Added a favicon (finally) to the game. Chose the Rapier II. Any like/dislike this choice? I also considered a crosshair. Been also doing a lot of behind the scenes tweaking of the code, cleaning up old comments, dealing with some of the grid fudge-factor numbers (which lead to almost a 10% increase in grid size when set to 100x100 before being fixed). Also added a better system for permissions. I may revisit the pop-up positioning math again, as I'm not crazy with the position choices on the drop-down selector (when needed) at the edge of the maps, nor the missile pop-up. The ship popup seems to be okay though...
Creating a computer-aided version of WCTO
- Thread starter Avacar
- Start date
looks like the dropdown menu for a stack is not working properly again. Anyone know when this started? I'll have to track back to which revision caused the problem.
- never mind; found the problem. I accidently overwrote the awesome selectmenu corrections I had made about six months ago. Fortunately I was able to rollback just that aspect of the code to get it working again. For most of you, you probably didn't even see what I 'm talking about (it being broken today) so you can ignore this.
- never mind; found the problem. I accidently overwrote the awesome selectmenu corrections I had made about six months ago. Fortunately I was able to rollback just that aspect of the code to get it working again. For most of you, you probably didn't even see what I 'm talking about (it being broken today) so you can ignore this.
Is it still bugged? It looks repaired to me in game 4 (which is where I detected it). I know the drop-down behaviour isn't ideal, but at the moment it should at least stay in the vicinity of where the ships are (whereas the bug I was seeing had it teleporting across the map and breaking).I just noticed the "stacking bug" in Game 4, but I usually don't stack my ships too often...
If it is doing that which I described in brackets, please clear your cache and reload the page and let me know.
I am happy to announce that Jason_Ryock has joined the WCTOO coding team! He's going to be our jquery bug-squasher and general guru to start, and we'll see what else he has time to work on from there!
Please help him with any debugging he requests, as you have with myself and Wedge. Expect to see most of his initial work discussed over in the Interface Development thread.
Please help him with any debugging he requests, as you have with myself and Wedge. Expect to see most of his initial work discussed over in the Interface Development thread.
Straightforward questions for Ironduke (hinting at what I'm currently working on 
):
):- Should asteroid-ship collisions ignore shields? I would suspect the answer is yes...
- Can missiles flying through asteroid fields hit asteroids? If so:
- Does it use its guidance rating to avoid the asteroids?
- Can a ship occupying an asteroid field space get some native protection from incoming missiles (i.e. should the missiles check for asteroid collisions before checking for ship collisions?)
Okay, here we go...
1. This sounds like an easy answer, but I don't think it is. In Prophecy-era games, we can clearly see the Confederation uses kinetic shield technology as well as energy shield technology. So kinetic shields should be able to repel asteroids... My memory might serve me wrong, but I think asteroids in WC1 and WC2 used to drain shields completely before damaging the hull. I'd have to confirm this by playing one of the games again - or can anybody else shed some light on this?
2. to 4. Yes, no, and yes! Actually, missiles are very likely to be destroyed in an asteroid field. The manual says (and this is v0.15, I'm not sure if it's in 0.14 already):
Asteroids are one of the things that haven't seen extensive testing, though, so I might be forced to redo one rule or the other while we're in the process of implementing them in WCTOO... We'll have to see on the go what works and what doesn't.
1. This sounds like an easy answer, but I don't think it is. In Prophecy-era games, we can clearly see the Confederation uses kinetic shield technology as well as energy shield technology. So kinetic shields should be able to repel asteroids... My memory might serve me wrong, but I think asteroids in WC1 and WC2 used to drain shields completely before damaging the hull. I'd have to confirm this by playing one of the games again - or can anybody else shed some light on this?
2. to 4. Yes, no, and yes! Actually, missiles are very likely to be destroyed in an asteroid field. The manual says (and this is v0.15, I'm not sure if it's in 0.14 already):
Asteroids are one of the things that haven't seen extensive testing, though, so I might be forced to redo one rule or the other while we're in the process of implementing them in WCTOO... We'll have to see on the go what works and what doesn't.
Yeah, that line is in v.14. I must have missed it on my most recent read through. I've updated missiles to use a 1d6 instead of a 1d12 vs threat.Okay, here we go...
Asteroids are one of the things that haven't seen extensive testing, though, so I might be forced to redo one rule or the other while we're in the process of implementing them in WCTOO... We'll have to see on the go what works and what doesn't.
I've switched the damage function for ships from raw_damage back to take_damage (which means shields will be factored in). Let me know if I should go back once someone does some testing in WC1 or WC2. (I really should pick up a working copy of those right now while they're $2.99 on gog.com...)
I have begun implementing Capital ship weapons. The changes needed may add bugs into the regular weapons, but only if I typo or something like that. Otherwise the associated code won't get triggered until we have a cap ship.
The AMG is "ready" and the PTC is almost done. I'll likely run some quiet trials in a private game before I push it out to an alpha test of the weapons.
Flak is still in the future, for now.
edit: PTC done too...maybe? honestly I'm not sure if I remembered to put everything that both would need, but if I did one correct, they are both correct.
The AMG is "ready" and the PTC is almost done. I'll likely run some quiet trials in a private game before I push it out to an alpha test of the weapons.
Flak is still in the future, for now.
edit: PTC done too...maybe? honestly I'm not sure if I remembered to put everything that both would need, but if I did one correct, they are both correct.
I have now made visible my test game of capital ship weaponry. I have tested that:
Note: flak weapons are not yet ready. Also, the game seems to have stalled with only 1 ship left alive. While I really should pat myself on the back and say "feature!" this is an unintentional consequence of something which I need to look into.
- Guns Charge
- Guns can be fired
- Guns can only be fired forward
- Guns that are not fired when charged, maintain their charge
Note: flak weapons are not yet ready. Also, the game seems to have stalled with only 1 ship left alive. While I really should pat myself on the back and say "feature!" this is an unintentional consequence of something which I need to look into.
I'm about 60% of the way done coding flak fire. I've got the flak in-situ rules set up (aka don't smash into flak). I've also addressed the biggest problem I had had which was turning mouse position into cell numbers. Now I just need to work out the format for storing flak fire information, write the actual interface for flak fire, and also make sure that said interface gives appropriate feedback (such as not firing outside of range, etc.)
It'll probably take another week or so to get it all up and running, then fully tested. More as it develops.
It'll probably take another week or so to get it all up and running, then fully tested. More as it develops.
I've got most of the new flak fire control system up and running. You can mouse around the ship, and a snap-to-grid image of flak appears. On clicking, it leaves behind a flak indicator. I haven't yet got this fully translated into command/order input for the turn processor yet, but in the grand scheme, that's the easy part. We're mostly over the hill now.
To get the flak fire system working behind the scenes (transiting the targetting data through the database and over to the turn processing engine) I overhauled the entire combat phase order system. This is entirely a behind-the-scenes change, the interface you're all used to will look and act identically.
With an overhaul such as this, the rules themselves should still be handled identically, however there is always a chance that information is getting lost. Look for situations in the combat phase resolution where the wrong target is coming up, or the weapons you ordered to fire don't fire at all, or the wrong number of refires are used. I believe those to be the most likely bugs, although I've already gone over the changes myself in the hopes that I caught all the refactored data storage. Fortunately Game 5 is not on a combat turn, so I didn't need to manually update any of the existing orders in the queue.
For the contributors out there reading this, these updates aren't yet going to be in the SVN until I've had time to do some debugging, but I'm posting this now because they'll be live in the /avacar branch of the phase5 game engine immediately... so they will affect gameplay for the main players.
Report any strange error messages or behaviour to me as soon as possible, although I expect none of it to crop up until we get back to a combat turn. Hopefully, by then, I'll have had time to iron out any bugs I've found in the capital ship combat game.
With an overhaul such as this, the rules themselves should still be handled identically, however there is always a chance that information is getting lost. Look for situations in the combat phase resolution where the wrong target is coming up, or the weapons you ordered to fire don't fire at all, or the wrong number of refires are used. I believe those to be the most likely bugs, although I've already gone over the changes myself in the hopes that I caught all the refactored data storage. Fortunately Game 5 is not on a combat turn, so I didn't need to manually update any of the existing orders in the queue.
For the contributors out there reading this, these updates aren't yet going to be in the SVN until I've had time to do some debugging, but I'm posting this now because they'll be live in the /avacar branch of the phase5 game engine immediately... so they will affect gameplay for the main players.
Report any strange error messages or behaviour to me as soon as possible, although I expect none of it to crop up until we get back to a combat turn. Hopefully, by then, I'll have had time to iron out any bugs I've found in the capital ship combat game.
Okay, first cut at flak weapons is done. They fire and stick around. I haven't done any testing yet to make sure the flak bursts themselves work, but that's strongly related to the collision work in general, so in theory if asteroids work, they should too.
You guys can witness them as being shot from the Crazy Horse in the Capital Ship Weapons Test Range.
I haven't yet put any work into using flak cannons for point defense. The interface should be quickly transposable over from the combat phase to end phase, although moving over the actual flak fire processing from the combat engine to the end phase engine may be a bigger task, and less of the combat phase engine rework will be directly applicable to the end phase engine.
For those of you who are paying extra special attention, you'll notice the flak is only being kicked off the board during end phases. Technically, flak is meant to go away at the end of the movement phase. I just haven't got around to that. I did notice that the v.14 rules state that flak fired during the end phase should stick around to the next end phase... as far as I'm concerned though, the only reason for doing that is to ensure it is relevant to the next movement phase, so removing both types of flak at that time (while perhaps not making sense from a real-world flak-burst time durability sense) wouldn't have any impact on gameplay, so I may go that way. Thoughts?
I'm going to take a break from coding until bugs crop up or I feel up to it again; as such, no end-phase flak fire for now. That said, once that feature is ready, I promise to throw some cap ships out there for player testing.
I should mention that we're 'getting close'. Flak fire is the 2nd last game rule/feature yet to be coded. After that, only friendly fire remains before we have a 'game rule-complete' version of WCTOO.
When that happens, I'm going to kick us into Phase 6. This is a redefinition of all the timelines out there, and I'll publish updates to the appropriate threads when we get closer. Phase 6 will focus on a lot of the user interface requests/suggestions, as well as start work on the much-needed administrator tools (leading up to the eventual map editor).
You guys can witness them as being shot from the Crazy Horse in the Capital Ship Weapons Test Range.
I haven't yet put any work into using flak cannons for point defense. The interface should be quickly transposable over from the combat phase to end phase, although moving over the actual flak fire processing from the combat engine to the end phase engine may be a bigger task, and less of the combat phase engine rework will be directly applicable to the end phase engine.
For those of you who are paying extra special attention, you'll notice the flak is only being kicked off the board during end phases. Technically, flak is meant to go away at the end of the movement phase. I just haven't got around to that. I did notice that the v.14 rules state that flak fired during the end phase should stick around to the next end phase... as far as I'm concerned though, the only reason for doing that is to ensure it is relevant to the next movement phase, so removing both types of flak at that time (while perhaps not making sense from a real-world flak-burst time durability sense) wouldn't have any impact on gameplay, so I may go that way. Thoughts?
I'm going to take a break from coding until bugs crop up or I feel up to it again; as such, no end-phase flak fire for now. That said, once that feature is ready, I promise to throw some cap ships out there for player testing.
I should mention that we're 'getting close'. Flak fire is the 2nd last game rule/feature yet to be coded. After that, only friendly fire remains before we have a 'game rule-complete' version of WCTOO.
When that happens, I'm going to kick us into Phase 6. This is a redefinition of all the timelines out there, and I'll publish updates to the appropriate threads when we get closer. Phase 6 will focus on a lot of the user interface requests/suggestions, as well as start work on the much-needed administrator tools (leading up to the eventual map editor).
My flak implementations are now "done", and they are interface tested, but I suspect that there will be bugs that you guys can find. At this point, I do need opinions on the above quote, since it is the only thing I haven't implemented yet. Flak still disappears at the end of end-phase, which technically means flak fired 'last turn' could help defend against missile flight 'this turn'. Putting in the movement-phase removal should be an exception, but an easy one to implement. Thoughts?