While I agree that not everyone on the team has to know everything, I have to point out that software development is always a big team effort. So if at least ONE person in the whole team that has contributed a bit of code to that mechanic would have checked out the correct, and unofficial Age of mandala mod, that one person would have realised: “ohh damn, they dont use circles, why would they not use circles?”
And the other point is: imagine you get the task of introducing a official way to show ranges of stone defences better, what would be the first thing you do?
a) draw a circle
b) try to find out how it is calculated if a unit is in range of a castle or not
c) look at existent solution and try to reproduce it
Now lets assume you choose to go with a):
You draw a circle around the castle, just from the middle of it with a radius of 8. You are a really good developer who tests what he does and you get surprised. Why? Yeah because your circle is waaay too small, since the castle has a 4x4 foundation you decide to go with a radius of 10 (8 base range+half time the size of foundation) (+whatever upgrades the player has). This is the exact moment when every bell in your head has to ring… something is off, maybe range is not as easy as intended, maybe some more research has to be done.
Yes exactly, where was the guy who knows about the game mechanics?
I could not agree more on that. Since any IDE nowadays has the possibility to jump the code to whereever that specific method is declared/defined this shouldnt take too long. But iirc at some point it was said that they lost the original code of the genie engine, but only had the compiled program left. I can not imagine what genius though it would be a good idea to republish a game for the third time when you dont have the source of the engine…
It just shows there is no QA involved. Someone even pointed out he reported that issue in the prerelease phase. If it does not get pushed back after such a report you can just cancel the prerelease thing. Link to the guy who reported the wrong behaviour in PUP Forum: Range indicator is a disaster
imho it is fine if it looks ugly, thats one thing you will never satisfy everyone, but the other thing is: the shown information is wrong, its close to the correct information, but still wrong…