Object Builder: Bug Reports

[roquijad]

What a great toy!

I had no problems browsing it.

The only thing I found strange was that you can define an ethnic group, FE romans and create a culture, FE persianculture and assign persianculture to romans. In the original model ethnic group and culture are one single thing. I'd like to have the CREATE_ETHNIC_GROUP button introducing the EG attributes, one of them would be its name/nationality.

I know you're gonna say my request is just a particular case of your more general coding, but you'll have to live with my feedback, man!

[F_Smith]

Rodrigo:

Actually, you're right, I think.

The 'EthnicGroup' in that builder is more meant to be just a generic group of people, with no definition. Perhaps it would make more sense to just make the 'culture' the Group name -- I think that makes a lot of sense.

I hope this is of use to ya'll. I'm enjoying coding it.

[F_Smith]

Oops:

We need the seperate culture object. For 'romanized' greeks, for example.

Populations are going to have to have the ability to change cultures in respose to certain stimuli (a new Civ conquers them, for example).

[roquijad]

F_Smith:

My original idea was that a civ like the roman empire had several ethnic groups. Each EG has a nationality. So, in the case of "romanized greeks", it'd be an EG living in the roman empire having greek nationality. This EG is different from an EG with greek nationality living in the greek civ simply because the rest of the EG attributes are different.

What I'm really saying is that I see no point in having "culture" as a separated thing from nationality (by culture I here mean a set of cultural attributes like Individualism). What culture would you assign to the greeks living under roman rule? the same culture romans have? I think they'd have a culture which is partly roman and partly greek (at first at least). If so, they have a unique culture: greco-roman (or something like that). Given this uniqueness, i.e. this culture cannot be found anywhere else in the world (there's only one roman empire and only greeks in the roman empire have it), then it's unnecessary to break thing in two: EG and culture. They're really one thing. The right modeling IMO is having an EG with its own cultural values, one of which is nationality. The name of the EG is IMO irrelevant. They can be called "greeks under roman rule" or simply "greeks". As long as all civs with greek population have their own EG with own values each, there's no problem and you can see several forms of greek culture depending on where they live.

What do you think?

[Kull]

Much better, but there's some new stuff:

1)In the third group of buttons, no matter which characteristic you choose to edit (Social, Religious, Culture, etc.) the "New ****" button brings up a window titled "New Social Class" with a subheading of "SC Name:". The data feeds to the correct location, so it's just an aesthetic problem, not a functional one. NOTE: Same thing happens with the "Edit Civ" and "Edit Base EG" buttons, except they share a window titled "New Civ Name".

2) The Add/Remove Map Squre button doesn't remove. I kept clicking on Squre 2,2, and now there are three of them in the box.

3) Squares retain all the selected info except "Civilization". The "Civ Detail" box always displays the last civ selected, regardless of which square you click on.

4) Clicking into the "Pop:" field does pop-up a new window, but it does NOT activate. Instead, the window is grey and the cursor hops into the Ethnic Group field (right beneath "Selected Group Detail"). If you start typing before looking up, you'll edit that field instead of the population! NOTE: It's easy enough to click and activate the window, but that should be the default.

Onward and upward!

[F_Smith]

rodriqo:

The problem I came across was what happens when an ethnic group in a square undergoes changes to it's environment -- i.e. greeks suddenly coming under Roman rule, then living under Roman culture for a long time.

I have to be able to change their culture individually.

The Scenario Thingy might reflect more what you wanted now. I added in a concept of 'base Ethnic Groups' that is what your 'ethnic groups' concept was -- one unchanging EG with given settings. But then each group in each square is independent from that point, and can change religion, culture, whatever.

Or, it doesn't have to change. Up to you.

Will that work?

[F_Smith]

Kull:

1) Fixed, and fixed.

2) Done. Interestingly, I wasn't thinking about clicking on the map to remove -- I had it set up to be removed when you clicked on the list item. Your way is better, makes more sense. Thanks.

3) I'll get to this one next.

4) Fixed.

The new 'base' Ethnic Group stuff seems pretty clean, so far. But I'm sure I missed a few obvious things!

[axi]

I am still unable to copy from your save window. Why me?

Otherwise, it looks very good now. Good job FSmith.

[F_Smith]

Axi:

Managed to find a machine at work that duplicates the problem. The 'save' dialog doesn't even come up . . .

The error says 'class Civilization not found', which is wierd, since the class is there -- I'll look into it some more.

That is on IE4, by the way. Could you possibly be running IE4? Again, I don't know why that would be causing a problem, but one easy fix for now might be to get IE5, if you don't already have it.

[roquijad]

F_Smith:

"The problem I came across was what happens when an ethnic group in a square undergoes changes to it's environment -- i.e. greeks suddenly coming under Roman rule, then living under Roman culture for a long time.
I have to be able to change their culture individually."

Yes, I know what you meant. I maybe wasn't clear with my explanation. An EG who suffers a change in its environment will evolve differently than one that stays in the original one. We agree on this. My original idea was not, as you said, "one unchanging EG with given settings". The changes you talk about were included in the model. My "protest", if it can be called that, is that you're separating things in a way I see is artificial and unnessesary. The greeks under roman rule in a given msq has a unique culture, so you have an EG called "greeks under roman rule" with greek nationality and "greek-under-roman-rule" culture. It's one thing. If you define "g-u-r-r" culture as a stand alone object, you'll find you can only assign it to this particular EG and to no other. If so, why should you have it separated from the EG itself? They'll go together all along. In my head you need an OO-class called EG with attributes:
Nationality
Cultural attr1
Cultural attr2
...
Cultural attr3
+(some extra info)

The greeks u-r-r would be an object of this OO-class which in time is a piece of the roman civ object. The greeks in Greece are another object being a piece of the greek civ object. When turns advance, you change cultural attributes values for each of these two objects. Since the greeks u-r-r are a part of the roman civ object, changes in values would be different to the changes greeks in greece expirience.

So, in short, is not a matter of changes occuring or not or being different here and there, but a matter of having different objects for things that inherently go together.

[F_Smith]

Hi, Rodrigo:

First, remember, this is just my version of the data model, and it likely will change. And it may not even resemble the one Clash ends up using. But the data will remain the same, so this is a fruitful discussion.

I feel your questioning is great. I enjoy discussing this kind of design detail, and I'm one of those guys that feels that if I've got the right answer it'll stand up under scrutiny.

My concept of OO design is typified by an atom.

There is no such thing as an 'atom'. An atom is actually a 'wrapper' name for a collection of particles and forces. So we have an 'Atom' Class that contains collections of 'Electron', 'Proton', 'Nuetron', etc. objects. Then, I can create any number of 'atoms' (instances of 'atom'), and each will have it's own, independent values.

In Game terms, every square has a population. That Population is broken up into 'group' objects -- instances of the 'EthnicGroup' class. There is no such thing as an 'EthnicGroup', in game terms, each instance is just a collection of values (EGDetailChoices) -- Culture, Religion, Tendencies and Attributes.

In other words, I'm using a 'wrapper' class. That's why it seems 'un-necessary', perhaps -- it's purpose is largely to organize the object-hierarchy. Just like the 'particle'-'Atom'-'Molecule' hierarchy.

'EGDetailChoices'-'EthnicGroup'-'ProvincePopulation'.

Does that seem right?

[F_Smith]

Axi:

Wierd. A few possibilities --

Could the old version be 'cached' on your browser? Let me ask:

Do you see any 'base Ethnic Group' info in the beginning help info?

Do you see a 'Build/Edit Base EG' button on the left?

If not, then perhaps try clearing out the 'cached' files in your browser (depending on your browser version, look for 'internet options' among either 'view' or 'tools' in the menu bar on the browser, and on that page click the button 'Delete Files' in the 'Temporary Internet Files' section). Then reload the page.

I'm going to add a button to copy that to the clipboard tonight. That should solve this problem, for the time being. But I'm curious about the origin . . .

If clearing the cache doesn't help, then we'll need you to enable the 'Java Console' in your browser, and look at the error that pops up there.

We'll nail that one down, don't worry.

P.S. Just wanted to verify -- you have IE5, not IE4? Not sure if that would even cause this, just trying to get it all settled in my mind.

[F_Smith]

The server at my home page seems to have given up the ghost. They assure me it'll be back up tomorrow, by mid-morning.

So I haven't bailed, don't worry.

Of course, some of ya'll might wish I would . . .

Due up in next release -- basic MapSquare editing (adjusting the number of 'prodution' zones per square, mostly), and a simple 'turn' method that harvests food and stores the surplus in generic 'warehouses'.

[F_Smith]

*NOTE*:

The server for my home page space is still in the midst of upgrading. They've restored an old version of the files, but I can't update the applet to the newest version yet.

Sometime today, they said.

Of course, yesterday, they said it would be by 11 a.m. . . .

[F_Smith]

Okay!

It's back up. I'm adding in a few new things this weekend, so any requested changes will be easy to work in.

Anyone with a few minutes to spare, please run the Object Builder thru a few paces and list anything I didn't notice. It would help me tremendously.

Thanks.