Messages

151

Bug reports / Re: trouble with path names

« on: 7 March 2014, 22:06:32 »

I agree that MegaGlest should insist on names being lowercase and ASCII. When exceptions are needed, that's what the translation files are for (well, works fair enough, anyway).

However, because this could break backwards compatibility with existing mods, I think it should not be changed until a major version number increment. Speaking of which, I'd like to see semantic versioning enforced in our releases. That would make it clear when versions are backwards compatible, which is important for mod support. We can then say that a mod is compatible with MegaGlest 3.x, for example. We can't do this unless we know future versions in the 3.x branch won't break backwards compatibility. Semantic versioning is really just a contract that basically states "changes that aren't backwards compatible will result in major version number increment -- if any other number changes, the release is backwards compatible".

152

Closed bug reports / Re: OS X / v3.9.0: Network games fail with "Value not found in propertyMap"

« on: 27 February 2014, 04:59:20 »

Was this post stickied by accident? I couldn't see any reason for it to be stickied, so I unstickied it for now.

153

Mods / Re: Comments on Mods List on Wiki

« on: 27 February 2014, 04:52:17 »

The Mods/List page has been around for a long time (I converted it to the current format in 2011!). Several of the factions in the factions table were released at a time when it was common to release just the faction folder (which would have to be added to an existing techtree). That, combined with the fact that the tilesets/maps/etc included columns of the techtrees table made the faction-only mods unfeasible to go into the same table.

I agree with Tomreyn that all downloads should come as complete techtrees and never expected to be put into an existing techtree (which, I believe, causes incompatibilities for multiplayer).

So with that expectation for future mods, I think we could just go with one Techtrees/List page. Then we could perhaps (in the future, if time allows), have a separate, *unrelated* Factions/List page that lists factions but only offers information and is not meant to be a download center. The factions would then link to their individual pages (such as the ones we have for UNATF, Tech, and Phorin. I'm thinking we could use a bot that parses XMLs to create templates for factions, units, and upgrades (in the style of the UNATF pages).

But, yeah, in the meantime, I think we should just combine the two tables. The difference is fairly negligible right now (and while we're fixing links, perhaps we can quickly throw factions into a barebones copy of the magitech techtree).

154

Mods / Re: Factions Download Center

« on: 24 February 2014, 05:40:31 »

Also I can't open the "Other" and "Tools" menus on the side-bar, they just close again instantly.

Thanks for reminding me about this. I spotted it earlier, but forgot to fix it. It was caused by a conflicting, unnecessary extension, and should be fixed now.

155

Mods / Re: Factions Download Center

« on: 23 February 2014, 23:32:53 »

It won't let me edit the wiki. How to I create an account?

Aha, our first "bug". Anonymous account creation and editing was disabled. I've re-enabled them both.

156

Forum discussion / Re: New administrators.

« on: 18 February 2014, 23:50:32 »

Ok, thanks. So, if i'll want to become administrator, how can I do exactly(only for curiosity)?

Well, I would guess that you'd need to have been a member of the community for a long period of time (we'd need to know you're trustworthy). You'd need to have a history of being rational (we can't have administrators who could, for example, get angry at a user and delete their account). There'd need to be some way that you benefit from being an administrator (for example, having some skills -- like familiarity with the forum software -- that requires administrator powers).  As Tom mentioned, the board would have to require an administrator (too many cooks spoil the broth, after all). And you'd also have to be the best choice for administrator (versus other people).

So, yeah, lot's of stuff.

157

Closed bug reports / Re: no more teamchat when game is lost

« on: 14 February 2014, 22:51:41 »

oh ok . Maybe we should write something to the console each time people press "h" key and teamchat is disabled like:

"No team chat to avoid cheating"

What about, "Team chat is disabled after death"? This way the player knows what caused the chat to be disabled.

158

Feature requests / Re: Ability to easily take screenshots without HUD

« on: 14 February 2014, 15:31:33 »

Would people be happy with shift-screenshot for always-no-hud?

Yeah, that's what my original request was. Shift + 'e' or Ctrl + 'e'.

159

Feature requests / Re: Ability to easily take screenshots without HUD

« on: 13 February 2014, 06:15:04 »

So the point of this would be...?

A quick way to take screenshots without the unnecessary HUD...?

160

MegaGlest / Re: running multiple headless servers on one host

« on: 10 February 2014, 06:45:05 »

And the relevant file, for those wondering:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash
portstart=62000
cycles=$1
megaglest=./megaglest
headlessparam="--headless-server-mode=vps"
useports="--use-ports="

 if [[ `echo "$cycles" | grep -E ^[[:digit:]]+$` ]]
 then
   i=0
   while [ $i -lt $cycles ]; do
      port=$[portstart + 1+ $i *11 ]
      statusport=$[port - 1 ]
      echo i=$i port=$port
      cmd="$megaglest $headlessparam $useports$port,$port,$statusport"
      echo $cmd
      $cmd &
      i=$[$i+1]
   done
   exit 0
 else
   echo "Wrong Input usage="
 fi

So basically, it's running ./megaglest --headless-server-mode=vps --use-ports=62001,62001,62000 and so on (ports increase by 12 each loop, starting at portstart + 1).

From the wiki, use-ports does this:

Force hosted games to listen internally on port x, externally on port y, where x is the internal port # on the local machine to listen for connects and y is the external port # on the router/proxy to forward connection from to the internal port number. If enabled the FTP server port numbers will be set to x+1 to x+9.

Unfortunately, the wiki seems to be outdated. I'm not sure what the "statusport" is. Titi, can you please update the wiki?

Anyway, the above is run the input number of times. So you're really just creating multiple instances. I don't think there's any actual changes to the game's source (can you confirm, Titi?). It seems to me that Titi's changes performance changes for headless servers simply makes it more practical to run multiple instances.

161

MegaGlest / Re: how to make headless server much less cpu/memory demanding

« on: 8 February 2014, 02:12:46 »

To make sure I understand correctly, only the AI computations have been moved to the controller's computer, right? It doesn't affect the performance of other players? And I would also assume that the AI computations are no worse than running a single player game with the same AI?

If that's the case, I would say remove the old functionality entirely. No need to clutter the source code with near-obsolete functionality. Surely the expectation that one player has the resources akin to playing a single player game is not at all unreasonable?

Git: How can I check this ( big ) change in, in a proper way? I think I want a branch for this to try it with others.

I notice that most of MG's development seems to go into the main branch right now. Have you considered adopting a more pro-branching strategy? Branching works really well in git. Unlike SVN, a branch merely needs to store the difference from the previous revisions (SVN would usually make a whole freaking copy). Git also focuses on a "working directory" model. You work on a current branch. Thus, it's very easy to do some work in a feature branch, then switch to a bug fix branch for something that needs your attention more before switching back to what you were doing -- all without breaking your current work or creating new copies of everything.

I found this to be an interesting read, back when I was learning git.

Regarding distribution, everyone will just have to checkout your branch as normal (git clone -b <branch> https://github.com/MegaGlest/megaglest-source.git). It'd probably be best to distribute executables, however, if you want people to test.

If the tester already has the repo cloned, they can just run git pull; git checkout <branch>. That will switch their current working directory (so they'll need to do git checkout master when they're done).

162

MegaGlest / Re: IQM model format (abandon ship MD5)

« on: 8 February 2014, 01:53:36 »

I started into it, but eventually decided it was much lower priority (if needed at all) as no-one is really asking for it, and currently most modders already know and use g3d.

To be fair, I don't think a new model format alone is *that* exciting. But some of the potential features that could arise from such a format could be very interesting. A bone-based model would make ragdolls a possibility (highly advanced, but could make for some very interesting animations). Rotating turrets have been a feature request since time eternal. They don't *need* a new format, but I think the separation of meshes and animations would be helpful here.

One indirect advantage would be the improved converter support. We wouldn't have to maintain any tools ourselves (I think?).

A side note that the old link in the first post has broken. Here's a current link: http://sauerbraten.org/iqm/

But anyway, I agree with Softcoder, the priority isn't that high compared to a number of other features.

163

Announcements / Re: Glest 3.2.2 Released(Final Version)

« on: 4 February 2014, 08:11:34 »

What the heck? This thread is ancient and the board is locked as read only. How on earth did you manage to post here???

164

Maps, tilesets and scenarios / Re: Megaglest Senario Players

« on: 3 February 2014, 07:38:19 »

and to create a page on the wiki where possible strategies are explained to those who cannot figure it out themselves.

You should note that there is already such a page. It's very old, however, and only has strategies for the oldest scenarios (all which are still in MG, though).

165

Mods / Re: Revival of BattleGlest?

« on: 3 February 2014, 05:30:15 »

The Problem is that you cant do a black border with megaglest.

Not yet, you can't. Such a feature could be requested.

GAE once added a feature that would add a team colour outline on units. Similar logic could be used to apply a black border.

166

MegaGlest / Re: New Camera Shake Feature

« on: 3 February 2014, 05:27:30 »

Looks cool. I did notice in your video that shadows on the edge of the screen flicker (although I believe this is a long-outstanding camera issue and shaking merely demonstrates this issue -- not cause it).

Can you elaborate on how the intensity value works? I'm assuming it's related in some way to the distance the screen moves? Similarly, how does camera-distance-affected work?

Also, you're welcome to add it to the wiki immediately, but I think you should mention (until it's part of a stable release) which revision this was implemented in.

167

MegaGlest / Re: Weak factions? No... :p

« on: 31 January 2014, 06:59:00 »

I assume you mean "mean", not "medium"?

However, calculations that take in just HP and armour aren't sufficient for determining strength. There's tons of other factors, including attack strength, attack speed, cost of the unit, time to produce the unit, when the unit is available (early game vs late game), effect of upgrades, move speed (golems are pretty poor for offense, for example), and strategy (some units have to be used very differently; for example, the archmage is powerful but vulnerable, so is best used with stronger units to distract enemies).

I don't think a single mathematical formula can be used to gauge balance.

168

Feature requests / Re: headless server names should not change

« on: 28 January 2014, 22:34:05 »

A side note that we could always put the specs/benchmark/whatever in a tooltip.

I don't like the current tooltips, and would like to see a dedicated documentation page for the masterserver API, which should make the current tooltips obsolete.

169

MegaGlest / Re: New team play features coming soon

« on: 28 January 2014, 22:32:32 »

- Should a player be considered 'dead' ONLY when the last team building is gone?

I like this idea. I agree that players should be considered dead after the last team building is destroyed, as this strengthens the team (versus the player losing control after their faction is destroyed). Losing a teammate cripples a team. Letting that team member help control your units *might* be able to offset that a little.

I feel this could lead to some interesting gameplay. Might be difficult to work as a team in some games, though (in particular, I'm imagining the situation where one player accidentally uses resources that another was saving for something). Still, I see that as a good challenge.

I agree with Tomreyn that the custom game screen is becoming very cluttered. As an alternative to modal dialogs, however, what about converting the custom game screen to a tabbed interface? The host will see tabs for things like "players", "map", "network", and "advanced settings", while the connected players would just see "players". The rest of the game info can be shown to connected players via either a scrollbox (since there's more room now) or perhaps more ideally, an "info" screen, which summarizes the games settings. If anyone else is interested, I could whip up some more information in a separate thread.

170

Feature requests / Re: headless server names should not change

« on: 28 January 2014, 22:14:52 »

I don't think it's a good idea to just display things like RAM and the number of cores. There's too many factors influencing performance (as Tomreyn pointed out).

Instead, why not show a number from some benchmark? I'm not sure what benchmark you'd want to use, though.

171

Closed feature requests / Re: Better health bars.

« on: 28 January 2014, 22:08:23 »

Side note: I would hide the health bar if the unit/building is at full health and not in combat.

172

MegaGlest / Re: Opinion: The way forward

« on: 28 January 2014, 21:44:36 »

Curiosity: Why SDL instead of, say, SFML, which would have much cleaner code (C++ instead of C)?

One change I think a lot of people would like to see is making the AI more versatile. In particular, a Lua AI. This is a major change, as all the existing AI logic (which is a lot) would have to be converted into Lua code and appropriate handlers would have to be created to allow the AI to use this Lua code. I think the end result would be fantastic, however, as the AI would be extremely customizable and we'd be able to customize the AI to factions and scenarios.

173

MegaGlest / Re: play.mg (help needed)

« on: 18 January 2014, 04:16:21 »

I'm willing to take a look at it.

What I would do is I'd split this into three pages:

1. The current master server (but without the past games). This can refresh and supports desktop alerts (refresh works to a limited degree without JS). The filter system is already in-place and supported with and without JS. The filter is activated by clicking on a version. I would add a dropdown box or something to make it more obvious.
2. A list of past games (up to a certain date). We should be able to expand these to see the game's stats (as we already can with past games).
3. A proper high scores page, which would allow us to sort players by things like games played, time in game, etc. I think we could probably add other scoring techniques such as units created, killed, etc (since the endgame stats are sent). There isn't really any way of preventing cheating though. If implemented, the high scores should be considered "just for fun". I'm not really sure it's even worth the trouble given that you can create a HTTP request without even playing a game. And I don't see adding security as feasible or a good use of time.

I think the API should be better documented, too. I don't think there's any documentation besides the limited readme and reading the source files directly.

I would put these files on separate pages with the "current games" (#1 above) being the index page and the others being linked from that page.

174

MegaGlest / Re: Top 100 MegaGlest Players

« on: 15 January 2014, 06:19:46 »

Can this be expanded to rank players by factors such as number of wins, win-lose ratio, etc?

175

Forum discussion / Re: Forum cleanup

« on: 14 January 2014, 01:22:13 »

Yeah. I mentioned before in IRC that we'd have to delete all references to the user IDs (of the accounts we delete) from the logs, though, otherwise SMF chokes.

I also mentioned the SQL code that would be needed to do this. It'd be trivial to add a condition that only deletes accounts with, say, zero posts.