RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (Full Version)

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Vic -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/11/2021 4:55:54 PM)

@akrakorn,
In the Dev notes on SE_Data library (also included in Manuals directory) there is also a table of all "hisvars" that are used to store the effects of stratagems.

exe(203, HISID, HISVAR ID, VALUE,0)

best wishes,
Vic




Vic -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/11/2021 4:56:45 PM)

@Pymous,

Thanks!
And I already requested that subforum, but it might take a few days.

best,
Vic



zgrssd -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/12/2021 1:58:47 PM)

Some questions on the S&S Editor:
1. When I set a variable, in what scope do I set it?
Is the scope global?
Relative to the Empire I set it in?
Any way to set the variables for the scope not yet covered?

2. The rule that I should tag ID's as relative ("$1$" instead of "1"), does it only apply to logic?
What about Story IDs in the Story Groups Table, should they use the relative ID Format?
What about Story IDs in the story tables, should they use a relative ID?



Vic -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/12/2021 4:13:31 PM)

1. It depends TEMP1, TEMP2 and all story flag instructions are local.
REGKEY. GAMEKEY. and basically any flag is a way to write to a data table.

2. You should only use $ $ encoding in IF or SET logic columns as here the game needs to be told that it concerns an SSID.

best,
Vic



Vic -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/20/2021 3:37:55 PM)

New open beta. Fixed a number of rare crashes and added some interface improvements.

Thanks for all the feedback once more!

best wishes,
Vic



Soar_Slitherine -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/20/2021 5:52:48 PM)

Nice, the formation type bookmarks will be useful for sure.



Jadey -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/20/2021 6:53:48 PM)

Bad news, Vic, stratagems are borked with 1.09.03 and state "You cannot target yourself" when trying to apply them on other empires.

It seems to only be with covert ops though upon further research. Also the empire icons have applied without requiring a game restart.



Vic -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/20/2021 7:17:22 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Jadey

Bad news, Vic, stratagems are borked with 1.09.03 and state "You cannot target yourself" when trying to apply them on other empires.

It seems to only be with covert ops though upon further research. Also the empire icons have applied without requiring a game restart.

quote:

You cannot target yourself


thanks for the quick warning!



Jadey -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/20/2021 7:29:38 PM)

Here's a screenshot.

[image]local://upfiles/78690/97B615B1C7324FE3B52442A1CBD4A9ED.jpg[/image]



Vic -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/20/2021 7:31:29 PM)

fixed the issue spotted above! 91.03b uploaded



Jadey -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/20/2021 7:35:33 PM)

quote:

91.03b uploaded


Damn, dude, you are legend. TYSM!



Mazth -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/20/2021 7:50:05 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Vic

New open beta. Fixed a number of rare crashes and added some interface improvements.

Thanks for all the feedback once more!

best wishes,
Vic



OMG zone pagination; Small numeral step for beta version, giant leap for QoL! Esp for working with a 2nd SHQ
I was so ready to type a ranty post about this.
Can't wait to see how it looks. =D



BlueTemplar -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/20/2021 11:18:40 PM)

quote:

-Added symbol for type of Regime to the S.MAP regime list and the Stratagem regime target list. Minor ∘. Major ⌾. Human Major ⍟. Alien minor ∞. Rebel ⊷

Yay ! And awesome use of Unicode ! [;)] (Where are those symbols initially from ?)



Uemon -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/22/2021 1:52:03 PM)

Vic if its at all humanly possible, can you please find some time to optimize stuff a bit and make the game run a bit faster? As of 2 patches ago it kind of started slowing down mid game for me. To the point where at turn 190 it takes about a full minute and half a for a turn which sort of makes me rage / lose interest unfortunately.



zgrssd -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/22/2021 1:55:47 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Uemon

Vic if its at all humanly possible, can you please find some time to optimize stuff a bit and make the game run a bit faster? As of 2 patches ago it kind of started slowing down mid game for me. To the point where at turn 190 it takes about a full minute and half a for a turn which sort of makes me rage / lose interest unfortunately.

???

He has been doing speed increases several times during the beta. He literally just published a new beta with another speed improovement.
You just asked him to do, what he has been doing all the time.

If you want improovments, you have to be a bit more specific then buzzwords like "optimisation".



BlueTemplar -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/22/2021 4:13:33 PM)

A minute and a half for round 190 is not that bad. What AI settings do you use ?
YMMV depending on the planet settings of course and the overall state of the regimes, their units, the wars that they might be in...
(I know of some games where even mid-game AI turns easily get in the dozens of minutes.)



Uemon -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/22/2021 4:27:31 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

quote:

ORIGINAL: Uemon

Vic if its at all humanly possible, can you please find some time to optimize stuff a bit and make the game run a bit faster? As of 2 patches ago it kind of started slowing down mid game for me. To the point where at turn 190 it takes about a full minute and half a for a turn which sort of makes me rage / lose interest unfortunately.

???

He has been doing speed increases several times during the beta. He literally just published a new beta with another speed improovement.
You just asked him to do, what he has been doing all the time.

If you want improovments, you have to be a bit more specific then buzzwords like "optimisation".


Yes i asked for more because its still not good. I dont know how to make it more specific. Turn times take too long. If i have to wait between 2 turns more than it takes me to play a turn, thats a problem.

This is just my personal opinion, but i would like love to play a version of the game that even lost some features (such as economic depth and simulation, if that is the thing that is so taxing) if it meant turns taking seconds as opposed to minutes.



Uemon -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/22/2021 4:29:24 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

A minute and a half for round 190 is not that bad. What AI settings do you use ?
YMMV depending on the planet settings of course and the overall state of the regimes, their units, the wars that they might be in...
(I know of some games where even mid-game AI turns easily get in the dozens of minutes.)


Small planet, "Severe stress" (most of the time, but not exclusively) and without "give ai more time to think" (that extends turn times to minutes as much as i would love to use this one).

In practice i mostly end up with 10-20 minor regimes and 5 major ones.



BlueTemplar -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/22/2021 5:41:34 PM)

Just in case, I suppose that you then have :
PREFS => AI Speed => "NORMAL AI PROCESSING - Level 0"
?

Would playing against a single Major AI be too boring for you ? (Crusoe + Nemesis ?)

I wonder if it can be viable to make the AI even dumber and faster ?

What about a new setting where even Major AI regimes would *completely* ignore logistics ? (Maybe still building those free roads for show ?)
Would that speed the AI enough ?



phyroks -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/23/2021 5:13:24 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Uemon

Vic if its at all humanly possible, can you please find some time to optimize stuff a bit and make the game run a bit faster? As of 2 patches ago it kind of started slowing down mid game for me. To the point where at turn 190 it takes about a full minute and half a for a turn which sort of makes me rage / lose interest unfortunately.

hey, it takes me 24 minutes on turn 79, largest planet and slowest ai speed :/




Elver -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/23/2021 5:09:33 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Uemon

If i have to wait between 2 turns more than it takes me to play a turn, thats a problem.


If your only problem is relative time taken rather than absolute, you might as well be playing on much larger planets - turns on big maps will end up taking much longer for you to complete even if processing time is longer. If absolute time for AI turns is an issue, well, nvm.

(1.5m at turn 190 sounds great to me, TBH.)



Uemon -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/24/2021 12:13:31 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Elver


quote:

ORIGINAL: Uemon

If i have to wait between 2 turns more than it takes me to play a turn, thats a problem.


If your only problem is relative time taken rather than absolute, you might as well be playing on much larger planets - turns on big maps will end up taking much longer for you to complete even if processing time is longer. If absolute time for AI turns is an issue, well, nvm.

(1.5m at turn 190 sounds great to me, TBH.)


Im not hardcore enough for that kind of experience. A video game has to have a certain flow in order to work; sitting at a static screen simply interrupts that flow. I get that its ok for some of you, and i respect that, but i also suspect its not ok for a lot of people. In my humble opinion this should be a developmental priority. I would personally not mind playing a "lobotomized" version of the game, if it meant less waiting. But like i said, thats just me.



BlueTemplar -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/24/2021 10:34:14 AM)

Personally, I play on the slowest AI speed, but once turn processing starts to take too long, I just alt-tab to reading the manual or these forums...

(But also I don't think that I ever did one of my own turn in less than a quarter of an hour, except for late-game cleanup - if I even bother with continuing to play when I have clearly won.)

Consider also how MP is played for these kinds of games, AFAIK PBEMs are usually configured to be played at the speed of 1 turn per day (per player or not, depending if the turns are simultaneous or sequential), especially for games with more than 2 human players :
http://pbw.spaceempires.net/games/victory (simultaneous)



Elver -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/24/2021 2:53:00 PM)

Aye, I've been playing strategy games that do their MP as PBEM and 1 turn per day for decades now (forex, playing games in the Dominions series), so I'm not daunted by the AI taking a long time to process. As with BlueTemplar, I do something on my second monitor while the game processes, then I switch back and spend 15-30m doing my turn, etc. If I were only taking a minute or two to do my turns it would be irritating to have to wait a long time, but since my own turns are drawn-out affairs it just feels like any other wargame - and I expect a very large amount of the player base is coming in with those sorts of crusty old grognard expectations just because of the publisher/genre.



varangy -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/25/2021 8:20:50 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

Personally, I play on the slowest AI speed, but once turn processing starts to take too long, I just alt-tab to reading the manual or these forums...


Correct me wrong, but AI speed has nothing to do with how deep it processes the game.

The setting when setting up a planet under difficulty -> give AI more time to think is the option to do that.

The only thing AI speed does it adds time between moves, so you can watch things happen - and does not affect the AI itself in any way. So if you alt-tab anyway, it is useless to set it anything other than the fastest.



Soar_Slitherine -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/25/2021 11:32:42 AM)

No, the AI speed options are directly related to the AI's performance. The game setup option was added first and the Prefs menu option added later so people can adjust the speed back up if AI processing starts dragging on later in the game.



zgrssd -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/25/2021 10:56:49 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: varangy


quote:

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

Personally, I play on the slowest AI speed, but once turn processing starts to take too long, I just alt-tab to reading the manual or these forums...


Correct me wrong, but AI speed has nothing to do with how deep it processes the game.

The setting when setting up a planet under difficulty -> give AI more time to think is the option to do that.

The only thing AI speed does it adds time between moves, so you can watch things happen - and does not affect the AI itself in any way. So if you alt-tab anyway, it is useless to set it anything other than the fastest.

If you want to see what happened, it is easiest to just look through the history after the turn processing is done.

Those settings are explicitly for how complex the AI routines should be.
I think I once heard that the old Command & Conquer games had a similar thing - the more CPU time was left over after running the game, the more would be spend on the AI routines. So AI performance actually varried based on computer performance.
No idea how precisely it is implemented however.



BlueTemplar -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/26/2021 8:47:45 PM)

One cool thing that I heard that some turn-based games do (IIRC GalCiv2 ?), is that some parts of the AI turn are (pre)calculated during the player's turn !



zgrssd -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/27/2021 10:28:45 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

One cool thing that I heard that some turn-based games do (IIRC GalCiv2 ?), is that some parts of the AI turn are (pre)calculated during the player's turn !

I never heard of such a System being used, not in GalCiv2 or elswhere.
Precalculating generally usefull stuff like the Pathfinding Network is normal, but I doubt pathfinding is a big part of the AI turn.

As other AI's can affect the gamestate before the 3rd through 15th AI player even have their turn, I am not sure how much there could be precalculated. Both in general and in Shadow Empires in particular.

Do you maybe have a keyphrase to google for? The right name means a lot.



Soar_Slitherine -> RE: Open Beta Patch v1.02-beta1 (last update 9 june!) (5/27/2021 2:19:38 PM)

Precalculating AI moves would work fine in games with a turn resolution method that involves everyone first planning out their moves and them then being executed simultaneously (WEGO), used by games such as the Dominions or Combat Mission series (or Kriegsspiel, one of the originators of the wargame genre from back in 1824, which relied on an umpire for turn resolution). WEGO is also much better for multiplayer compared to the "IGOUGO" turn resolution method used by Shadow Empire, since it allows everyone to do their turns at the same time rather than stringing out the process and gets rid of certain exploits like loading the savegame multiple times and performing different actions each time to gain more information. Personally, I also prefer it because I think it's a better simulation - armies do not politely take turns acting in real life.

But while it would solve a bunch of design problems, I am pretty sure it's way too late to try to graft a WEGO system onto Shadow Empire. Precalculating AI moves in an IGOUGO system is going to be rather complicated and of comparatively limited use.



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