Creating a computer-aided version of WCTO

Alright, at this point, the ship entry form as probably come to the end of its usefulness, and I will stop maintaining it. If we have a countable number of ships that needs specialized tweaks into the database, so be it.

I'll probably release a spreadsheet copy of the database later next week and ask 'you guys' to look it over and see if anything was entered wrong. We can use that as an opportunity to solve your issues (since when I manually do changes, I can put in pretty much any value I want).


As a side note, I noticed someone decided to find out what would happen if we stacked the rapier on the ferret. As you can see, I *have not* resolved this issue yet. For the purposes of "fun" I've manually bumped the Rapier over 1 space, so the move from turn 10->11 was technically illegal.

I've got the Cap ship code written, and I hope to test it today; if the whole alpha demo stops working, that's probably why. I'll announce here when it does work.

Additionally, I'll try to tackle the overlapping-ship problem next. Given how it has been coded so far, I don't have a good way off the top of my head, however.
 
Ironduke said:
Also, things get interesting when you start a maneuver with a turn rate of 0.3, but then decide to turn to the other direction two game turns later. This would actually have to take 5 game turns instead of just 3 then. I guess your new database field is there to cope with this...? :)
Click to expand...

Okay, none of this are in the v.14 rules. At the moment, I have it coded such that when they decide to go the other way, it starts over, but I can easily make it cummulative like that.
 
No, it's not explicitly stated in the rules, but it does make sense, I hope. ;) I've used a display like "turn left 1/3" in past games (scenario 2, I think), but it would probably be better to make that a "turn left in 3 turns."
Honestly, though, I'm not happy at all with capship rules, whether it's movement or combat. When I developed the rules, I was much more focused on fighters, so capships were more or less "patched in" later. :(
 
Avacar said:
As a side note, I noticed someone decided to find out what would happen if we stacked the rapier on the ferret.
Click to expand...
That would be me. Sorry about that. I was testing a border-line case and didn't think what might happen if they got stuck.

About the orders window, I'm still not able to use it in my copy so that I can do testing. Compare your phase4.php page with mine. Using the Orders button on mine seems to be broken and I don't know what I'm missing. I'm quite sure I've uploaded everything from the latest SubVersion copy, but if you've uploaded something that isn't yet committed, then that would put me at a disadvantage.

Edit: Corrected a bug in ship.php
 
Alright, I've hacked in a durango, and am using it to populate some of the fold-out data (stuff like 'jump drives' and 'jump capacitors' were hardcoded to say 'none' until now). The pop-up seems to be shoving the text around and I'm not sure why yet. I may move it to a new location and see if it was the ferret that was shoving text, and if so, find a z-index solution to this issue.

This will also let me test cap-ship movement. Until I say otherwise, I am not myself confident everything is working, so expect it to be buggy.
 
Pretty busy with other stuff right now, but the Durango is in the game and sort of flying. It currently should be attempting to decelerate and turn, but the orders window isn't aknowledging this; evidently a fix is required.

The shelton slide was broken; I guess no one had tried it yet. Found the bug and it should work next time.

The pop-up on the durango is still wonky; I haven't begun to look into why yet. For all I know, it could be related to why the orders window isn't aknowledging the turn and acceleration in progress (which *are* successfully in the database).
 
Well, the alpha demo is broken at the moment due to the added cap, but once I announce that the Cap ship is working too, I do need someone to systematically use and check every move to make sure they are doing what you'd expect. Please note that it *is* dice rolling already, so things can fail, but I haven't built in reporting yet to list off what worked and what didn't on any given turn. That functionality is roughed in, but not yet implemented. As such, you might try something like a burnout, and it may not go through, but that doesn't mean it is broken...
 
Okay, the Durango "might" be fully functional now. Obviously its pop-up is badly formatted, but I haven't tackled that yet, but I *think* it should move around. I'll do some testing either later tonight or tomorrow. Anyone who wants to mess with it is welcome to, but if you encounter any errors, please list them here! Also any suggestions on the cap-ship movement wording is welcome, for clarity.
 
I think the demo is currently broken... At least it claims there's no "valid image source." (indicator.php, line 115) Did you upload the Durango pngs yet, or is there maybe a typo in your source? Just guessing wildly here. :p
 
I did an experiment recently, using the WebKit rendering engine inside Konqueror instead of the default KHTML. It did have an odd side-effect whereby one of the fighter images refused to be displayed, so I reverted to KHTML and all was well again.

...I don't think it's the same reason for the 'missing' Durango, though.
 
Okay, found the problem with cap-ship pop-ups. The word 'active' in 'active phase shields' was just enough to push it too wide. I've removed it for now. Alternatively, we could just widen the window a bit.

Aside from getting details from ironduke on why he can't see the Durango, I *think* the alpha movement demo is now fully functional, and I'd appreciate you guys messing around with it, to see if you can break it further. If I have time, I'll add in simple reporting so you know how dice rolls are going.

Also, if you want any more ships, just let me know. "Everything" is in the database now, thanks to Ironduke.
 
Okay; everything *seems* to be working, AND rudamentary reporting is now in place. I know it is ugly, but I haven't done any formatting to it, let alone given it a pop-up or a slide-down tab or something.

Thoughts about where it should go? I was thinking of making it an always-on-top tab that slides down from the top or up from the bottom, but anything goes, really.

Wedge: do you have any experience with regex? If so, feel free to use php's regex functions and add in some class info to the reporting based on context (i.e. highlight different colours on success, based on string patterns and keywords, etc. I'll get to it eventually, but that means after all the game engine coding). I can send you the movement_alpha_demo.php file if you're interested.

Meanwhile, anyone who wants to volunteer and debug, now is your chance! Go nuts with this demo and try to break it.

Remember: off-map death isn't in yet, so if you do fly off, use your memory and try to fly back on.

If you want more ships, or tire of these, I can swap them up. If you run out of afterburner, I can hack more in.
 
Just did a few turns, and yes, it seems I used an old link instead. The Durango is there now and everything seems to work as it should. Actually, I like how you've solved the "continuing" orders for the Durango!

As for the reports: Why not put them right in the center of the screen with the usual close button (much like the old "Turn Summary" screen)?
And I think I'll send you an old file of my other (ancient) game project, maybe that'll give you an idea or two...
 
I've begun work on the combat engine. It will probably take me a week or so to get this done, and then I'll be able to release a playable alpha with both combat and movement.

In the mean time, the playable movement demo should continue to work, but if it breaks, it is likely because something I'm testing for the combat demo has messed up a more global piece of code.
 
Rules question:

I'm probably missing it, but I don't see rules for natural hits/misses on weapons fire in the rules. I remember we've used them though, I think. Do you want me to implement a 12 as a guaranteed hit, and 1 as a guaranteed miss (for those following along, see above that we're moving from 2d6 to 1d12)?
 
And another rules question:

The torpedo has 2 different speeds listed. The table says it has a speed of 5, but the text says it approaches targets at 4 hexes per turn (which I read as a speed of 4). It is just 1 field in the database, but to what would you like me to set it?


As a general update, the weapon's "fire_at" function is done, as are basic ranging and bearing calculators. I'm right now putting missiles together, and their class. I'm not 100% crazy on how I'm handling the multi-turn lock missiles right now, but I'm confident it will work. Maybe after we launch the first full version, I'll rethink and retool it if a better idea comes to mind. For now, they're using the same multi-turn data structure that I put in place for capships turning and acceleration; that seemed to work well, but there's more going on here.
 
Sorry for the delay - I was attending Gamescom yesterday (and obviously missing out on some good stuff there :().
Yes, I'd like to keep the 1/12 rule, even though we changed the dice from 2d6 to 1d12. (It's on p. 6 of the manual, in the middle of the second paragraph on the right side.)

As for the torpedo... I'm pretty sure I started out with speed 3 for it, but kept adjusting it since there are actually capships that have a max speed of 3. As far as I can remember, we ended up with 5, so the mentioned 4 hexes would probably fall under the category of errata in the manual.
However, I've been thinking about another torpedo rule altogether. Make the torpedo have a speed of 1 by itself and add the firing ship's current speed. That way, torpedoes would have a speed of 4 when fired from a Broadsword at max speed, and up to 8 when fired from an Epee. (Or even at afterburner speed...?) Not sure which version I like better - I can guess which one you'll like better, though, having to code in all that stuff... :p
If we go with slow-moving torpedo at a set speed, maybe we should increase the "decay rate" from 3 turns to 5... (Or just let torpedoes fly off the screen and never decay?) I guess this is one of the parts of the game which still needs a lot of play-testing to be balanced.
 
I have to start running trials of code bits for combat; if things are working, the alpha movement demo will continue to work as well, but when I hit fatal errors, it'll take everything down. As such, if you've been playing with the alpha demo, don't worry if it suddenly won't come up at all.

If you bump into any other errors, however, keep me informed.
 
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