Object Builder: Bug Reports

[Mark_Everson]

Tried to check it out, but the server musta been down again.

[F_Smith]

Now it's up again. Supposedly for good.

They were supposedly upgrading the server for better thruput.

Which brings up a good general question -- how long does it take the applet to load on ya'lls machines?

I can change the order things load in, to speed it up, if anyone is experience serious delay.

On my machine it comes up in about 10 seconds, altho I have a Cable modem and pretty serious machine.

[axi]

I still can't copypaste your savetext to the clipboard! What about that save button?

It's difficult to have satisfied customers...

[F_Smith]

Hi, Axi:

I am sorry about that. It seems to be an isolated case on your environment. If you don't mind, for now, I'd like to solve your specific problem by creating an application for you to download, instead of running the applet. That'll let you save, guaranteed.

But about the functionality of the tool itself -- is it okay? Terrible? Comments? Suggestions?

What can I add to make it useful?

We need this to replace the spreadsheets, so we can develop real models and get debugged gamecode at the same time.

What do I need to do to get us there?

[axi]

Wow, now we have forests, mountains, villages, a lake and omigod! those cute little castles!

Btw, where did you get this?

quote: You can't control more provinces than the current tech level. Your Tech level is 1, and you have 1 provinces Raise the Tech level first.

Oh and I love the NotReadyYet messages!

Seriously now:

1) The Build/Edit base EG dialog is a little screwed up. It won't let you select the 2nd base EG you create to assign it it's attributes.

2)The selection mechanism on the map (the one that makes them pink) is either too slow or it is screwed up; can 2 or more squares be selected at the same time?

3)Your program is several times larger or your server is several times slower now. It takes me a couple of minutes to load.

4) How about the right click menu on the mapsquares? Will we be able to set the number of sites for food and resources in the future?

5) Don't you think it's just tedious to fill the map with the same EGs all over the place? What will happen in the beginning of a game, when the "world'" is created? What I mean is, don't we need a random generator for that stuff? (A thing that you could instruct: gimme a world with these religions, these civs, these cultures, classes, etc...)

6) When will we be able to insert, test and modify our formulas for the various attributes we provide for our EGs?

I would make more worhthwhile comments, but I am not very familiar with the game object model; Rodrigo is really your man.

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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[F_Smith]

Hi, Axi:

Forgive the silly little line drawings. It's just the best I can do. They're just 'placeholders', for now, I'm simply drawing those pixel by pixel in the game code, creating a memoryImage (very flexible, but very inefficient). Most everything I've done for displaying the map will be different for the final game, in fact. I just cut some corners.

The number I plucked out of thin air, but in one of the threads (tech discussion, perhaps?) mentioned that the number of Provinces would be dependent on a tech level. So, for the moment, just to test the model, I've limited each 'civ' to one province. It can be easily expanded -- I'll set a place for you to customize a civ's tech level for that.

1) I'll look into it -- it works okay on my machine, oddly enough.

2) Same thing. I have an idea of what to do now, I'll post about it later tonight.

3) Dang it. As I said, they 'upgraded' the servers. It shouldn't be any longer to load. I can do something about the load time, tho -- it takes about 15 seconds on my machine (but I have a 2 meg/sec cable modem and 512 meg ram).

4) Absolutely. I will add that in tonight, in fact.

5) This is not how a game will begin. That will be either generated randomly, or you load a 'scenario' file. This is an early version of what will actually be a 'scenario' editor. That's also why I was hoping ya'll could save/load game info in this editor -- so you didn't have to re-create the entire world you want to test every time.

6) I'll add the Gui parts to do that tonight. The code already has that (empty) data in it.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi F_Smith:

I got to check it out without fate's evil hand interfering! You've made a lot of progress, very cool.

It took about 90 seconds to load with a cable modem and I E. 5.0. I had the same problem as Axi, I couldn't actually copy the stuff in the save file info box. Here's my requested feature list

1) Please start the ObjectBuilder with a default set of information covering at least half the map with a few civs, several cultures, a few provinces, etc. already built. It is an extreme pain to need to go in and create a whole bunch of dummy names for things when you just want to see in general what is going on and what is implemented. Perhaps you could leave the bottom half of the map unfilled so people could do things starting from scratch if that's what they wanted.

2) As Axi said, getting the actual values for the government and social models in there, and being able to watch how they evolve with time, is key. But please start it with a default set of values. Most of the people who check it out will not want to enter in 25 numbers by hand just to see what the thing does.

3) The number of provinces you can control stably in the best guess we're working with now depends on tech level (and infrastructure like roads). But even at the lowest level of technology and zip infrastructure you could probably control five provinces (if they are all close together) with no trouble. So I suggest at least opening it up so that a default civ can have five provinces or so.

4) Have you put any thought into how you're going to show the evolution of the values that are behind culture and government? If you have a simple graphing program available, it would be excellent to select a few characteristics and then be able to watch them evolving on a strip chart as the turns go by. You know, that's for us guys who like to do things on spreadsheets .

[F_Smith]

Mark and Axi:

One possible spot of hope--did you try using Control+c to copy (and Control+v to paste) the the text in the box? Make sure the text is highlighted, too.

I was assuming that approach. I tend to use it without thinking.

Just one possibility.

And regarding download time, I'm not sure how much we can do about that, short of spending money for a faster server. I'm just using my default webspace at my ISP for testing, so for now that'll have to do. Even connected straight thru to them, I've noticed that it can take a few seconds for a new dialog box to pop up the first time, while it downloads the Gui classes. Then every other time it comes up very quickly, since it's been cached.

Mark:

1) Okay. I'm a good ways done. I changed the thing to load a scenario file from the server on loading. Tomorrow night I'll actually flesh out those scenarios some (right now they mostly load blank worlds -- altho at least the 6000bc one has a little data in it).

2) Once I finish #1, then I'll do the Gui's for altering model values. The gamedata already has a place to store the values, it's just a matter of writing up a few more GUI panels. This weekend, it should be done.

3) I'll change the province situation after that. Might fit into this weekend.

4) I can easily save values along a timeline. I probably could graph the data, too. I've actually got a widget I built for work that does some nice charting.

[axi]

Some more ignorant comments:

1) I'll second Mark's request for a graphing utility, able to be assigned to every public (observable) or private variable of the game. It will be useful even in the final game.

2) If Mark has the same problem as I do, then something has to be done with it ASAP. And I don't think that creating a special downloadable application is the appropriate solution. What about subsequent upgrades?
And YES, of course I have tried ctrl+C/ctrl+V! There is no other way to access copy and paste in the save window(no right click menu - no dropdown menu)

3) I maybe totally wrong about this (as I said I am not too familiar with the game object model), but shouldn't a BEG (and an EG in general) be able to hold more than one TV and Attribute? And the collection of these attributes shouldn't be the culture object?

4) The random generator is part of every respectable scenario/map editor and it will have to be there eventually. Of course it's a bit early for it now, but we should plan ahead. At least we have a VERY GOOD geographic map generator in our hands.

***Ooops, didn't see you were here!
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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
[This message has been edited by axi (edited July 27, 2000).]

[Mark_Everson]

F_Smith:

Thanks for the scenario load feature. It will help a lot!

Have you considered putting out the ObjectBuilder as a .jar file? Most team members are already set up to use java2 .jars because demo4 is a .jar. Of course you still might need to change over to an application to eliminate the problems with saving files, etc.

One other thing. The tiles are diamonds (like civ2) in our graphics. I'm not suggesting you switch over now, but eventually the OB map will need to match the existing layout.

[F_Smith]

Axi:

1) Shall do.

2) Agreed, altho the other options are not necessarily preferable right now. The ways around applet secutity restrictions are

a) to use a servlet and run my own webserver from my machine 24/7. We absolutely will do this eventually, for multiplayer, but hopefully we'll be able to find a better machine to host the servlet.

b) to 'sign' the applet. Theoretically this is a good option, but I'll have to look into how to do it.

c) to create a downloadable application, to allow users to save to their local machines.

I'm afraid there just isn't much other choice.

3) Excellent, substantive question. The datamodel I'm working with now has 'TendencyValues' and 'Attributes' as collections of what are called 'key-value' pairs. That's one thing I need to add to the Gui -- the ability to define those key-value pairs. And the idea is that while those values are a component of people's behavior, it will be able to be changed from EG to EG, so that not all members of a given 'culture' have to have the same tendencies or attributes. They can have the same ones, but they don't have to. Plus, a given group of people in a give square might have cause to change their attributes or tendencies independent of the larger 'culture'.

4) I think that would be a good addition, later. And actually, I've never before seen a scenario editor with a random map feature (altho it would have been nice to have had one). For now, I'm trying to keep the map small and sweet, so we can have controlled tests.


* * *

Mark:

I had considered a .jar, altho it would make it harder to control start-up time for the app, since it has to download the whole .jar before you can launch. But if people already are set up for Java2 .jars, that would save me a lot of trouble making up Gui components . . . and the collections stuff is better, too, altho a bit slower to access, on average. But that's a thought. Maybe after this weekend.

Oh, and I don't mind using the 'diamond' shaped tiles, later. For now, tho, I'm taking a simple (altho slow and memory intensive) shortcut of simply making each mapsquare a 'component' and adding it to a panel with 'gridLayout'. So I don't have to mess with a bunch of custom display code, and I get the right-click menus and such.

But later I can change that.

[Mark_Everson]

One other option on the jar file is that you can let people who are going to use the OB intensively just download the jar file and run it locally (as an applet or application). Then they won't have to wait several minutes to load... Its a bit kludgey, but just a thought.
[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited July 27, 2000).]

[F_Smith]

Mark:

That's a great idea for getting around this slow server, actually. I'll do that tonight.

Since Visual Cafe makes it so easy to put out a .jar file, there's no reason not to.

It really makes me mad, tho -- the thing was loading pretty fast last week, before they 'upgraded' their servers.

Some upgrade . . .

[axi]

F_Smith:

1) Why did you make this thing fullscreen? It was good as it was, now my browser acts funny, not to mention my taskbar, which I have located on the left side of the screen, blocking the way. (Pity, this position of the taskbar always causes my windows to initially assume bad positions; why don't the programmers leave 3-4 cm margin on the left?)

2) Could you make the text windows that involve a list of objects a little bit larger? When the sidebars cick in, it's kind of ugly.

3) Now your program takes even more time to load, but I'm afraid that's partially due to my own crappy provider. (Well, if you consider that it's free and that I live in the other side of the Atlantic, it's not so bad after all...)

More comments when we see more progress...

[F_Smith]

Axi:

1) Sorry, just testing out something different. That's how I explore possibilities -- I don't ask you what size you want the screen, I show you a few different options and get your feedback. That way there's no guessing -- it's clear you *don't* like fullscreen!!!

I'll change that. I was going to try a 'frame' and see what that looks like, too. It would give me menus to use, for one thing, which would allow me to move those on-screen buttons to menus and free up some screen space.

2) Shall do.

3) A fix for the download time prob is going to be forthcoming. Please just bear with me, for now.

Right now, I'm beefing up the XML loader, so I can load all the scenario info. It's taking a bit of debugging, so it should be another night before I can add the object details Gui panels (Religion, Culture, etc).

Thanks for keeping up with this, tho . . .