Improving roads

[AmateurHistorian]

Akypor Forest South has three exits:

o Akypor Path to Klojt Mountains (west) (path)
o Akypor Path to Akypor Forest (north) (path)
o Plakypor Bay Road to Klojt Mountains (northwest) (path)

But the Activities page shows only two road-improvement tasks:

o Improving Akypor Path
o Improving Plakypor Bay Road

So I have two questions. First, *which* Akypor Path does the first task refer to? Second, how can I initiate improvement for the other Akypor Path?

[Bowser]

A road connects to towns. Only one town can initiate an improvement project on the road that runs between them. Once this town starts the project, it must be finished from that side.

How's that, clearer?

Sometimes, someone starts the project and then never adds the resources to it or even owns a shovel.

[AmateurHistorian]

And I just realized that my first question isn't yet answered. The same problem is present in two other territories where I have characters. For instance, in Mianir, the Locations page shows four exits:

o Mianir Hills Path to Mianir Hills (southeast) (path)
o Mianir Hills Path to Mianir Hills (northwest) (path)
o Mianir Road to Mianir Hills (northeast) (sand road)
o Mianir Road to Mianir Hills (southwest) (path)

Correspondingly, the Activities page shows four road improvement activities:

o Improving Mianir Hills Path
o Improving Mianir Hills Path
o Improving Mianir Road
o Improving Mianir Road

But I can't tell which activity is for which part of Mianir Hills Path or Mianir Road. Clicking the "i" icon to show the activity detail doesn't give any more information.

[AmateurHistorian]

I'd like to request that this be fixed by the simple step of listing each path segment in the improvement projects just the same as in the Location page, for example "Mianir Hills Path to Mianir Hills (southeast) (path)."

Also, what would be wrong with showing the improvement project for each path in the Activities lists of the territories at both ends of the path? That would allow people in both territories to improve a path, even without knowing who's working at the opposite end, or even if anyone is working at the other end. That would actually be a closer model of reality than at present ... why should I have to improve a path only from one end?

[Junesun]

As far as I know, Jos already abolished road names for the new regions. I don't think he can do anything about existing roads though, especially if there are already improvement projects.

Judith

[AmateurHistorian]

I never got an answer to the question: how can we tell the difference among multiple road improvement projects that are for segments of a road with the same name? At the moment, it appears that the only way to tell them apart is to complete the improvement project on one segment, then look at the road types on the Location page and see which segment's road type has changed. That's no help when we want to improve one segment but not others.

This is a continuing problem, and it hasn't been resolved since I first asked the question, almost five months ago. Could we simply add the name of the town at the other end of the road segment to the description of the improvement project for that segment on the Projects page? That's all it would take to fix this.

[Thomas Pickert]

I have altered the names of the projects you mentioned in your earlier posts. The original topic was probably overlooked. Maybe we were busy with our real lives for more than two days, and the topic simply vanished, considering that the messages in it were posted within a two days period.

You gave the answer to the question you never got an answer to. You can currently only tell the difference between such projects by finishing them. I agree that this is not character-friendly. As soon as any of our programmers has some spare time, they certainly won't have anything better to do than to fix that miserable status quo.

And finally, a personal thing. Could you please avoid using words like 'simply', or statements like 'That's all it would take.'? We certainly welcome all the hundreds of 'simple' solutions for all our problems, but after solving such problems with such 'simple' measures for half an hour, and then considering that we sometimes run into 4 to 8 problems a day...
On such days, I sometimes think to myself, that a 'simple' solution to all our problems, 'all that it would take', would be to hire me as a full-time programmer, who really doesn't have anything else to do but to work for Cantr.
After a minute or 120, I then think that it's not fair to demand that.

So, really, please, I love programming for Cantr, and I love giving real-time support (with some 5 months exceptions, when I just really miss a thread or two in 2 years of service), but don't give me the 'simple' or 'all that it would take' talking.

That somehow seems to assume that we don't help our players, even if it takes little to no effort. That's not only completely wrong, but I would take it as an insult, hadn't I learned in so many other threads, that this would be a misinterpretation of your intentions.

[rklenseth]

Maybe we can simply clone Jos and Thomas so that there is two of them. That's all it would take to fix this.


Now I'm going to go and hide.

[AmateurHistorian]

Thomas - what you picked up was that I *was* feeling impatient, and that showed in through in my choice of words. That was unfair to you and the other Cantr programmers, and I apologize to all of you. I'm a programmer myself, so I know what's involved, and I should have stopped and edited myself before I submitted that last post. I'll try to do that from now on.