Brit
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Posts posted by Brit
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Cool. Glad it's working for you. I thought there might be a bug when I read your first post.
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Hi Hairog.
That was something that was originally in the design, but never ended up getting implemented.
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Sorry you haven't gotten more of a response. It's been kind of quiet on the forums, but maybe some people people check the forums occasionally, so hopefully you'll get more responses in the near future.
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This is a good place to start. I'd generally avoid posting your email in the forums, since bots might read it and collect your email address for spamming. But, if people respond to your message in the forums, you can private message them and send your email address (which will keep it out of sight from spam bots).
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I started a game about 6 months go and played daily, and recently replaced my computer. I reloaded EOS and want to know how I can get back into the PBEM game.
The 2 guys I am playing with would like to continue the game.
BTW ...I did not keep the original message key.
Any help would be great.
Thanks
Okay, you have the *.game file. Did you save the *.pbem_tracker file or *.event files? (You probably won't have any event files for the game.) The tracker and event files are stored in the PBEM directory. If you don't have them, there are ways to recreate them, but I'll have to do it for you. Email me the name of the game and your player number.
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You'll need to choose "new game" and then in the game setup window, change "generate random map" to "load scenario".
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Also, if you open the project inside Visual Studio, the files are organized by category. If you don't have Visual Studio, though, it's going to be especially confusing to look at the files individually.
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I am interested in following along with this, although to be honest I doubt I would get into editing the code and compiling .dll files to use. But still, it's interesting to see what's under the hood and perhaps better understand what parameters are being used.
Could you maybe provide a 'mid-level' summary of EOSAI getting into which algorithms (in which files) do what? At first look, things are not very intuitive. But I'll keep looking and trying to make sense of it!
BTW, there's a certain amount of documentation in the google.code wiki, but it's not down to the individual file level or a mid-level summary of the AI.
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...and we thank you !
Hi Hans. Tonight, I tracked down the reason why new PBEM games couldn't be started and fixed it. Let me know if you run into any other problems.
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I just wanted to post an update to this. Recently, my webhost moved me to a new server and (unbeknownst to me) it had the side-effect of breaking my gmail access to the bugreport emails. This means I haven't seen any of the bug reports sent in the last few weeks. I've fixed the problem now. I'll respond tonight to all the emails.
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Has been pushed to an open source project using Mercurial source control: http://code.google.com/p/eosai/
The AI has been split off into a separate dll. The code is there for educational purposes (if you want to see how an AI works), for the possibility of having a modifiable version of the AI for EOS, and for potential use in third-party games.
Splitting the code out of the executable caused some things to break, so it's not fully functional right now. The current version of EOS.exe does not use the dll, which means you can't currently modify the AI and get it working inside your EOS game.
You should be able to download the code, but not be able to upload changes to the repository. If you can upload changes, let me know. If the code won't compile, it means I missed something. Again, let me know.
And let me know if there's much interest in this and I'll devote more attention to it (including getting it working with EOS).
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Yes, I still check the forums and respond to bug report messages sent via the game's bug report tool. If you have bugs, I'll either fix them in the saved-game file or will create a fix and push out a new version.
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That's right - only units that self-destruct can have a blast radius.
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I was going to increase jet speed by 50% to hopefully make them better at intercepting tac / reg bombers.
Would doing this cause any issues since it would set the speed higher than the range?
This also assumes that speed is one of the variables used in the interception calculation.
Yes, the speed is being used in the interception calculation. I don't think there are any issues with setting the speed higher than the range. It just means that the aircraft will return to base earlier in the turn.
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The issue where the different players games can get out of sync. It happens to me all the time if my stupid dell crashes right after processing the turn but before I hit the save button. The other players will get 2 sets of events for the turn, since when I reload the game it has to calculate the turn again.
I think it can also happen when one of the other players (not the host) thinks it sent the event file but the host doesn't receive it (corrupt file on the server or some other issue). In that case it just seems like that player starts seeing weird behavior.
All sorts of strange behavior follows that.....
BTW, the crashes don't seem related to the game. It is some mysterious dell problem that happens every so often.
The latest update has improvements to make the PBEM games more stable (the game will automatically re-download game events if they are corrupted during download; the game autodetects corrupt events using a checksum), but that particular problem wasn't addressed. I have an idea about how to fix it, but haven't thought through the fix enough and haven't changed any code. (Sorry)
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I'm guessing you haven't had time to work on the PBEM sync thing, but I thought I'd ask anyway.....
Wait, which PBEM sync thing?
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Brit, what about you collaborating with others under Battlefront NDA to continue with some EOS development?
As an example, Matrix/Slitherine has a group of modders who have released a custom mod Grand Strategy 2.0 for Commander Europe At war. They apparently have access to the source code for some editing to enhance the scenario editor capabilities, thus provide some additional features to their custom mod. Apparently all done with the approvals of all concerned.
Just a thought.
By the way, a few weeks ago, I created an open-source project for the AI. I'm still working through getting the code to work properly (mostly problems with naming collisions), though, so the project doesn't actually have any source code in it. I figured I'd delay mentioning it until there's actually some code there to play around with. The new AI will run in a separate DLL, so players with C++ knowledge can have compile a new AI and get their copy of EOS to run their version of the AI.
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Since EOS development is effectively done, how about releasing the game as open source? A lot of the topics for improvement that have been discussed here could be addressed that way.
Hi Jeep.
I have a contract with Battlefront for a period of three years. We're currently getting close to the two-year period (it was released in November 2009). There may also be some third-party deals as well. While I don't have any particular problem transitioning to open-source, I want to make sure I'm not harming or undermining any of the other parties involved. So, transitioning the entire game to open-source* is unlikely to happen before November 2012.
* I say "transitioning the entire game to open-source" specifically because it would probably be fine to release parts of it as open-source.
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I'm carving some time out to fix some of the issues with PBEM. In particular, sometimes people email me because their game is not progressing and it turns out the game-events were downloaded incompletely. There's really no way to recover from that situation. I still don't know if that's a network issue or a server issue. Either way, I'm going to set it up so that the game will automatically delete and re-download events when they aren't accurately downloaded. There's a few other issues to clear up with PBEM game I'll address, as well.
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Hi Brit
Hope its going well.
Is there a way to print out a ruleset?
Kinda makes your ears bleed when your trying to change a lot of stats.
Best regards
MT
Well, no. The analysis section of the Rules Editor helps when you're comparing a lot of numbers, though.
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Yeah, I think that is exactly what is needed. You could fix the security issue by having each player put a password on your game (sent back to the host as an event on turn 1).
Actually, there is already a password system in place to prevent players from getting each other's events. Maybe it could use that same password.
This would be sort of like a failsafe to correct any strange issues that crop up. If the game is messed up or crashing, the host can regenerate the files (which will delete all the events from the server) and email them to the other players. They would then delete all their event files and copy the new save game in.It would also be nice to be able to go back a few turns in the game (before the bad stuff happened). Maybe this would be as simple as the host keeping autosaved game files for the last 3 turns or so?
I should look into that a little more in a few weeks. I have some other projects due at the end of this month.
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This has happened to me on a couple of PBEM games now...
It seems like it your computer crashes during or right after turn processing (before it saves) the different players games can get out of sync.
By "out of sync", what happens is each player sees different locations for some of their troops. If it happens enough, the game is unplayable.
Is there any way to resynch these games? I'm thinking that if you could send all the data from the host to each player (instead of just event files) after this occurs you could get it back on track.
Ah, I see what you're saying. Right now, there is no way to resend all the data. This can be a particular problem if the host sends out the turn updates to everyone then crashes, since the client-players will get a turn-update that the host doesn't know about. And then the host will have to reprocess the turn (sending, yet another turn update to the clients for the exact same turn). I think I've seen that problem in some people's bad games that were sent to me.
I had thought about writing exactly this type of function a while ago (I have some initial code in the game), but I never ended up writing it. The idea was to output a whole new *.game file for a player (although there could be some security problems with that, since the host could dump out a client-file for another player and open it himself to see what other players are doing).
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In the rules editor, there is a "damage radius". If a missile has a damage radius, then it hits everything within that radius.
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When a missile hits a group, it randomly hits one unit, unless it's an area-effect missile (I think nukes are the only ones in this category), in which case, it hits all units.
When a missile hits a city, it will randomly target either the city or a unit inside the city. If it targets the city itself, then it has a random chance to apply damage to each of the individual sub-targets: population (deaths and refugees), in-production, or building damage. For example, a missile might have a 40% chance to damage the population, a 30% change to damage items in production, and a 20% chance to cause building damage. Each damage is calculated separately, so damage might be applied to none, one, two, or all three.
Also, missiles will never target a unit they can't hit. For example, if a missile can't hit units, but can damage cities, then it will always be targeting the city itself, rather than a unit inside. On the other hand, if a missile has no damage-city ability, then it will always target one of the units it can hit inside the city.
Tis a shame
in Empires of Steel
Posted
Thanks, glad you're liking the game!