civil-devel Mailing List for Civil

On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Marcus Alanen wrote:

>On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Jan Ekholm wrote:
>
>> Hmm, the feature *is* there, but it's buried in the main menu. I really
>> don't know of any better way to do it, short of putting up a dialog with
>> one lousy "End turn/action"-button in it.
>
>Yeah, problem is, I would also dislike that solution. Waste of 
>space...

True, and it would moronize our players. If they can't RTFM even slighlty
or even bother to pop up a menu we don't really need them. H*ll, even in
games like Q3/RTCW/UTx/Warcraft people are used to all kinds of weird keys
for moving, firing, jumping, spells, strafing, setting gamma, activating
cheats, setting details etc etc. I think we sure can require the players
to click the thing where it says "Menu" and choose "End turn" or "End
action"?

The users are part idiots, but not total ones.

-- 

  That's right," he said. "We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am.
                                             -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Jan Ekholm wrote:

> Hmm, the feature *is* there, but it's buried in the main menu. I really
> don't know of any better way to do it, short of putting up a dialog with
> one lousy "End turn/action"-button in it.

Yeah, problem is, I would also dislike that solution. Waste of 
space...

On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Marcus Alanen wrote:

>On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Jan Ekholm wrote:
>
>> So I hereby consider this "bug" obsolete and declare it fixed unless
>> someone has any other comments.
>
>Feature request, not a bug :)
>
>"Clearer visual signs how to end turn, and how to end action phase."
>                      ^^^                  ^^^
>
>It's not just about in which phase we are, it's also about the 
>transition.

Ok, I misread then whole thing. Silly me.

>I'm not terribly happy about your resolution, I would still like a 
>button "End Turn" or somesuch... 

Hmm, the feature *is* there, but it's buried in the main menu. I really
don't know of any better way to do it, short of putting up a dialog with
one lousy "End turn/action"-button in it.

--
  Shadwell hated all southerners and, by inference, was standing at the
  North Pole.
                           -- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Jan Ekholm wrote:

> So I hereby consider this "bug" obsolete and declare it fixed unless
> someone has any other comments.

Feature request, not a bug :)

"Clearer visual signs how to end turn, and how to end action phase."
                      ^^^                  ^^^

It's not just about in which phase we are, it's also about the 
transition.

I'm not terribly happy about your resolution, I would still like a 
button "End Turn" or somesuch... On the other hand, with all respect 
to Joe User, perhaps we don't want every loser out there to play the 
game---it's not the newest quake4 or anything, anyway...

Marcus,
with the dark shadow of a thesis deadline looming above

-- 
Marcus Alanen                       * Software Construction Laboratory *
mar...@ab...   * http://www.tucs.fi/Research/labs/softcons.php *

On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, Korruptor wrote:

>> """
>> Clearer visual signs when we are in action mode, and when in "real" 
>> play
>> mode. Clearer visual signs how to end turn, and how to end action 
>> phase.
>> """
>>
>> Anyone have any ideas for how to fix this? It's of course not good if 
>> the
>> player doesn't know what's going on. "WTF is this POS doing?" is 
>> nothing
>> we want the players to think.
>
>My suggestion at the time was to pop up a little box in the middle of 
>the screen with a banner (nice piccy with some text maybe?) indicating 
>what the state was, so when you ended the orders phase it would pop up 
>and cry: "Actions..."
>
>Or something similar...
>
>Nothing large, say similar size to the stats box at the bottom left, 
>but centered...

Hmm, thinking of it the user already *has* to read and click Ok in a
dialog that asks him/her wether to proceed to the action/orders phase. If
users are so brainless that they don't read dialogs before clicking them
(ok, my dad doesn't, he prides himself in Ok:ing anything as fast as
possible) we don't really need to care about it.

So I hereby consider this "bug" obsolete and declare it fixed unless
someone has any other comments.

Damn SF Reply-To. It's so broken, I'm always almost sending mails to the
author of the reply, not the list.

-- 
     "I name you... Esmeralda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre!"
                                      -- Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, Korruptor wrote:

>> """
>> Clearer visual signs when we are in action mode, and when in "real" 
>> play
>> mode. Clearer visual signs how to end turn, and how to end action 
>> phase.
>> """
>>
>> Anyone have any ideas for how to fix this? It's of course not good if 
>> the
>> player doesn't know what's going on. "WTF is this POS doing?" is 
>> nothing
>> we want the players to think.
>
>My suggestion at the time was to pop up a little box in the middle of 
>the screen with a banner (nice piccy with some text maybe?) indicating 
>what the state was, so when you ended the orders phase it would pop up 
>and cry: "Actions..."
>
>Or something similar...
>
>Nothing large, say similar size to the stats box at the bottom left, 
>but centered...

I'll add one and see what it looks like. Easy to do.

-- 
"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said.
              "Have you thought of going into teaching?"  
                                                    -- Terry Pratchett, Mort

> """
> Clearer visual signs when we are in action mode, and when in "real" 
> play
> mode. Clearer visual signs how to end turn, and how to end action 
> phase.
> """
>
> Anyone have any ideas for how to fix this? It's of course not good if 
> the
> player doesn't know what's going on. "WTF is this POS doing?" is 
> nothing
> we want the players to think.

My suggestion at the time was to pop up a little box in the middle of 
the screen with a banner (nice piccy with some text maybe?) indicating 
what the state was, so when you ended the orders phase it would pop up 
and cry: "Actions..."

Or something similar...

Nothing large, say similar size to the stats box at the bottom left, 
but centered...

G

-- 
    "Applying the 'Star Trek' test suggests that it [a paperless office] 
could be possible - was Captain Kirk ever seen with a piece of paper in 
his hand?" And, likewise, applying the "Sesame Street" test suggests we 
should all live in dustbins...
    -- Nik Barron, Insights into XML schooling.
--

Yup,

While looking through the BUGS file I again stumbled across this:

"""
Clearer visual signs when we are in action mode, and when in "real" play
mode. Clearer visual signs how to end turn, and how to end action phase.
"""

Anyone have any ideas for how to fix this? It's of course not good if the
player doesn't know what's going on. "WTF is this POS doing?" is nothing
we want the players to think.

Any ideas as to how to make the distinction between the action and orders
phases more visible to the player?

-- 
 The Emperor had all the qualifications for a corpse except, as it were, the
         most vital one.
                                       -- Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

it sounds good. would be nice if i could see it. 

1. my windows version keeps getting an icon read
error.

and

2. im reinstalling linux. =(

But anywho, once im finished installing linux ill
check it out. Sounds like it could be VERY useful.

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Ok, the feature seems to work now. The buttons I draw are so far just
squares, so don't be frightened by them.

I think I'll add one last pane to the dialog with totals for the amy, a
bit like in the "End game" display. Should show total number of men
and losses, guns and destroyed guns and maybe objectives too.

Comments folks?

-- 
  "You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could
                  do is give them a meaningful look."
                                              -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

> I think the feature can be a good way of giving the player an overview 
> of
> how his/her army is doing. I also think that I could fairly easily let 
> the
> player click on any unit in the dialog to activate it. Would make it 
> easy
> to find "that sorry almost destroyed unit" or some brigade HQ.
>
> Comments?

This is an excellent idea! Me likey...

I'm off next week, so I'll do the required GFX and commit for you. No 
problemo...

G


--
"There are only 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand 
binary, and those that don't"
     -- Dan Smith, Edge, Issue 113.
--

Hi,

I got some inspiration last night and did a little thing that is supposed
to display the player's army status. It draws a simple tree-like thing
with all brigades, battallions etc in it, all the way down to companies.
It also shows the number of men/killed in each unit, as well as the number
of guns (if applicable).

As the data does not fit in one single window it is split up into several
"panes" that the player is supposed to be able to shuffle up and down. The
shuffling part does not yet work, only the first pane is ever shown. For
that I'd need two buttons that can be used as "Next/Prev" or "Up/Down".
I'll add in some Chakie-art later today and at least fix the funtionality
so that real gfx can be just plugged in later.

I think the feature can be a good way of giving the player an overview of
how his/her army is doing. I also think that I could fairly easily let the
player click on any unit in the dialog to activate it. Would make it easy
to find "that sorry almost destroyed unit" or some brigade HQ.

Comments?

-- 
    There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like
                installing smoke detectors in Hell.
                                            -- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

Hi there,

Ok, apologies for being slightly too caught up in real life of late to 
get busy with Civil, but things appear to be getting better...

I've been trying to catch up with the list and I've noted that sean has 
started doing some work on the win32 side of things. This is great! 
Certainly saves me having to worry about it...

However, I would like to know *exactly* what's been done to "fix" Civil 
for win32, and I'm curious as to whether this is related to some of the 
errors that have been cropping up. Sean, could you elaborate for those 
of us at the back that weren't paying attention?

I'm also very aware that we've left some major TODO items open for 0.82 
with regard to win32, so it's important that we're all planning the 
same thing.

I've also seen some talk of properties.py and paths.py crop up. For the 
purposes of win32, these files are a bit of a misnomer, and really 
shouldn't be groked at all. They are for unix systems, and are built 
via the autoconf system. The plan for win32 is to have the base path 
(that's used in ./configure --prefix) added to the registry, and for 
the win32 Civil build to pull this from the registry and append it 
appropriately. There was some code in properties.py to do just this, 
but I think it's either been commented or removed entirely.  It's 
trivial to use the registry though...

This also relates to the starting of the AI client under win32, which 
has always been a little bit of a pain. Again, I suspect this needs to 
be handled in the registry, and recall getting a partial solution 
working for 0.80.

Sean, can you confirm your fixes with regard to these files and what 
you're planning for "the future"? I've never had this much of a problem 
getting a win32 development environment working (although I've not had 
anything setup since 0.80) so I'm suspecting that some of the changes 
you may have made could indirectly relate to the weird errors you're 
getting. Civil CVS isn't setup for win32 development, which I guess it 
should be, so apologies for that.

Currently, I've taken the line that NSIS (the Nullsoft installer) 
should be responsible for creating the build environment under win32 in 
a similar way to conf/make do under *NIX -- it's proven to be "less 
hassle" in the past, you could possibly play with that, get the 
Registry stuff setup, and then ensure win32 stuff works?

G

--
   "The only 'intuitive' interface is the nipple. After that, it's
    all learned."
       -- Bruce Ediger, be...@te... on X interfaces.
--

On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, Sean Carroll wrote:

>Here is a problem i got while trying to start a new
>game. I looked at this section of code for a while and
>couldnt see why it was acting up, so i thought id let
>you take a gander at it:

I added some debugging there, could you please retry? It should now print
out the id of the failed icon and the path from where it tries to load it.

-- 
                        "Bingeley bingeley beep!"
               -- The Personal Disorganizer, Terry Pratchett in Feet of Clay

Here is a problem i got while trying to start a new
game. I looked at this section of code for a while and
couldnt see why it was acting up, so i thought id let
you take a gander at it:

Oops, something went wrong. Dumping brain contents: 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\Civil\src\civil.py", line 480, in ?
    main ()
  File "D:\Civil\src\civil.py", line 455, in main
    initAll ()
  File "D:\Civil\src\civil.py", line 448, in initAll
    initPlayfield ()
  File "D:\Civil\src\civil.py", line 191, in
initPlayfield
    scenario.playfield.addLayer ( TerrainLayer   (
name="terrain" ),    visible=1 )
  File "D:\Civil\src\playfield\terrain_layer.py", line
32, in __init__
    self.loadIcons ()
  File "D:\Civil\src\playfield\terrain_layer.py", line
272, in loadIcons
    icon = pygame.image.load ( names [iconid] )
error: Error reading the PNG file.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please mail this stack trace to
civ...@li...
so that the error can be fixed. Thank you! -- the
Civil team


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I've got a pretty good outline of an AI that will be an improvement on
the minimal one; I think it will be moderately effective but still very
simple.  It would be handy if the pathfinder returned total cost as well
as the path; this would make it easy to the AI to make synchronized
attacks - arrange for all the units to arrive at the target at
more-or-less the same time.  Can the A* gurus put this as an optional
(or just additional??) return value, eg. something like

return path, cost

?

I'll have a look at this in a few days if not, but it'll take me an hour
or so to sort out what's going on in the pathfinder, and I suspect
(well, hope) it's a one-liner if you actually understand what the h*@#
is going on in the pathfinder.


My current plan for a slightly non-trivial AI is to do the following
each turn:

Calculate influence map.

Make a dictionary of the 10% of enemy units on hexes with least
influence for their side (potential targets).

Loop through our own units.  For each:
	
	If any enemy units are in range, attack them.

	If not, add yourself to the queue of units to move to 	potential target
closest to you (by pathfinder).

For each targeted unit that has attackers assigned:
	
	Calculate time for each attacker to arrive.  Round off
	to nearest turn.  Unit (units, in case of a tie) farthest
	move toward it; others do nothing.


There'll be some fiddling around with that, but I think that algorithm
will at least make things interesting, and it's simple with no 'magic
happens here' holes in the outline.  Comments welcome. :)

- mikee

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Hash: SHA1

[Let's see if this message makes it through.  I've had some trouble
sending mail to SF, but it seems like it's fixed now.  I guess the
subject is a bit old, but I'll just go ahead anyway.]

Hi all!

I've implemented a much simpler pqueue module (built on implicit
binary heaps), with a mostly compatible API.

It has only insert, pop, peek, length and remove at the moment.
That is, no decreasekey or indexing operations.  decreasekey can of
course be implemented by delete and insert, but that's not very
efficient.

I took a quick look at your code, and I didn't see a need for those
operations.  If I missed something, please tell me and I'll see what I
can do.  Also, bug reports would be most welcome.

Also, it's surely slower than the other pqueue module, but might well
be faster than the bisect solution.

If you want to try it, it's available at
http://www.juckapan.org/~kalle/hacks
or maybe
http://db4.myip.org/~kalle/hacks
since I'm having some DNS difficulties as well.

Peace,
  Kalle
- -- 
Kalle Svensson, http://www.juckapan.org/~kalle/
Student, root and saint in the Church of Emacs.
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On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, Sean Carroll wrote:

>It was on my windows. When i took out paths.py, i kept
>saying that it couldnt find certain modules.

Could you please post the error it gets?

-- 
   Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in
   your home.
                             -- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

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