GALSIM update

[markb50k]

NEW galsim.zip update at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/galsim.zip

 

New Features:

 

- reports from server now get placed into your "reports" directory off of your main directory.  Each report you get is now put in its own file with timestamp.

 

- a new custom.ini file is included in the zip and is to be put in your main directory.  This file has defaults for all the colors I am making configurable now: 

 

EnemyColor=255,0,0

NeutralColor=255,255,0

AlliedColor=0,255,0

Debris1Color=255,165,0

Debris2Color=255,255,0

Debris3Color=255,0,0

FormationEscortColor=169,169,169  ** this is the color of escorts in the formation display

FormationSelectedEscortColor=211,211,211  **this is the color of the selected escort in the formation display

 

each color is a red,green,blue value (RGB) which Java needs to produce a color.  you can look up RGB values on the web.  Here is a good link http://html-color-codes.com/rgb.html

[Deathwatch]

Nice, that definately will help

 

A quick search on google found this: http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html

Allows for a little bit more messing about with colours (although Im sure there are much better ones)

 

Small request about the logging, you could log it as REPORT.<# of the current turn>..txt ? Makes it a bit more readable. and easier to look up.

Edited May 30, 2008 by Deathwatch

[Idle_Scholar]

A few of UI widgets that might be nice.

 

1) A scale measure, like you have on maps. OK so you've got the RMB thingy but a little bar that tellls you how big it is at all times would be cool

 

2) Range circles. Say if you hold down shift and hover the mouse over a unit it draws little circles/wedges showing range and fire arc

 

3) A button to take you from selecting a ship to its information page in the database

[Deathwatch]

That last bit somewhat exists - you can click on the ship, get on its status overview screen and then click on the acronym (like LFRG or so)

[Idle_Scholar]

Heh, opps. Well thanks for pointing that one out.

[Turgidson]

2) Fleet formations. It would be great to be able to select a group of units and assign them one out of a small choice of formations (line, wedge, circle, diamond...), selecting e.g. center point and radius, or start and end points, and having the code automatically spread the units within the selected zone. It's extremely tedious to use the "escort position" function on large groups of fighters.

It would be IMHO even better to be able to "save" our formations, and have semi-automated scripts assigning units to the different formation slots.

 

Formations/Squadrons:  In my opinion there is no need for a new thing for the game to track, i.e. squadrons.  The game already allows you to group ships into fleets and subfleets, etc, in any manner you wish.  Plus you can give orders to groups of ships already.

Yes, but... you currently have much less flexibility when giving orders to groups, than to single units: you can add orders to the stack, but you cannot manage that stack (apart cancelling everything). Of course, there would be many instances where you simply cannot manage one such common stack, because units of that same group got different orders... but maybe detecting similar orders could be possible ? Currently, if I mess something with my fighters wing, I have to cancel the whole stack...

 

As for formations: I agree that using escorts would work, but it's quite a burden. Suppose I want to keep a group of similar ships in a specific formation: I have to specify a "root" unit, from which I'll set all the escorts. If this "root" unit dies, I'll have to set everything anew. Formations are not a top priority, IMHO, but they'd be an useful addition if they get coded.

 

 

 

What's more needed, at least for me, would be a "mouse drag and zoom" functionality. Currently, dragging the mouse would select the friendly units, not zoom the map... having the two behaviours accessible would be useful (e.g. drag for zooming, and CTRL+drag for selection, or use a hotkey to switch between the two modes).

[Deathwatch]

In order to keep see the status of the game, maybe have a changelog type sticky post on the forums which Mark can update with the implemented features, what's under development (or research) etc. (a bit like what's posted on http://markb50k.dyndns.org:12345/gal_sim/about.html)

[markb50k]

NEW galsim.zip at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/galsim.zip

 

New Features...

 

You can now give simple formation orders when you assign ships as escort.

 

IF YOU ARE ASSIGNING A SINGLE SHIP you can choose any CLOCK heading (ex.  12 o'clock, 6 o'clock) and a range from the flagship

 

IF YOU ARE ASSIGNING MULTIPLE SHIPS you can choose these formations:

 

CIRCLE (ships are spread in an arc around the flagship at a specific range)

LINE (ships are spread sideways around the flagship at a specific spacing)

COLUMN (ships are spread front and back around the flagship at a specific spacing)

WEDGE (ships are spread to the left and right rear of the flagship (flagship leads) at a specific spacing)

VEE (ships are spread to the left and right front of the flagship (flagship trails) at a specific spacing)

ECHELON LEFT/RIGHT (ships are spread in a slant with the flagship in the middle of the line at a specific spacing)

 

Have fun..

 

Turg:  good point on the flagship dying, but instead of creating a whole new structure that will be a code nightmare to implement, I can have the 'flagship' switch to an escort should the flagship die, and all the positions will stay the same perspective wise.  Its a code nightmare itself but much smaller of a nightmare.  I'll look into it.

[Turgidson]

That last bit somewhat exists - you can click on the ship, get on its status overview screen and then click on the acronym (like LFRG or so)

It shows the angles, but not on the tactical map... (and ranges aren't there).

 

 

 

By the way: would be great if we could assign different weapons to different types of targets. For instance: if my ship has both HTLBs and LCs, I'd wish the HTLBs to target enemy capships, while the LCs target the fighters. It's more code, for sure, but if the option were there that'd be great.

 

 

 

And about armour: if I understand the formula correctly, it currently applies a modifier that is uniform to all weapons (i.e. all weapons will get the same reduction, depending on the unit). In a way, the same effect would have been achieved by tweaking the shield and hull hitpoints values... My idea was more to make the penetration vary with the type of weapon (the higher its damage, the higher the relative penetration).

 

The formula could be like:

 

total absorbed damage = SQUARE (armour rate) * SQUARE_ROOT (bullet damage) * arbitrary factor

relative absorbed damage = SQUARE (armour rate) / SQUARE_ROOT (bullet damage) * arbitrary factor

 

This way:

- the higher the bullet damage, the less relative damage is dealt; the decrease slows down.

- and the higher the armour class, the higher the absorption; the increase speeds up.

 

The calculated value could be matched against a max, so that a minimal percentage would still get through.

 

 

Also, it'd be possible to propose that absorption works for hulls only, and not for shields (or, computes differently for shields, e.g. different factor, or a "shield rate" computed much more conservatively).

[markb50k]

Turg:  good analysis, at the minimum I can look to have the absorption only work on hull damage.  The other stuff I will have to go over in more detail.

 

UPDATE

This is a change to the engine code so you dont have to re-download the zip

 

New Feature:

For Attack, Defend, Patrol, and Bombard orders, it will choose between the five closest enemies that fulfill all the other restrictions that it currently uses to determine the target it maneuvers on.  This is only if it does NOT already have a target it is maneuvering on.

[markb50k]

I have raised each users spending limit to 250000 pts

[Idle_Scholar]

If you view the fire arcs for ships in GalSim's stats viewer, the forwards fire arcs are currently incorrectly displayed. If this reflects on the actual simulation then there's a tiny bug there.

[Deathwatch]

That is something Kobra and myself noticed as well - often when you click through arcs, the model of the ship shifts slightly (you can often see it when going through the arcs of an ISD) and after that the arcs don't match anymore.

[Deathwatch]

A suggestion: have the server store the actual version of the game (timestamp of compile/whatever) and when someone logs in with a client, it verifies if it's the same version and if it doesn't match, it should mention the page for the update. This allows you to easily keep the client up to date without having to contact us every single time

[Kobra_warlords]

Does it still happen to you guys? I had the glitch all the time in some of the older versions, but it has not reappeared for a number of releases already...

[markb50k]

I actually already have that.  sometimes when i update the zip it is a cosmetic fix that  you dont necessarily need to download, but when its one that i want everyone to upgrade to, i change a file on the server, and that will prevent ppl from logging in until they get the new version.  ive done it a couple of times already but since i alert you guys of the change, most of you are good enough to download the new one before logging in so you never get the error msg.

[markb50k]

FYI:  Engine went down last night because of a weird bug that put some of Kobras TDs in a super long jump.  Took me a while to figure what it was, but I fixed it, and restarted stuff.

 

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[markb50k]

let me know what you do to make this happen, like key strokes, what do you click on, etc, so I can reproduce it.  otherwise its hard for me to fix it.  Thanks.

[Deathwatch]

For me it happens when I click through arcs, mainly those of wedge shaped ships.

[Idle_Scholar]

Ok I think I've found it. Select a ship in the unit viewer. Select a left forward weapon with part of the forward firearc in the -ve direction (with 0 at +ve X and -ve angles in a clockwise direction from the X axis, as defined by my crude ASCII axis)

 

 

Y^

  |     

  |   

  | 

  | ___________>

                        X

 

Now rotate the ship anti-clockwise and watch the -ve part of the weapon arc first subtract from the positive bit, then gradually return as the ship continues on its anti-clockwise roatation.

 

For some reason this doesn't apply to weapons mounted on the right of the ship.

[markb50k]

ok ill check it out when i get a chance.  just realize its purely a visual error with the code and the real arcs calculate correctly in combat.

 

Thanks for the info!

[markb50k]

NEW ZIP available at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/galsim.zip

 

New Feature:

 

Ok, i did the most easily implementable change to give some worth to the ESCORT order.

 

Now, you can augment a ESCORT order by adding a DEFEND order right behind it.  what will happen is that any ship in ESCORT will follow the rules of the DEFEND order, and when it has no enemy to kill, will return to its escort station. 

 

When you give the DEFEND order, dont worry about the defense location, as soon as the engine runs a turn, it will move the defense location to wherever the ESCORT station is and keep it updated.

 

In addition, the ESCORT order, when you view it in the GUI, will show whatever target your ship is engaging from its DEFEND order, so you can see it both places.  If you want to clear the targeted enemy, just clear it from the Defend order.

 

If the ship loses its escort order, via its flagship dying, it will then take on the DEFEND order (thats how its always worked anyway, just wanted to point it out).

 

Have fun!

[Kobra_warlords]

Append reports:  what I can do is have the reports written to a unique filename everytime you login with a timestamp  "REPORT.123145.txt" so you can keep every report you want.

 

I find that my reports folder fills up with empty files (created during save/refresh), and it gets increasingly tedious to dig for the actual turn reports.

 

Would it be possible to do one (or both) of the following, or something to that effect?

 

-Save proper turn reports as "report-turn-X.txt" instead of a timestamp (a file with multiple turns need only be named after the first)

-Not save reports at "save/refresh" unless there has actually been a turn change

[Deathwatch]

NEW ZIP available at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/galsim.zip

 

New Feature:

 

Ok, i did the most easily implementable change to give some worth to the ESCORT order.

 

Now, you can augment a ESCORT order by adding a DEFEND order right behind it.  what will happen is that any ship in ESCORT will follow the rules of the DEFEND order, and when it has no enemy to kill, will return to its escort station. 

 

When you give the DEFEND order, dont worry about the defense location, as soon as the engine runs a turn, it will move the defense location to wherever the ESCORT station is and keep it updated.

 

In addition, the ESCORT order, when you view it in the GUI, will show whatever target your ship is engaging from its DEFEND order, so you can see it both places.  If you want to clear the targeted enemy, just clear it from the Defend order.

 

If the ship loses its escort order, via its flagship dying, it will then take on the DEFEND order (thats how its always worked anyway, just wanted to point it out).

 

Have fun!

That definately is much better but there is one small problem - the escorting ships don't jump with the ship they are escorting due to the defend code.

[markb50k]

are you sure?  the code for them to follow the DEFEND orders is only even looked at if the ship gets past the whole "look for your flaship jumping" code.