Countdown to D5.1

[Gary Thomas]

There have been various parts of technology implemented (others will have to give the details there).

My major contributions are the event display and the roads.

The event display is done, and I believe Mark has done the economics part of road building.

I have done the actual pictures, their display, and the civilization infrastructure for building (mainly remembering what roads have been ordered, and producing them when the money is available).

At a later stage some refinements will be needed - you shouldn't be able to build roads under enemy troops (would you want to?) for example. Also road building orders need to be able to be cancelled, and the planning should check to see if there is a road there already (it doesn't at present). There is one cute feature - if you plan a road, it takes the shortest route from the selected square to the square you click on, using foot movement rates. If that route includes a road the new road will join up with the old road (without charging for the use of the old road!) automatically.

The road planning code is done, but not working - needs debugging.

Everything else is fine. The day approaches...

Cheers

[Gary Thomas]

For those who don't realize, I have, until Christmas, an affliction called work.

The interesting thing is that I got the contract because of Clash. They wanted me to work on a user interface, and asked me if I had any examples to show them. I just told them to download D5, which they did. I got the job.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
The interesting thing is that I got the contract because of Clash.

That's Great! And did you tell them that everything that doesn't look professional is Everson's fault?

[Gary Thomas]

Everything looks professional.

For D5.1, I have a couple of bugs to chase.

Also, I have implemented unexplored territory and fog of war.

So there...

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Gary:

The hidden territory and fog are great! I think there should be more of the map exposed at the start though. There are these cities with 100k people in Delenda, and yet they know absolutely nothing about the world a few hundred km away ??? This is the sort of absurd thing that always ticked me off about civ's hidden territory. I'd suggest exposed map should be twice as far out as it is now.

Overall a great job, and fog will also make the existing AI a bit more competitive!

[Mark_Everson]

NOTICE:

We have decided to call the forthcoming demo (formerly called 5.1) Demo 6! This will cause some confusion in the threads for a bit, but I think its the rational thing to do in the long run. The reasoning is that since we don't have version numbers (FE V 0.31) that we might as well have a new release every time we have "enough" new features, and these should just be integers per Clash tradition. Sorry for any confusion.

BTW, I am assuming that since we don't have a GUI for ship boarding that this feature will be bumped to D7. Is my assumption correct according to those in the know? Gary and Laurent?

[Gary Thomas]

We have decided to call the forthcoming demo (formerly called 5.1) Demo 6! This will cause some confusion in the threads for a bit, but I think its the rational thing to do in the long run. The reasoning is that since we don't have version numbers (FE V 0.31) that we might as well have a new release every time we have "enough" new features, and these should just be integers per Clash tradition. Sorry for any confusion.

This was actually my idea. It wasn't that I was giving up decimal increments, simply that D5.1 has so many new features that I felt that it deserved a full version number on its own. D5.1 was supposed to be a small increment, with, say, just roads added. In fact, it turned out to be much more than that!

So I would still anticipate that the next release will be D6.1, unless it has some really significant improvements (which I think D5.1 aka D6 does have).

BTW, I am assuming that since we don't have a GUI for ship boarding that this feature will be bumped to D7. Is my assumption correct according to those in the know? Gary and Laurent?

This, too, is my fault. Laurent explained the requirements to me. My problem is that units can only be loaded onto carriers in ADJACENT squares. My order system cannot handle that. Nor do I think it is a good idea. The implication is of a 100km gangplank.

On the other hand, if we reject the adjacent square approach, we have to deal with the concept of ships in land squares. This gets back to my original arguments for rivers and coastlines to be in land squares (and beaches and ports also). This is the wrong thread to extend this discussion - but at least I have explained the reason for the delay.

Cheers.

[Mark_Everson]

Gary:

I ran into an issue with the most recent code you sent me. I am putting it here because I don't have your email here at work, and I can't do much debugging without movement available! Maybe you sent an old file by accident?

It has the following error as soon as I try to enter a move order:

Exception occurred during event dispatching:
java.lang.NullPointerException
at game.movement.Path.makeMoves(Path.java:220)
at game.movement.Path.evaluate(Path.java:150)
at game.movement.Path.(Path.java:128)
at game.movement.MapInputMode$Move.getPath(MapInputMo de.java:321)
at game.movement.MapInputMode$Move.leftButton(MapInpu tMode.java:287)
at game.movement.MapInputMode.leftButton(MapInputMode .java:81)
at game.geography.gui.MapPanel$1.mouseClicked(MapPane l.java:75)
at java.awt.Component.processMouseEvent(Component.jav a:3718)
at java.awt.Component.processEvent(Component.java:354 4)
at java.awt.Container.processEvent(Container.java:116 4)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Component.jav a:2593)
at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Container.jav a:1213)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Component.java:24 97)
at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.retargetMouseEvent( Container.java:2451
)
at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.processMouseEvent(C ontainer.java:2230)

at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.dispatchEvent(Conta iner.java:2125)
at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Container.jav a:1200)
at java.awt.Window.dispatchEventImpl(Window.java:926)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Component.java:24 97)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java: 339)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForHierar chy(EventDispatchTh
read.java:131)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarch y(EventDispatchThre
ad.java:98)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispa tchThread.java:93)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThre ad.java:85)


BTW the NT Dos window size enhancement thing works great.

Cya,

Mark

PS please let me know here or by email that you've seen this.

[Gary Thomas]

I played a complete game of Delenda as the Romans (I won, surprise, surprise) without getting this bug. I got others though.

I noticed that economic events do not announce the building of new units.

Also, when a unit is destroyed it is announced as belong to the "Empty list" civilization.

I will work on these.

Cheers

[Gary Thomas]

My email is gthomasnz@hotmail.com

Cheers

[Gary Thomas]

Don't have anything to say. Just wanted to reach 400 posts.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Now that is thoroughly reprehensible behaviour that I as a moderator frown upon. Fortunately, since I can preach at you about your scandalous behavior your post has some merit and so I have saved you from yourself Prince Gary

At least next time fabricate something that Sounds like it might be useful! With god knows how many threads around here you'd think it wouldn't be too hard.

[Gary Thomas]

I will save my answer to that until I am on 499 posts.

Cheers.