The suggestion to send a saved file and make a commentary on the various things found, seems an excellent idea for all concerned.
I have therefore forwarded a save of a test game, with very few troops played on a 1920 x 1200 resolution monitor. In order to reduce uncertainties, all delays and fog of war are at their minimum levels. For completeness, I have included all my observations in the hope that this will be of the maximum benefit. Some items may be bugs and others may be simply my misunderstanding of correct operation.
The first section deals with the user interface in particular and the second section catalogues timed events during the gaming session. The .sav has been mailed separately - shame that format is not permitted in posts here.
Would be better if the game use one logo instead of three for the short cut, the minimised game and the website - for the sake of consistency.
Previously mentioned system menu on the F3 screen. This also makes it difficult or impossible to take screenshots using the W key?
F2 view: displays information boxes for each side on the wrong side of the screen (one would have expected the French to be on the left).
The cavalry icon in the smaller of the two F2 views is shown as two overlapping rectangles - is this intentional?
The hotspot for selecting a unit with the mouse is considerably offset from the centre of the rectangles, making it difficult to select. The same is true of the F3 view.
"Save initial deployment" - no file name is prompted?
The method of saving the game seems problematic, with the absence of specific filenames making it difficult to revisit previous stages etc. Use of the starting time as the file name is pretty confusing. It seems necessary to exit the game in order to achieve a save.
After having saved the starting positions / order of battle, during the game it would not permit redeployment, despite the top of screen menu inviting me to do so. I think that exiting the game again completely may then have circumvented this.
Mousing over units on both sides on the F2 screen producers the numeral 1 next to the Austrians, when the French were selected. This may well be an issue arising from my ignorance.
Place names only appear when the overall commander is selected. Linking places to commanders doesn't seem a logical thing to do.
Of all the aspects of gameplay, the way in which morale is presented is most unhelpful to my mind. A "time to rout" raises the difficulty of dynamically changing circumstances making this potentially inaccurate. The use of numbers for morale is difficult to assimilate and the lack of thresholds almost renders the numbers inconsequential anyway (you never know when a unit is going to break). The human brain assimilates shapes and colours more easily. It would be a big improvement to have either a sliding scale, or gradually a changing colour (say from green through amber to red).
Similarly, the coding of unit quality is just that - a code. It could be a lot more user-friendly than having to remember the number, location and colour of chevrons.
When replaying a video, there did not appear to be an indication that it had come to a conclusion.
During the game
Loss of animation experienced again, with units sliding along instead of marching.
Is there a way to turn off the music in F3? It's quite appropriate and I liked some of the time of those tunes are becoming seriously ingrained now. The F2 screen theme I thought was very nice in its full rendition.
Units became detached and could not be re-attached. Again this may be my unfamiliarity with the game in that they may have been circumstances which precluded their re-attachment.
When deploying, units would seem to start and stop their movement arbitrarily, rather than simply to maintain a formation.
0820 Soult circling.
1013 cavalry rallying for some reason but nowhere near enemy
1017 unit withdrawing but seems okay. No evidence of enemy activity when 2% losses displayed. The artillery must have been firing.
0006 this is undoubtedly a different time reference to report dispatches but it's not intuitively obvious what this time in years or how it relates to the rest of the timing in the game.
0943 stream no impediment to artillery movement apparently. During artillery advance, more circling observed.
1025 mouse over cavalry unit shows "infantry is in line formation". Mouse started drawing grey boxes across F2 screen. Could be the game working correctly but I don't know what it was doing.
1026 artillery seem to have stopped firing (maybe earlier and before the following action below). When the artillery was firing, only half the battery did so. This could well be a historically accurate simulation of artillery just firing a couple of pieces when at long-range.
1130 cavalry seem to have attacked French artillery but I missed it, the cavalry often disappearing from the screen. There's then a flickering vibration of the attacking cavalry amongst the artillerymen. No evidence of destroyed artillery unit. All looks a bit odd. The AI appears to have placed the artillery in considerable jeopardy recklessly.
1257 one battalion way ahead of the deployment line.
1403 units advances which morale of only 32.
1404 cavalry withdraws, why?
1407 music stops when Cmdr selected?
1409 ranking battalion does not show its casualty figure. Another battalion refuses to deploy in line.
1414 both units in a firefight against each other rout. Unit seen to rout with zero casualties. AI has inexplicably retaken command of battalion that I had deliberately removed from the AI.
Some of the timing is maybe slightly approximate and other odd events missed but I was trying to scribble all this down whilst playing!
I'm sure some of the things are down to me but I hope that the time invested in doing this test and reporting upon it is of some value to the further development of the game, which is the intention of this post, i.e. to be helpful and not to detract from the game.
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