Towns are going to be huge. wow. Having maybe 10-15 buildings for a town of 30, and each taking quite some space (not as much as the farm), one could take a stroll through town without reaching the end too soon. I like your proportions.

Where on your list of town sizes would this farm fall into. Is it average in size, or one of the larger ones, or are all towns roughly the same size (dependent on resources)

Well, that's a history lesson anyway.

hehe, I'm only 18. I've only used CRT with my win98 about 10 years ago, and those things weren't strong enough to run half of a modern internet browser, let alone a game.

If he does have an intel built-in chip, then I can add my input. I'm running integrated with intel HD3000, the newer one so far. If I forget to turn on my nvidia and run the game with intel, I get about 30-40 fps in open areas and loading a leaf takes a bit (low video memory 64mb). So if you happen to have an older card, even if it does work, it will be painful.

There are a couple things you should know first. There is a frame rate for both your monitor (refresh rate) and the game. A frame rate is how fast, in frames per second (fps), the screen/program runs at. What you see is basically a bunch of still images displayed about 60 fps normal (the higher the better) so that it looks almost seamless.

Vsync (vertical sync) reads both the fps of the monitor and the game and determines if it needs to slow down the game. This may seem weird to slow the game but if your monitor is running 60fps and the game is running 100fps, sometimes you would get tearing in what you see. This happens more on earlier monitors (such as xp) but can still happen anywhere.

Basically, play the game and see if there is tearing in the video (you will notice it if it happens). Textures won't look normal, just google for images. If tearing occurs, turn vsync on. If tearing does not occur, you can leave it off to have a higher frame rate. Basically, it just adapts your system to fix problems, and isn't needed if the problems don't occur.

Hope you understand (it is a bit hard explaining a concept in a post)

Sometimes antiviruses have false positives, like paul said. I'm not familiar with Bullgaurd but if anybody has antivirus problems, there is most likely an exclude list, of which you can add the mythruna website. Also, if you happen to be unsure, download a good on-demand antivirus, update it, then run it. Your choice of free antivirus is huge, mse is good. Never heard of bullgaurd but if a study was conducted that included it, you can check its frequency of false positives, missed malware, etc.

hehe, i see it now. So it won't be the building but it will be the properties associated with an object that will define its role. The building itself would probably house a set of objects and the living quarters etc. It is just the need of the worker (blacksmith etc) that will need his tools (furnace etc) and will need his food, bed, etc... which will entirely decide what buildings and objects are needed.

In short, it is that you don't need the physical blacksmith workplace, but instead a tool and the ai's desire to work (for production) which will enable him to use the tools.

hey paul, minimum memory for win xp is 64mb. My sister is running 128 mb on her laptop and its fine for normal things except multitasking and fast loading.

looking at the minimum specs, one can probably run windows xp off a phone connected to a monitor and have good response (if one is inclined to stick xp on a phone  )

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865

Now that buildings can understand about their outputs, the next thing will be giving them a list of required inputs.  After that, I can start mapping requirements to resource production and figure out how well the town is operating.

So I see that you have the road layed out in front of you now but I'm just curious, the player will be able to construct objects in the final version. However, how do you plan to allow players to build their own buildings.

 (My thought would be similar to blueprint editor but in the physical world, with predefined objects of specialty, sawmill furnace etc, and hopefully the ai could navigate)

 I see you taking the a method highlighting object properties instead, which would make it easier to autogenerate but in my opinion harder to manually design something unique but recognizable for ai.

We hit 112 Degrees last year here. Humidity is so cruel. It's still hot here. And the sun doesn't completely set until 9:05 . No power outages this year where I am yet! It has also been a month or two since we had a storm.

ya, oklahoma is next to texas so we probably felt the same heat wave. 100+ for more than a month straight  . Anyway, glad you finally get your ac. hopefully power will be back on for the rest of everybody. I think its funny that they are prophesying a hard heat wave this year, even though were i live is about 10-20 degrees below last years temps.

optimistically - only 2 more months of hot temps 

What is up with the northeast? Either that was a beyond massive storm or the economy is really slow to react fast. I get the blackouts for 1-2 days but half a week is bad. I hate to think how dependent we are to electricity (spoiled food and no communication, much less mythruna down). Just a question, do you guys in the NE have to worry about rolling blackouts in hot summer days? Texas is on the verge over-electrical consumption, it was so bad last year.

ok. my system didn't slow down but I was checking before I go full scale. grass does look very good , makes it look twice as amazing. I'de hate not to be able to play with grass.

My city in texas does 4th of july fireworks the saturday before. Anyway, happy Canada Day

wow. thanks for clarifying everything, even if it needed a superpost 

Quick question here. Does grass affect performance much, since it uses an animation but switching the /grass option does nothing to performance (I know that is not why you put it there). I'm thinking about covering up all grass blocks in the enclosed area with grass/flowers blocks to make it look more animated and colorful. Swaying grass looks much better than flat grass.

I am a bit curious, are there going to be some kind of generated nations, and if so would that mean politics and huge castles must also be applied? Or is this going to be a single kingdom (due to relatively small size of land) in which towns of various sizes populate the area with no real superior authority (towns have separate authority and are loosely connected through nationalism).

It would really be interesting if ai are influenced by their town. For example, a small town ai would be more local work oriented, while ai in large walled town may be looking more at a big picture. (ai in castles or capitals would be looking more nationally and their patriotism/ego will be stronger, while ai in small towns will have more dedication to his family/town than to care for the nation). I use nation loosely as either a country or the world, whichever way you take the game.

Aside, if there are going to be different towns everywhere, I'm guessing the spawn point will be removed and map will be saved but limited in what it shows (like a shadow effect).