Bug Fix Discussions

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gary, good to hear from you!

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
The Great Kludger strikes again!

You got it, hard to put anything past you .

Are these economic resources held in the map XML in the same way?

Exactly as you say

I do not believe they should be. I would have thought it better to code them as:

<resource>
<location> ... </location>
<name>Gold</name>
<type> ... </type>
<worth> ... </worth>
</resource>

Sorry, I just don't agree with you. At least I don't agree with you while we are putting these things in by hand. With a density of specials of one per 20 squares soon in the game, I would need to add by hand many tens of locations even for a small map. Once the map editor is working then I've no issue with any way you'd like to save them. . .

Cya,

Mark

[vovan]

I am not sure this would be the place to say this, but any way:

Since we are going to have a certain set of relations and attitudes, and such nice things between different nations, maybe it would make sense to start thinking about how we are going to incorporate that stuff in the XML files? After all, if we are creating a sccenario, we might want to have some civs know about each other's existance, and maybe have certain attitudes towqards each other, and maybe even some treates already set up? That would be especially useful for the tutorial scenarios introducing the concept to new players, but would add nice functionality for other scenarios as well. Is that something we want to consider, or are we going to have it the way it is in other games - all the civs start out without "knowing" about each other's existance?

[LDiCesare]

Inserting yourself in the xml files is ridiculously easy. Gary used reflexion to parse the xml files, so you just need to implement one interface for the top level objects that can appear in the xml, then everything is automatic, nothing to code.
You can look for examples by grepping XML in the source code. I'll send you some explanations if needed, but don't worry about it. The amount of code needed to integrate to the parser takes around 10 minutes to do. Just make sure you have methods with understandable names respecting a setXXX/getXXX syntax for those things you will want to show up in the xml.

[vovan]

Well, I realise there is probably a more or less easy way to do it. And at the moment it is really not needed yet. It's just that I was thinking that since for every object there are essentially several ways to encode it in XML, maybe there is some format you (as in people who have coded the xml data package) would like to follow. In other words, the format could be like this:

<civilization>
    <reputation>
        <trustworthiness>1</trustworthiness>
        <competence>2</competence>
        <tyranny>0</tyranny>
        <aggressiveness>-1</aggressiveness>
    </reputation>
</civilization>

or like this:

<civilization>
    <reputation
                   trustworthiness = 1
                   competence = 2
                   tyranny = 0
                   aggressiveness = -1
    / >
</civilization>

It's really no big deal, I suppose, but it would be nice if all of the objects are stored in the same format. So, I was just thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to just think of the xml schema that we'll use for diplomatic data, as opposed to the coding part, which is more far off for now.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Vovan:

Its like your first case that is the standard. You can look at any of the xml initialization files to see further details you might need. They are in the resources sub-directory. There is also a dataformat.html doc that documents what the tags are. When you actually do the xml tags you should update that file with the new information so scenario designers can use your codes easily.

[LDiCesare]

Mark just answered about the format.

So, I was just thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to just think of the xml schema that we'll use for diplomatic data, as opposed to the coding part, which is more far off for now.

The xml reflects exactly what is in the code. Thinking about it first is a good idea as it will also provide you with the interfaces (api) of the (public) classes you will manipulate.

[vovan]

Thanks, Mark.

Laurent, I already have the basic design of all the classes, and its just for the coding part now. The reason I was wondering about the xml is I was thinking that maybe there is something really special and uncommon you try to do with it. If not, I'll get right to it.

[Mark_Everson]

We have a potential new coder, and I mentioned this thread to him. I thought I should bump it up so its easy to find.

[Framnk]

Bug List...

Hi all -

Mark mentioned this thread to me as a place to get started by looking at some Clash bugs. Is there a list of outstanding bugs right now in a common place, or anything critical that I should look into to start out with?

- Framnk

[vovan]

Hello, there, Framnk. And welcome to the team.

To answer your first question: yes, there is a list of current bugs. Take a look at the Demo 7 Download and Comments thread. The first couple of posts by Mark summarize the bugs, and requested features.

[Framnk]

Event Windows...

Hi all -

I have a comment which is perhaps related to this feature:

f118 “hide events” should also hide the detailed description boxes associated with events. Actually closing them would be best so that we don’t end up with hundreds of little event boxes accumulated and hidden from view by the end of the game. [medium priority, D8]

I noticed when playing with the demo for the first time that the popup event windows became annoying after a while. Sometimes they would overlay each other, and be out of order. (I'm specifically referring to the tutorial scenario here - I don't know if the other scenarios have as many windows?)

I noticed that by clicking on bulletins you get a nice ordered summary of the windows so far that you can click on and bring them up. I thought it might be a nice idea to combine the two approaches: Create a new toolwindow that would display a list of recent bulletins/events, and to the right of that a scrollable text window containing the text of whatever bulletin/event is currently highlighted.

Sorry, I'm kind of an interface guy and just something I noticed when playing through the tutorial. Please feel free to flame away!

- Framnk

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Framnk, welcome to the Clash forum!

An interfaces guy, that's great, we definitely can use your skills! As you can see there's a lot of gui stuff that needs serious improvement.

On your specific project, it doesn't seem very high priority to me. . . More of a final polish sort of thing. Lets see what others think. OTOH, if it won't take you much time, it certainly wouldn't hurt anything.

My quickie suggestions in the gui area would be (of course these are just things that bug Me mostly )

-165 (Mark) I would like the game to come up maximized by default. It comes up slightly smaller than maximized, which means I can’t see all the detail frame. [med D7.3]

f74 One thing we could use when there are multiple TFs in a square is whether they have movement orders or not.

Good to have you on the team!

See 'ya

Mark

Thanks Vovan for giving Frank the URL for the D7 thread. I should have done it, and in my rush to get him something last night I forgot. . .

[Framnk]

Start Maximized...

All:

Was looking into this one a little bit:

-165 (Mark) I would like the game to come up maximized by default. It comes up slightly smaller than maximized, which means I can’t see all the detail frame. [med D7.3]

After finding nothing very helpful in the JDK documentation I did a quick search and came up with the following thread: Maximizing a JFrame at Start-up

In a nutshell, you can't do it, at least as of the JDK version I am using which is 1.3.1. The thread proposes two solutions.

1) "Simulate" the maximizing of the JFrame by setting it's dimensions to the largest screen dimensions supported. The drawback here is that the state of the maximize button will not correctly indicate that the Frame is maximized.

2) Use JNI to interface with Win32 (or other native API) to cause the maximization to occur at startup.

As I am kind of new here and I wasn't sure of your design philosophies, I didn't want to start diving in and writing JNI calls to Win32, as I'm assuming that you are trying to keep Clash as platform neutral as possible.

Let me know what you guys think should be the best route (if any) here. My vote is just take the Frame dimensions up to "almost maximized" and make an adjustment or two to the detail window so everything comes up clean and visible.

[Mark_Everson]

Re: Start Maximized...

Originally posted by Framnk
Let me know what you guys think should be the best route (if any) here. My vote is just take the Frame dimensions up to "almost maximized" and make an adjustment or two to the detail window so everything comes up clean and visible.

Hi Frank. Thanks for looking into it. Its Amazing there's no clean solution.

Your approach sounds best to me. We Definitely want to maintain platform independence. One issue is you shouldn't make the detail frame go all the way to the bottom, because FE the icons that show a minimized econ window show up on the bottom and will be buried if the detail frame and main map go all the way. Also the bug notification that says its still running the turn shows up there. So you need to leave maybe 12 pixels worth 'bare' at the bottom for those purposes.

[LDiCesare]

Yes! An interface coder! Welcome Framnk!

I suggest a few things of my own:
- You could look at whether it is possible to have two versions of the game, one windowed, and one full screen. Not that I like full screen, but some people do, and I have no idea how that is done.
- You can look at the various UIs and come up with brilliant ideas. I think econ is already being worked upon (like it needed it), but there is also the government stuff.
I think you can go with the panels if you find them troublesome, because I find them to be a problem in Dawn too. Other scenarios use very little events, and they come very far one from another, but that is still annoying.

I believe with a fresh eye you could have a few interesting ideas worth trying.