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From Alex

the music keeps switching itself on every few minutes and sometimes causes crash before any notes are played, but generally if i turn the music off as soon as it turns itself on, i get to play.

as for the gui - cursor keys scroll in overview mode. generally better mouse-camera interaction.vvvv has a camera control patch that may be portable.
I'd like a speed dial to control the speed at which the computer players and animations play.
An options screen onto which the controls can be hidden, and a help button for all keyboard shorts.

Fullscreen mode. I run at 1280x1024, and I like my games to fill the screen.
A 'bling' sound when ready to start a player's phase upon pressing the mouse. (if you still have an old type writer, sample its carriage return action)

better terrain texture. maybe break them up into sub meshes, or bump map them for a bit of visual variation
support for higher resolutions of sprite, plus info about whats what file wise.

Points.
With different game types having different score schemes. (eg, 'good vs evil' would have bonus point for evil vs good battles and penalties for good vs good or evil vs evil)
Tournament mode
multiplayer over IP

mini awards, 'most violent' 'most cowardly' 'most average' etc.

Accept shifted-capitals from keyboard when entering name - keeps catching me out and missing the first letter.


thats all i can think of just now.
high score table.

and when you've done all that, bigger levels, with castles and rivers n stuff. and the moon on a stick.

From Pau

I want to keep the .png filename the same as the monster name, as it should make any future user "creature editor" super-easy to operate.
I've uploaded a new version with regular characters (which is probably for the best. It's easier to understand what an "elf" is, rather than an "alfar")
Again, thanks for your feedback!

The characters show fine in game, its just deletes the character in the windows filesystem. Maybe you could keep the names
the same in game and just reference different files? Unless its hardcoded somehow to just add .png to the creature name...
I have Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 2002, SP3 - English (U.S.) version with Asian Language Pack installed. I have
no idea if this is a rare version or not, but it'd seem weird to me that they would be different in that respect.
- Pau

I thought that all versions of Windows would accept those special characters in file names, but I guess not.
I will change the name of those units for the next release - I guess I'll just go back to "light elf", "berserker", etc.
Thanks - Duncan.

From Pau

Now crashing when trying to load ulfhednar.png when that spell is cast. Special d
character in game for the name, but the file name is ulfehe-nar.png
Just happened again with a different creature, another special character missing from file name.

Yes. Oops. I'm re-uploading with the WAV directory this time. - Duncan.
Thank you, now it's working - Luke

From Pau

Same problem as Luke!

From Luke Of Zion

Just downloaded Ataxia II, it gives me a "illegal memory address" when i click
the mouse button on the first menu screen. I do not have a clue. Can you help me on this?
I can't even get the game to start.
Tried every possible "compatible mode" in windows to no effect.
In the readme it says there should be a "WAV" directory that is missing
in your zip archive. Could that be the problem?
Thanx

Luke

From Vic

Vic: Attaxia works mostly fine.
There's sometimes errors cropping up when using range attacks, either by creature or spell, on enemy wizards.
I suggest:

• creature and spell stats. to show when you highlight them;
• no two wizards can be the same colour type;
• some creatures cannot attack diagonally even though they have enough movement;
• enemy creatures should be unsummoned when you kill the summoner;
• and of course a victory run or game over sign at the end so that you know when it is over.

Nitpicky things: cobras and hobgoblins to have a range attack 3; orges to have dazing strike; a smaller grid.

From Alex

A rat that was dead continued to be damaged by snake poison

the unit query display dosent cls before redrawing when viewing dead units
game crashed 'illegal memory address' due to poison damage killing an already dead rat

banshee breathes 'fire' but animates x-bones and reports 'psychic' damage

Banshee breathes x-bones and causes psychic damage. Confusion may lie in the "Banshee may fire." message, so I've changed it to "Ranged attack for X's banshee."

I would like:
Alife type rules for law/chaos level interaction on board
- chaos/law should have at least two mutually complementary rules (yin yang balanced iyswim) to govern behavior (I'm thinking of vortecies causing separation of particles by mass in a radial direction, and possibly that 'charged' particles would separate in opposite directions if the vortex spins in the opposite direction... where here 'vortex' means a recursive algorythm for modifying a location's Z property according to the rate of change of Z in the XY plane, but also taking into account of angular velocity as well as linear, thus allowing for vortexal structures to from in the plane... does that make any sense to you?)

>I used to have a great freeware cellular automation program that included various physical models, but I can't remember what it was called :/ Videopaint, or something else with "paint" in the title. Let me know if you come across it.
>Just found out that Mirek's Cellebration [http://www.mirwoj.opus.chelm.pl/ca/] was the program. The cell "paint" program must've been on the Amiga.
>>it was called 'video easel' - alex
>>>See, I knew it had the word 'paint' in it. Videopaint. Video easel. Same thing.

Distribution of spells according to type.
- ie each wizard gets a certain amount of bias towards chaos/neutral/law spells such that the mean bias over all the wizards is zero, and a certain amount of 'RMS' difference as a game parameter. Could also do some distrib based on any kind of spell param.

>Good idea.

Darkness /daylight spells

Actually one of my least favourite aspects of Ataxia I, not sure if I want to bring it back. But maybe, as they were good spells for controlling the power of undead creatures.

more ambient illumination for scenery (you must have your gamma set too high, or you're programming in a dark room)

>There isn't any scenery :> Well, I tried playing with various ambient and spot lights, but it seems nothing effects the display of sprites. Unfortunate.

'3d' sparkly sprites for extra strongly enchanted or cursed grid squares

>Yes. Was also thinking of spontaneous appearance of flowers/butterflies/sparklies and spikes/small fires/nastyness.

hills

spells to make hills (or valleys with swamps)
a general association of high ground with law and low/swampy ground with chaos

rotational view (to see behind hills and long chains of creatures)
- make the sprites rotate to face the camera (only in horz. plane?)
- horz reflections of sprites according to direction of movement (be sure not to cause jittering when moving 'up' or 'down'

Currently rotation is shagged. I had the whole board rotating on a pivot, which looked fine, but for some reason screws up the sprite-to-2D coordinate mapping. I'll have another go later, may have to move the camera instead.

implement and prioritize as you wish.

Generally its going very good, one of the most entertaining games I've played recently. It's just realistic enough in the right ways for me to get involved, but still retro enough for me to take it only half seriously and have fun trying out different ways of doing things.
You really ought to be doing this for a living. Or at least, providing some e-packaging and some anti piracy system and selling copies on e-bay, or get Derek to market it for you.

As Julian Gollop kindly made Chaos public domain, Ataxia shall be also. If it becomes popular I may go the Dwarf Fortress route and set up a donation system.

Camera

A quick(ish) note on Ataxia's camera - It keeps missing the mark when it tracks to a location. It usually seems to be off to the left.
Also, when a unit moves towards the edge of the visible area, the camera should track before it's so close that you cant see the squares adjacent to the ones that the unit can move into.
Also I'd suggest that you make the camera zoom or pan out in response to large lateral movements so that the apparent screen velocity is always limited. eg, it should zoom out so that at the peak of it's movement (mid track) the total translation in screen coords would be half a screen width/height, But there should be some lag, so that if there's many large tracks from one end of the board to the other in quick succession, the camera will stay zoomed out until it's all settled down. And if you can, make the velocity graph smooth: try to follow a cycloid(the path traced by a point on a circle rolling on a surface), as this is (apparently) optimal.