Messages

201

Off topic / Re: Planetary Annihilation development video

« on: 30 March 2013, 19:05:08 »

I've been watching PA lately, though admittedly more for the game than the engine innovations. Its pretty exciting even given the graphics they said they would use being super simple, the models I mean. I'm not sure 0AD is really the place for flow fields. It seems more like something to put into TW.

202

Mandate Engine / MEU: Traits and Events: P2

« on: 29 March 2013, 19:43:01 »

Here we actually get to the traits and events systems. These two systems can be separated from the Characters aspect described above. But they do contain some aspects that only work with that.

Traits are sort of like modifications, but they are earned in another way. You can set a series of requirements, which once met either give the trait directly, or give a chance for an event to confer the trait. In some cases a series of events or actions may increase a progress stat which upon reach 100 will confer the trait. You could also lose a trait if you did the wrong things. This aspect is less of a Majesty thing, but the trait system is broad and generic because its an engine rather than a game feature.

Traits may confer the following benefits:
a bonus to statistics, the GAE EnhancementType class type stuff, as well as to resistances and damage bonuses.
a bonus to your equipment slots for items
an effect, the GAE EffectType class kind

Traits are generally thematic, sort of an upgrade for a single unit, but earned in a different manner

There are some special traits, almost always conferred by an event or even chain that may confer a tag and possibly some associated skills as well. For instance the hypothetical trait Dragon Friend may confer, in addition to fire resistance or some other regular trait benefit, a skill to temporarily summon a dragon, or dragons, to fight on the units side.

Events are the next thing I want to discuss. Events can do many thing. They are sort of like the various events you can create with scenario scripting. However they are not intended to be part of a larger scripted story, but merely one or a chain of generic semi-random events that can mix and match in a non-scenario game. You can assign a chance to ever world tick occur as well as either triggers or modifiers of that chance. Events can give a resource bonus, confer traits, spawn allied or enemy or neutral units, cause new map objects to appear with or without buildings on them, confer upgrades, confer effects, grant modifications to a unit or units, such as a god granting poison to all your heroes' weapons and other similar things. Events can be triggered or have their chance to trigger modified by various things such as traits on units, numbers of units of a type, the level of a unit, resource stores, one or more various buildings made, building buildings on certain map objects or even previous events or series of events.

Events can also trigger some of the weather and map effects I am working on adding to the game such as droughts and storms and so forth. They can even deal damage to player or enemy units and structures.

203

Mandate Engine / MEU: Traits and Events: P1

« on: 29 March 2013, 19:26:35 »

This is an idea I thought up while playing CK2. It fits into my plans to have varying levels of RPG spread among my classes of units, classes being worker, guard, military, hero, overseer, leader, and so forth. This is distinct from UnitType. I suppose I should do some details of this before I get to traits and events.

Actually this post became too large, so I'll drop traits and events to the next one:

Worker is the general unit type. These can involve resource gatherers, units you garrison to buildings that gather resources, units that transport resources around, units that go out to buy resources such as raw materials and processed ones from other buildings/groups, builder units, tax collectors, and other such things.

Guard involves mostly what it says, guards of buildings. Guilds, Orders, Manors, and Palaces all have these units, or rather you can decided to recruit them. They mostly protect their home structure and buildings associated with their organization, their may be special abilities to call all guards to defend the settlement though. They are AI units, like heroes, and some Workers.

Military is the directly player controlled RTS style combat units. So as described elsewhere the city guards/archers that you control like an RTS unit with micro. You can garrison them in guard towers and such for more arrow attack speed and such. This is a minor class in the current game I am working on.

Hero is the traditional Majesty unit, recruited from a guild, or in my case Order, controlled by AI, has levels multiple skills, gains stat boosts and buys items. May also have other personality traits that cause other actions.

Overseers are special economic units that act to provide buffs to structures and groups. An Overseer might provide gathering and movement speed buffs to gatherers, or be assigned to a building to produce production/processing/crafting boosts and may even increase the quality of the goods or produce goods itself that are special. My current project involves garrisoning units in buildings to create production rather than a building doing the work at a static value like most games. Even citybuilders don't tend to do this.

Leaders are units that work like overseers but with heroes and possibly guards. In other games they may lead military units, but you shouldn't have enough of those in this game for that to be necessary. Each order produces its own unique leaders, especially the preceptor of the order who controls the motherhouse. These are the most powerful example. Most Orders have normal heroes, champions which are less numerous but stronger, and a preceptor. Some Orders have special other units, like the Bannerman of the Defenders who has leadership powers. They provide buffs in an area like the preceptor, but they also cause other units to follow their lead. This is one of the ways of forming "parties" for adventurers. There will be cross Order parties though.

Guard leaders are just slightly more powerful versions of a the guard that can provide buffs and direct troops. Basically they can lead any number of guards in an organized way. They won't be too common since you shouldn't have a lot of guards working for one group, although the total number may be high.

The player also controls a special sovereign unit. His Order is the castle and it has various facilities and upgrades that give him new powers. He can be assigned to work as an overseer, a researcher, a leader of troops and such. Pretty much any leadership position. He may gather a party of adventurers to follow him, but not a game breakingly large one and they still do their own thing, they just follow and support him.

204

Mandate Engine / MEU: Video Issue Resolved

« on: 28 March 2013, 23:10:29 »

Turns out that resolving the lag issue enables release version videos to be recorded. So possibly a new video will come out this week.

I will demonstrate the new multi panel unit menu and perhaps some other things. There won't be a demonstration of the map editor for a while. Still has some kinks to work out.

I will demonstrate how a single FactionType can load other FactionTypes and how you can use the build menu to create them in game. This is only partially implemented. Or rather I only have a single unit in the game due to XML updating. I will add the units for my actual project once the XML pattern is organized. I will attempt to add voice and maybe quiet sound in this video so its less disturbing.

I may also demonstrate some other stuff and explain some things that are not new features.

205

Mandate Engine / MEU: FType Issue(Resolved)

« on: 27 March 2013, 20:15:52 »

I believe this issue is now resolved. I have not been able to duplicate the error.

It appears that there is a slight error in the unit description. The getFactionString function derives the faction type name from the faction class, whereas units from other types are not from that faction type. I shall have to fiddle around. The function takes Faction as an argument, maybe I can make it take FactionType instead.

206

Mandate Engine / (Complete)MEU: Faction Type Rework

« on: 27 March 2013, 00:19:45 »

This particular aspect of the code has been completed. You can now set any number of included factions in a faction. You can then access those faction type's units from the faction build menu or designate units of that faction to be built from your main faction starting units menu. On game start only the top level faction type will supply starting units or resources. Lower level faction type starting unit and resource lists will be ignored.

As I was working on support for neutral structures, although you can add non-neutral ones in the new map editor, I decided that a rework of the concept of faction types was in order.

Faction Types will still be static, and the const keyword can still be applied to them in source. But there will be a bit of a change. Each FactionType can hold a vector of names of other faction types which are included by default in them. I know in most traditional cases this is not strictly necessary. But some games involve a set of common structures. WBC3 has mines for instance. This will now be possible with the new system.

A single faction can now use units from multiple faction types. There will be a default neutral faction, sort of like Gaia is currently. This will also enable the capturing mechanic I did a lot of work on to become more powerful. Previously you were only able to capture buildings from another player with the same faction type, I think you may get a crash trying to convert other faction type's units, although I didn't actually test it. There is very little source code bloat or memory bloat here. FactionTypes are just a pointer, so another pointer is added.

There are a couple applications here, even if I'm the only one who makes games weird enough to use them. For those of us who are lazy about modelling you can layer faction types. So I can use the same model for multiple worker units or barracks or other generic buildings.

So neutral faction. Then a basic faction on top of the neutral one. Then 2 or more factions on top of the basic one. But sharing the same XML and textures and model files. Saving up on that memory and what not. Saving me the trouble of changing multiple XMLs and so forth.

I can use layering for other stuff, too. Maybe I have a 3rd layer in common. So neutral, basic, city-building, then a faction with fire mages. And then another faction on top of that. The fire mage faction would be the AI, but as a player I could get extra stuff. And you don't have to tell the AI not to build it because they can't use it at all. There was other stuff but I can't remember at the moment.

207

Forum discussion / Re: [Forum] The next step

« on: 26 March 2013, 05:34:34 »

I think Hailstone said he was going to write some new Multiplayer code for GAE based off of 0AD. So GAE isn't entirely dead. Ygg said he was not going to be active, though I know he does the Blender script thing.

I'm not super concerned about what you do with Mandate. You can stick it at the bottom or something if you want. Almost no one from the other forums I post on can be bothered to sign up here afaik. But I do need to be able to post and edit there since I keep a lot of the info and updates in the forum.

208

Mandate Engine / Re: Mandate Update Thread

« on: 24 March 2013, 06:03:36 »

After my absence playing CK2 I decided to implement a bit of their Character development, and that of KoDP into my current project. Higher class citizens as well as heroes and special player controlled units will be used to fill various niches in society and as such will have individual talents and traits. They will be able to increase these stats and gain new traits from both standard game interaction and special events. Further, KoDP style events will now cause various affects in the game including alliances with special non map based societies/organizations, discoveries of magical structures and new resources and so forth. Various powers might bless heroes or the player's special personal units. Buildings might be given special upgrades in events as well such as the ability to produce new items, create better goods, and orders will gain possible new skills/spells/units. Various pre-designated non player societies on the map will interact differently based on what orders and buildings you have as well as other factors.

There will also be an overworld map whereby you can play different cities in the same world and they will run concurrently to some degree. This will be simulated more by a series of data points whereby other cities can send or request various goods or units from you. But this will be derived from the actual map of an area after you have played on it.

209

General discussion / Re: How do I limit a unit?

« on: 14 March 2013, 22:22:27 »

Mandate has a function where you can specify a unit to be limited and it keeps track of how many exist and won't let you make new ones. It uses the <units-owned> tag. It should be possible to port this and only this feature to GAE if you don't want to deal with all of Mandate's other stuff.

210

Tools / Re: 3D Map Editor

« on: 10 March 2013, 17:51:11 »

So I'm pretty much back from my extended break I hope. I got CK2 out of my system and Anno 1503 as well and also Warring Factions and various forum activities.

Anyways I am currently working on this project. I'm trying to add Map Editor to the main menu options, its gonna take me a day or so since I haven't touched the menu files at all yet. Once I can start a map session from the main menu I will swap the map_menu files over from a regular game to only being available from Map Editor.

I'll probably have to fiddle with some stuff like removing ticks and so forth. Then I'll need to stabilize saves since my vision of the Map Editor is basically just modifying a normal game and game save file. I'll have to manipulate some things to do this but its probably better than a standalone Map Editor and just easier for me to code personally. At some date when I'm much more familiar with the code I may create a standalone program that is much more capable, it really depends on if its necessary for my personal purposes.

I don't have a real estimated date of completion, so I'll just be posting important updates as I go.

211

Feature requests / Re: Attack while moving

« on: 16 February 2013, 18:30:16 »

Mechs in spring have multiple weapons and will attack nearby targets while moving with their various weapons. they tend to stick to a target till it dies with each weapon, also factoring in the range of the attack so they will switch if the old target is out of range. Attack animations are mostly independent of move animations because spring uses machines which means little animation change is necessary.

212

MegaGlest / Re: 3.7.1: rate of fire is determined by anim-speed, not speed

« on: 9 February 2013, 22:02:57 »

When I was writing the new AI code for my game I noticed that a unit would repeatedly attack a tile even if nothing was there. It had something to do with how the targeting functions worked. I eventually fixed it. But the reason why something weird is happening isn't always intuitively obvious.

Not that damage is dealt whenever a projectile hits the target iirc, that is why arrows that miss the target don't deal damage and the same for other stuff like mage attacks and splash stuff and that attacks do not track after the initial position is calculated.

213

MegaGlest / Re: AI changes

« on: 31 January 2013, 08:00:46 »

Also, how do you know the pro players have the best AI ideas?

When i'm saying "pro", i don't mean it as in starcraft-like notion of a pro. It should be at least a player who learned what it takes to win a game, who can, in most human or AI games, easily identify why they were won or lost (and make corrections). That's what can be identified as AI ideas. Then, if they are actually working on the AI code, they can observe AI games and keep tweaking its behaviour until the flaw they found is removed, or give up on it.

You are aware that you are responding to a post directed at Omega?

It seems that whoever you are, you can't make the AI play better than yourself: if you fail to realise a certain aspect of gameplay, the AI you make will fail here as well.

Opensource games that follow the "release early release often" paradigm and stay around for a while seem to have better chance of having a good AI inside them, compared to most commercial games where people good enough to work on an AI appear much after the game is released.

Being a good player doesn't necessarily mean you know why certain things work. And if you don't know why you can't tell the computer what to do. Also human minds short cut a lot, your average person doesn't really know why they can throw a ball perfectly, they just know they can. A task that is incredibly difficult mathematically in some ways. But that information is below the level of conscious thought.

And further even if you can articulate why you win, that doesn't mean you can do it on the level of a programmer.

whereas in an RTS it needs to make its moves at least every 5 seconds.

Well, in my case, i had to make decisions in under 20 milliseconds. Because the API was implemented in such a way that the game just stalls when the AI is thinking >_<

I was referring to the high level decision making. Humans don't reevaluate every decision every 20 milliseconds. The response time to alter your medium level game plan is not the same as microing units for instance. Also "every 5 seconds" is not grammatically the same as "in 5 seconds".

You could make it do a few simple tactics with execution and speed a human couldn't possibly match which is easier.

Macro > Micro.

Its not that simple. As a human you need to divide your attention micro wise across multiple battles. Computers don't have to do this. That is because the amount of time it takes a computer to issue an order is measure in milliseconds or less. It takes a human with 600 APM, which is incredibly high, ~100 times longer, 1/10 of a second vs 1/1000 to make the same decision. Actually the disparity is probably larger depending on how many instructions the code the programmer wrote takes to process.

You need both micro and macro to win a game. And the game space contains fewer options than the real world. Also you didn't define macro. For instance SC players define macro as dumb crap like keeping each barracks making 1 and only 1 unit at a time.

Suppose we assign a value of 40% to micro and 60% to macro. If the computer micro score is 1000 and the player score is 10 and the computer macro score is 10 and the player score is 500, even though macro matters more and the player is 50x better the computer still wins. In fact the value is 4600 vs 3400. That's a 30% bonus to the computer.

Brute force should win, in a usual game, against an improved micro. Moreover, providing a better macro is often surprisingly easy: it does much less to do with our intuition than tactics and micro, since the latter relies on our visual terrain geography and topology analysis. That's one of the common failures of AI developers, i think, to fall into improving micro, which is both hard and pointless. That's why i started speaking in the first place: to identify a few directions of easy and effective improvements.

I cannot follow what you said at all. It would probably be easier if you define micro and macro in your opinion so we know we are talking about the same thing.

214

MegaGlest / Re: AI changes

« on: 31 January 2013, 06:02:40 »

Well this is perfectly on topic. You can absolutely make good AI without being a pro player. Almost no AI programmers are pro MP players because it takes so long to become a pro, most people make a career out of it in popular games. Also the standard RTS is so focused on execution whereas AI doesn't care about execution because its not using a GUI, its just activating functions directly. In fact I suspect that most AI programmers would make terrible pro RTS players.

I don't know, using an interface alone doesn't mean much. For most games, the strategy is most important. Consider Civilization V, where strategy is far more complex than MegaGlest. Most of the best AI ideas come from "pro" players on the forums; the people who have the most experience with playing the game. Myself, I'd love to get into AI in the future, and it seems that a strong understanding of how the AI should act matters as much as how it should be implemented.

That's a TBS game. The interface could be awful, and frequently is and it doesn't matter. We are talking about RTS games. Also TBS AI is different because you don't care about execution time, whereas in an RTS it needs to make its moves at least every 5 seconds.

It might be more accurate to say that the computer has multiple ways to be better. You could make it do a few simple tactics with execution and speed a human couldn't possibly match which is easier. You could also try to make it smarter. But that's more work. Humans have a whole separate super powerful computer highly optimized for strategy whereas a computer can only do what the programmer tells it. How can it compete?

Also, how do you know the pro players have the best AI ideas? Have they made several implementations of the AI with ideas from non pro players, pro player, and AI programmers and compared them?

What do you mean by ideas anyways? Just a paragraph description? Pseudo code? Actual implementation? One of those is not like the others.

215

MegaGlest / Re: AI changes

« on: 31 January 2013, 00:40:44 »

Please don't quarrel, i don't like it when people start quarreling around me
Also, it's pretty hard to point me away, since i'm not quite inside yet ...

I can decide what i enjoy, don't worry about me (: Glest is enjoyable, so i'm a bit worried about it. Haven't yet tried 0 A.D. yet, but wanted to have a look anyway; and spring games never worked for me on my low-end ATIs (i even accidentally tried to run it on windows lol). The fact that they use JS doesn't make things much easier; their API will most likely be completely different, and also one can't make a good AI without being a pro mp player; that was nice to know though, thanks.

Well this is perfectly on topic. You can absolutely make good AI without being a pro player. Almost no AI programmers are pro MP players because it takes so long to become a pro, most people make a career out of it in popular games. Also the standard RTS is so focused on execution whereas AI doesn't care about execution because its not using a GUI, its just activating functions directly. In fact I suspect that most AI programmers would make terrible pro RTS players.

216

MegaGlest / Re: AI changes

« on: 30 January 2013, 15:55:38 »

You can say what you like about my other posting, but you can hardly argue that MG is more appropriate for a JS proficient AI scripter than MG.

And as you well know I did release my work to the public as you saw me trying to help John get it to compile on the irc.

I find your honestly claim dubious.

Someone might want to split this thread also, since you've dragged it off topic. I suspect NoQ doesn't want to be dragged into the Glest  codebase fragmentation mine field.

217

MegaGlest / Re: AI changes

« on: 30 January 2013, 15:28:35 »

Quite the contrary. I tell people to play MG if they want multiplayer. I mentioned 0 AD which I don't play and have no association with because he says he writes AI in Javascript which is how their system works. None of the Glest derivatives have any sort of moddable AI, unless you could a few XML attributes.

MG is actually better at multiplayer currently, compared to 0AD, and 0 AD has some lag issues and its gameplay and balance are lacking because they still don't even have a beta. But for AI scripting it is indeed better.

I recommend Spring to people too, although generally not here, if Spring would serve their interests better than other foss projects. There is no need to make everything so personal.

218

MegaGlest / Re: AI changes

« on: 30 January 2013, 11:40:44 »

If you are really, really into doing AI, you could do an AI for 0 AD. They use Javascript iirc for mod APIs. You can even force AI to fight each other and see which AIs do better. Maybe you already know that, but just in case. There is a semi decent group of people working on AI there.

219

Tools / Re: 3D Map Editor

« on: 30 January 2013, 04:09:11 »

Err they are panels in the GUI like Display or Resource Bar. One panel holds all the surfaces you can use like grass or dirt or mud and one holds map objects like trees and mountains and rocks and one holds resource objects like gold and stone and one holds the tilesets. So you click the icon for the tileset you want and it populates the other 3 panels with the surfaces objects and resources for that tileset. The new biome system has multiple tilesets, one for each biome. I suppose you could shove everything in one giant tileset if you really wanted though.

You can do whatever you like really, I don't have an opinion on graphics for the most part. Staying with the theme of Glest would be good I guess since at least my games will all be fantasy style. But if you want to do anything else it doesn't bother me.

220

Feature requests / Re: Increase and/or allow modification of the shadow casting radius

« on: 29 January 2013, 22:48:38 »

When I was adding the functionality to make map objects placeable in game I had a super long time where I had made a dumb error and it would only display shadows. It took me forever to figure out what I had forgotten but I noticed a lot of shadow issues. Basically if you move the screen only a little distance shadows disappear and often it cuts shadows off or in half on a straight line.

My understanding is that its because closer to the camera things are sized normally and farther away they are smaller, which is good. But the shadow rendering box appears to be a quad and so it doesn't reach the edges of the screen the farther towards the top you go. This could be totally wrong because its hard to be totally sure where an error is in computers.  So many options. Or it could be this and the shadow box is too small in general and so forth or it could be just that the box is too small.

221

Tools / Re: 3D Map Editor

« on: 29 January 2013, 09:44:07 »

That would actually be quite helpful. Some icons would be mod specific but some would be for the engine in general.

I would probably need these for the editor:
surface panel
object panel
resource panel
tileset panel

Maybe some others when I really look into it. Each tileset would probably need an icon also to select from the tile set panel. Generic ones that will be needed are:
Desert
Plains
Mountains
Sea
Forest
Jungle

Hellish/fiery for near volcanoes

A redo of all the generic tile set icons for people only using one as opposed to multiple sets.
An icon for the most common resources for the non biome-using editor. Gold stone wood and food.
Icons for the various editor functions like height and water and so forth probably.
Icons for 8 players. Might be more later if I need to have multiple allies for some of my games.
Any other important map editor buttons I've forgotten.

For the biome system every object be it map or resource will need its own icon but that will be up to the tileset creators modders, although if I can get existing sets for the basic biomes then someone will need to make icons for that.

My icon making abilities mostly consist of modding the colors on icons so that the same icon can go for the dozens of metal resources and so forth.

222

Tools / (Update) 3D Map Editor

« on: 28 January 2013, 23:16:23 »

I have been working through adding biome data to maps. I almost have it integrated. I will then proceed to adding the various tools to manipulate both biome data and adding the terrain brushes to the 3d editor. Currently you need to load a blank map from the regular  map editor to edit in the game.

I would say that the 3D map editor should be done late this week, maybe Friday or Saturday. You will be able to get to it using a new button on the main menu. It will default to one of two maps, a blank map using the first surface of the first tileset available, if you use biomes you will be able too uses multiple tilesets fyi, and a second map that is the same but has a complete wall of mountains around the outside of the map so that you don't accidentally put other objects there. I personally surround all my maps with a wall of mountains to mark the edge but I'm leaving the option to use a default map without it.

The new editor will have space for up to 72 map objects and 72 resources that have models. However your tile set/tech tree can use only 1 of each if you want. You'll have access to up 48 surfaces as well. This is for each individual tile set. Obviously most people won't need access to this many assets but I am planning to use a lot of it myself so I had to add it.

The interface won't be super pretty, it will use the same interface as GAE does in game. There will be one panel for each type of asset. You can decide which ones are visible using buttons on the top bar similar to how the new GUI panels for units work.

223

Feature requests / Re: Game should end when all buildings initiate their death animation

« on: 27 January 2013, 18:34:30 »

Is it really a climax though? Most RTS games have a clear winner several minutes or more before the last building goes down.

224

Tools / Re: 3D Map Editor

« on: 27 January 2013, 18:33:18 »

You could use it right now if you could get it to compile from GitHub, but I'm not sure how easy that would be, I haven't actually tried it.

I keep having desires for random features so I can no longer make a guess as to when a stable version will be out. If I'm really honest I'm not the most reliable or organized person in the world.

225

Tools / 3D Map Editor

« on: 26 January 2013, 13:13:13 »

After quite a bit of labor I have gotten the beginnings of a 3D Map Editor for Mandate. As far as I am aware it doesn't require a significant amount of my new code so its possible that if I add features in the right order it could be easily ported to GAE.

I have, after lots of labor and annoying errors and unclear code, been able to allow proper placement of map objects in game, based on my previous faction build menu. I will be working on added all the other current map features later. I will be attempting to utilize the save feature, with some modifications for maps, to create a way to store a map. Since the map is effectively created in a game context, its requires both a tile set and a faction. I will try to make these option when I split map making into its own context activated from the menu. Currently and hopefully still after that change, you are able to place both any tile set object and any unit from the player faction. After the change ideally you could place a unit from any faction in the same tech tree.

This may or may not later be modified to include some sort of scenario editor. When and if I add the overworld map screen you should be able to use that as well in conjunction with the map editor. I haven't ironed out all the specifics yet.

Although this should be relatively easy to port to GAE it uses the UI library of GAE so I do not think it would be possible to add this functionality to MG or VG as well.