Artillery strike count

[MrDee]

I have wondered why the Artillery strike count goes 1,2,+ and not 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,+

Adam, can you explain your thinking? thanks.

For AC3 could we please have a menu off the map screen that allows you to see your full health stats?

[Adam Schmelzle]

Well, the label for the arty strikes was a technical limitation. Strangely enough you can't just change the label on the corner soft-buttons. You actually have to have a different 'Command' object for each one that has a different label. It wouldn't be practical to have 9+ objects to handle the button pressing.

I COULD do it, but at the time (AC1 in '2005) it didn't really seem all that important to have a label showing more than 3 arty. It's quite difficult to get more than 3 in AC1, and that carried over to AC2.

Health on screen? Sure, why not.

[MrDee]

Interesting. Thank you.

[MrDee]

could you have 3 objects current -1, current, current +1
as you used / gained an art strike dispose the object 2 steps away and create a new object 1 away

so say you have 5 Art. create a 4,5,6 object. if you use an art dispose the 6 object and create a 3.

[MrDee]

I am assuming this is similar to the map logic (only loading the bits you are likely to interact with) - or do you load the entire map in memory?

[Adam Schmelzle]

The entire game of AC1/2 is loaded in-memory at startup. During that loading screen with the title, and my e-mail address, every single byte that will ever be accessed is loaded. I don't allocate even 1 single object/byte during gameplay. This is pretty much the way all my games work. The network code requires the odd object, but that's not during gameplay.

It's best to avoid allocating memory, 'cause it causes fragmentation on the heap, and the silly VM's on mobile's don't compact the heap after running a sweep of the gc.