xconq on x86

[Jason Molenda <jsm@cygnus.com>]

I downloaded and tried the latest Xconq snapshot on my Windows 98 box.
Here are a couple of comments.  Just for background, I'm almost a total
Xconq newbie, I haven't played it in three or four years.


It was confusing that the filename for the x86 prebuilt binary was
different from the other files; I couldn't just go to the ftp site and
spot the correct file to download.  I think you're trying to keep to
an 8.3 filename convention--don't bother.  Wintel boxes haven't been
restricted to 8.3 since '95.  Use a name that fits in with the naming
scheme of the other pre-built binaries.

You include the .dll files so that people don't need to have Cygwin,
but you've made the file available in .tar.gz format, which I need
cygwin to uncompress.  Most Linux systems have "zip" on them; you can
probably make a .zip file with this that can be easily handled by users.
You can publicize Infozip (http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/Zip.html)
for folks who don't already have some unzipper.  (infozip is an open
source multi-host implementation of zip)

I was annoyed when I had a game running and I had a factory producing
troops (which I no longer needed)--I couldn't just click on the town
to tell it to stop that.  I couldn't figure out how to say "I want to
change _this_ item's current task".  Not an x86 specific prob, I know.

The scrollbars were really hosed while playing the Standard game.  My land
was just right of the center of the world, and once I scrolled to the
left with the scrollbars, I was unable to scroll back to the right again.
It was pretty weird; I would drag the scrollbar to the right all the way,
then it would snap back ~1/5th of the way.  I eventually got the main
display window to show my land area by clicking in the world-view window.

I only saw one other problem in the ~10 minutes of gameplay.  When I
started the Standard game, I had a pop-up menu of options for the game.
These clickboxes were grey colored, but when I moved my mouse over them,
they became white colored.  (I didn't click any of them--just moved my
mouse over them)


I'd like to have a menu right at the beginning which says "Easy,
Moderate, Hard?"  I'm a really lame game player, and I like these pop-ups
on Windows games because I can select the Easy mode.  I got my ass kicked
on the Introductory game within like three minutes.

I didn't like having a DOS window around for I/O; I'd rather have a
separate pop-up window if you want to output text.  Whenever I close DOS
window, Windows tells me that I might be causing problems, blah blah blah,
and I have to click OK on some warning box.

The game really needs sounds.  I think the creative use of a narrative
voice-over could help reduce the clutter of the Xconq UI.  Like "You
just had a town taken over!"  In the Introductory game, I didn't realize
that my towns were being taken over; I saw them switch to a fancier
looking icon with a "2" and I thought they'd advanced to some more
sophisticated state.  Oops. :-)


Well, that's all so far.  I'll try playing it again this week and if
anything else shows up, I'll send in another note.

Jason
Free the Software!