Red Brick Games

Development progress for July and August:

• units now walk apart
  When several units overlap because they’re standing too close, they now automatically walk apart.
• made the end-game replay show roads
  As they get paved.
• improved the end-game graphs
  Among other things, the time axis is now labeled in minutes:seconds.
• improved the appearance of player colors on the 3D models
  Mo’ better lookin’. Conquer the world, spread your colors.
• made the AI send workers in pairs when building new bases
  So they get built faster.
• allowed players to specify “random” for their color
  In the game setup screen. This is a surprisingly enjoyable feature. Sometimes it’s the little things…
• made the unit portraits show the units correctly posed, colored with the player’s color, and holding their weapon
  w00t! This was a fair-sized technical challenge, because the portraits are not bitmaps loaded from disk, they’re generated in-memory each time the game runs. Originally, I wasn’t at all sure I could get Torque to do this. Especially the part about the weapons. Torque really shines this way: though buggy sometimes, though undocumented in many places, Torque almost always gives me the tools to do what I need to do.
• allowed user to specify random maps’ maximum elevation and median elevation
  Allows more precise control over the random maps. The median elevation is the elevation at which half of all elevation points are lower, and half are higher. For example you can set the median near the maximum, and the resulting map will have near-uniform plateaus that plunge into deep lake valleys. Pretty neat.
• added post-processing to random maps
  …to increase the amount of playable land. Before, sometimes large parts of the map would be unreachable and thus unplayable. Now, there’s an algorithm that inserts little connecting ramps between unconnected regions. So far in testing, the algorithm consistently gets nearly 100% of the walkable land to be playable. (this issue/task had been on my to-do list for forever and was a source of some anxiety, so I’m glad to see it finally done. random maps have been a lot of work)
• off-screen attacks now cause an alert sound, an alert popup in the main GUI, and pings on the minimap
  The popups on the main GUI are awesomely helpful! I plan to add more info to make them even better.
• fixed a bug where unit animations occasionally missed an action
  Like an axe swing, etc.
• showed players who are teammates adjacent to each other
  In the details window.
• showed team numbers next to players’ names
  So you don’t need to remember who’s on whose team.
• workers now switch to different tools to do different tasks
  Axes for chopping, pickaxes for mining, hammers for building, etc.
• resources carried by workers are now shown as piles of logs
  Held in their hands. Got rid of the backpack placeholder.
• units now rotate
  E.g. as they change walking direction, or as they turn to face things that they act on.
• implemented an auto-explore feature!
  Just hit the “Explore” button (or “X” hotkey), and the unit will auto-explore land that is covered by the fog of war! No further user action necessary — though you may not like the path your unit takes. This is another feature designed to reduce micromanagement and make the game more enjoyable. I first saw this feature in Empire Earth 2, and really liked it there. (actually, that’s the only place I’ve seen it)
• made unit-level retreating easier
  Now, units that are moving will only stop to engage targets “in front of” them, and not stop for targets behind. Before, units would stop for any target within range (unless you used the specific “rush” command). Playtesting revealed that the old way was very frustrating when you were trying retreat from a losing battle. The new way feels considerably more intuitive.
• allowed the game window to be as large as the virtual desktop
  Helpful if you’ve got a laptop driving a larger secondary display. Before, Torque limited the window size to be smaller than the primary display. Probably because Torque was originally written back when secondary displays were rare as hens’ teeth.