Sentience

Joint second oldest pal to be accurate. ;)

Well, I had nothing to say to you. Besides 'Hi'.


Hi.

Whoa - just read your other post.

You've nearly done you say? Excellent, well done!

Well, feel free to bring them round when they're done and we can celebrate with beer.

Cool as!


So, what do you think of Plend's "Supergiant mutated dinosaurs"?



(PS - if you have news, post a new post rather than amending a new one, cos then it flags that you've posted and catches my attention...)

I realised that after I'd done it. I simply wanted to remove the attachment...

PlenderJ (mad little irishman) + plenty of mind expanding drugs = mutated dinosaurs... :D

PS. who's your mate that's exactly the same age as me then?

Saul

nope, I'm definitely older than Saul...

The way you said it, it came across as being 'known for longest' pal.

If it's any consolation, I might not have known you the longest, but I certainly respect you the most.

So, are you coming over for bevvies later? I can't offer you a lift back but I can pick you up...




(PS - where 'respect', read 'fancy')

;)

Not sure about coming round or not yet. I'll speak to my dad & see if theres a lift on offer.

PS. I've found a way to do animations (a bit) quicker, but it means separating them into individual bitmaps. You mentioned you'd written something to plug 'em together. Is there anything special I should know or do to them first, or can you plug any number together? (yes, there's 30 of them and they're all the same size...)

...30 frames per animation...

Behemoth,

I've had a look at the graphics and they're quite nice, but as always I have some suggestions/comments. See screen shot attached.

Factory: The image was too dark, it's hard to make out what's going on. All greyscale too...

Pods: Christ they're big! They dwarf all the buildings! Maybe the scale needs altering. Apart from that, the animation is quite nice! :)

Mobile building: Nice, but all greyscale. Any chance of us having some colour somewhere? I know you say it's all metal - but it does look drab. Design's quite good though!

All: They seem to have some form of white border around them. Did you use a blur effect on the final product, 'cos the transparentariser isn't coping with it. You have been warned about the effects of blur....

Apart from that I'm well pleased. There's been quite a bit of work gone in there...

I suspect the white outlines come from shrinking the image down - I think it should be easy enought to remove them - I'll look into it.

I don't know why everything came out so dark. I suspect its the cartoony-effect I warned you of - the outlines may be thicker than I suspected - again, I'll look into it.

Sorry about the size of the pods. I was tired when I made them & didn't think about it. I can shrink them very easily - what sort of size do you want? I was thinking about a 1/4 of their current size (20 x 20) - comments/questions?

The factory isnt greyscale - theres red and yellow flashy lights, but you can't see them because everythings so goddamned dark! :mad:

Mobile building - NO! I'm happy. I like it grey. It looks chunky and industrially.(I might put a flashy light on it if you really want.) :D

I WANT COLOUR!!!

*ahem*

Does the copy of Sentience you have support the animations? If so, I could send you the rough shod animation creator and you can plug them in to see them working in front of you. Means we won't get probs like this 'cos you can identify them at your end.

20x20 is just what I was thinking for the pods. Great minds etc etc

Are you popping over this evening? I've done **** loads on Sentience and it's just kicking arse.

Course when you get over I'll find there's little enough to show - it's all behind the scenes - but I've tidied up the UI a bit though.


SCHPUNKY!!!

its getting to the point where you know better than I do what version of Sentience I have...:D I think mine supports animations, I 'll have a look.

I was thinking of coming down tonight. I'm still dog-tired - didn't get to bed until a stupid hour (and after I'd promised myself an early night :rolleyes: ). I'll see whether my dad'll give me a lift.

Did you give those designs to your mum or not? I'm waiting for some sort of feedback.

Did you get anything done with my CV? mail me with anything you came up with...

TTFN ;)

Well, you're more than welcome if you want to show up.

I can pick you up, but can't take you back....

Errr... designs..... errr..... I think I lost them. :( I'll have a look.

Done nothing with your CV, been working on Sentience all day.

I'm implementing a custom message box to inform of noteworthy events. Possibly use it display combat results as well?

grr...:mad:

Nope, I can't find them.

Could you bring them round again this evening please?

how do you manage to lose so much of my work? its incredible!

ok. I'll find it.

Heya matey.

Just a thought for when you get in in the morning.

Have a think about what's going to be contained within the pods, specific benefits etc.

Also I'm still working on some new screens. The 'special projects' screen and the grow critter screen.

I was thinking for those we would have three of four pictures donating their progression through the embryonic stage. Four pictures for all the creatures, not four each that is....

I'll attach screen shots later...

Cool!

Since when did I become a 'fanatic member'?

Whaddya reckon to this hombre?

(PS - did I ever tell you how much I hated creating screens?)

Right,

See attached spreadsheet (rename to .xls)

If you look at the projects tab, you'll see a sample list of projects along with their benefits and what tech they're derived from (should be obvious from the name in most cases).

You'll see that the benefits correlate with the benefits on the factions tab. What I was thinking was that when the project is complete, the benefit in the projects tab are added on to the benefits the faction receives (cumulative like).

e.g. If the Fission Amplificatoriser project is completed then the 10% (0.1 on the chart) benefit is added to the existing benefit/deficit provided by the faction.

See where I'm coming from here?

Of course, these are only broad benefits, but I'm not sure how else I could implement other benefits into the script. If you see the factions tab there is a column marked 'special'. This is for things that will require extra programming and can't be added to the script.

I was considering having something like that for the projects (i.e One free monkey every base - that sort of thing).

Comments/questions?

busy now. reply properly later -
Looks like you've put a lot of work in. :)

I always put lots of work in.

Still waiting for your reply(s).....

My boss is prowling today, so I'm having trouble posting...

I've only managed to scan-read what you've sent, but it looks reasonable. I think the important thing is to make sure our "secret projects" are as different as possible from Sid's.

Good work anyway...

Ours are special projects not secret projects. Completing one will not prevent anyone else from completing it.

Q's,

Did you get anything done on the graphics last night? (Where are you up to?)

Do you want me to mail the latest copy of the code over to you so you can plug in the graphics and see them in action yourself?

How long does it take you to knock up those buttons?

smartened up and shrank down the pods - unable to test without plugging together 120 images into bigger bitmaps and I'm not ptepared to. The AVI looked ok though.

There's little point having the new code. I already have the version with the animation engine, but I'm not prepared to plug a bunch of graphics together - thats hours of unnecessary work.

As far as I'm aware, the buttons are done - I found them last night & they look right (black corners, lighter text on understate). If I can fight my sister off the line & get online tonight I'll send em to you...

Do you want me to send you the code for plugging the bitmaps together?

Will only be a couple of K (if that ).

PS - If found the famous half full bottle of Bacardi Limon! Any chance of you Dad picking you up tonight? :D :D :D

no chance... its Wednesday...

Hi bloke.

Still waiting for the graphics you promised me last night...

Morning dude!

You gonna be available for forum chat today?

I want some ideas on how some of the simpler AI's are going to work and also how the computer will determine which AI to use.

For starters I was thinking that all the unit's AI's are set to defend and then when it has 10 (arbitrary number) or more mechs defending it sends a few on the rampage. Number will be a % of mechs defending times by the factions attack number.

This means that it sends mechs in attack clumps (as we were discussing last night).

Of instead of having it do that when it gets to a number of mechs, when it gets to an amount of hardware equiv. to a number. i.e 1000 points of mechs.

Make sense?

(PS - Return to innocence sounds cool as on these new speakers!)

hardware points could really leave th AI in the schmuck - if it gains 1000 hardware points (say for example builds loads of weapons) - it may only have sufficient components for 2 complete mechs. A poor balance - unlikely but possible. I prefer the %age number of mechs idea...The mechs could also be specifically designed then.

An assault party would also be designed for attack on a specific target. To assault a player with a bigger city would require a bigger force. Only if the target size is not known, would an AI attack with a standard arbitrary number of troops...

No, I meant a number of points of complete mechs. Doesn't matter what's in stores - it adds up the points of all the mechs defending and then decides what it's going to throw at the enemy.

Well, how do you propose to design and 'assault party'? We're not even putting mechs into parties - they all work independantly. We need to come up with some method of making the mechs appear to work in packs, when it's simply lots of AI models doing similar things.

e.g. putting them all on defend and then turning a clump over to assault all at once.

Also, I need some idea of how we're going to implement a scout AI - want to post any psuedo code? At the moment, the computer player can simply see all, but I don't want that - it's cheating...

quick question:

do all AI units have "view zones" as a human player might (regardless of whether or not it has knowledge of whats beyond this zone)?

If so, the AI would use the information within this zone as fact - what it can see, it will act upon

In the same vein, if it has uncovered some of the map, it MAY base its attacks on this - is it worth timing the views - for example an area uncovered 4 turns ago is going to be more accurate than one uncovered 20 or 30 turns ago (do you follow?)
The more recently an area is uncovered, the more likely the AI is to use it.

the 3rd option - if a unit has not uncovered an area, it can't act upon it. It would send scouts out to the middle of the largest areas of blackness, and towards the enemies landing site (assuming we're always going to see that)...

sorry - im blathering - thinking on the fly...try this.

* Build scout mech: queue more scout mechs
* send first scout mech towards anything visible (assume enemy landing site) hold position
* send scout mechs to any other "points of interest" - anywhere not viewed for X turns, anywhere partly viewed with enemy presence

[repeat loop]
* send scout mech to middle of largest uncovered area.
if map coverage>60% then stop else
[repeat]

or something like this.

Yes, all units have view zones, but the player should be able to base their knowledge on what has already been discovered, and what sum of all the units views.

No, it's not worth timing the views.

The scouting loop has it's points. How do you define the largest area of blackness? And where's the middle of it?

Finding the centre of any polygon is simply geometry. Finding which IS the largest area is going to be more difficult...

OK - a slightly different angle.

quick calculation:
height of map / units view DIAMETER = max number of mechs to scout 1 edge of map permanently - send each mech to (maxX, (maxY/number of mechs)*(mechumber-0.5)).
However it may be sensible to use just half this number of mechs... Repeat for all 4 edges.

Assume:

100 x 100 map. All scout mechs have 5 view radius (==10 diameter)

100 / 10 = 10 mechs necessary to scout right edge of map.

use half of this for practicality:

therefore send mech1 to (100, (100/5)*(1-0.5)) == (100,10)
mech 2 to (100,(100/5)*(2-0.5)) == (100,30)

etc.

The scoutmechs should radiate from home base giving a good overall map coverage.

(does this sound like the bollocks I think it does?!)

Too impractical.

If you have a 100x100 map then you're going to need 40 mechs to scout out the map. And that's assuming the map's all land.

We can't afford to chew up that many mechs early game, and if we just add mechs when we can afford it, you're going to end up viewing big long lines miles away from base and very little near home.

We need something that explores around the base. Maybe just something that orbits the base? No, 'cos then mapping irregular islands will be daft.

We need something that goes exploring.

we need to devise an "exploring" AI model...

Things to consider:

Will be based on a land chassis type
Will originally scout around home base and then later towards enemy
Will stop at waters edge (obviously), but this will affect how many other scouts are built
Will investigate anything "interesting": pods?, enemy activity, high resource squares
Will avoid heavily armed/armoured enemy (its only a scout!)
Will avoid its other scout mech colleagues (don't rediscover the same bits...)

anything else?

No, that's covered it.

When it gets to waters edge, it's going to have to turn around and wander off somewhere else.

I was thinking of having a couple of explore AI's

Explore coastline (runs 'til it hits the sea and then follows the coast around. Could be useful for determining the size of the island)

Explore local (runs around the base area)

Explore general (runs aimlessly around)

On all of these explores, if a pod comes within view range it will collect the pod.

had to reformat the disk last night :(

Gave me chance to think about stuff though - although I like your scout AI, it occurred to me that its a simple recon scout AI - there would be more AI models for scouts...

So we've got your recon model, a coastline geographer, and possibly a spy-scout (heads straight for the enemy), any other ideas?

How about resource scouts? possibly applied to an RMV - this model follows a resource seam before any mining is done - enables you to check that your RMVs aren't going to wander aimlessly into somebody's base in the pursuit of resources. This is also going to give a quie good general shape or area to discover...

Well, I've implemented (a modified version of) the scout AI model and it seems to have the right idea.

It wanders off scouting in a sensible manner, but for some reason it's not using its full move quotient so it's taking ages to explore anywhere.

Fear not, the mighty Ben is on the case.