
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ThirdParty
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Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2003 2:24 pm

Lux Wishlist

Post by ThirdParty » Sat Oct 04, 2003 5:49 pm

Hi, I just bought Lux and am enjoying it--it's a good game to play as I listen to music, while I relax. (Taking over the world in my leisure time ... heh.) Anyhow, thought I'd offer my wishlist for ways it could be improved.

Fix Bugs:
  • While picking countries at the start, it sometimes lets the player pick an extra one right at the beginning of the player's turn.
  • Lux sometimes unexpectedly quits. This especially seems to happen after all human players have been eliminated, when I attempt to close the game window or to go to the next map.
General Features:
  • Allow games with fewer than six players. (ie. have a setting, in addition to "Human" and the AIs, for "not in game")
  • More "card sequence" options that do increase but increase slower than "4, 6, 8..." are needed. For example, "4, 5, 6..." and "4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 8, 10..." would both be nice to have.
Custom Map Features:
  • The map code should have a tag in (continent) for location to display the continent info (sort of like the (armylocation) tag in (country)). This would prevent contintent infos from being smushed together when the user says "show continents".
  • A map debugger would be nice. It could check a map and give a warning if tags aren't closed, a country links to one that doesn't link back, if a country links to itself, if two countries have overlapping borders, if a country links to a nonexistent country, or if the armylocation of a country isn't within that country's broders. It should point to the specific problematic tag.
  • It'd be nice to have an additional tag--call it (area)--in (continent) for additional drawing on the board. (area) would have at least one (polygon) tag, a (color) tag, and an optional (above) tag. Areas would not be treated as empty space for deciding where to put filler images. This would allow us to draw in landmasses that don't have countries on them, to spare us from having to make separate themes for each map à la "Battle of Europe".
Webpage:
  • We need a place for downloading new Maps, Themes, and AIs that other players have made. (I can send you my first new map, if you need something to start it off.)
Information:
  • How does the die combat work? What's the advantage of using fewer dice?
  • What are the (color) codes for the continent colors used by default if no (color) is specified? I'd like to know so I can specify it in my custom maps without it being obvious to players that I've done so.

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dustin
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Post by dustin » Sun Oct 05, 2003 2:34 am

OK, many issues, I will try to respond to all of them.

Fix bugs: Yeah, I have to nail down the extra country choice bug. The unexpected crashing is a bit of a wildcard in that it happens in code from apple's cocoa libraries. I have submitted some bug reports, but I doubt it will be fixed in any version of MacOS 10.2.

Game features: There is a setting for '<no player>'. This allows you to play games with under 6 players. Thanks for the request for more card options.

Map features: They would all be nice to have, but my time is limited, so I don't know if they will happen anytime soon. Eventually I hope to make a board-creation app to help people who want to make maps as well. For now you can do some extra drawing using colored extra lines.

Webpage: I agree it would be nice. I have just been including the maps that people make inside the Lux download. If you email me your map I can do the same, or put up a directory to post it in. dustin {(at)} sillytech dot com

Info: The only advantage of using less attack dice is that you are allowed to move less armies into the conquered country. There is no advantage to using less defense dice (in my humble statisticians opinion). There are about 12 colors that the continent colors are chosen from at random. They are mostly the primary and secondary colors (i.e. 1/0/0 or 1/1/0). I will try and post the exact info for you tomorrow.

ThirdParty
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Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2003 2:24 pm

Post by ThirdParty » Tue Oct 07, 2003 12:28 pm

Still waiting on the list of default continent colors...

Also, another item for the wishlist:
  • I'd like the cards the computer players cash in to briefly appear on the screen. It would make it easier to tell how they're managing to pull together such large armies out of thin air...

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dustin
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Post by dustin » Tue Oct 07, 2003 2:49 pm

Sorry about the delay. Here is the list of continent colors:
0.5 / 0.0 / 0.0 // red
0.0 / 0.5 / 0.0 // green
0.0 / 0.0 / 0.5 // blue

1.0 / 1.0 / 0.0 // yellow
1.0 / 0.0 / 0.75 // pink
0.0 / 0.75 / 1.0 // light blue

0.5 / 0.0 / 0.5 // purple
1.0 / 0.5 / 0.0 // orange

0.0 / 0.0 / 0.0 // black
1.0 / 1.0 / 1.0 // white


If all of these have been used up and there are still more continents then Lux will start randomly choosing from this list:
1.0 / 0.0 / 0.0 // bright red
0.0 / 1.0 / 0.0 // bright green
0.0 / 0.0 / 1.0 // bright blue

NSColor.darkGrayColor()
NSColor.lightGrayColor()
NSColor.brownColor()

While looking at this I found a bug involving the continent colors. For a random map Lux will use the above colors but give them a little transparency to look nicer. This transparency wasn't being added to custom map set continent colors. I have fixed this in the code for the next version.

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