Wishlist

The wishlist has moved: The wishlist has moved to a service that supports voting, and is more organized. You can check it out at http://glob2.uservoice.com/. Feel free to add new suggestions there. Thanks.

In game

Prioritization

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).

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.

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

This idea was so long (but still worth posting I think) that I made a separate page for it: click here.

In short: This idea adds a new type of terrain: earth. Grass grows on earth like other resources, and other resources grow only on fully grown grass. Walking a lot on grass destroys it, making it earth again. This way, earth paths are formed, and it becomes possible to stop resources from growing on clearing areas by clearing the grass.

Part b: High-traffic paths will be (automatically) paved and become roads. There are multiple level roads, higher levels require more stone and more skilled workers but also increase the speed bonus.

Please post comments on this page.

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

• New keyboard shortcuts should be added to quickly select a building ready to be placed on the map, automatically deselecting whatever else was.
• Idle workers could randomly work on tasks, especially if they are already carrying a resource.

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!).

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

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.

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)

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).

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

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.
• 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.

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)
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