Object Builder: Bug Reports

[Mark_Everson]

Sorry, saw something above that made me think there was more new stuff...

I'll wait for the banner headlines next time!

BTW - why no packages in your code? Packages help me understand the code better, making it easier to read, etc.

[roquijad]

Hi F_Smith.

I played with the beast and it crashed again. I tried again and it worked. I'm not sure why it worked on the second attempt.

Here are my comments:

1) just to show my ignorance: what's an "applet"? why they appear with a warning message?

2) When editing a civ, you have a sub-section called "govt planning pref". Why? what's that? why didn't you put just the list of all policies? why "social policies" and "economic planning" aren't there?

3) Since we're still discussing scalability for social classes, I'd appreciate it if you use our "standard" classes. No slaves class. Include Religous Class and Warriors Class. Alternatively, you can implement my last proposal in the govt model thread and replace the political structure with People, Ruler, Capitalists, Bureacratic Elite, Religious Class and Warriors Class.
You should also display two lists of political power. The nominal (by law) political power and the real political power for each entity.

4) When I add a new base ethnic group the window is titled "new civ"...

5) What's the difference between an ethnic group and a base ethnic group? does the concept ethnic group exist? is it all "base" ethnic groups now?

6) when editing cultures, a "ruler govt preferences" title is on top.... get rid of! ruler has nothing to do there.

7) I presume editing religions is not implemented yet. I couldn't do anything there.

8) what is a "group"? (edit group option)

9) A simple next step is to add ideologies objects. Attributes for ideologies would be (using the newly proposed system) Ruler pol.power, People's pol.power, Capitalists pol.power, Warriors Class pol.power, Religious Class pol.power, Social Policies, Economic Planning and Private Property.

10) Within ruler's preferences, you must include his preferences for the distribution of pol.power.

11) We should be able to give a nationality to a civ. This sounds tricky, but civ's nationality doesn't have to match one of the ethnic groups names. A civ like Yugoslavia has yugoslavian as nationality, but ethnic groups are actually serbs, croats, kosovars, etc. This "trick" serves a purpose in the social model.


It looks nice! keep on going!

[F_Smith]

Rodgrigo:

I don't understand that about windows crashing. Does Internet Explorer ever crash your machine at other times, or is it just with this applet?

1) An applet is a type of java 'program' that runs thru a web browser (like IE). The warning is because it's a program running on your machine, and can do many things in the background (but can *not* write to your hard drive, so no viruses to worry about).

2) For cosmetic reasons only, I put the planning techs in a seperate 'panel'. And the three that should be displayed there are 'economic', 'social' and 'foreign policy'. They should be there. But all that is only temporary anyway, that entire civilization dialog box desperately needs a 'look and feel' makeover.

3) I can remove 'slave' class, if you'd like (altho I like it, if it's possible to keep it for testing, for now).

I do need to, and was going to put in 'social classes' next -- warrior class, etc., and I would really rather use your new system, if that's okay. If so, I'll alter the 'political structure'. I'll also put another 'political structure' next to it, and call one 'real' and the other 'nominal'.

4) Oops. Fixed. Altho that entire functionality will be switched over to a 'build EG' wizard, under the other drop down list, in time.

5) Actually, that's just for my convenience. The 'base ethnic groups' are the actual 'ethnic groups' that exist at the civ level. My 'ethnic group' might be better labelled 'local ethnic group', because they exist in a single mapsquare. Usually they begin as an 'instance' of a 'base ethnic group', but their evolution from there forward is dependent on their envrionment.

6) Oops. Fixed. Copied that panel, forgot to change the label.

7) No religion detail GUI yet. The plumbing is there, gotta whip up some quick GUIs.

8) 'Groups' are usually 'Ethnic Groups' (groups of population). But I couldn't find an 'edit group' option -- where was that?

9) Yes, absolutely -- ideologies seems to tie in with social classes, unless I'm wrong, since social classes need 'ideologies'. (Do I have this right?).

That must be next (social classes and ideologies). When those are done, we actually can start playing the 'govt' game, and tweaking the turn results/turn code.

10) I believe you mean 'ideology', again, correct? Yes, the ruler will have one too. Brings up an interesting idea, too -- I've arbitrarily given the ruler an 'ethnicity'. Should his ideology be related to his ethnic group's culture, and evolve from there?

11) That's in the code, forgot to put it on the screen components. When you pop up the 'edit Power structure' button, it allows the choice of a 'majority EG'. The majority EG defaults to the ruler's EG, for now.

Hey, if you can be available next weekend to check this once a day or so, I think we can finish this model soon. It looks like my wife is going to the Dallas Apparel Market for the weekend, leaving me time to get wild at nights (well, coding is about as wild as I get! Sad, eh?).

[roquijad]

F_Smith:

About your post above:
Windows crashes only when I play with the beast.

2) For cosmetic reasons I understand. Tho, I don't know what you mean by "economic" and "social". Are those the "economic planning" and "social policies" policies?

10) The ruler needs a set of policies (his prefrences) which includes all policies and political structure (pol.powers). He doesn't pick an ideology like class members do.
As for ruler's ethnicity... sounds interesting. I'll think what effects it could have. Keep it for now.


As for your list of functionalities you posted in the govt thread, I don't see how all that will be possible without ideologies (which you say we'll pospone)

I'll be checking the beast during saturday and sunday afternoons. I'll give you all the feedback my browser allows me to...
(chilean time (I'm chilean, btw) matches US eastern time)

[F_Smith]

rodrigo:

1) I'm sorry, yes, typo -- those are 'economic policy' and 'social policy'. I'll fix that.

2) The ruler's prefs are currently in there, except his 'ideology/political structure' preference.

3) If I understand Ideologies correctly, their purpose is in determining the political structure.

For now, we'll just let the tester set the political structure at will. That's better anyway, for testing the actual govt turn logic, since we have to be able to test every concievable type of govt.

Sat and Sun afternoon would be perfect. Just remember to be patient with me -- the turn logic is pretty complicated, and I guarantee I won't nail it right the first time! But with ya'lls help correcting my errors, this shouldn't take too long.

[axi]

I didn't see any significant (visible) progress in the beast the last few days, so I had nothing to comment on. Fortunately for you (unfortunately for me), my recuperation period was extended for safety reasons , so I will be in this weekend and I will probably be able to comment on any updates made. Bear in mind that I live in GMT+2, which is 6 hours in front of EST.

Btw, F_Smith, check this out: http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum23/H...tml?date=03:46 It's the kind of topic one expects to find you in.

[F_Smith]

Okay:

The progress is significantly more visible now, altho far from finished.

Please still be kind with corrections.

The Turn Button is now live, and processes turn logic.

The turn logic structure is in place, altho not all the equations are in yet. The few that are (taxes, slavery) are just using very simplistic equations, and will certainly have to be tweaked.

But you can get an interesting feel for how this game will be played. And I think it's kinda cool, myself.

Try raising taxes as each of the three different leaders. A 'small' increase is currently hard-coded as under 3%. A bigger increase and the people resist (yes, just a simplistic trigger, for now).

Business(capitol) always resists higher taxes! And no one resists lower taxes (haven't put in the beauracracy yet . . .).

More coming tomorrow night.
[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 19, 2000).]

[axi]

F_Smith:

1)

quote: Merchants throw a 'tax resistance' rally, with free beer, to garner support.

LOL!

quote: Business objects, and makes a few 'donations' to key people, killing the increase.

What is the difference between the two expressions? The second one occurs when capital has a lot of pol power?

2) Another question: These things in the civ's colors that look like horses in the prairie, wtf are they?

3) A minor bug: The first time one turn passes, the year does not change from 4000BCE.

4) I think that you have started the wrong way! Tax Rate is the only policy we haven't discussed any behaviors about and it's the first that get's it's own negotiation process. It would be better to rely on what is already in the govt model rather than on improvisation. If I were you, I would begin with the Culturally Negotiated Policies, who are simpler, and then proceed to coding Ideologies and the INP negotiation procedure.

5) Btw, I think that INPs and CNPs should be eventually seperated into two individual groups in the civilisation window, specially after ideologies are implemented.

6) The idea of keeping a log of the "major events" is good (and very funny sometimes ), but this birthday thing is a little bit annoying.

7) Even at this stage, I feel that it's necessary that all the pol. powers amount to 100% Is it that hard to accomplish? (But please, no "You can't do that!" popups; every % that is missing or is superfluous during a change should be automatically subtracted/added from/to elsewhere - like in civ2)

8) When you said (in the other thread) you were going to flesh the econ code into the Beast, what exactly did you mean? Are you by any chance going to code any of the govt-econ stuff?

Come on, how long am I going to listen to poor "Sir Rogin" calling helplessly "for an end to slavery"?

[F_Smith]

axi:

Hope you like it. It actually seems fun to me.

1) One gets written if govt is acting alone (the 'donations' one). The other gets written if the people are also against the increase. This is all just arbitrary right now, but I think it's already kinda cool.

2) Those are just an early attempt at 'TaskForces'. They have no other purpose than cosmetics, at this point. There's one for each civ -- 2 groups of horsemen, and one group (the 'townsfolk') of spearmen (in yellow).

3) Oh, actually the date starts at 4001 bce. I need to fix that.

4) Actually, the reason I chose tax rate first was because it was one of the hardest, and because I was concentrating on building the structure of the turnhandlers, so I could just make up an equation without having to study anything yet. I have now finished that, and can plug in turn logic quickly and easily. So now I will study and implement the other equations tonight.

5) INPs and CNPs -- I'm afraid I don't understand the reference. I'm sorry.

6) Yeah, I can do away with that. Or better yet, I'll allow the player/designer to set what level of messaging comes thru. It was just that, at first (and during many turns), that was (will be) the only messages.

7) They're suppose to add up to 100%. Did I goof somewhere? The GUI will have to be changed to enforce that, as you say, but right now you can set the numbers to any combo you want.

8) I don't know how far all this will go. Perhaps I'll end up adding everything in the game, if ya'll like it enough. For now, since we've got taxrate, population and production sites already stored, I wanted to add in production values, so we can figure tax income.

Finally:

I also wondered if Poor Sir Rogan (and any leader that wants something his country won't pass) should call for a change every turn, give up after a while, etc.

Maybe something in the Character model I can add in that would help determine that?
[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited August 19, 2000).]

[axi]

1) INPs and CNPs are the original expressions that Rodrigo used in our initial discussion and probably they have not survived in the final version.
INPs: PP, EP and SP (policies that are included in ideologies) + the power structure.
CNPs (or DNPs - Directly negotiated policies): Slavery, RelDisc, EthnDisc, CivRights, ForPol.

I suggested that they will have to be seperated for practical reasons.

2)

quote: I also wondered if Poor Sir Rogan (and any leader that wants something his country won't pass) should call for a change every turn, give up after a while, etc.

Well, IIRC, Rodrigo intended the negotiations procedure, for the CNPs at least, to be initiated only if there were enough cultural or political changes that would justify a rearrangement. As for the INPs, the same conditions apply, but changes are allowed to happen on a more regular basis, while the player can initiate a negotiation himself. That means he can push a "negotiate" button, that will automatically provide an equilibrium point, which is to be gradually reached in a given small number of turns (like some kind of inertia). When we were discussing this, Rodrigo was talking about the accumulation of "events", which, after some limit, would trigger the negotiation. I was pushing for more frequent negotiations; in fact I envisioned a political system that would never be in equilibrium, but would always change upon changing conditions. I also suggested that then it was too early for such discussions, so we dropped the subject; now would be the right time to bring it back.

3) Before you start adding economy into the Beast, you'd better consult with Mark for the theory and with Laurent, who is supposed to be coding the econ model. Maybe Laurent should come on stage too and start contributing his code directly into the Beast, under the public's eyes.

4) Features that have come... and gone: Where did the "Build new EG" button go? How am I supposed to add EGs to unpopulated squares? Also, where did the object "Social Class" go? If you are going to start creating behaviors, you'll have to base them on classes (I had the socioeconomic classes in mind). A socioeconomic class will also contain lots of economic data (WHs, Labor, Kapital, Profits, Wages, Income, investment, demographics, etc). Mind you, classes of both types will have to be editable in everything (this is the Scenario Editor after all).

5) What are Tendency Values and Group Attributes supposed to be. What are they doing sitting there? I thought that all the cultural elements that you have hardcoded into Religion and Culture should be instances of TVs and GAs. Or maybe I have not understood the Social model all so well.

If I have busted your balls, please excuse me, will you?

[F_Smith]

1) Ah. I get it. I don't think I've noticed those terms used. Yes, agreed, it might be good to seperate them graphically.

2) Good point, only show events when something actually changes. For now, so we can see all the behind the scenes stuff, I'll keep the extra info in there. But I will allow the user to turn that off.

3) Agreed. I have checked some with them. I was just thinking ahead.

4) 'BuildEG' should still be there, under 'build' objects -- "buld new BaseEthnicGroup". Be aware, that is a 'game' level ethnic group. To add an ethnic group to a mapsquare, click on that mapsquare then use the 'add ethnic group' button on the main page, under 'Selected Square Detail:'.

And yes, Social Classes are all ready to be put in, once there's some sort of consensus on how they'll work. I may have missed it, but I didn't see any clear decision yet. It won't take long to add. And absolutely, everything will be editable.

5) I forget the specifics, but they're for the social model. But I haven't needed them yet.

P.S. -- hey, no problem. This is exactly what I need from all of ya'll. As long as you are understanding and kind when I get something wrong, this is how software gets developed.

[F_Smith]

Okay:

I'll be browsing the boards for the next hour, reading and digesting the exact requirements for setting the various govt policies.

Any suggestions/comments/helpful hints would be welcome.

[F_Smith]

Help!!!

I've got a serious question.

Is this correct:

When a player is playing the game, if he wants to raise taxes, his mechanism will be the ruler's tax rate pref?

* * *

If so, then from playing with the beast I'd like to raise a complaint.

If I want to raise a value in a negotiated policy, I have to 'high-ball' the pref choice -- ask for way more than I want to get what I want. It's kinda wierd, and wasn't much fun.

It kinda seemed like a loophole that allows you to manipulate the system.

* * *

If I may offer just one possible idea . . .

I was thinking that all proposed changes from the status quo could begin as 'proposals' that must be passed thru the govt meat grinder for approval by each group with power. For now, only the ruler could offer 'proposals'. Altho perhaps that is easy to expand on, too.

* * *

I'll wait for an answer. I can fix a few other bugs while I wait.

[axi]

quote: When a player is playing the game, if he wants to raise taxes, his mechanism will be the ruler's tax rate pref?

Well, as I have previously pointed out, the Tax Rate was originally intented to be a ruler's exclusive policy, so his preference would automatically become the govt's policy. Only lately have we started to discuss about restrictions (or reactions) against overtaxation. I think the "datastructure" difference between the two approaches is that Tax Rate is kept in two places (Govt profile and Ruler's prefs) instead of one (Ruler's exclusive policies), but I don't think that you'd want or that you should change what you already have.

Edit: The quotation was moved to the govt model thread.

Excuse me for the vast quotations, I hope they will be enlightening. I only hope that Rodrigo would reply here presently.
[This message has been edited by axi (edited August 21, 2000).]

[F_Smith]

Axi:

I agree, that is unworkable.

I'm coding assuming that has to be fixed. The way it works now, is as I said above. The ruler proposes, then the people with govt influences get their chance to agree or disagree.

The ruler has to get 51%+ of the political support to pass a change.

It seems quite cool and fun. Altho maybe it's just me.