Two Suggestions

[charlieg]

Orthogonal Projection

This can make interpreting the landscape much easier for players, and can be done with just a few lines of code.  (Obviously a few more to add as an option.)

Storyline

I see lots of people trying to make mods but without a storyline, the game is somewhat restricted to multiplayer.  There's little incentive to play against AI other than just for the hell of it.  A storyline engages people.

[horusofoz]

A) Dont know what that is but if it makes things easier then cool:)

B) 100% agree. There a lot of content in this game but little if any story/background to go with it. Maybe have some sort of story of how Magic and Tech split to form the two rival faction. Also stories for the other factions. Stories for individual scenarios and of course some good stories for some campaigns  would be great:D

Also I think with so many modders out there cant some of you guys focus your efforts onto producing base Glest and GAE? I mean there a re a lot of great mods and dont get me wrong I hop you all continue with them but the base app and GAE seems to need more contributors. Just an ubernoob's 2 cents:p

[hailstone]

A) You can implement it then let us know how it goes.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_projection

B) There was a story for Magic and Tech but I couldn't find it, it should be on the board somewhere. Also there are some stories for other mods such as Sun and Moon.

http://www.glest.org/en/background-1.php - link doesnt work anymore.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3811&p=17983#p17983
http://www.glest.org/glest_board/viewto ... 5647#15640

A lot of modders aren't programmers and those that are think they aren't experienced enough to modify the code.

[John.d.h]

I think when the campaign mode gets implemented (hundreds of years from now), that will be a much bigger motivation for people to develop good stories.

[charlieg]

A) You can implement it then let us know how it goes.  :roll:

[hailstone]

You said it would only be a few lines of code so I figured you knew how to do it.

[daniel.santos]

OMFG, good suggestions, WTF?!

Actually, I don't understand the 1st one at all, but I agree with hailstone, go for it!!!  Also, I can't tell you how souped up I am about your 2nd proposal, one that I go on about a lot.  I have a girlfriend.  She's not interested in Glest.  Well, it would be safer to say that her interest in Glest is about as much interest she has in football -- which is actually a negative value -- well, American football, I know it's not the "real" foot ball, you throw, catch and carry the goddam thing with your hands for chirst's sake!  But, like rugby, you get to slam into each other at high speeds and be very aggressive.  Unlike rugby, you get to keep your teeth!! -- But I digress, my gf likes to play puzzle games.

I have a book (it's around here somewhere) called Gender Inclusive Game Design, I forget the author's name, very good book.  It talks a lot about story line and this is very key to engaging females.  Men are very visual -- we see beautiful women and we're ready for sex -- that simple.  Women are more dialog oriented, they want to talk about their feelings and hear the stories.  I know that I'm over-generalizing to some degree, but I hope I've made my point.  Also, all males are chemically part female and visa versa -- men's blood has oestrogen in it and women's blood has some amount of testosterone.  I enjoy games with good story lines as well, as long as it's actually an interesting story and it doesn't take too goddam long to tell, when I'm in the mood to just kick some ass (or die trying and restart the game).

charlieg, this is primarily where scenarios come in, but the current scenarios aren't nearly sufficient.  Martino has expanded upon scenarios quite a bit in the 3.2 beta (especially adding lua support) and this is very important for playing out story lines in campaigns.  This just isn't here yet.  But when it does arrive, it should be able to support good story lines with dialog (both text and sound), animations and complete camera control (like a movie, only not pre-rendered -- kinda like they do in warcraft and other games).

I do have a backstory I wrote some time back to adapt the Four Path Magitech mod to the original backstory for the Magitech mod, but I haven't been working on FPM too much lately, I will be once I'm done with the networking changes for 0.2 and the initial 0.3 implementation (0.3.0), which I need to support the next features I want to have in FPM.

As to the orthogonal projection, please do pump out those "few lines of code", thx!

[charlieg]

Orthogonal or orthographic projection is simply a type of view matrix, one where there is no depth perception.  Isometric games are a typical example of this (although the majority of them tend to be 2D, but I'm talking about the effect rather than the technique) - that is, the objects at the top of the view (which in Glest appear small) are the same size as those at the bottom (which in Glest appear larger and nearer).

It may be as simple as calling setOrthographicProjection(); early on before you draw anything to the screen.

More info on orthographic projection.

[RTSman]

i always thought it was the europeans in europe as tech and the evil they thought was out in the woods or that was in fairy tales.  daemons for example would be a prime example of what they probably thought was "out there".

[Omega]

I gotta agree, I'm a sucker for a good storyline. (Final Fantasy, anyone?)

[daniel.santos]

Orthogonal or orthographic projection is simply a type of view matrix, one where there is no depth perception.  Isometric games are a typical example of this (although the majority of them tend to be 2D, but I'm talking about the effect rather than the technique) - that is, the objects at the top of the view (which in Glest appear small) are the same size as those at the bottom (which in Glest appear larger and nearer).

It may be as simple as calling setOrthographicProjection(); early on before you draw anything to the screen.

More info on orthographic projection.

!!?? This setOrthographicProjection(); function you are talking about is part of the OpenLayer project and we don't use OpenLayer -- Glest & GAE is it's own game & graphics engine.  Further, there are other implications: it would require changing the game camera code completely and restricting it's pitch to only point straight down -- if not, things would start to look REALLY strange at a distance!  That will also require changes to GameCamera::calculateVisibleQuads() and other things aside from just the rendering code.  Also, Glest/GAE's landscapes are 3d, they have hills that go up and down.  All perspective of altitude would be lost aside from what shadows & lighting would reveal.  I suppose I can see its uses, but it will also take away from the realistic look & feel of the game.

Really, if you think it will be useful, (and only a few lines of code) check out the sources and give it a try! (Glest calls gluPerspective() to set perspective projection, that's probably what you'll have to replace -- google some OpenGL tutorials on it)