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Re: [Rails-devel] Test report: 1835 in Rails 1.5.1 (Windows XP) - corrected
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From: Erik V. <eri...@xs...> - 2011-10-12 13:24:42
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John, Thanks for your report. Many aspects of it sound familiar to me... :-) I cannot promise that every aspect of it will (or even can) be addressed, but your most of requests are reasonable and will be saved. Some comments below. Erik. > -----Original Message----- > From: John David Galt [mailto:jd...@di...] > Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2011 3:08 AM > To: rai...@li... > Subject: [Rails-devel] Test report: 1835 in Rails 1.5.1 (Windows XP) - corrected > > Observations in playtest game of 1835 on Rails 1.5.1 on 2011-10-10. > > 1. I appreciate the changing of major company abbrevs to two letters, but > the "Bay" president's share in starting packet seems to have been left out. This would cause saved game incompatibility. I have put it on the wiki Legacy clean-ups wish-list. > 2. During a starting packet purchase round, if a player cannot take any action > (has too little money to buy anything currently available) a popup appears > "[name] cannot buy anything" with an OK button. If two players are skipped > they are combined on one popup. That's cute, but I'd prefer the turns be > silently skipped. > > Oddly enough, the stock round behavior is not the same. If a player cannot > take any action on his stock turn (he has too little money to buy anything > currently available, and owns nothing that can currently be sold) he still gets a > turn, even though "Pass" and "Autopass" are the only actions allowed. > Again, I'd prefer the turn be silently skipped. Same answer, although I will consider Stefan's suggestion to add 'silent' player actions. Not sure if we should consider that as a permanent solution, or just a compatibility hack. > 3. If the start packet does not sell out in first round, the unsold shares are not > accounted for in the "Game Status" window. They do not appear in the IPO > column, bank pool, or anywhere else. (I suggest adding a column for > "Reserved" shares -- which would also include the 60% of PR that will be > exchanged for privates and minors.) Not a bad idea. > 4. The bug reported in Game Notes, where the game would hang if the By > did not float in the first round, is no longer fatal, at least for me. > > To be exact: As soon as the "Start Round" is passed out, focus moves to the > Game Status window, and its "Pass" and "Autopass" buttons change color as > if they'd been enabled (but that window's name does NOT change to "Stock > Round [n]", and a popup "Error: No action available" appears). > > I worked around this by simply doing File -> Save on the menu bar and saving > the game. (A restore wasn't needed.) This moved the focus to the map > window and made it an operating round, which of course is how it should > have been. When the OR finished, "Start Round" reappeared on the screen. > > 5. Nit: The first operating round is still "0.1". > > 6. The columns "Current" through "Tokens" on the Game Status window are > too wide, apparently because they've been constrained to match the line > showing the number of trains of each future type. I would prefer that the list > of future trains be allowed to word-wrap, especially because it already takes > up two lines if any player owns two private companies. An old wish. Being lucky* today, I finally found a solution on the Web: embed the text in <html></html> and set the preferred size to (1,1). Works nice. Martin Brumm will also appreciate it. Pushing it to the repo doesn't work yet though, so I have to fiddle with Git again. (* or so I though initially; to set that off, I just broke a nice vase at home, a work of art. Well, you can't have it all). > 7. I really appreciate your enabling scroll bars on the Game Status window so > that the window no longer frequently and automatically changes size. > > I propose a similar change to the Map window, which seems to frequently > set itself to extend way beyond the screen (thus making me manually resize > and move it) several times per game, either because the number of > companies has changed or because a company laid a tile or token that > required one of those columns in the list of companies to resize itself. Yes, I also find that very annoying. This was supposed to be fixed when we added saving the window location and size, but apparently recreating the window contents at each new OR breaks that. I'll look for a fix, but the mysteries of Java Swing still elude me often enough that I can't make any promises. > (Conversely, the Tokens column does not resize itself when it gets so narrow > I can't see the number of tokens a company has left, and I wish it > did!) There you have it: sometimes resizing to make everything fit is good (in this case), sometimes it's bad (in the above case). Either the window size is fixed, or it isn't - and it now seems to behave in either way on the wrong moments. > 8. Unlike most companies, a PR token does not appear on the Stock Chart > until the M2 is traded in to form the PR. I propose that the PR token, appear > as soon as any player buys a share of PR, even though the shares can't be > sold until the M2 is traded in. (Other companies' shares can't be sold until > they have operated, but their tokens appear on the Stock Chart as soon as > someone buys the president's share.) The token is placed when a company is started, which in this case happens with the M2 swap. The 1835 rules also explicitly say that the token is placed at this time. So, although I understand your wish, I don't think I'm going to put any effort into it. > 9. The Pfalzbahnen owner is being offered opportunities to lay a token using > its special power even when impossible (because the company currently > operating has run out of tokens and/or already has one in the Pfalz hex). Yes, that's a detail that still needs to be addressed. I have no solution for that yet. See also your next point. > 10. The Map window now allows a "Special" action to close private companies > voluntarily. I don't think this is legal in 1835. (I ran across this while looking > for a command to use Pfalz's power to lay a tile. I think this "Special" menu > would be a much better place for tile- and token-laying powers to be, rather > than make the user click "No Tile" or "No Token" an extra time every turn. > But I suppose that's a style issue.) This is a stop-gap to enable closing privates that do not automatically close according to the rules, such as the PfB above. This also applies to the OBB. Once all that works correctly, this option will be removed. > 11. The tile-laying logic is mostly correct but still suggests tile lays where the > new tile is rotated in a way that makes it not connect to any station of the > company. And there are situations where some tile lays are allowed but > nothing gets suggested. Indeed the tile laying process needs several refinements. We all know, and if it was easy it would probably have been done already. > (This game, the Pfalz owner did not have a major company before Phase 3, > so I was unable to verify whether it still offers the Pfalz tile-lay on every > major-company turn of that player during yellow phase, which should never > happen because the tile lay is impossible then.) > > 12. The token-laying logic similarly still makes mistakes. It suggests every turn > that BY lay a station marker in the south side of Nurnberg- Furth, even > though it laid one on the north side in OR2 using the NF. That would obviously be a bug. > (Oddly enough, in a problem that resembles point 3 in reverse, the five PR > tokens that are supposed to be reserved for exchanging minor company > tokens > *do* show up as available to be built. Next time I'll try to build them in > arbitrary locations and see what happens -- both then and when the minor > companies merge and there aren't any PR tokens for them.) Interesting question: are these PR tokens really reserved? I don't believe the rules say so. > 13. The revenue calculator consistently shows the correct runs for M6 on the > map but calculates their value as 20M too low (40 from green Hamburg to > yellow Kiel, which should be 60). Mousing over the map reveals the > underlying problem: northwest Hamburg is value 20, not 40, in the tile list (or > wherever this information is stored for preprinted cities). Right! Strange that I have never noticed that. Fixed. > 14. The game reaches the point of the attached save file. When the PR buys > the 5-train, SX has to discard a train (correctly changed from happening upon > purchase of the 4+4). But then the game hangs while trying to merge the > remaining private and minor companies. I had to "undo" the 5-train purchase > (using the report window) to be able to save the game. > > I've included the log as well. I will investigate that later. |
