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En Greve (On Strike)

Started by A Nonny Moose, March 04, 2016, 09:20:20 AM

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A Nonny Moose

I just had something I hadn't encountered before.  My labourers and builders went on an undeclared strike.

I very carefully maintained the building program within the available materials and personnel, but at one point, with some buildings in the 90% complete category all building ceased and even jacking up the priority didn't help.

The amount of marked resources to collect was not beyond the capabilities (few), and even unmarking some of them did not help.  It seemed that what these bannies wanted to do was be idle.

I am thinking that maybe my map was too large and I didn't have enough local communities to support the building program which was, perhaps, a little more scattered considering the main village was fairly centralized.  However, setting up food supply and local residentials didn't seem to help this much, if at all.

In the end, I got good and frustrated and killed the whole village.  Probably should have taken a screen shot first.
Go not to the oracle, for it will say both yea and nay.

[Gone, but not forgotten. Rest easy, you are no longer banished.]
https://www.haskettfh.com/winterton-john-hensall/

A Nonny Moose

Aha!  I just spent the last hour chasing a couple of my bannies around using follow mode.  I set it up so that they were both builders building a wooden bridge (everything else was paused) and watched while:

Bannie #1 wandered all over Robin Hood's barn looking for something to eat when all he had to do was follow the dirt road back to the Boarding House where he was domiciled to get fed.  He wandered all over the woods and at one point seemed to fall off the edge of the map.  He finally made it back to the Boarding House, got fed, idled a bit and finally went back to work.  This doesn't say very much for the AI's pathfinding capability, especially since the path was laid out and the sprite was on the path at the start of his wandrung.  In fact, Luke, it sucks.

Bannie #2 worked on the bridge a bit, got hungry and followed the dirt road back to the Boarding House, but lo and behold, half-way there, as he came into town, he turned into a fisherman delivering a case of fish to the storage!  WTF!  No damned wonder things sometimes seem to be off the rails.  They are!  This is worse than some of the silly tricks that happened in SimCity 2013.  When a bannie has a job he ought to stick to it.  Getting an unwarranted lateral arabesque in the middle of a work assignment also sucks.

I don't know how you set up your sprite objects, or even if they are objects, but they ought not to be able to change types arbitrarily while walking along a path.  There is really something wrong with the object code and/or the pathfinding algorithms.

I've been writing code for computers since sometime in the middle 1960s, and I grew up with all the latest bells and whistles including the transition from C to C++.  I would never allow a piece of code like this out of my hands.

Much more time needs to be spent on debugging and quality assurance on the next version of this program.
Go not to the oracle, for it will say both yea and nay.

[Gone, but not forgotten. Rest easy, you are no longer banished.]
https://www.haskettfh.com/winterton-john-hensall/

salamander

I have to agree with much of what you said.  Although the game is enjoyable as is, there are some things that really don't make a lot of sense, or that complicate things.  Unfortunately, it seems like further development of the game is unlikely (as I'm sure you know).  There has been a lot of player input to date both from here and I'm sure from any other forums (fora?).  It would be nice if the developer could do an update based on some of these suggestions/concerns, but that doesn't seem to be in our future.

Nilla

Yes, @salamander I'm sure you're right, there will not be any serious updates of the game.

I can somehow agree with you @A Nonny Moose; the game have some "non logical" features. I sometimes wish, that things would have been different. But on the other hand; this is some of the charm; if you want to do something, say build a house, it's not like in ANNO (a game serious I've played a lot) the house is magically there immediately, it takes time to build it. The Bannis sometimes seem to have their own mind. You have to watch, accept and adept. I like that. I don't want a too smooth game. But sometimes it annoys me, too.   

A Nonny Moose

Well, I am glad I am not the only one who has found some of those grapes to be sour.

Programming a simulation of this type is always difficult, especially balancing the need to keep a good frame rate for the display while not chewing up the CPU(s) entirely.  However, there are some things that need to cling properly to the specification for the program, if one exists.

Remember, quality is defined as conformance to requirements.  Heaven help us if the requirements are not well thought through.
Go not to the oracle, for it will say both yea and nay.

[Gone, but not forgotten. Rest easy, you are no longer banished.]
https://www.haskettfh.com/winterton-john-hensall/

Paeng

Quote from: A Nonny Moose on March 04, 2016, 12:51:03 PMthey ought not to be able to change types arbitrarily while walking along a path.

Well, actually I think that is a feature, not a bug.  ;)

We know that the program keeps "updating" things like housing, jobs, storage etc. in certain intervalls - so if a peep changes his occupation while en route to some other place, that is usually due to the AI filling in a freshly vacated job (death of a worker), a freshly vacated house (death of a resident), accomodating a student turning laborer and similar events.
* That's why you also get strange items in storage once in a while - because a peep carried e.g. tomatos but before he delivered was sent off to become a baker, so for a while you'll have tomatos in the baker's storage...

I feel that without that, things would be much more chaotic and path-finding much worse.



Quote from: Nilla on March 05, 2016, 02:47:04 AMYou have to watch, accept and adept. I like that.

Yeah... since I have embraced that set of mind, there are not many things left to anger me...  ;)
[i]Heads are round so thoughts can take a turn[/i]
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A Nonny Moose

@Paeng :  An interesting point, but when this happened there were no other (apparent) activities such as those going on.  Maybe it is completely arbitrary, in which case these polymath sprites should at least hiccup when the change occurs.  Changing sprite types in mid-task has the fine odour of an undocumented feature.
Go not to the oracle, for it will say both yea and nay.

[Gone, but not forgotten. Rest easy, you are no longer banished.]
https://www.haskettfh.com/winterton-john-hensall/

A Nonny Moose

Something else happened just now (I wish I had been quick enough to get a screenie).  A trader left my TP and sailed right through the end of my fishing pier.  No damage, but it indicates that the fishing pier is not considered a solid (hunk of land).  Worse yet, no damage.  These images passed though each other as if the other wasn't present.  Two things come to mind:


  • Object instantiation over water doesn't relieve the "water is here" presence when it is placed.
  • Pathfinding is unaware of such objects on the water.

Such is life.  Other games I play with water borne objects sometimes handle this, and sometimes not.  I've had instances of both in, for example, SimCity 4 Deluxe where some automata are aware of objects in the water and some are not.
Go not to the oracle, for it will say both yea and nay.

[Gone, but not forgotten. Rest easy, you are no longer banished.]
https://www.haskettfh.com/winterton-john-hensall/

rkelly17

Quote from: A Nonny Moose on March 06, 2016, 09:39:50 AM
Something else happened just now (I wish I had been quick enough to get a screenie).  A trader left my TP and sailed right through the end of my fishing pier.  No damage, but it indicates that the fishing pier is not considered a solid (hunk of land).  Worse yet, no damage.  These images passed though each other as if the other wasn't present.  Two things come to mind:

This happens all the time. Merchants (like all Bannies) take the shortest route from A to B. If that puts them through a fishing dock, well, so be it. They will also crash right through trading docks not their own and I have seen them go through mud banks where everything but their head disappears, especially when two water squares touch on the diagonal point and the graphics paint in mud to join them. Just some of the antics that Bannies get up to. It's of a piece with livestock and deer that can walk along the river bottom.

A Nonny Moose

I've always been charitable enough to postulate that the livestock can swim.  Most can.
Go not to the oracle, for it will say both yea and nay.

[Gone, but not forgotten. Rest easy, you are no longer banished.]
https://www.haskettfh.com/winterton-john-hensall/