Images
- use 64px based tiles - as sometime in 32px we wanted a few more pixels to draw a detail
- use small infantry images, or squad images if you will have war machines and ships too (that is much bigger in real llife than a soldier)
- unit_ger_inf_paratrooper.png (13.9 KiB) Viewed 10288 times
Texts, references
- make the flavour text of units right when unit is ready and about to be jsoned (in AOF we have hundreds of units without texting and idk when will they be filled. (use \ before ' character inside texts)
- make unit Wikipedia references right when unit is ready and about to be jsoned (image + url) if we make a historical game (like in AOW all new units gets the wikipedia reference - see eg. German Tiger tank) - and also a pain to fill now on all existing hundreds of units.
Maps
- (almost) finalize terrains and decorations before making random maps, maps and campaigns, otherwise you will get many maps with not nice terrains that no one will remake later.
Game
- define "default" units (not buyable in upgrades) and upgrade units when you have a couple already, and always think of default/shopitem thing when a new unit comes (ask yourself: should it be default?) - upgrades are important to catch players, to give them "mission" to fulfil.
- keep track of used unit ID-s (and effect ID-s) there are files for them under the "ID" directory - make the in a sequene, dont make ID groups based on nations, unit types, came out it has no any use, and only a pain to find the good section on adding new id later (also ID length is limited as skins use same ID-s but writing 1000 or something before it so it should not run out from "integer".)
- unit costs: most unit costs shuold be between 2..6 turns, the stronger ones can go up to 8. and only exceptionally big things (eg. a air-carrier) should go up to 12-14 maximum - above these the unit will not really be trained by players. 1 turn cost also dangerous as can be mass produced and used as blockades/meats. so only very few or no unit should have 1 turn cost.
- be wise on setting ranges: in game most units (at least 50%) should be 1 ranged and only the other half should have range - dont make all units ranged - will kill most strategic element from game!
- Unit speeds: as the game itself is a slow game by its genre (being turn based not real time) we should not make games that are tiring or pain to play - So we need to set unit speeds about on minimum 3 tiles (only rare or exceptional units like artillery should have less speed)
Same true for maximum speeds: like MOST unit should have like about 6 speed maximum, as if the target location is off your screen it is pain to move units (some units can have more but it should be not the mayority of the units you would want to "move")
- Unit sight: As the engine currently let players to move units within sight range (in FOG mode) we must not set smaller sight than the unit speed (movement range), otherwise the game gets slower to play and a pain to play. (there can be exceptions eg. if most units are ground/water units in an alternative than maybe very high speed planes can have smaller sight than movement, and maybe artillery type units too, but all other "marching" and advancing units should go at full speed always.
.. there will be many more i will list when comes to my mind. (maybe Endru and Alexander can help listing these 5cents)
these are only practical advices as i see very hard to fix things later (eg. missing textings).
