Optimal Walling: JavaScript to test a QoL (Age of Salamanders)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I recently posted a scenario presenting different QoL suggestions: Age of Salamanders (presentation here, and Mod available here).

One of the featured QoL in Age of Salamanders is the Optimal Walling: an algorithm to build walls as straight as possible and costing less wood/stone (see here for more details).

I discovered in this post the CodePen tool an I thought it could be a good opportunity to quickly test this QoL.

https://codepen.io/nvandernoot/full/MWaGMbL

For the optimal experience, open it in full page.
Feel free to play with it and tell me what you think about this QoL :wink:

If you want to test it in game, to see more QoL suggestions, or just to have fun, you can try the Age of Salamanders scenario.

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You can alraedy do this with some clicks. I dont really know how much QoL this really is.
This is nothing game breaking. So fine if it would be part of the game. I have nothing against it.

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Love it! This QoL feature should be a part of the game.

At the same time I expect some anti-Auto movement to appear soon in the comments.

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Love it! Nice, accessible version of the core idea of the scenario.

Very minor things: a truly optimal wall would also take account of map edges to save tiles :wink:

One thing the scenario shows that this doesn’t (yet?), and might convince people like WoodsierCorn696, is the comparison with the game’s terrible walls from any given point (x,y) to (x+n, y+1).

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looks awesome man! would love it in game, but prefer for opposition to this…

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Nice, maybe devs would consider the possibility to implement something similar.

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This isn’t auto though, do you not understand his suggestion or just seeing it as an opportunity to get at people who don’t think automation is good for the game?

I like the suggestion but I don’t know how much it would be different than just holding ctrl and clicking once for a straight part and once for diagonal.

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Yes, of course. The purpose is mainly to ease the process and avoid wrong walls or having to find the perfect tile when making a wall with diagonal lines, especially when in the rush of the action. Once a wall is badly placed, eliminating the wrong foundations is also time consuming.

And this also happens at pro level, see for instance this video posted last week. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Yeah, but “Quasi-Optimal Walling” seems less exciting :grin:

Technically, the third (or fourth… I do not remember) configuration is the one implemented in the game.
But, I like the idea. I will add an option to show the comparison with the game solution when I will have time. :wink:
In the meantime, people can have a look at this post from @Yorok0, to see an image explaining this.

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1920Ă—1080 1.29 MB

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I know how it is in the game, and how it is shown here. Like i said: Nothing really game changing. I wouldnt mind if they add it to the game.

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Small question: To cycle between the 4 configurations, you can use the right mouse button or the mouse wheel in the CodePen project.

Which one do you find more intuitive, easier to use ?

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Sorry, could you elaborate? Which configurations are you talking about?

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For the same two end points, there are 4 configurations possible:

  • diagonal line attached to the first point
  • diagonal line attached to the second point
  • no diagonal, vertical line attached to the first point
  • no diagonal, vertical line attached to the second point

On the tool, while you are drawing a wall, you can cycle between these 4 configurations with the right button or the mouse wheel.
Which one of the two (right button or wheel) would be better ?

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Mouse wheel feels more intuitive and easier to use.
RMB may be used to cancel the command when placing a structure.
In chess RMB is used to cancel the command.

Many people use the wheel to rotate gates (aka change the configuration) so using the wheel as default while placing a wall is preferable.

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Ok, thanks for the insight.

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This would be a QoL buff for turtling civs like portugese and koreans… I want it for yesterdey

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This was one of the most popular suggestions during beta and also gathers popularity quickly here :slight_smile:

It would avoid one of the biggest problems of current walling algorithm - accidentally causing wall to be built in a completely different shape by moving mouse to adjacent tile at last moment before clicking. If this suggestion would get implemented, then moving mouse to adjacent tile would alter shape of wall just a little bit, making it much safer.

Players would love it, but what do the developers think about it? How hard it is to change current walling algorithm?

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Great and simple feature! Love it. Would get rid of one of the most annoying things in this game.

Also this has nothing to do with automatization, people that say such stuff clearly dont get the point of why many of us dont want things like Autovillagers. In the end the existing drag-and-click feature for walls is simply bugged and this would fix it!

If mousewheel can be used without conflicting with zooming (if you have that on mouse wheel aswell), would highly prefer it over Right Mouse Button.

Great Work!

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I posted another QoL suggestion from Age of Salamanders in this post.
It is also related to walls building and could work well with the Optimal Walling.

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Thank you for the idea, I just updated the CodePen to allow to see the difference with the current implementation.

If you tick the Show game current implementation, yellow tiles will appear when building a wall to indicate the tiles that would currently be built in the game.

wall_comparison
wall_comparison1617Ă—657 160 KB

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