Re: [glob2-devel] Forbidden flags

[Gabriel Walt]

> Can we remove the forbidden flags abilities from the engine ?
> Or does anyone thinks there will be a future use of the feature ?

What? Remove the forbidden areas? Hey, it's one of the most important 
new features [if not the most important recent feature at all]:
- It allows to avoid to loose stupidly units that go to enemy territory
- It allows to manage resources by cleverly putting forbidden areas on 
rare resources
- It allows to solve impossible path finding situations when too many 
units are at the same place

MOA333 suggests to even make a better version of the areas, and I 
totally agree. Some time ago I suggested a discussion about such a 
system, but nobody replied anything, so here it is again.

---- "bugs and features" 2004.08.04 16:43 ----

[...]

And a little discussion about the flags and area drawing:
- Flags:
  - can be moved and scaled
  - can have a number of units assigned
  - can have options [what units are concerned]
- Areas:
  - can have any size and shape
  - are global so no units or unit options can be assigned

You chose to set flags for exploration, attack and clearing - and areas 
for forbidden areas. This is logic, but two things stay frustrating:
- it would be really cool to be able draw clearing areas too
- it could be useful to tell what units are forbidden from different 
areas [e.g. only workers]

Here is my suggestion for a better area mode:
- There are two kind of areas: clearing [green hatching] and forbidden 
[red hatching].
- There are two tools: draw and erase with different brushes.
- When you draw an area where no adjacent area already exists, it 
creates a new area. When you draw an area and begin drawing above or 
just aside [your brush "touches" the area] an existing area you enlarge 
the existing area.
- It would not be possible to have several areas layered [even clearing 
and forbidden areas cannot be layered, they are exclusive], so if you 
pull your brush above an existing area, the existing area is cleared and 
replaced by the one you're drawing.
- When erasing, every area under your brush is erased, there's no 
consideration next to what area you have begun erasing.
- There must be a trick to select an area differently from the buildings 
lying beneath, I suggest shift-right click selects areas as a normal 
right click selects a building.
- Once an area is selected, you can assign workers to it if it's a 
clearing area, or assign unit kinds [worker, warrior, explorer] if it's 
a forbidden area. There must also be the delete button that deletes all 
the area at once.

When you build a building there's a little conflict: a new forbidden 
area should be drawn by the program to make units leave, but you have 
possibly already drawn an area at that place [clearing or forbidden]. I 
suggest that the program adds anyway the new area at the needed place, 
thus erases a piece of the existing area. I can't imagine a situation 
where this would be really problematic.

So what do you think about this system?

Furthermore, I've two more suggestions for areas:
- In globulation everything is "round", I'd suggest you to make only 
round drawing brushes. The square ones are not useful at all in my opinion.
- When a building upgrades and needs space, there should also be a 
forbidden area at the needed space.

Pfffiw... that's it! Next step will be to play more against human 
players to make gameplay tuning suggestions. Anyway, thanks for having 
read until here!

Gabriel