In D2175#182398, @wraitii wrote:

Formations are supposed to be about fighting and battlefield shape, which is why using them for gathering makes little sense.

Agreed, but I would say the story is different for battalions, as the are/ could be seen as a more general organisation entity. That's what I liked about the previous patch version :) but yes this it getting off topic, sorry about that.
As I said, the patch is still nice and an improvement as it is now, so no objections from me. Although I would like battalions to be usesefull outside of formations to reduce micro or formations generally being less broken.

I agree, control groups and formations with battalions do overlap, but they differ in key components.
Control groups are limited, but they are able to group buildings, which is what I use them for the most.

Would just be a bit sad if something that can be useful in many situations (selecting a bunch of units with one click) is tied to something that is halfway broken. But as @Freagarach said, probably something for another patch.

I agree that this is better than the alternative. See here for reasoning: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/56973-are-civs-in-a25-more-uniquespecific/?do=findComment&comment=455533

Nice, thanks :)

@Langbart thanks for testing.

I am unable to test the new version at the moment, that's why I'm asking;
Since the battalions are now tied to formations (as far as I understand), is it still possible to have a battalion and send it to gather something or will this disband it, since the formation can not be used for that?
Cause I liked it to be able to select one wood cutter battalion with one click and task them with something different.

@Ceres the [hack] in the title implies that its not meant to be applied for production use and also I have no idea what kind of c++ wizardry is going on here. So can't help you here.

In rP25789#53964, @Ceres wrote:

Which manual step do you mean?

ok then I don't have any more remarks, its definitely already an improvement.

In D4252#181859, @Ceres wrote:

Maybe I could add another tooltip style, so users immediately see that there is a tooltip.

Tested the patch and it looks good to me.
The other question is how many people will find this, but at least it is there now.
Just to think out loud here, maybe we should still add an (order matters) behind the heading.

In D2175#181736, @Freagarach wrote:

The more I play with this the more I think this should just be the default for formations.

I just tested the patch in a small game and I like it very much. Basically like control groups, but unlimited.
All worked as it is intended and I got no errors or noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Only problem is that the panel for the buttons is too small and some are missing. But that was already the case before.

In D4270#181692, @Stan wrote:

Just for the record how bad does it look for ARB since there is no shader ?

In rP25789#53944, @Ceres wrote:

Even if not possible automatically from within the game, maybe it was enough to create them by screenshots or so? I would help with it, if deemed feasible.

I would also like biome previews for every map, but the problem is that it is tedious to do by without automation. You not only have to do it once, but you also have to repeat the whole process when textures or maps get updated.

In D4270#181709, @Stan wrote:

You can use github.com or github1s.com's search features

Thanks for the tip, that works great.

Arb are a special kind of shaders used when you disable glsl

Well, good news and bad news:
player_water looks nice (enough) on all objects I tested:

In D4270#181692, @Stan wrote:

Nice patch. How does it look for other objects using that shader?

That is the question, I'm not sure where it is used elsewhere, so I need to find out how to tell windows to search inside all the files.

Just for the record how bad does it look for ARB since there is no shader ?

What is ARB?

In D3868#181632, @Freagarach wrote:

There is no timer when the berries are full, they only run when they have been gathered

So the performance impact is insignificant? In that case yes why not :)

and as such players can notice it?

I was just referring to the patch description. "The effect will be minor"

In D3868#167382, @Stan wrote:

One argument @wraitii had for the relative uselesness of regenerating berries is performance. It running all the time and not being used will mean that you'll waste some perf doing it;

You can always discuss stuff on the forum, but not sure how many people there are interested in a small UI improvement. You can always try I guess.

@Kate do you want to work further on this patch? Otherwise I could commandeer and do the JavaScript part.

In D4266#181310, @Stan wrote:

points more toward a will to get A23 back than an actual need for those animals.

In D4266#181310, @Stan wrote:

Maybe they were removed due to a lack of animation? The link in the summary points more toward a will to get A23 back than an actual need for those animals.

Sorry the comment was two down from the original link. I fixed it in the summary now.

In D4086#181288, @Feldfeld wrote:

I see, it indeed makes sense. Well you can do as you want, the current snow distribution works and it's true that my suggestion could turn out weird in the end.

In D4086#181278, @Feldfeld wrote:

That's a nice rework of the map, I like the concept of the new biomes.

I notice that in 'first snow', all the ground is covered in snow except for forest floor, meanwhile in 'spring', there isn't any snow anywhere except in the forest floor. This looks quite unnatural to me. I think this is to represent the evolution of the quantity of snow as seasons passes, with more and more snow as we approach winter.
As a solution I can propose an idea I had while making my map Alpine Mountains, even though I decided to do something else in this case:
The winter biome doesn't get changed. However snow patches of varying sizes are placed in spring and first snow. Snow patches are scarce and small in spring, and would be bigger and more frequent in first snow. Trees forest floor would depend on if the tree is in a snow patch (which is a sort of snow region) or not. It could also be nice if trees themselves could have their snow variant placed instead if they are in a snow region. Of course that would be harder to implement however.

Thanks :) Yes I agree that the snow distribution is subotimal, the problem is the the new snow textures don't blend well with other textures, therefore it is hard to reach a natural looking result either way. But I can try the ways you proposed.
It should be noted however, that the current distribution is at least semi realistic. When the first snow falls, the forest floor is usually not covered, as the snow fall on the trees and melts there with the next sunshine.
In spring it is the other way round: snow stars to melt on open ground as the sun shines on it, but the snow that has fallen over the course of the winter inside the forest is covered in shade and survives longer.

There's also one semi-related thing I had in mind, I noticed that muskox and walruses disappeared of random map generation in last version. I was wondering what is the reason for that, is it because it is justified with historical accuracy, or because they didn't merge well with new biomes, or because they were forgotten? I like animal diversity in maps so I was wondering if it was possible to have them back. Of course the addition of bears in this map is a nice touch as well.

To throw it into the discussion here, because it seems related,
This map could solve balancing resources:
https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4053

as per above test^

I tested (started and let it run for a bit):
"We are legion" vs PetraAI.
"Peloponesian Wars" vs PetraA
"Miletus Penisula" vs PetraA
-> no more errors

Update to @Stan 's comments. Also trying to please Lint.

Update after @Langbart 's comments.
Midwinter now has a bit more blueish lighting, which makes the ice look less green.
Also added fish to the frozen lake (Midwinter)

The water color for midwinter was a bit too radioactive. Fits now betters to the environment.

Alright. No renaming this time. Add new ones and delete the old. Who needs to compare the biomes side by side anyways.

Update as @Langbart described. Hopefully svn won't hate me anymore.
Also fixed the sun elevation as @wowgetoffyourcellphone mentioned: longer shadows do look nice.

I played the first part of the tutorial.
Confirmed that the berries are not grapes and that the lake is in the south.

In D4086#180854, @Langbart wrote:

Try the following:

mh why does the build fail now?

update with new winter version of the trees.

The enabled mods shown below are loaded from top to bottom. Please keep in mind that mods loaded later might overwrite settings of mods loaded earlier. Therefore, it is advisable to have more complex mods loaded last.

after talking with @wowgetoffyourcellphone :
It would be nice if this map is not just a reskin of alpine/arctic but looks more like the actual landscape there (especially the spring one).
see:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Archipelago062009.jpg

To explain why I would remove them:
There are so many maps in the game that it gets hard to navigate. Imo the release should just include the best / prettiest/ most fun to play maps and they should be easy to select and find.
If a new user wants to play a match for the first time they will be overwhelmed by the options and filters and chances are they may choose a map which is subpar and not representative of the quality the game can offer.
So I would remove all the maps that don't meet the expectations a player has (i.e nice to play, nice graphics) and then put them as @Stan said in an extra mod, for everyone who is interested.

In D3995#179683, @wraitii wrote:

Basically, biomes offer a "balanced" version of their setting, and a "realistic", and maps can choose which they pick.

My 'hunch' is that we want maps to not be drastically affected by biomes, _unless_ the map says that it will be massively affected by biomes. One could make a map with Landscape x Biome being the 'main feature' as a feature, kinda like Unknown. But specific maps should IMO always play mostly the same, regardless of biome, or it kind of loses meaning.

Thanks for the link @Stan interesting discussion. I'm still on the side "why make it complicated when it can be easy".
Imo, the civs are different enough to have equal chances in a random draw (when they are not, then they why are they different civs).

seems like a good idea to me

Not sure about this patch. If there are no opinions in favor I will abandon it.

Yeah, I think before I (or someone else) can continue there needs to be a design decision.
I think we can agree that maps could have more interesting features and that some of them should be inserted programmatically to reduce the work for map makers and reduce the amount of maps that are very similar and only differ in one feature.

sure

Thanks for working on this. There are indeed so many important tips missing atm.

Tried it for different languages (not all) and found no problems. Text fits nicely in the box / or at least better than before, in the case of greek.

certainly better than before.

Improvement imo. To have more than four words on a line seems more natural than before. Also fixes the problem.

Works for me.

Found a problem:
EMBASSIES AND MERCENARY CAMPS is too long, it gets cut down to EMBASSIES AND MERCENARY.
We either need to add a line break or shorten the title.

When the max is 120 sec as in D4135 implemented, I wouldn't lower the cooldown (or at least not so much). It can get quite crowded otherwise. Maybe 4?

Works. I tried to trigger an error but was all good.

Agreed, better they go somewhere else and fulfill the task then become idle.

In D4126#176868, @wraitii wrote:

I think that would be mitigated by adding mipmaps. Add this file in the ranks folder:

textures.xml120 BDownload

(though this will only work well for icons that are used in the 3D scene, not for GUI icons).

actually not sure if it is better after all.
Closeup definite yes

In D4145#176778, @wraitii wrote:

Can you check for Nubia if it changes with the camera rotation? Though I guess most people don't really rotate from the default angle too much.

Yes it changes drastically. That's why I think the starting angle should be the one which makes it look best because people don't really change it or return to it after a change.
Other option would be to desaturate the grass texture, but I don't think thats necessary when we can just change the angle.

Update here, to not litter the comments with icons

Update some of @Freagarach 's comments.

They (" village phase") have a different capitalization atm. Not sure what is right, but I would make it uniform.

for some reason the 64 version still looks better, but I think the 32 version is stil an improvement.

here the 32x32 version

new ones:

@Langbart
Try these ones

All the changes are improvements, especially Cantabrian Highland.

Improved the pictures @Langbart and @vladislavbelov mentioned.

fix for @Stan 's comments. Also replace all "buildings" with "structures" and replace "factions" with "civilizations".

More fixes by @Langbart and @Imarok comments.