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here's some issues I saw
Ok, after playing through the entirety of the unregistered section (thanks for the pointers on Containment - I got 464 Darwinians this time!) here's some of the bugs I encountered and requests for enhancement:
This is really annoying. If I have a complete set of tasks running, like, say, 4 engineers, I can't create new officers, despite officers not taking up a task. It says I have too many tasks running, but if I kill an engineer, I can create umpteen officers, then create a new engineer
It's too easy to accidentally go through a transmitter. I sent a group of about Darwinians and 2 officers through a transmitter, then on the other side I selected an officer and sent the darwinians on, 3 of them managed to get back into the transmitter despite me trying to send them away, simply because they were right next to it
Sometimes Darwinians get stuck. I managed to get about 8 of them to stand stock still, occasionally jumping and slowly doing a 360 degree turn and landing exactly where they were, but not moving. And my officer couldn't get them to move either. I had to turn each into an officer, kill it, collect the soul, and order the new Darwinians. I have no idea how this happened
I mentioned this in another topic, but often when I'm controlling an officer and I click to move, nothing happens. Movement on click happens about 40% of the time when I click - this is made especially annoying by the fact that it's way too easy to send a Go-to order with an officer. Often I'm trying to move and instead I send my Darwinians to the wrong place. I really wish I could set it so left-click always moves and right-click issues Go-to orders
There's no way to tell what officer is currently selected. At least with the tasks I can tap option and the selected task gets the yellow arrows. The only hint for officers is the off-screen arrow that appears when I look away. There really needs to be a way to tell what officer is currently selected. It would be nice if this could be a permanent thing applied to all tasks, like, say, a green circle around the base of each one, but, again, with the tasks I can at least tap option to see what's selected
It's too hard to select officers, especially when they're wandering in circles after leaving a transmitter. I'm not sure what the best solution is (since I don't think adding to the option-tab list is a good idea), but as it stands currently, whenever I'm trying to select an officer, a) it's hard to hit them, and way too easy to accidentally tell them to stop moving (if they're currently moving) or to even set a go-to order when trying to select them, and there's no way to tell I was successful if I already had something else selected (so there's no cursor change). I usually end up canceling previous selection just so I can watch the cursor to see if I managed to select the officer. This bit would be ameliorated if the officers got the yellow arrows like tasks
I managed to lose an officer into the hillside. I accidentally managed to send it back through the transmitter to the furthest island (the one with the Yard trunk port, IIRC), and when I sent the camera over there to pick him up again, all I saw was the flag disappearing into the mountainside, which makes me think the officer was inside the mountain.
I managed to get a Darwinian stuck in an endless loop. This is part of bug #2. One of the darwinians I tried to send away got sent through the transmitter, and on the other side it kept trying to go to where it was originally instructed, but the sea was in the way, so it was stuck forever trying to cross the sea and failing. I couldn't instruct it to go elsewhere, since it was trying to fulfill the original orders. Usually this is not possible because you can't send an order to cross the sea, but since it went through the transmitter while trying to go elsewhere (no clue how, since the Go-to order was in the opposite direction), the sea barrier wasn't there during order issue, and it apparently has no way to deal with the impossible path later. This would be fix-able if it were possible to cancel an order a Darwinian is trying to follow. I don't know how that should be done, but it would be handy to be able to selectively cancel orders (i.e. don't cancel orders globally, just cancel the one a Darwinian or a group of Darwinians are currently trying to fulfill)
And here's an oddity. This was my second time in Containment, my first time only getting 149 Darwinians. I was told in another thread that research continues even after you restart an area, so playing an area several times gives you benefit. Well, I didn't lose any research by starting the area again, but I didn't gain any research at all while playing the area again. I tried selecting different research options in case it simply didn't want to do one (dunno why), and none of them advanced. I had 2 research options that were partially-advanced during the previous play, I tried those, that didn't make a difference either. I simply could not do any research. Is this expected, or is this a bug?
That's all I can think of for now. I may have left some stuff out, I don't remember. If I think of anything else, I'll be sure to mention it.
And now I have to register to continue playing...
Aranor, on Apr 1 2005, 01:05 AM, said:
This is a gameplay decision on Introversion's part. Creating an engineer requires one task slot for the creation process.
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This can happen sometimes, and the best way to fix it is to leave the level and come back. All orders will be cancelled in the process, and you can just pick up the darwinians.
There's a way to fix this, and I've mentioned a fix in another topic on here. I'd dig up the link, but I really should be going to bed.
And here's an oddity. This was my second time in Containment, my first time only getting 149 Darwinians. I was told in another thread that research continues even after you restart an area, so playing an area several times gives you benefit. Well, I didn't lose any research by starting the area again, but I didn't gain any research at all while playing the area again. I tried selecting different research options in case it simply didn't want to do one (dunno why), and none of them advanced. I had 2 research options that were partially-advanced during the previous play, I tried those, that didn't make a difference either. I simply could not do any research. Is this expected, or is this a bug?View Post
This is expected. You get research points by capturing buildings. When you reset a level, buildings stay captured. This is so you can't get infinite research points.
Andcarne, on Apr 1 2005, 08:15 AM, said:
This is a gameplay decision on Introversion's part. Creating an engineer requires one task slot for the creation process. View Post
Hrm. I have to say that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but if it's deliberate, then I guess I won't complain - it just felt like a bug to me.
Yeah, I thought of that, but it was faster to just kill them, since I already had an engineer there, next to an incubator, picking up other souls.
You mean setting that preference key? Yeah, I saw that after I posted this.
Ahhh. That's information I didn't know. Perhaps some of this valuable information being disseminated on this board should be put into the manual?