Beta version of new Slay ready for testing!

[Ber]

[Sean OConnor]

[Wakke]

[Fusion_power]

The buttons at the top don't appear to be properly defined. Also when I 'mouse-over' them, they should give a description of the button's function.

I have a serious problem with the location of the End Turn button. It is not readily accessible for either left or right handed people. Since all people that I know are either left handed, right handed, or like me (ambidextrous) , the button must be difficult to access for everyone. This is more of a problem on a laptop than on a desktop machine. Please look at alternatives for location of the end turn button. My suggestion would be to turn the "land" graph into an end turn button. That would let it have two functions.

Overall playability is pretty good, but there is no Auto move at this time. I presume it will be added later?

DarJones

[jcscar21]

[ziggyred]

[Sean OConnor]

[Sean OConnor]

[gebba]

[flap]

[Sean OConnor]

[Sean OConnor]

[flap]

Some issues related to translation (by the way the number of languages there is is impressive !)
- On the map editor, the two sentences are too long in french, and are cut (see picture)

- The translation is not consistant : some words in the menu are translated, some not. But thinking of it, it probably are things that were not in previous version.
There are for example : undo all, redo, redo all, game sounds, reset window stretch,...
- An other inconsistancy in translation : when passing the mouse over an icon, the text appears in english (while we had it translated in the menu)
- In geman specifically, "End Turn" is still in english.

Some other graphical issues :
- When winning, the "Ok" button in the new window is flashing. Is it normal ?
- When minimizing the game, and reopening it, nothing draws anymore in the window. The only solution I found was to shut the game down and start it again.

Some comments :
- Seeing the graphic all the time is cool, but I miss when we could see the whole evolution from the begining...
- No chance to see that type of display once the game is finished ?

( that's a movie made with one picture for each turn. The picture of a specific turn could be displayed when hovering over the graph...)

[Sean OConnor]

Beta #10 is now on the download link

- I've made some more speed improvements (my computer's CPU is about at 1.5% for Slay now whereas it used to be over 10%)

- There's now a "Penguins" theme.

- The colours in the rankings pane now get updated when you change colour scheme

- I've made the font a bit smaller on the Map Editor so the French instructions fit now.

- all of the text for different languages is stored in a .txt file within the "Slay\Languages" folder. If anything needs updating please correct it and email me the corrected file! The tooltips are new editions so haven't been translated yet (I just copied and pasted the English text into each of the language files for now) I'll be able to take the words from the menu strings and remove the \t and ... to create a translated tooltip text though.

- I'll look into the flashing OK on the Victory dialog box.

- I know that closing a laptop lid and re-opening or Ctrl+Alt+Deleting will cause DirectX to "lose the device" and you need to exit and restart Slay. I haven't seen that happen on just minimizing the game though. I'm hoping to be able to get the game to recover from a "lost device" in the future.

- I only showed 8 days on the graphs in previous betas as drawing lines was very slow. I now draw the graphs "offscreen" as they only get redrawn at the end of the day. So, now that it's quicker I show the last 12 days worth of graph

[Fusion_power]

Sean, I think there may be a logic problem with the new algorithm that cuts off enemies. What I am seeing is that there are times that a better move is available yet the AI chooses to cut off and kill an opponent. This leads to the AI being highly predictable and therefore easily beatable. Can you tell me if the AI is weighted to do a cut and kill as first choice?

The way I think this should work is for the AI to determine a range of actions and weight them according to play value, then choose the move(s) with the highest play value. The way it seems to work is to run through a list of possible strategies and then select the move(s) that result in a kill. I see this happening when the AI preferentially cuts off and kills an enemy and I see it when the AI attacks a capitol instead of the castle right next to it.

DarJones