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Mark-

It's a pretty rich game, I continue to enjoy month-spanning gameplay. But I suspect additional excitement will come from new pieces with new capabilities. Imagine loading radar scanners on ships, gliders for silent invasion forces, buzz bombs (but not nukes). I also suspect those are harder to add!  

But I've always felt that adding custom maps took away the dark territory exploration which is so central to the game. So pieces with new capabilities always interested me.

My .02.

Thank you for your dedication to the curation and growth of this game.

Happy New Year!

Best as always,

Loren

Congrats on the newest maps/scenarios, Mark. I think I'm still about 20 hours into my latest campaign, spread out over months. 

Any plans to institute 10-space Radar units on land or sea?  I guess they'd be amphibious.

Still a fine program. Sorry, inspires a lot of suggestions.

Hope your holidays are well spent and whatever difficulties you encounter are surmountable. 

Best as always,
Loren S. Miller 

Success! It's not laid out as your snapshot indicates but I found the Activate command. Played for an hour and a half, and posted my first bug report, all inside Steam.  I'm very proud of myself.

Game play very much as I remember it, but I have to bind those keys!! Body memory is making fingers twitch to unassigned keys.
X for Exploration mode, for example.

Pretty darn nice, Mark!  Take the rest of the year off, why don't you?

Mark-

Ah, forgot about that install.  I have a "Steam.app" listed, not a "Steam Client."  I figure that's the client on Mac OS X.

Thank you, I'll give that a try.  It'll be nice to graduate kindergarten.

Best, as always.

Loren

Mark-

A suggestion-- can we segregate Mac, Linux, and Windows feedback into their own threads?   Might be easier for users to share similar issues and help you isolate bugs related to one OS API but not others?

Still trying to parse the Steam link to the game-- I am successfully driving an earlier DRM download, and it looks fantastic.

Best, as always.

Loren S. Miller

"Explore the keybinds. Every command and info button on the display can be bound to a key, or Shift/Alt/Cntrl key combo."

Not only that, you can map the keyboard to command shortcuts!  Even add modifier keys like Shift, Command, Option and/or Control!

JK- sorry, just the UX in me.... ;-)

So that means we're playing it from Steam, not from our computers?

Oh, that's very Zen...

Yes, I feel the same way, but I guess it has advantages which Mark can delineate.

Thanks, Mark, will try that.

I haven't played yet, though I have downloaded. I assume this is the right place to flag a Steam issue. I've rejoined Steam after years of neglect; I have found EDCE aboard Steam but it's "not in my library." I don't see a way to add it to my library. Have you got a step procedural for this added layer?  This is why I generally avoid Steam.

What about sending you short movies captured from screen?  I have Screenflow here. If some odd behavior shows up due to my own gameplay style, you can see an unintended result. You up for that?

Great, thanks, Mark.

I'm asking if a Specialty City, when I capture it, can be made able to produce the very same units produced by the enemy , using the enemy's former plants and equipment located there-- because of strategic bombing to preserve infrastructure!  This provides a real incentive to capture certain cities over others! I guess I'm asking if there's a legacy value to capturing a Specialty City.  A legacy game somehow informs current play with previous play history.  Providing the concept of a Speciality City, you've already laid pipe for it, so it came to mind.  All existing Efficiency rules can apply, even reduced efficiency of 10%, but perhaps restoring production of a unit the city was known for should provide a faster than usual ramp up in efficiency which makes such captures a real lure, not to mention a mine field and patrols for protection.

Studying Manual release III.  I wonder if,  when an enemy Specialty City is captured, is there any instant economy of scale in producing the same unit?

I've never used Steam as a layer to get into gaming. I do hope for a standalone I can download.

- Lorenzonio

Mark -

I was kind hoping to avoid a game layer like Steam, since I don't do network play. But I'll be available to test standalone game flow for MacOSX, using 10.11.6 right now.

Best, as always.
Loren S. Miller

I wish I had the chops to help on AI, Mark.  Alas, my brilliance lies in UX and information design.-- when I'm not editing film.

You mean we could select bots reflecting generals like Patton, slapping soldiers and trash talking, ignoring orders and other behaviors which might effect the enemy's performance? Or a cautious general like Bradley, who would likely prefer patrols to wedge attacks? How is it some AI's cannot use all units?  You might have to do a video seminar on this, Mark. Break it down so idiots like me can understand what I'm engaging when I select one.

As I continue to watch YouTube demos I'm increasingly impressed with KB's work.  Like, it seems all there!

But I'm encountering Info Overload from three separate game status displays, in different font sizes, addressing separate info sets, scattered to the corners of the screen.  Hashtag: distraction!

Strikes me these ought to be completely consolidated into a single comprehensive screen. 

I really like the pop-out displays for Victory Conditions and the like, and I'm suspecting users would like to see unit, city, or command info at certain times, and not at others, and those slide outs are sexy.  The screen borders are exactly the place for these.

But I also value the classic status bar at top left.  Body memory takes my eye there for summary unit particulars like name, current orders, strength and damage.

The larger pop-out could duplicate this summary info but also also contain Unit Order History, Originated at____, and other Unit info, such as name changes, latte preferences and the like.

Selected City Info would appear on the same slide out, summarized in the status bar, Name, When Taken.  If an enemy city has been sailed past or flown over by your planes or satellite, intelligence reveals what it's currently manufacturing and its timetable.

Command Info would appear there with a function summary, plus any keyboard shortcut assigned. Those are identified here as "key bindings."

Player profiles would appear here too, for network play.

But the main point: reduce visual clutter and train the eye where to go for all info.

Any thoughts?

My .02

"MY habit before the box was to just send it way out in a dir until the warning came up, which is also probably why you saw them a lot."

Yeah, that's something I was watching you do-- you had me literally wincing!  

I am very conscious of fuel limits and I don't need annoying messages obscuring the map. This is why I use Patrol mode for planes, or when transporting them to the front along a movement path, I make sure cities are within fuel distance.  

Warnings are important but veteran players really don't need them.  IMHO, all you need is a global Squelch Warnings messages command, or a dialog with warning checkboxes.

My .02.

I've just begun wading through those videos, Mark, and its a hidden treasure chest. You've have done a humungous amount of work. 

One thing I don't see-- and I'm not done watching yet-- is Escort function, assigning one ship to tag along with another, such as a destroyer or sub supporting a troop transport into dangerous waters.

Hey, you had Group Mode running since before I discovered Killer Bee!!  AND the ability to hide all controls with a keypress to give us full map immersion.  Woo hoo!

Oh, here's something I'll be looking for:  the ability to center screen over the active piece?

I was concerned by the Out of Range warnings popping up constantly in your demo.  I assume these can be squelched?

Epic enhance.

Best, as always.
Lo

Always bugged me that when captured, everything invested in taking the city is lost: ships, planes, infantry.  What if you have a land, sea, or air patrol configured to emerge from and return to,  span, or encircle a city?  Shouldn't that ameliorate destruction?  The city might be captured, but some  infantry or a troop transport anchored within may escape and be applied toward an insurgency to recapture it.  An incentive to patrol your important cities?  

I always loved setting up an 8-plane radial patrol from my AC's and having them cruise past an important city.  Used fast moving 3-space destroyers  for patrols too.

That's great, Mark.  Thank you for all your work.

- Loren

That mode of play always interested me, but I had no tech for it back in the day. Now, of course, we're in the Megabit bandwidth range-- this could be very hot for live play and chat.

I'm excited to see this classic evolve but preserving its charm,  without "chroming" it. 

Although, it might be fun to hear that 80's 8-bit score start up-- and then morph into a 72-piece orchestral version!  (Some of us may recall a video analog to this when the first laserdisc of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" started playing-- as a direct transfer from horrible VHS-- which suddenly stops after a few seconds -- and is replayed in pristine laser format.)

Do we still support a "Group move" protocol? (I guess the PDF manual will answer this.)  For those who never used it, this involves expanding the selected piece marquee to include other similar pieces (such as infantry),  and then mousing  in the desired re-direction, such as to another city, or region, and watching the entire group make its way there automatically, turn by turn.  Also handy with fighters, or any other group of materiel which needs a massive change of battle orders.

I also love the fact you support keyboard shortcuts as well as mouse, and hopefully all on-screen controls can disappear leaving only the map with say, a tap on the TAB key, a handy toggle.