Dynamic News Questions

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vodalian
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Dynamic News Questions

Post by vodalian »

Hey guys, I have a few questions:

1) If a siege/fleetbattle/battle results in a draw, which side would consider it 'good' and which side would consider it 'bad'?

2) I notice that some text reads "will be done when sieges are completed", could someone tell me exactly which events work and which don't?


Thanks
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Post by vodalian »

Okay, after further examination of the scripts, it appears that draw is good news for the defenders (and friends) and bad for the attackers. Now I just need to know if all events are currently working at the moment.
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Post by vodalian »

Okay, here is what is currently not supported, which is a drag because I have added a crapload of content to the dynamic news:


Siege

- Begin
- Middle

Fleetbattle

- Middle



After looking at dynamic_battle.py, it appears I can just add the events myself, but since I don't understand the mindset behind some of the code, it's hard to implement them properly. Could one of the devs please consider looking at this small issue so I can submit my dynamic news content patch?
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Post by ace123 »

Sorry, could you please explain further what exactly you need implemented in the dynamic_battle scripts?

I don't know who wrote it originally, and at this point I doubt if they even remember everything since it has been around for many years.
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Post by vodalian »

Basically that script is a mess and could probably use a rewrite :P


Right now it's not making all of the calls to all the dynamic news events, 'begin', 'middle', and 'end' and 'win', 'loss' and 'draw'. Some events are only calling one or the other, but not all. For instance, siege calls the 'end' dynamic news event, but not 'begin' or 'middle' and doesn't include 'draw', fleet battle is not calling 'middle' etc etc These are just small changes that need to be made to dynamic_battle.py to make full use of the dynamic news. The reason I want this is because I've been working on a patch for the dynamic news which adds many many new lines of text, and it would be nice if vegastrike actually used them :P
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Post by ace123 »

I agree: dynamic battle really could use a rewrite...

I will look into fixing dynamic battle to see if it's easy to fix, but I don't want to rewrite it before the release.
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Post by vodalian »

ace123 wrote:I agree: dynamic battle really could use a rewrite...

I will look into fixing dynamic battle to see if it's easy to fix, but I don't want to rewrite it before the release.
Great thanks!
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

ace123 wrote:I agree: dynamic battle really could use a rewrite...

I will look into fixing dynamic battle to see if it's easy to fix, but I don't want to rewrite it before the release.
Great!
One thing Dynamic Battle could use is a bit more flexibility. Right now it's too tied up with all the siege stuff. In PU we've been struggling for a month to get a dynamic universe based on vegastrike's going but the sieging keeps killing us: There's no kilrathis anywhere until you enter Perry and then all of katland seems to have congregated there as if to celebrate the new Sivar-Eshrad.

Well, I know that python files are not officially part of the engine, but still, it would be nice for vegastrike's dynamic battle to be written in a way that could be easily modified by other mods, or at least written clearly enough that other mods can figure out how it works, to then roll their own.

We don't really need any sieging, as the original game simply had a probability of spawning per system and that's it; but commenting out the sieging factions entries didn't seem to do the trick though. We'd like to get rid of all traces of sieging, but it seems to be mixed with the rest of the code.

Another concern is that, in Gemini, kats come from the North-East corner of the map, and have to get through the vecinity of Perry to reach other parts of the map; a real Strait of Thermopilas, in strategic terms. Chances are they will never get through; or else they will wipe out Perry. Not good. So, the solution we were thinking of trying to implement is to produce less kats and confeds, but to increase the chances of battles either not happening or breaking up.

Another feature we were considering was a simple check in random movement to see if any flightgroups of the same faction are already there, and if so to roll the dice again for a where to go. To reduce the chances of having too many flight groups in the same system, and to act as a sort of repulsive force, to drive dispersion.

Dilloh is adamant about a totally different idea, which would have a per-system chance of a ship being killed, which gets divided by the ship's mobility. No fg to fg battles at all, with his system.

Another thing wolphin and I were working on was a way to autogenerate a stattable from units.csv on boot.
http://wcjunction.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=6350#6350
And a post of my assorted, frustrated rambling when I was trying to understand dynamic battle without knowing a thing of python... but still containing some valid points, I believe.
http://wcjunction.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=6489#6489
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Post by vodalian »

Hey guys, sorry to bring this up again, but could one of the devs consider taking a look at the code to see if you can patch up some of the problems that were mentioned? Once the news gets fixed, I'm willing to rewrite countless lines of text for it. I also have a suggestion:

Semi dynamic news:

Basically it would be like static news except it gets random variables. When it's called, it would choose a random planet, a random station and a random fleet in a random system of a random race. So that way we can have news like "A deadly virus has broken out on [planet] of the [system] system. [race] scientists are desperately scrambling to create a vaccine." etc.
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Post by safemode »

0.5.1 is pretty filled up as far as stuff that's gotten done. Since this issue is fairly well outlined, it's got a good chance at being worked on for 0.5.2, which is still very open to additions.

Though, if anyone who knew python is finding themselves with nothing to do, they can get an early start. All the major developers are knee deep busy with finishing up the stuff already on the roadmap so we can get this release out sooner, rather than later.
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Post by vodalian »

safemode wrote:0.5.1 is pretty filled up as far as stuff that's gotten done. Since this issue is fairly well outlined, it's got a good chance at being worked on for 0.5.2, which is still very open to additions.

Though, if anyone who knew python is finding themselves with nothing to do, they can get an early start. All the major developers are knee deep busy with finishing up the stuff already on the roadmap so we can get this release out sooner, rather than later.
Oh well.. It was worth the shot... :wink:
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Post by safemode »

Not saying nobody can work on it, or that it wont be looked at and considered for 0.5.2, but that 0.5.1 is filled up. So, even if it was done, it's unlikely that it would go in before 0.5.2. The roadmap is a release requirement schedule, not a "dont work on anything not listed" type guideline.

It would be good to follow up on the previous posts and detail a written api requirement list for dynamic battle both in how it functions and how it interfaces with dynamic news.

Perhaps describe types of battles better.

We have siege, fleet battle, single battle. Maybe extend that to other types of conflicts.

Describe modifiers to each type. Perhaps this modifier could be a callback function that returns true or false for determining when a battle is to be called off or considered over by a given side. There could be default ones for each type, or you could provide one yourself and customize a given battle how the campaign or dynamic universe sees fit.

Decide how dynamic news is going to retrieve info about the battle. Perhaps with a value dictating the level of verbosity / importance of the battle, giving dynamic_news the ability to auto-retrieve the correct amount of info from the battle to display to the user. Is it a clandestine operation? give dynamic news no info, etc.

Then we can get on to conducting battles.

Battles need a modifier indicating the likelihood of an Ace pilot.

They need a time factor. Do we want to draw a battle out, do we want a quick and dirty battle, do we want to make the battle take a random amount of time. this isn't an explicit length of time, but closer to a "simulation atom" for the battle. Useful to campaigns to give the player time to respond to an in-progress battle.

etc etc. ideas like that that can be written, modified, perfected so that the coders know exactly what needs to get done. When someone gets around to writing it.
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