Creating a computer-aided version of WCTO

Yep, seems to work now! I only noticed one (cosmetic) glitch in turn 44 CP: The "FF missile auto-generates target" message doesn't fit in the box. (Looks like there's one line too much in between the text anyway.)

And yes, I did manage to get two ships stuck again... :rolleyes: Funny thing is, I knew it the instant I clicked on "Report Orders to Command." Seems like I'm desperately trying to test the undo feature or the multiple objects selector... :rolleyes:
 
I un-stuck them for you. I won't be doing the 'undo' command anytime soon, but we'll all be migrating up to the phase 5 code once we're happy there are no more obvious bugs in the combat system.
 
One meaty bug report coming up! :p

- Turn 46 CP: The Rapier could fire a DF missile at Delta 2, but not at the Kamekh. Since LoS isn't yet working, this probably means the corvette changed its course during the last turn. (If not, it's a bug. :p)
- Turn 46 EP: What a turn summary...! :D
- Turn 46 EP: The Broadsword shows 1 chaff pod in its pop-up info, but 2 chaff pods in its evasive action menu. Considering the position of the Broadsword and the vector of the Drakhri's DF, I guess we should restrict chaff pod efficiency to just the rear arc, instead of rear and side arcs. (According to the manual, chaff against DFs only works from the rear arc - if at all. So releasing a chaff pod would be a waste of resources in this case, but who cares... :p) This is funny, anyway: There's no missile showing up as "Incoming" at the Broadsword's detailed info, but the evasive action menu is nevertheless there. (Probably since DFs are unguided and therefore don't show up as being "locked" on the given target...) I'd vote for DFs being displayed as "Incoming" if it's not too much of a hassle code-wise...
- Turn 46 EP: Delta 1's details don't show. The buttons are there, but the slide menu won't open.
- Turn 47 MP: "Ship target update Error. Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'WHERE `id`=1327' at line 1
UPDATE `pieces` SET `target`= WHERE `id`=1327"
 
Good bugs. I'll look at them probably tonight.

W.r.t. the 'incomming' pop-up menu info, at the moment that is still a placeholder; it is always blank/none. That said, I've definitely written the code necessary to fill that in, so I can go ahead and update it. The only exception is that FF's may not show up, only missiles with explicit targets.

The chaff pods is definitely a bug; I'll have to look at what happend with the DF to see if it is a bug or the correct behaviour.
 
Okay so:
The DF was correct; the Kamekh thought it was turning, therefore the DF can't target it.
I found and fixed the Chaff-pod discrepancy.

I haven't had time yet to code the 'incomming' to work; maybe over the weekend. I haven't expanded the css box for the FF's auto-target message.

These changes were made to phase 4.
 
Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm still getting a "ship target update error" - only this time, it's "id=1397" instead of the old 1327.
 
I see it. The ID number increases with each attempt to access the turn list page. I'll have a quick look over it, but I think this will need someone familiar with the database queries to fix (that is, Avacar).

Edit: It's not clear enough to me what the code is doing to be able to fix it on my own. But it seems that the update_target() function (indicator_funcs.php: line 131) is not doing any validation on the $target->submitted variable before submitting it to the database_target_update() function (ship.php: line 535).

The problem occurs in both Phase 4 and 5. The code references above refer to Phase 5.
 
Sorry about that guys; somehow I glossed over the database issue.

It's fixed now. It appeared to have been related to the explosion being an untargetable object, and more importantly, that environment-class objects weren't yet submitted to the database, and therefore didn't have a target id to be submitted. Since we'll never want them shooting at explosions, flak, or asteroids (only environmental objects so far) this was an easy class exclusion. We can always code an exception later, if you want missiles to blow up asteroids or something.
 
...and on we go:

- Turn 47 CP: Beta Pack 2 can open the "Fire Missile" dialogue, although there aren't any options.
- Turn 48 MP: Whee! Something is fishy, though: Reserved fire for the Jalkehi worked for the particle and laser cannons - but why for the turret (the DF comes in dead ahead), and why does the Jalkehi begin to "resolve an Image Lock on Dumb-Fire Missile"...? I guess some targets got mixed up there...

That might just be enough to take care of... Besides, it's late, and I'm having another performance tomorrow and a busy day ahead of it, so I'll call it the quits for now. :o
One issue I noticed with phase 4: When someone has already issued movement orders for several ships, I can't see where they're going. Which makes it difficult to not stack up ships... ;) If everything turns out okay with reserved fire and chaff, maybe we can go ahead and test stuff in phase 5, now that both phases are merged. (Or does the merge mean we also have access to the objects selector menu in phase 4 now?)
 
Unfortunately I'm doing a one-way merge. Game engine changes in phase 4 move to phase 5. Phase 5 interface changes are not backward compatible to phase 4.

Wedge: thanks for pointing it out, I'll look into it. I also noticed in phase 5 suddenly the CSS is knocking the TR out of the target recticle image... possibly related? I'll look into it when I have time.

As for your new bugs, Ironduke, I'll have to do my standard debugging to check.

I'm all for testing stuff in phase 5. I can just as easily make the engine changes there, the only thing that is a slowdown is that we'd now depend on different players for different ships. That said, if you (or someone else) wanted to volunteer to run dedicated testing, I could simply assign all ships to 1 player.
 
Avacar said:
That said, if you (or someone else) wanted to volunteer to run dedicated testing, I could simply assign all ships to 1 player.
Click to expand...
As long as there are no other volunteers - sure! I guess you could easily switch back to controlling all ships by yourself if you wanted to do some testing on your own. (Since I won't be able to do any testing today, you can take your time until Saturday.)

Has anyone else registered so far? I've sent an email out to all former players of WCTO, so I'm hoping some of them will eventually drop by.
 
Ironduke said:
...and on we go:

- Turn 47 CP: Beta Pack 2 can open the "Fire Missile" dialogue, although there aren't any options.
Click to expand...

Fixed this in phase 4. Issue was it did still have missiles, but had no targets. Previously, the missile dialog always appeared if you had a missile left. Now it needs both targets and missiles to appear. Hmm, I suppose I should have tested the contrapositive, that if you had both, it DOES appear, but instead I only tested that it doesn't when you don't. Someone please make sure you can still fire missiles at all in phase 4?
 
Avacar said:
Someone please make sure you can still fire missiles at all in phase 4?
Click to expand...
Yes, you can! (Sorry, bad pun...)
I noticed some other (and some old) bugs in phase 4 today:

- Turn 49 MP: No report about chaff efficiency (just "Delta 1 releases a chaff pod")
- Turn 49 MP: Missiles are shown outside the hex map (as again in turn 51)
- Turn 50 MP: "Fatal error: Call to a member function submit() on a non-object in /home/agespast/www/www/avacar/phase4/end_phase_engine.php on line 228" (this occured temporarily, disappeared after hitting F5...)
- Turn 50 MP: Tango 2 and Delta 1 immobilized after an evasive action two turns earlier (maybe due to Beta Pack 2 taking evasive action and mixing stuff up?)

No bugs, but things to consider:
- Will there be missile info pop-ups (who launched it, IFF, expiration)? We had this in WCTO, and it might come in handy for those FFs, IRs and torps. Then again, more pop-ups might seriously clutter the screen...
- Could we possibly add a glowing contour/half-transparent radial thingy to ships that haven't yet submitted their orders? (This would also make the "waiting on players" list kind of obsolete.)

Now that we have some more registered beta testers, how about creating game 3 with some Sabres/Jalkehis in it to fool around? :)
 
Ironduke said:
...and on we go:
- Turn 48 MP: Whee! Something is fishy, though: Reserved fire for the Jalkehi worked for the particle and laser cannons - but why for the turret (the DF comes in dead ahead), and why does the Jalkehi begin to "resolve an Image Lock on Dumb-Fire Missile"...? I guess some targets got mixed up there...
Click to expand...
Okay so what happened here was that I had it coded such that you pick a target, and then all weapons fire at it. I had thought I'd filtered out all valid point defense targets in the pre-engine, so that any target listed was 'legal'. I forgot that not all weapons are forward facing.

I've reworked point defense slightly, leaving in hooks for the future use of flak as point defense. I've also put it in such that turrets *always* automatically point defend if they have any remaining refires. They will auto-target the first missile they see.


Ironduke said:
Yes, you can! (Sorry, bad pun...)
I noticed some other (and some old) bugs in phase 4 today:

- Turn 49 MP: No report about chaff efficiency (just "Delta 1 releases a chaff pod")
Click to expand...
I still don't know what is going on here. I keep looking at the chaff code, and it looks fine. We need to set up the counter scenario: do we know if chaff is working at all? We need to fire some easily chaffable weapons (HS?) at a bunch of ships that don't try to evade or to point defense (look out for the new auto-point defense turrets), to see if the chaff works at all, even if we can't see it. That will help me isolate the issue.

Ironduke said:
- Turn 49 MP: Missiles are shown outside the hex map (as again in turn 51)
Click to expand...
Found this one. Missiles were split out from other indicators when I built in the end_phase_engine, and so they weren't calling board_cleanup. Added to all 3 phases.

Ironduke said:
- Turn 50 MP: "Fatal error: Call to a member function submit() on a non-object in /home/agespast/www/www/avacar/phase4/end_phase_engine.php on line 228" (this occured temporarily, disappeared after hitting F5...)
Click to expand...
Didn't have a chance to work on this one, since I'd have to do rollbacks to recreate it. Makes me worried though. Is anything weird going on in 50CP?

Ironduke said:
- Turn 50 MP: Tango 2 and Delta 1 immobilized after an evasive action two turns earlier (maybe due to Beta Pack 2 taking evasive action and mixing stuff up?)
Click to expand...
Found the problem with this. I *think* we'll be cleaning up evasive actions properly now.

Ironduke said:
No bugs, but things to consider:
- Will there be missile info pop-ups (who launched it, IFF, expiration)? We had this in WCTO, and it might come in handy for those FFs, IRs and torps. Then again, more pop-ups might seriously clutter the screen...
Click to expand...
Yes, there will be. I just haven't taken the time to design and code them. I have a few other things on my pop-up todo as well, such as that 'incoming:' info you asked for. I will get to this eventually; the location for it is already roughed in, I just need to add them on.

Ironduke said:
- Could we possibly add a glowing contour/half-transparent radial thingy to ships that haven't yet submitted their orders? (This would also make the "waiting on players" list kind of obsolete.)
Click to expand...
In theory, yes, in practice, no, not for now. This is one of those cosmetic things that will take way more work than it is worth for now. We'll use the list system, as I can get that working a lot faster. Ask me again in a few months once I've got all the core game features working.

Note: All the above changes were made in phase 4 only.

Ironduke said:
Now that we have some more registered beta testers, how about creating game 3 with some Sabres/Jalkehis in it to fool around? :)
Click to expand...

This is a busy weekend for me, but if someone wants to sketch up what they want and where they want them located, I can set up a new game. Or better yet, why don't our new registered pilots call dibs on ships, and we'll just do a free-for-all mashup. Only rule right now is you can't pick any ship that has flak cannons, AMG or PTC, as those currently all work like forward guns at ridiculous power and are unfair.

If we do get a new game going, I can quickly/easily merge over the phase 4 updates into phase 5 first. Also, if we're all sure that we don't need to do any more phase 4 testing, I can discontinue doing my combat updates on the phase 4 work and only do them on phase 5. Just remember that I can move code from phase 4 to 5, but not the other way. Thoughts?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top