Wishlist

Campaigns

Better Campaign system

• Campaigns definitely need to be more engaging
  • Better support for map descriptions.
  • Map previews and map descriptions should be shown at mouse over
  • What maps you have and have not completed should be separated somehow
  • Maps should be capable of a complex set of map goals, such as destroying a particular building, then achieving certain economic status, and stuff like that.
  • The campaign needs to give you a feeling of accomplishment.
    • When you finish a map, it should debrief you, and then automatically brief you on the "next map", jumping you right into the experience
    • Campaign games should have an in-game list of match goals, the same as the winning conditions menu mentioned above.
    • These match goals should be checked off as they are come to.

Custom Games

Instant Custom Game map generation (random map)

• Custom games need to be able to be created directly from a random map
  • In a menu, there would be a number of selectable "pre-configured options" on the left
  • You can select one, it would set the options, you can change those options. The selected item would change from the selected pre-configured option to "Custom Setup" or "Custom Layout" and it should be possible to save this custom layout with no more effort than hitting the save button.
  • The map editor random generator menu should be layed out the same way, with the preset options selectable on the left, and full customization on the right. These pre-configured options can be just some generic settings chosen by us.

Map filter

• The functionality to filter maps, allowing you to see maps of only a specific size. This is a difficult to implement problem, as the gui structure will have to be reanrranged for the filter settings to be do-able. If one filter setting is achieved, perhaps more could be implemented. Special live search filtering should be done (if the above is done). As you type in your entry, the list of maps is automatically filtered, rather than filtering at the end of typing (when you click enter). This does result in allot of filters, but it makes it easier to tell if the map your typing actually exists, and if you misspelled something.
• Allow a custom game to be customized more beforehand (requires creating a custom-game options menu)
  • Allow for alliance changes
  • Toggle fog of war and discovery options
• You should be able to select a map using the arrow keys, instead of needing to click on them

New Pregame Options (fog, fruit)

• before the game, be able to choose the following:

1. fruit vision enabled or disabled? - reason being sometimes a person will turn it on to turn the tables when they are loosing because they have more fruit (ok, I do this to others, but still)
2. fog of war?

Map Editor

SGSL Improvements

SGSL Coding

• The scripting engine is starting to fall behind. At one point it was enough, but with the newer tutorial and campaigns and such slightly more involved and less linear code is required
  • Serious consideration should be given to using a system like Guile or Squirrel in the game. We don't need to expose much interface, the programming language would be used mainly because it provides conditional constructs like if and mathematical expressions and state, which I can foresee being a requirement in many types of scripts, especially tutorial scripts.
• Allow pre-generated areas for SGSL, instead of manually entering coordinates in an SGSL script.
• Allow modifying properties of globules, buildings, and flags (for example globule hunger)
• Allow setting a time-limit for the game

SGSL Editor

• Provide script editor syntax high-liting (requires changing text editor widget)

Other

• Provide script editor with a help menu with full explanations of various commands
• Assign a button to the showing of coordinates.

LAN and YOG games (and their engines)

Rename YOG

• Ysagoon (YOG) online renamed to something cooler

Make a new metaserver

• A new meta server setup that allows the linking of multiple ones for redundancy +Giszmo
  • basically something like battlnet from blizzard, where you can choose your location and connect to that one
  • have the metaserver deny you access if you aren't running the latest version
  • have a seperate metaserver for testing versions+Giszmo

New Lan structure

• New YOG structure is required.
  • New clean YOG based on IRC.
    • Login support in IRC using NickServ.
    • IM support in IRC using MemoServ.
  • Bot for NAT.
    • Bot server.
    • Client interaction with bot server.
  • Proxy subsystem for maps.
    • PHP server that reads map using post and offers lasts.
    • Client side map supports.

Bookmarks for LAN-games

it's very uncomfortable to have to type the same url (dyndns) again and again. also when it crashes it would be nice to at least not have to type it again.+Giszmo

Improved Map Management

+Giszmo

The idea is to provide a possibility to both provide own maps to the community and easily retrieve maps from others. For this purpose I suggest to implement some new features in the YOG-map-selection-screen.

• a "share map" button next to every map that is not already shared via the YOG-server. Probably the Player will be asked to provide a name and comment.
• some filters:
  • a checkbox "list online maps": if checked, maps that are not yet downloaded are listed with those on the pc
  • min rating (attention: new maps start with 10 votes "0/10")
  • min player count
  • max player count
  • map has fruits
  • min size
  • max size

Where does the rating come from? Well I suggest to put it in the "game finished" screen as an extra tab where the player can change his mind on the map (vote or withdraw his vote).

In game

Resource Transplanting

-Giszmo (i think it is a map designers choice to place resources and a players choice to not harvest it to the last bit.)

Workers should be able to cultivate wheat, forest, algae and mine up new rock. This should be time consuming and use a lot of work, but this should be allowable. This would reduce concerns on over exploiting a resource, or having it all destroyed. However, doing so should be undesirable except as a necessity. The difficulty of cultivating various resources can very reasonable vary based on which resource it is. Wheat for instance, is a resource that can be legitimately easy to cultivate.

wheat/wood/algae can even now be cultivated if in a fertile environment. simply forbid to harvest all and these remaining patches are kernels the res. grows from. stone and fruit are meant to be infinite resources at very local spots. --Giszmo

Cultivate -- to promote or improve the growth of (a plant, crop, etc.) by labor and attention. Currently, in Globulation, the player cannot cultivate. The player instead lets wheat/trees grow wild. Given that cultivation of wheat has been fundamental to society for yeah, 10,000 years, it seems a bit odd. Why can't I take wheat and PLANT it elsewhere (or if all the wheat next to my base is has been 'over exploited'/destroyed), why can't I have my globs take wheat from elsewhere and replant it next to my base where I want it? That is what I mean when I say cultivation.

It'd take balance considerations of course. Though, personally I think farming should already be a prime consideration with getting reasonably high wheat growth. --Xylix 12:25, 3 July 2007 (EDT)

Prioritization

Building Prioritization

-Giszmo

• Buildings should be able to be priorotized. Priorities should be fully enforced, if a building being constructed is given a higher priority, units won't go to Inns and work their regardless, the building has a higher priority, and the units *must* go there if possible. For several buildings in the same priority level, normal prioritizing rules apply. There should be three priority levels, low, medium, and high. New buildings start with medium priority. Priority should be adjustable from the side menu, a likely placement is right underneath the "number of workers" bar. Flags should also have priorities. All buildings should have seperate priorities. The difference should be noticable.
• Priority Flags. Set the radius and priority for all work in a certain area. You can set it to be high priority or you can set it to low priority (which means it will use the workers on jobs where the priority is not set). The circular flags are suggested mainly so that you can set priority over a square marked for clearing.

Worker Prioritization

• The ability to split your worker force so that certian proportions prioritize certain activities over others (they will still do any activity). This is so that players don't need to micromanage unit distributions as they apply to specific buildings as much as is now generally required. It ensures that at least a certain fraction of the workers will take care of certain groups of activities, even if assignments overwhelm the number of available workers. This should include:

• General Chores -- the general chore maintence of buildings (e.g. keeping inns full, feeding the swarm, etc...)
• Construction/Upgrading -- the construction of buildings, the upgrading of buildings.
• Clearing -- Clearing or maintining land, in any manner assigned
• (Possibly) -- Military upkeep activities, normally I'd group this with general chores, but keeping things like towers full of ammo can be damn important.

• E.g: If I have 50 workers, and 10% are clearing, 60% are taking care of chores, and 30% constructing... and I assign 5 people to build a new building (and nobody else is building) then I should be guarenteed to get those 5 wokers, and those 5 workers should peel off ANY OTHER ACTIVITY in favor of construction (except training, feeding, etc... but I'll deal with that later). This should significantly improve glob response to certain work activiites, and reduce the periodic lack of control that results when the numbers go negative.

Default worker assignments

• For either buildings or just in general there should be a method to assign default levels to certain tasks. For instance, I should be able to set a general preference that 3 workers be assigned to building my buildings, but only one should work in the building after the building is done. This should be saveable to a player's preferences (so that they can automatically start with these settings), and manipulating it should be allowed outside of a game (as it's relevant only to reduce player micro-management anyway).

Warrior Prioritization

• The ability to split warrior distributions similar to how worker distributions are managed above.

• War -- Proportion of warriors that will eagerly answer war waypoints
• Defense -- Proportion of warriors that will prioritize patroling defense zones / the home base over answering war flags.
• ???? -- Anything else imaginable

Multiple building selection

• Multiple selection of buildings. This is an important one. Multiple buildings should be selectable. You should be able to do it two ways. The first is if you hold shift and click on multiple buildings, they are selected. The second way is if you hold the mosue button down when there isn't anything under the mouse pointer, you should be able to drag a box to a new location. All buildings that have all four corners within the box should get selected. When multiple selection is active, the right hand menu changes slightly. It should say how many buildings are selected. If there are buildings of different times, common options should be shown, (yes, this means labelling building option groups for the gui and doing it in an abstract fashion). As for the values of the options, if the buildings are all different, no value should be shown. However, if the values are all the same for a prticular option, that value should be shown. When changing an option, all selected buildings are affected.

Globule Ageing

+Giszmo

• Imagine the globs growing old. So from a certain moment in time on they start moving slower, needing more rest (grow hungry more quickly) and eventually die because they didn't reach the hospital in time.
• impact would be that training buildings and swarms would be needed at all time. also the experience could be stronger emphasized as they will die without getting supernatural from exp.

Automining

+Giszmo

• A way to selecting a mining method for wheat and or trees. Once selecetd the program will auto assign the forbidden zones allowing farming. There should be at least 3 choices (rows, checkered, and knights distance(chess term)). This is important because it will lessen the micromanagement big time.

Enslaving

-Giszmo

• Instead of using fruit to "convert" ones enemeis, this idea would consist of the player sending "Slave raids" of warriors into the opposing individual's base. The warriors would then grab innocent workers, and carry them all the way back to the raiders base (workers would be dropped if the warrior is attacked while carried). Then, once in the base they'd be converted (by an inn, a school, or a new building...). This takes a page from actual history, where "white men" essentially did this in Africa.

Massive Magic

• The ability to inflict "Massive magical" spells onto the game, generally with difficulty. Other players should be able to counter act, dispell or even aid in the casting of the spells. All of the spells should be a doubled edged sword of sorts, and as much "interesting" (or amusing) as useful. Strategic use should be imaginable, but may require making strong judgements at the state of affairs at the other's base. Though spells affect all players, they can enfavor a player by either harming him more / helping him more. (E.g. Plauge will harm the player that doesn't have many hospitals (or who's were recently destroyed) more than the guy that built half a dozen new ones before casting plauge)

Fog -- Reduces all sight ranges down to 1, even buildings.

Blight -- The growth of all resources reverses. Instead of regrowing everything -- trees, algea, wheat -- starts dieing instead.

Overgrowth -- Opposite of blight, trees, wheat, and algea grow insanely out of control (double or quadruple rate) quickly swallowing terrian.

Plauge -- Inflicts a plauge on all players. The plauge then begins to spread faster and faster as more units get it all the while slowly draining the hp of those that have it (about the same rate as starvation). Units can be cured by visiting the hospital.

Famine -- All units can only go half as long without food and starvation inflicts twice as much damage.

Freeze -- Turns all water to ice. Algea stops growing (or dieing), but takes more time to harvest (due to being in ice). All units can walk over water instead of swimming. If buildings can be built on the ice, they are destroyed the instant the water "unfreezes" because the spell is canceled / dispelled.

Forgetfullness -- Units on all sides start randomly loosing levels of skill (down to base). Units in the water that forget how to swim die. Units can be retaught as normal... provided that schools and other training facilities are not overflowing.

Rot -- Buildings begin to rot and very slowly (maybe 10-50 hp a minute) lose hp to a minum of say 1/4th.

Poison -- Units can swim across water, but swimming causes hp to decrease slowly.

Obviously there needs to be strategy in the deployment and control of spell casting. This could done by adding a "spell building" and having workers work their... or by adding new units, or by any other imaginable means.

Better landscape designs

Some spare but funny obstacles (as rifts, mountains, and so on) should be created with the use of a new resource type that is not harvested, and of a new tile; should be a small change, but should give more tactical options and a little improvement in map apparence.

I would love to see some flavor on the ground :-) Maybe introduce altitude? --DigitEyez 14:51, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Paving Areas / Roads

Paving Areas

+Giszmo my top wish!

Clearing areas don't work. To make them useful for not just keeping passages free but also improve building placement and upgrading i suggest the following:

turn them into paving areas.

• paving areas will get cleared if needed
• paving a square costs only time. maybe seconds
• paving areas request one worker per x unpaved squares
• paved areas can be walked on
• paved areas can be built on
• paved areas block resources
• paved areas give no speed bonus
• paved areas can be unpaved
• paved areas look discreet like in the pic (brown)
• paving areas look something like in the pic (yellow)

paving/unpaving is done with area tools and not with a 1x1 building.

With these paving areas we could modify construction and upgrading to be more realistic and handy by:

1. make the construction site into a paving area
2. when completely paved make it forbidden
3. turn it into a 0.9.3 construction site

Benefits

1. Construction would be more easy to use as it would allow to place/upgrade buildings not caring about clearable ressources what is micro management now.
2. More realistic as it would not be possible to block enemy units/ressources without actually having a glob that walks there.
3. Planned constructions would not be visible or attackable by the opponent.

Roads

• Roads that increase movement speed and decrease hunger costs allowing units to move farther and faster.-Giszmo
• No enty roads to avoid the trafic jams between the buildings.
• Roads unplaceable before school lvl 1

Grass -> Earth -> Paved

This is actually a combination of the two ideas above. Consider making grass behave like a resource:

• It grows/regrows faster in fertile areas (but it CAN grow on dry land)
• It has a "level", ranging from bare earth (level 0) to normal grass (level 2 or 3)
• Frequently walking over a grass tile will reduce its level, unless if it's next to a resource (except stone).
• Leave it alone and it grows back

So, even if you do nothing, earth paths will form between your buildings. This also happens in The Settlers (III and IV) and is pretty fun to watch. But it's not only visual: Resources can only grow on normal grass tiles. That means that your resources will not expand as fast towards your base as they will sideways. And all of this without human interaction.

But you can use it in your advantage, too: if you specify an area to be "cleared", your workers will not only remove resources, they will also remove grass and make the ground earth. Buildings can only be placed on earth.

So, the construction of a building happens in 4 steps:

1. Clear all resources (if necessary)
2. Clear the grass (if necessary)
3. Send away all units (if necessary)
4. Build

And, if an area has been marked to be cleared for a while already or has already been walked a lot, workers will start bringing stone and making the road paved. This costs about 1 stone per 4/5/6 squares. Like the grass, the paved road also has 'levels' (1: stones in dirt, 2: paved Roman style, 3: highway-ish). Upgrading also costs 1 stone per 4/5/6 squares and requires the school of the corresponding level -1, so the roads are in the same style as the surrounding buildings.

But you may be wondering what the big advantage is of building paved grounds. Speed of course! But only a little speed advantage. This is what I had in mind (s = current unit speed):

1. (High grass: s*0.9)
2. Normal terrain: s*1.0
3. Paved lvl 1: s*1.1
4. Paved lvl 2: s*1.2
5. Paved lvl 3: s*1.3

Buildings can be placed on both earth and paved ground of any level. You can't destroy a paved road, instead it just decays back to grass if you leave it alone for some time.

Pro's:

• No micromanagement needed!
• Looks wonderful

Con's:

• Requires a lot of extra tiles (unless we reshape the terrain engine to use alpha maps)
• No control over when/how much workers pave roads. This can be solved in 2 ways:
  1. Making it an extra setting in your swarm. This makes it a base-independent setting
  2. Make roads appear like earth, without requiring workers or stone.

NOOB-MODE

In noob-mode globulation messures things and triggers warning messages with a button for further help like:

inns per worker

if units>10 and inns*10<units then "build more inns! hungry units refuse to work! [how]"

hospitals per worker

if gametime > 3min and hospitals*20<units then "build more hospitals! injured units refuse to work! [how]"

units working at building

if gametime > 3min and noMouseWheelUnitAdjustment then "you can use the MW to ..."

if noUnitAdjustment ...

MMB-drag used?

hotkeys used?

more units clicked than buildings? hint that this game does not allow to directly control units ...

inn/swarm placed far from wheat?

narrow passage (1 wide passage left. forbid it or place building differently)

narrow passage after upgrade

no upgrade possible if placed like that!!

... please add further easy and helpfull triggers

This mode should be the DEFAULT and only be switched off by hand in the settings screen. no "no messages like this" on every message. It would help pros to save hinting noobs on all those obvious mistakes people do in the beginning.

Other Ingame features

• Units go near inns when hungry
• Allow the placing of a string of walls instead of only one at a time. (overriding standard click-down places building for walls. Instead, it will cause a flag to be set, and when the mouse is let up, a line of walls will be placed between the old position and the new one.)
• Buildings should not allow more globs to work on it then is necessary for the completion of the building. (can be done with a simple updated max on Building::maxUnitWorking)
• Fog of war should be made to drop less aggressively
• Towers should see further (simple change in data/buildings.txt
• Keyboard shortcuts should be modifiable from the in-game options menu (can be done by extracting the code from SettingsScreen into its own class).
• New keyboard shortcuts should be added to quickly select a building ready to be placed on the map, automatically deselecting whatever else was.
• Reduce the amount of fruit collected per-run to a tree.
• fruits should be collected more evenly. Now one inn might get filled with 3 fruits to the max while a neighboring inn has no fruit at all or only one kind. (Giszmo 17:02, 31 July 2006 (PDT))
• Idle workers could randomly work on tasks, especially if they are already carrying a resource.
• Check, debug and balance markets and market-related gameplay.
• Balance clearing attack.
• Currently, there is no overview over the overall resources in the game area's header or in the statistics area. By this reason it is hard to evaluate how many resources one has all in all. (not sure if that is necessary, after all)
• I'd like a more flexible option system in choosing colors of globs. And I'd like I can select the same color for globs and user (to view it on minimap).

Auto-upgrades

• For late in the game, the player should be able to assign certain buildings to automatically upgrade to certain levels. This is to reduce building micromanagement, ESPECIALLY, on large maps.

Resource Destruction

If my warriors can destroy walls, they should be able to destroy resources that get in their way as well. So either resources need to be destroyable by warriors, or warriors need to be able to walk over resources (possibly at a movement penalty). Resources shouldn't be a better defense than walls.

This has been discussed on the ML and we agreed on the design as it is. Benefit is that you can't rush in with only warriors but will have to bring workers there, too. That's more strategy. --Giszmo

I'd strongly disagree. The growth of resources should not be vastly superior to existing walls. As it is, it is far better to lay down forbidden zones to create a layer of defense (especially wheat).

Now, I agree that strategically, control points are needed. However, this is better done by adding a selection of new tiles that obstruct movement. Alternatively, something could be done about walls, either drastically improving their HP, or if you wish a meaningful use of workers, make it so that workers are the only/only effective means of destroying walls. (Obliterate enemy construction ability? Combat engineering done by workers plus making walls immune to warriors or boosting armor to around 50).

Actually, that'd be pretty cool, having workers act as combat engineers that can inflict damage on buildings ignoring armor. It'd be interesting to make some buildings virtually require workers to destroy. --Xylix 12:41, 3 July 2007 (EDT)

Resource non-obstruction

If I build a building over resources, it should just destroy the resources... or assign a worker to do so for me (from the construction pool if global management above is used). Equally this should be true for upgrading a building. If I destroy all my resources... well... I should have though of that shouldn't I.

In order to reduce micro management all agree that the clearing of ressources by hand in order to upgrade or place a building is almost a bug in glob2. --Giszmo

Reduced building minimum but existing footprint

• For large buildings (swimming pool and racetrack) I suggest reducing their size by one, but maintain the same foot print. As such the building will need the same amount of space, but will in essence force the existence of at least a single "lane" all around the building where even resources cannot grow. This will help some in alleviating movement problems without otherwise effecting gameplay.

Building Hitpoints

• Buildings should be tougher than Globs. Really, just think about it. Stab a sword into a person and what happens? Stab a sword into an large wooden house and what happens? Which one is going to die first. Honestly, I don't think any buildings should have less than 400-500 hp (Though some, non-militarily hardened buildings, shouldn't have any armor either!).

Gifts

• It shall be possible to donate wheat, wood, buildings and units. (donating wheat/wood with an extra building, donating buildings with a new button (donate to playerX) and donating units with an menu (donate 4 workers to playerX) --Aiju 11:22, 11 August 2007 (EDT)

Better alliance system

• All Allieds have to agree for A and perhaps for V and mV. (playerX want to ally with you.) --Aiju 15:18, 11 August 2007 (EDT)

Better Markets

• markets collect the checked ressources and get added to the gradient of all

other ressources.

• in the alliance screen, one can choose to share ressources at the markets so

allied units may fetch from them/allied markets may distribute ones res, too.

• markets get ressource symbols for each kind of ressource they export.

• markets can fill up to sum(level of all markets) * some basic for each res.

• during upgrade markets can still hold the ressources and count as source of all

ressources but are expensive to upgrade./during upgrade the markets are closed and thus can not hold their res./during upgrade they keep their capacity to hold res but are not able to deliver them

• destroying a market leaves a package with 50% of the res. that have been inside.

a warrior may carry that to an own market. the other 50% are straight lost.

Planes and Ships

• The Plane.

To get a Plane you need an Airport. An Airport should be a really big building because of the runway. In the Airport Warriors can train to fly an plane. Airplanes can start if a Warrior heads to the Airport an gets in a plane. A plane can be repaired in the airport by workers.

• Ships

Ships are build in a Pier. Everything functions the same as the Airport. There should be many Types of Ships and Planes. In the Pier or Airport a Warrior learns to fly one Type of Plane or Ship. If the Warrior enters again the Airport of Pier, it can learn to fly or control other ships and planes.

• Types of Planes and Ships

- To attack Units - To transport Units

Magician

We can have a new unit, let's call it magician, caster or shadow for now. This unit will undiscover the map around it for the enemy (i.e., recreate black). When upgraded, it could kill explorers. This way, the information control get a first place in glob2's gameplay. Ideally, it should be linked to papyrus. I still don't know how it should be done (by a building, an upgrade, a continuous consumption, per shot consumption, ...). On the implementation side, this effectively bring ranged weapon ability to units. Nevertheless, it should be implementable in a reasonable time if we use the bullet code.

God actions

We can have global effects. For instance, buildings providing prestige could recharge some global action capacities, which can be used globally. I can imagine:

• mass conversion (convert all units on an area of map)
• garden of eden (a nice way to recreate wheat !)
• holy forest (you always loved trees didn't you ?)
• mass depression (remove all happyness of units on an area of map)
• eye of god (reveal the whole map)

Singularity Obelisks

We can have a new building, the singularity obelisk. It would allow any globule to instantly travel to any other obelisk. This would allow the unit to get a shorten way in some situations, for instance to go from one island to another.

This can be not-too-hardly implemented by modifiying the gradient computation system so that when it encounters an obelisk, it looks around all other obelisks belonging to this player or its allies (obelisk sharing being a question to discuss) to see if there is a lower value for its target (or higher, depending the gradient algorithm conventions).

Of course, an obelisk would be hard to build, and perhaps would consume, let say, papyrus ;-) (so that the Archwizards in it can write and cast spells to maintain singularity). We could even imagine to make the obelisks quite dangerous so that if they reserve of papyrus fall to zero singularity collapses and make a lot of damage around.

Warehouses

Warehouses idea 1

• Warehouses that can store grain, fruit, trees, stone, and algae. These are not global but any worker that grabs resources from this warehouse can grab twice the normal load (they can also grab only the regular amount in case that is all they need for construction)

Warehouses idea 2

• A building that carries resources. It comes paired with a "distrubition center building" that can be "built" up to a certain distance from this store house (about 10ish spaces). Globs can get resources from the distribution center, where as they put them in the store house. This acts as a mechanism to circumvent distances, improve worker efficiency, and improve city construction management and thus reduce clutter. Players should be able to assign which of the four resources they want workers to gather for their storehouse, with the potential for choosing "all".
• Obviously there will need to be a way to ensure that the "distribution center" corresponds to a particular warehouse. The best way would probably be to have the "build icon" tagged to that particular building.

Barrack Units

Give the Barracks building the same menu as the Swarm where warriors will be trained in different fields of battle.

• Normal warrior

Archers

• I just want a ranged unit. I was thinking that they should have limited shots and then then need to run back to the archery range to refill. Also they should only be for support so a few weakness should be used. They cannot hit moving targets once they fire if the unit moves within a small amount of time they avoid getting hit. Also archers cannot shoot things right next to them.

• Giszmo likes this. it could be of the kind "many different actions without players interaction" with workers carrying wood to the archery, archers fetching arrows. maybe they could exchange arrows in the field. No enemy near by: when they meet and don't have the max. of 10 arrows (one has 4, the other 3) the one with the fewer arrows gives them to the other and goes fetch new arrows. Mid fight it's the other way round: The one who ran out of arrows gets half the arrows of the first he can reach. handing over takes little time.

• Archer: A unit that will hurl bits of itself at the enemy. This would damage the unit itself as well. (the range shouldn't exceed the range of a tower)

Catapults

• A ranged unit for hiting towers and units. When they fire a target is chosen after a small amount of time every unit in that square and all adjacent squares takes significant damage (including friendly units). Maybe we can have warriors being targeted automatically run when they see the catapult fire?
• Also known as a Hurler: A larger and somewhat slower Glob that can collect some rocks to throw them later. (the range shouldn't exceed the range of a tower)

School Units

• Same goes for the school building as the barracks. Convert its menu to that of the swarm, and allow these to be trained:

• Normal Scholar
• Magician
• Vessel-enabled-worker (a glob that will convert to some sort of ship after going to the shipyard)

Force March option

A clickable (whatever) option for Flags, construction (not maintanence), and various other things that tells your globs to answer this flag/construction in favor of hunger or death, VERY useful, and even necessary when building or attacking beyond the edge of your glob's hunger thresholds. The default is obviously "false", this option is only for when the player gains strategic advantage from the risk / sacrifice of his globs for a purpose (one way suicide attacks, constructing inns REALLY far from the base).

Level 3 towers too weak?

• Look over the strength of level3 buildings, maybe too weak?

Non Swimming Warriors

Add "bridges" to the game, and eliminate the ability to teach warriors to swim (or make them swim much slower 1/2 to 1/4th rate). Adds an interesting strategic element, and creates more natural choke points against assualts.

Armory

• A building that manufactures a set of "weapons" and then carries them. The building consumes wood and/or stone, and constructs so many "weapons" when it receives these (say 2-3 weapons per a wood and stone). Warriors, and explorers can then go to this building to get weapons. This improves or allows for certain attacks. For instance, bombers might result not from such special training but rather the equipping of explorers with ammunition (Though their effectiveness may vary greatly with training).
• Warriors alternatively may gain a mild ranged attack, and/or improved melee attack (this may require reducing bonuses from other training). However, all weapons have an ammunition limit much like towers, and the ammount of ammo a armory gives depends on the quality of it's production (e.g. upgrade level).

Guardhouse

• A building that "stores" warriors. Warriors automatically leave the building and attack any enemy units that come within a certain range of sight (7 - 9 ish). The building can be set up to only release warriors to certain kinds of enemies. Warriors in a guardhouse consume less food, and are thus able to stay prepared at all times. For obvious reasons, guard houses should allow the players to set how many warriors are to respond to a particular guard house.
• This is essentially a means of controlling the placement of warriors in general areas (but with a much more refined mechanism than guard areas currently do). It also reduces clutter and population food consumption levels.

Gate House

• Essentially this is a building which only the owner (and his accepted allies) can walk through. Takes up four spaces, and is a bit weaker than 4 wall spaces. The purpose of the gate house is to act as a simple simalicrum of a true "gate", allowing the player to wrap his entire town in a protective wall, while still being able to exit that wall.

Raft section

• Creates floating raft spots on water, much like little wall spots on land. Raft spots use 1 wood each, and have much less hp/armor than walls (they aren't walls!). The general purpose here is that raft spots should be buildable upon, thus allowing floating buildings...useful when forward bases are needed on a map with lots of water. It can also improve build area of a player... though at an additional cost of 1 wood per a spot of area that building uses. (Either this, or allow floating buildings).
• A similar building "spot unit" should be available for sand as well.

unoptimal buildings

• Current and ancient technologies have existed throughout the real world allowing the building of objects on various terrians, and should exist in globulation too. This is basically as above, but instead of building a "platform" first, the building is simply placed in the terrian. Instead, the building has its own unique special cost additions for every unoptimal spot the building takes up. For instance, most buildings might require +1 wood per an area of water the building takes up (and may require the same on upgrade, or not)... but towers could be set up to require +2 wood per a spot (14 total wood for a floating tower) or even +1/+2/+3 wood (4 wood for building, 8 for upgrade, 12 for upgrade-2).
• This allows players to expand when necessary into unfavorable terrian, or allows them to put down "bases" where it would not otherwise be possible. However, as reasonable this adds a stiff cost that should keep players on the land they should be on.
• Some sort of warning mechanism should be built in to allow the player to know they are constructing with an extracost. Red glowing spots is probably fine (as well as red highlighted building costs where additions are necessary).

Close Building Temporarily

Make it possible to close buildings temporarily so that units can't train.

• Problem: Currently, if a building can't expand because resources are blocking the way, then you have to wait for a worker to clear them, but if in the time a worker is clearing them another unit enters the building to train, it extends the wait time for upgrading, and in that time, more resources might grow in the way, causing an endlessly frustrating cycle.
• Solution: Either make an option to temporarily close building in the panel when you click on the building or else make a flag that you can drop on a building to close it. Whenever you want to open the building again, simply either uncheck the option, or delete the flag.
• Maybe there could even be a need for power plants, and closing a building would reduce the amount of power being used?

Statistics

Audio & Graphics

Jack-audio-connection-kit support

• Jackit audio support. """JACK is a low-latency audio server, written for POSIX conformant operating systems such as GNU/Linux and Apple's OS X. It can connect a number of different applications to an audio device, as well as allowing them to share audio between themselves. Its clients can run in their own processes (ie. as normal applications), or can they can run within the JACK server (ie. as a "plugin").""" Support for Jackit should be optional, as a compile flag. Configure should automatically enable jackit supprt if jackit is installed on the system, and it should disable support if jackit is not. Use of Jackit should not entirely replace SDL sound support, only if the jackd server is running (at runtime) should Jackit be used. Otherwise, SDL sound should be used. This means either system could be used, it is runtime determinable.

• Why? For sound input? Sound output already uses SDL --Nct 14:04, 7 December 2005 (PST)

• SDL doesn't work well with jackd. I've tried, unless you know of a way. some people must use jackd do to the cards they have, such as me (the m-audio 1010LT) and glob2 doesn't work with it for sound --AppleBoy 09:06, 10 December 2005 (PST)

• Different sound and color for when units convert to other team
• Use theme for menus
  • bitmapped version currently non-bitmapped widgets (JJ)
  • Different players, different tiles: is there a solution to have players with a different graphics for building?

Miscellaneous

"engaging" single player experience

Winning Conditions

• Make a customizable winning conditions.
  • This should be done with a whole new "winning condition" system
  • This would include a WinningCondition base class of some sort and a variety of sub-classes
  • Winning conditions would be included in SessionGame, and tested for inside Game
  • There should be a winning conditions menu when setting up a custom game
  • Net games should be the same way, with the winning conditions changeable
  • Winning conditions should be visible inside the game

Adjustable Alliances

• Alliances should be adjustable in the same way, before a match
  • This would involve modification of SessionGame
  • Alliances should be another menu in the custom game system
  • Alliances should be able to be changed in net games as well

AI descriptions

• Each of our AI should have an associated description that is displayed when being selected, so that players know what they are facing. Stuff like, but not limited to, this:
  • Castor, for example, performs well on maps with tight resources. It plays conservatively and adapts well to its surroundings.
  • Nicowar, on the other hand, plays very well when the map comes with suitable resources. It amasses its army quickly and throws it into the arms of an unsuspecting enemy, destroying them in minutes if they are not ready to defend.
  • ReachToInfinity is no a capable war machine. Instead it focuses on a long term economic powerhouse. It is easy to defeat, but be careful, its got very capable fruit mechanisms and can catch even good players off guard.
  • Warrush is a tactical whiz. If it can defeat you, it will. And it will do it quickly. It can beat almost all of the other AI's simply because it goes straight to war when they are not prepared.

Recording and playing back games played

• It should be possible to record games to a condensed record file and play them back.
  • The recorded games start by with a save-game right at the start of recording and then list all of the orders that took place for each team. It should be simple enough to implement.
  • There should be a menu option to start recording right after the game begins
  • It should be possible to record net games.
  • During playback, the game should keep you from making changes.
  • You have no local team, but instead you can choose whos angle to see the game from while observing it
  • The "condensed file" should be zipped with GZip or 7Zip or similar to conserve space.
  • Random numbers must be synced!

Customizable Races

A editor that allows you to customize races. There should be some kinda of weights and balances. In the editor each unit being designed cannot attack, cannot fly, cannot mine, is the slowest possible speed, and has one hit point. Also that same unit has maybe twenty development points. To make it faster it will cost one development point, to allow it to mine it will cost ten. More hitpoints cost a development point and so on. The editor will allow you to create ten units for your race and you can use your race in any game without asking permission from the game host.

Smarter AI

• Is the issue where the AI will still allow it's buildings to be surrounded by wood or wheat fixed?

Modifications

• Support for creation and compiling of custom community made modifications (like BZFlag has) that work on all local custom games and YOG games that have the option enabled by the hoster (he/she would have the mod and see it in a selectable list of mods to ask players tpo have to play that hosted game).

Other

• Improve the local advantages to enhance strategic elements (See post) and make the explorer be a unit for hunting down this local advantaging buildings (except for the tower, its natural enemy) rather than a mob killer.

Training Activity maximums

A maximum percent for "Workers", "Explorers" and "Warriors" that are allowed to be training at any one time. This is to prevent entire forces from "dissapearing" when you really need them.

Feeding/Healing maximums

As per training, except for feeding and healing. Again, this is to prevent the entire work force from disapearing when you desperately need them.

Logistics

• Globulation, unfortunately, doesn't allow for much tatical distribution. The small number of viable units guarentees this, and I cannot see a fix that doesn't require drastic game change. As such, the emphasis on the exploitation and considerations of logistics is perhaps one of the best elements this game can utilize to require strategy.
• As such, I suggest that the importance of logistics, especially military logistics be improved. A simple suggestion would be decreasing the food consumption of idle units (e.g. Warriors at home), and dramatically increasing the food consumption of warriors that are fighting. This will help force players to setup and build forward bases in order for the attacking force to have even a fraction of the effectiveness of the defensive force (which is desirable).
• Alternatively, warriors can be given weapons with limited ammunition. Personally, I suggest both. Whatever the case, emphasisng logisitics more heavily in military conquest is desirable as it adds another dimension to advanced assualt strategy... and defensive counter attack.

Coding (general improvments)

• Optimize unit state machine.
• Gradient calculation improvements. BUG #16512: gradient calculation cpu consumption improvements
• Remove UnitType, put all attributes to unit. Remove Race, write Unit prototype.
• Create StreamEditor dialog box to edit properties of any serializable object. Have GUI to edit value from/to Stream. Allows per unit customisation in Map editor.
• Finish and use new script engine or review and improve the existing one.
• Optimize forbidden zone exiting.
• Explorer should consider both FOW and undiscovered ares, not only undiscovered.
• Order must be serializable object and accept a Stream in load/save method. This allow human-readable dump of orders in case of syncronization.
• Check all TODO, FIXME, DUNNO. Fix what needs to be fixed, remove old stuff, let usefull one in place.

Utilize Multicore processors

• Make AI (m.b some other parts too) use multiple threads. 6 AI Castors periodicaly slugging out X2 3800+.

Improved pathfinding

1. identify one-wide passages (every square accessible from 2 of 8 directions is part of a one-wide passage)
2. trigger when a glob moves within a passage
3. make the passage propagate gradients in one way only so other globs will be forced into the same direction.
4. when the last glob leaves the passage open it again for both directions

although i guess the above would dramatically improve pathfinding without the need of human assigned one way areas as proposed earlier there remain special cases:

differently fast globs

faster globs will not be allowed to ignore the global gradient due to a collision. switch off local gradients while within a passage!

dead ends

if a glob realizes it can't reach its target without violating a passage-rule choose the best passage and make it switch direction

an example of (blue=)"one-wide passages". each of those blue areas will have to be treated as one so direction switches on the whole length.

Warrior Rebalence

• Warrirs of various levels desperately need to be rebalanced. As it currently exists warriors must be level 2 in order to be effective (there is a huge capabilitiy gap), and upgrading the warriors is a necessity rather than a strategic consideration, as it should be. As such, warriros need to be rebalanced so that a player actually considers whether or not he wants to upgrade his warriors..., at least earlier in the game. Further the gap between each upgrade should be as equal as possible.
• I suggest trying to balance around the following principles:

• Time -- The time it takes a lv 1 warrior to defeat a lv 1 warrior should be approximately the same as the time it takes a level 4 warrior to defeat a level 4 warrior.
• Strength -- A lv2 Warrior should do as well against a lv1 warrior as a lv4 warrior does against a lv3 warriors. The strength "gap" should be the same.
• Capability -- Lv1 Warriors should be sufficiently strong to at least, in numbers, represent a real risk against lv4 warriors..., where as this is most definitely not true currently.

• Why all of these? Time is because the player should be able to get similar reaction/planning/counterstrike time against opposing warriors late in the game as they do to early in the game. Equally, logistical limits should be similar early in the game as late in the game. Perhaps just as importantly, there should be sufficient time that an invididual with a larger army can actually get his 2-1 or 3-1 advantage. Strength because there should be no "upgrade" that is more desirable than the last. Each increase should have the same weight. Capability because upgrades should never be absoultely necessary, even though they may be extremely desirable.
• To give an idea of the scale of the problem lets look a basic stats:

LV1 Warrior

HP: 250; Armor: 10

Attack: 8; Speed: 11;

Damage/Second: 8.3; 1.04 (armor)

TimeToKill: 30 seconds / 240 seconds

LV2 Warrior

HP: 250; Armor: 10

Attack: 16; Speed: 18;

Damage/Second: 26.6; 10 (armor)

TimeToKill: 9.4 seconds / 25 seconds

LV3 Warrior

HP: 250; Armor: 10

Attack: 24; Speed: 25;

Damage/Second: 55; 32 (armor)

TimeToKill: 4.6 seconds / 7.9 seconds

LV4 Warrior

HP: 250; Armor: 10

Attack: 32; Speed: 32;

Damage/Second: 100; 68.8 (armor)

TimeToKill: 2.5 seconds / 3.6 seconds

Time: 12x time factor (ignoring armor), or a 67x time factor considering armor. That's is to say that the player has 1/12th to 1/67th the time to respond to an assault from Lv4 Warriors, then they did against Lv1 Warriors.

Strength: The gaps of strength can be measure without armor as: 320% / 200% / 180% or with armor as 960% / 320% / 220%. This makes the upgrade from lv 1 to lv 2 absolutely necessary... and means a rush of lv 2 warriors will always obliterate lvl1 Warriors.

Capability: As per time; A Lv 4 warrior can defeat 12 Lv1 Warriors in a row (or 4 simutaniously) -- excluding armor; or 67 Lv1 Warriors in a row; or 11 Simutaniously (which will never happen!)

• I suggest squeezing this down some. The first thing I'd suggest is lowering time. I think balancing kill times (with armor) around the 25 seconds of the LV 2 warriors would be a good start. Additionally, I would reduce the "strength growth" with armor to around 200-150% growth. For this I suggest any of the following, all balanced for kill time circa 25-30 seconds against their own level. A lower value may be desired about 10-20 seconds, if 25-30 seconds is just too long -- 10-15 seconds can be easily acheived just by doubling all attack speeds, without changing any other balance.
• Growth ~150%; Lv1-Lv4 diff: 350% (counting armor)

LV 1: HP 250; Armor 5; Attack 15; Speed 10;

LV 2: HP 280; Armor 6; Attack 16; Speed 11;

LV 3: HP 325; Armor 7; Attack 17; Speed 12;

LV 4: HP 360; Armor 8; Attack 18; Speed 13;

• This would be a minor upgrade gradiant. Lv4 Units could destroy 3.5 Lv 1 units in a row, or defeat 2 simutaniously. This gradient may be a bit lower than desired. However, it is also the only gradient that would allow a player to choose to never upgrade their warriors, and still have warriors that are actually worth anything.
• Growth ~175%; Lv1-Lv4 diff: 560% (counting armor)

LV 1: HP 250; Armor 5; Attack 15; Speed 10;

LV 2: HP 300; Armor 6; Attack 17; Speed 11;

LV 3: HP 375; Armor 7; Attack 19; Speed 12;

LV 4: HP 450; Armor 8; Attack 21; Speed 14;

• A moderate gradient, certrainly balanced. I personally think this is the best gradient of all. Lv4 Units could destroy 5.6 Lv 1 units in a row, and to nearly defeat a triplet simutaniously, or 2 pairs in a row.
• Growth ~200%; Lv1-Lv4 diff: 990% (counting armor)

LV 1: HP 250; Armor 5; Attack 15; Speed 10;

LV 2: HP 325; Armor 6; Attack 17; Speed 11;

LV 3: HP 400; Armor 8; Attack 20; Speed 12;

LV 4: HP 475; Armor 10; Attack 23; Speed 14;

• The highest gradient I'd recommend. Lv 4 Units could destroy 9.9 Lv1 units in a row, and could defeat a quadruplet at once, or a triplet, dublet, then singlet. This is about the maximum amount of "power" a Lv4 to Lv1 can have without the level 1units being rendered completely useless.
• I would note, that the food consumption per a kill (of the same class) is not level here (Raises equal to speed!). This can be addressed in several ways. The first would be to simply allow it to persist (if it isn't too big of a deal), the other would be to increase the food "carried" by higher level warriors (Incidently, also giving them larger marching distances, which isn't really that bad of an idea!, especially if using a more moderate gradient). Or, an attempt to balance can be made while leaving attack speed constant... However, all of food consumption AND attack speed, AND time to kill same level cannot all remain constant, that is mathamatically impossible.

Selected Mailing List Threads

• Tutorial and scripting improvements
• additional feedback on Globulation 2 (most (but not all) of this has been incorporated into Current Issues with Using Globulation 2)
• flags vs. areas: getting the best of both worlds
• more feedback (many topics) (most (but not all) of this has been incorporated into Current Issues with Using Globulation 2)
• [1]

Other Ideas

• There may be some wishes not described here on the bugtracker or on the Feature Requests forum or the Ideas forum. These ideas should be moved to the right category on this page.
• Update AUTHORS file: please add yourself in it if you have contributed something that has been added to releases.
• Go through bugtracker and forum to compile a more thorough list of all bugs, document them, close fixed ones, etc.