PROJECT: Playtest

[Peter Triggs]

Tamerlin,

You don't need to worry about those, they're SLIC names not file names.

BUT, I've converted SAP to a scenario and have been playing it with the debug exe. You might as well scrap a lot of the SLIC. As Martin remarked to John:

Originally posted by J bytheway
Well, we should be fixing the source code so that all correctly-written SLIC will work with DebugSlic=Yes, so either way it would help .

The problem here is that most code is not written correctly,

If you play with DebugSlic=Yes, you get a lot of SLIC errors and it's quite obvious that the code that follows them hasn't ever been doing anything. I can't see any point in keeping it.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Solver
John, which SLIC function is the missing one?

GetMostAtRiskCity (but I don't know if it was ever used).

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
BUT, I've converted SAP to a scenario and have been playing it with the debug exe.

Have you noticed any of the old problems related to scenario play (like getting an extra turn when you load), or have the fixes worked properly?

With luck, we should finally be able to do without modswapper , and play mods the way they were always meant to have been played. No more worrying about which mod you were playing for any given save game, etc.

[Solver]

GetMostAtRiskCity (but I don't know if it was ever used).

Wasn't it said recently that no mod uses it?

[Solver]

OK, I decided to at least unzip the files over a patched install to see how it works. I can start a new game succesfully and play, that seems to be working fine. Color selection and such works as expected, even though I found colors of some enemies near impossible to read with the new color set. I brought up the ranking display for that.

I can not start the game if I try to load SAP2 or SAP2 with GoodMod, getting the error:

Expected keyword MAX_MATCH_LIST_CYCLES not found

Error occurs on line 225 of either APOL_const or GM_cost.txt, depending on the mod I'm attempting to load.

Edit: unsurpisingly, that's easily solved by adding that line to the file where it asks for it. I then succesfully loaded a game started under SAP2, and below is a screenshot of what I don't like.

[Solver]

Here it is, the third and the last are unreadable. Yes, it's GIF, under JPEG, the colors were made darker and readable. I know that colors are easily changed, but this is just my input for consideration of defaut colors.

Also: prior to loading this saved game, I started a new game selecting my color as red. When I loaded this, my civ appeared as red - is this supposed to be the case?

[Solver]

Excuse me for so many posts, but darn the attachments. Either way, great job on the latest build, again!

[Solver]

OK, and an issue with diplomacy photos.


I have a CTD when trying to diplomacy with some civs, with an error that leadername.tga can't be found. I've gotten that for Byzantines with constantine.tga, and Swedes with gustavusadolphus.tga . Yet, for some other civs, it works. How come? I checked the pic555.zfs and pic565.zfs, they have no such files, the diplomacy photos there are named differently, apparently.

I assume somehow paths need to be modified,or something.

Also, how about a potential addition of a function that, if a game can't find a targa file, it just replaces it with some standard file instead of crashing?

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Solver
OK, I decided to at least unzip the files over a patched install to see how it works.

Remember that you don't need to use a patched install, an unpatched one should work fine (and a patched one should work fine too).

[Solver]

Yep, I know, but all the previous testing I've done was on vanilla installs, and seeing reimplementation of SLIC functions, I wanted to give it a test-drive with a patched, modded game of mine. Just currently stumbled with that dip photo issue.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Solver
Here it is, the third and the last are unreadable. Yes, it's GIF, under JPEG, the colors were made darker and readable. I know that colors are easily changed, but this is just my input for consideration of defaut colors.

Well I just found one GIF, the problem with the colors is that if you remove yellow and that green then a collor would be missing in the color pallete, that was always the problem with the original colors all so dark, and no real bright color. So I prefer a background slolution here.

Originally posted by Solver
Also: prior to loading this saved game, I started a new game selecting my color as red. When I loaded this, my civ appeared as red - is this supposed to be the case?

If you started the same game with red then you should continue it after a reload with red. If you started in between another game with another player then you should continue that game with the same player, and the game that you started with red (player 1) with player 1.

Originally posted by Solver
I have a CTD when trying to diplomacy with some civs, with an error that leadername.tga can't be found. I've gotten that for Byzantines with constantine.tga, and Swedes with gustavusadolphus.tga . Yet, for some other civs, it works. How come? I checked the pic555.zfs and pic565.zfs, they have no such files, the diplomacy photos there are named differently, apparently.

I think you should find these diplomacy photos in the CTP1 section of the directory somewhere otherwise, use a small dummy picture and copy and rename the copies to fit the missing names.

-Martin

[Solver]

If you started the same game with red then you should continue it after a reload with red. If you started in between another game with another player then you should continue that game with the same player, and the game that you started with red (player 1) with player 1.

OK, here's the story, of what I did. Start a new game, as red. Load up a saved game from SAP - see myself as red. Quit CtP2. Load CtP2 again. Start a new game as blue. Load up the same save from SAP - see myself as red.

I think you should find these diplomacy photos in the CTP1 section of the directory somewhere otherwise, use a small dummy picture and copy and rename the copies to fit the missing names.

At any rate, can you point me to the the location where the paths and names of files for these pictures are stored, for the game to know where to look?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
If you play with DebugSlic=Yes, you get a lot of SLIC errors and it's quite obvious that the code that follows them hasn't ever been doing anything. I can't see any point in keeping it.

It aslso depends on what kind of slic errors, some of them are caused , because the code does not work as intended, that is also a problem of existing code, I tried to get the Stacked function to work, to save me the Is-The-Size-Of-The-First-Army-Euqal-To-The-Number-Of-Units-On-That-Tile check. In fact using the Stacked function is correct Slic but nevertheless it doesn't work. And the noname errors could come from using local functions without copiing the input variables to local variables. And we have the built in arrays if you fill them yourself, they can lose their value after you used read access on them. Everything correct slic but again doesn't work as expected. So in GoodMod I added a lot of valid checks to make sure that the slic errors doesn't occur, but one kind of slic errors we never notice is the devide by zero error, well in that case 0 is returned, but noone got an slic error about, so at least I know suchan error from some borrowed WAW code in GoodMod.

So the question is is the problem caused by errors in the slic code itsself or by errors in the underlying c++ code. In the first place it is non working code at all in the second place it is code that should work but doesn't work.

-Martin

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Solver
OK, here's the story, of what I did. Start a new game, as red. Load up a saved game from SAP - see myself as red. Quit CtP2. Load CtP2 again. Start a new game as blue. Load up the same save from SAP - see myself as red.

That is as it is intended, otherwise the stuff wouldn't be on the new SP players screen. Actual first it says that you set the start player and then it says that this determines your color, color is bind to player, so if you change the color in an existing game this way you have to change the player, for instance you started with the Incas and then you continue with the Germans , because they have a different color. As far as I know there is no other game that binds the color to players that allows you such an behaviour, once you started the game to change the player. Of course you can modify the colors00.txt, by the way there are some alternatives of Locutus Flinx and myself based on a colorset by Locutus, actual I wasn't happy with all of them, so many bright colors, and I didn't like the order.

Originally posted by Solver
At any rate, can you point me to the the location where the paths and names of files for these pictures are stored, for the game to know where to look?

The game looks in ..\ctp2_data\default\graphics\pictures\ folder for all this pictures wheather they are in the pic565.zfs as *.rim's stored or as *.tga's outside of an archieve in that directory. The leader pictures themselves are contained in Harlan's Graphic Mod 1.0.

-Martin

[Solver]

OK, I loaded a savegame started under Activision-compiled, patched CtP2 running SAP2. Here are the observations.

Everything seems to be working perfectly. The AI is functioning as expected, in a pretty clever fashion, so it's using its SLIC. All the nice interface tweaks work, and the bugs are fixed as mentioned in the fixlist. Two issues I noticed:

Mouse wheel doesn't work in the save game dialog, like to scroll a list of savegame folders - it scrolls the map beneath, instead.

Manager, diplomacy and other screens still don't start in center of the screen, though I don't think that was implemented.

Very good work on the game - I'm glad to finally see mods working with Platyest build .