Brit Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Just a few changes: - Rules Editor, Fixed bug: under certain conditions, buildings wouldn't show up in the rules editor building list - Changed the way that border lines are handled (I think players will like how they work a lot better now; the borders don't just disappear like they did in earlier versions). - Added some debug information to the Debug.txt file to troubleshoot problems a player was having I wanted to get out an update before I got very far into the work of breaking out the AI into a DLL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emptyT Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Kin ell Brit above and beyond the call! Lets hope 'Billy no mates' appreciates this devotion and stops slagging of this masterpiece to anyone who will listen. Will we need C programing to mess with the .dll? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich12545 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Lets hope 'Billy no mates' appreciates this devotion and stops slagging of this masterpiece to anyone who will listen. So, you're deliberately trying to start another flame war? You and slaver. Very immature. For the record, we all know this game is a masterpiece. But also we all know, or should know, it still has a major flaw. Brit, since you're looking at making an AI.dll public, does this mean you're not going to be able to work on those changes we discussed in the other thread? Since you left it hanging I'm just wondering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brit Posted January 20, 2011 Author Share Posted January 20, 2011 So, you're deliberately trying to start another flame war? You and slaver. Very immature. For the record, we all know this game is a masterpiece. But also we all know, or should know, it still has a major flaw. Brit, since you're looking at making an AI.dll public, does this mean you're not going to be able to work on those changes we discussed in the other thread? Since you left it hanging I'm just wondering. Shrug. I don't know. I've been doing work on the weekends, but not much during the week. It's Thursday morning, I actually haven't touched any of the EOS code since Sunday night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich12545 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Fair enough. When you decide would you please respond in that thread what, if anything, you'll be able to do. Then I'll know how much play time, if any, I'll devote to EoS. In any case I think it's too bad circumstances didn't allow you to continue devoting more time to the game and I wish you the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bugwar Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Kin ell Brit above and beyond the call! Lets hope 'Billy no mates' appreciates this devotion and stops slagging of this masterpiece to anyone who will listen. Will we need C programing to mess with the .dll? Issac Newton was described as 'very sensitive' to criticism. That is a Yankee turn of phrase meaning that the genius lost his temper when encountering mention of his views in less than flattering terms. While I do not think we have any viewers with Newton's level of gifts, I am pretty sure that some readers (possibly moi?) have his personality traits. Which is good. This provides each of us a goal to strive for, either embracing or reducing. As I understand it (could be very wrong), a dll file is a snipet of code reduced to binary form. If so, then I believe one will need a lot more than just a knowledge of C programming to 'mess' with the file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StellarRat Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Actually a DLL can be written a variety of languages including Visual Basic, C++ and others. It's just a standard library calling format that Windows OS and other OSs I think know how to deal with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich12545 Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 It's not just knowing the language. Imo the AI is the most difficult part of making a game. So someone would need the talent and have the time and the inclination to do it. Empire Enhanced made its AI.dll public a few years ago and nobody did anything with it. The dev hoped someone would pick it up and do something but it never happened. Maybe it will here but I'm not going to hold my breath. Unless you're an expert at improving an AI you'll just be pissing into the wind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magitek Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 You don't really have to be an expert, just have the motivation to keep working on it. Since no one is making money out of it and the playerbase is not exactly huge, chances of someone actually willing to take it on properly are indeed slim. I'm willing to take a look, but I doubt motivation will carry me much further than that as I already have a number of other mod projects active. I'm glad Brit is taking the initiative still, so in the future perhaps we might see something nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pzgndr Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Empire Enhanced made its AI.dll public a few years ago and nobody did anything with it. The dev hoped someone would pick it up and do something but it never happened. This is something Brit should carefully consider before spending too much time breaking out the AI into a DLL. If nobody is going to pick it up and run with it without wasting any more of Brit's time asking him to explain in further detail how his dll works, then why bother? Personally, I'd like to see it and maybe get into it myself, but like Magitek I also have other projects taking up my limited free time and probably won't do much with it. It may be best if Brit spends his limited free time making a few modest AI adjustments here and there to improve some specific behaviors. And if possible add some AI-related parameters to the ruleset editor to allow players to experiment on their own with making some adjustments? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StellarRat Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Actually, even though I have the programming skills to modify the AI code, it would be much better if the AI was a script that anyone could work on with a text editor, but it might be too slow running or too much work to change that now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich12545 Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 This is something Brit should carefully consider before spending too much time breaking out the AI into a DLL. If nobody is going to pick it up and run with it without wasting any more of Brit's time asking him to explain in further detail how his dll works, then why bother? Personally, I'd like to see it and maybe get into it myself, but like Magitek I also have other projects taking up my limited free time and probably won't do much with it. It may be best if Brit spends his limited free time making a few modest AI adjustments here and there to improve some specific behaviors. And if possible add some AI-related parameters to the ruleset editor to allow players to experiment on their own with making some adjustments? The AI already seems pretty good. Maybe the odd quirk still remains. But I don't see a need to "improve" it. The only thing that's needed imo is a simple way to limit the "all seeing" aspect. I proposed one way in the other thread. There may be others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brit Posted January 22, 2011 Author Share Posted January 22, 2011 As I understand it (could be very wrong), a dll file is a snipet of code reduced to binary form. If so, then I believe one will need a lot more than just a knowledge of C programming to 'mess' with the file. The source code to build the AI dll will be there. This means you'd need some knowledge of C++ and a compiler. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott_WAR Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 In that case Brit, I would not waste your time releasing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magitek Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 In that case Brit, I would not waste your time releasing it. Because C++ is hard! Right? I fail to see your motivation here, unless you're looking for some other improvement to the game first? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich12545 Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 Nobody will do anything with it. It's a waste of time better spent reducing the effects of the all-seeing AI as discussed in another thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott_WAR Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 Because C++ is hard! Right? I fail to see your motivation here, unless you're looking for some other improvement to the game first? When you can show me ONE,....just one,..person that says they will do anything with the dll then,.................well, actually it would still be a waste of time. There is no point wasting time releasing something that will never get used. I would rather he spend that time seeing if he can get the AI's units in the game to ignore enemy units if they are not within sight range of any other unit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StellarRat Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 I would definitely look at the source and see if there are some things I could fix or at least try to make less bad. If it looked like an easy fix I'd fix it. I'd like to try to hide subs from the AI. No guarantees it wouldn't actually make the game worse though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magitek Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 When you can show me ONE,....just one,..person that says they will do anything with the dll then,.................well, actually it would still be a waste of time. There is no point wasting time releasing something that will never get used. I would rather he spend that time seeing if he can get the AI's units in the game to ignore enemy units if they are not within sight range of any other unit. It doesn't have to be about NOW. In ten months someone could easily discover this game and start an upgrade project, which would go a lot further than some ghetto fix. Don't you think if he could have fixed it easily, he would have? I'm pretty sure I explained in the last update thread the effects of doing what you asked. Maybe you can't wait that long for someone to pick it up, but atleast the game might aspire to something greater in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich12545 Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 It doesn't have to be about NOW. In ten months someone could easily discover this game and start an upgrade project, which would go a lot further than some ghetto fix. Don't you think if he could have fixed it easily, he would have? I'm pretty sure I explained in the last update thread the effects of doing what you asked. Maybe you can't wait that long for someone to pick it up, but atleast the game might aspire to something greater in the future. Might or maybe is fine if Brit has plenty of time to work on the game. But with his limited time there are better things he can do now. Then when he's done with all that he can do the AI dll. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emptyT Posted February 5, 2011 Share Posted February 5, 2011 I'll have a look at it, I did abit of C++. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emptyT Posted February 5, 2011 Share Posted February 5, 2011 1LoVE. 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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