Re: [Rails-devel] 1835 playtest report - Rails 1.3

[Erik V. <eri...@xs...>]

Some comments inserted below.
Erik. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Stefan Frey (web.de) [mailto:ste...@we...] 
Sent: Friday 18 June 2010 00:37
To: Development list for Rails: an 18xx game
Subject: Re: [Rails-devel] 1835 playtest report - Rails 1.3

Hi John,
thanks a lot for the detailed report. 
Most issues were already addressed, but I would still like to add some
details 
for the parts I am responsible.

> But while that logic "knows" about route connections, the tile rotation
> logic doesn't.  That is, you're still allowed (and sometimes offered as
> first choice) the ability to place a new tile rotated so that it doesn't
> connect to your route.

You are right with your complain, the (current) highlighting only indicates 
the hexes were the route network has open ends.
The rule enforcing for tile laying in Rails has not changed (yet).
Enforcement is on my list, but it requires a more drastic change of the 
current UI implementation. It will also consider the various approaches 
(permissive, restrictive, semi-restrictive), with the default set
accordingly 
for each game. 

[EV] A permissive check would be easy to add. All that's needed is adding a
call to a method that returns if a given track on a given hexside is part of
a route (to be inserted in GUITile around line 115). The other approaches
would require some more coding but need the same method call. 


>
> Also, the controls to place a tile seem annoyingly finicky -- you have to
> click directly on the image of the tile you want to place, even though its
> description takes up a larger space that looks like a button.

The controls are those in the panel on the left to the map to select the 
tiles? On my system it is sufficient to click on the description and it 
neither takes up a larger space than the tile.
But I have a linux system, so my observation does not imply a lot.

[EV] I'm on (or under) Windows, but I don't have any such problem either.
BTW I find the current tile description somewhat confusing. Someone
(Stefan?) has added the number of remaining tiles, which is good, but the #
sign in front of that is more commonly used to prefix the tile number, as it
is done in the Remaining Tiles panel. I would have put the number of tiles
in parentheses, as is also done to indicate the number of remaining trains.


> I also tried out the "Cash Correction" mode just to see if it would help,
> and found that once you select it you can't cancel it without changing
> anything.  Entering zero gets you an error popup.
    
I admit that I deliberately decided to block the usual game actions as long
as 
(any) correction mode is active. My intention was to highlight that the 
actions available during correction allows the violation of game rules.
And I admit that I have not considered what happens if someone does not
figure 
out how to leave that mode. Maybe there should be some status bar, that 
indicates that you can leave the correction modes by deactivating them in
the 
menu.
The error popup on zero cash change is the standard implementation in Rails,

if you select a non-valid parameter, as those checks are done by the
backend. 
Sorry for trapping the game by this.

[EV] Accepting 0 as a no-op should easily fix that.