Sentience: VB Game (comments please)

New version....

Awight mateys!

The new version is now uploaded (just download the scripts and exe).

I've fixed the bugs reported (and some that weren't). There should be no more SOOR's now when 'next turn' ing.

I've also added the first stage of industry to the game. Whoopeeee!

You can now create components by rightclicking on the factory (bottom left) and choosing component construction. From the there you can add components to the build queue if you can afford them.

To view the build queue, click on the menu button above next turn and choose build queue. Every turn the industry points you have available (150 currently - 50 for your main building and 100 for the factory) are channeled into the build queue and any components reduced to 0 build points remaining are removed from the queue and added to the warehouse.

That's right, the manufactured button in the warehouse now works and gives you a breakdown of the components you've created.

A lot of the components don't require any industry points or resources to create at the moments (for testing purposes) so these will fall out of the build queue straight away into the warehouse.

Certain components require certain technologies to become available so try researching the first tech on the research screen to have another weapon available. (Just to prove it works and it all ties together).

Hopefully I'll have the second stage of industry (mech creation) done by the end of this weekend (probably before the majority of you come back on this forum) and then we'll have a game. Mine resources, research techs, build mechs, kill enemy.

Cool as!

If you are using Winzip Vuen (and I know, this happened to me :rolleyes: ) make sure you extract ALL of the files, not just the selected, and make sure you extract to the dirs it's specified. Winzip's kinda confusing in that way but you can get around it by choosing extract all files.

Arbiter could you give us that link again?

Sastraxi,

The link is: www.btinternet.com/~bstap (for the downloads)
and
http://www.geocities.com/sentienceuk/ for the website

The latest version is uploaded now. Thanks for your continued interest!

Vuen,

You managed to sort it yet?

Bah blarg :rolleyes: I have to redownload again! When it didn't work the first time I redownloaded everything, but that would be pretty unlucky to get two different versions considering I downloaded them at the same time. I think the reason is just because my computer hates me. Maybe it's still sore from when I used to make it render for 12 hours straight :p, or maybe it's the fact that I haven't formatted in 4-5 years, or maybe it's because I hit the reset button on average 3 times a day (lucky I disabled scandisk on bad shutdown, and I'm about to go get some oil to grease up this reset button, it takes too much effort with the case on. It's exactly the same as any other comp, so how does everyone else live with such a hard-to-press reset button?)

i got a sub-script out of range error when i clicked the shields button in the the component creation form.
BTW it looks great:)

Hey guys!

Good news! It's looking as though mech construction is going to be online by the end of this week!

Behemoth and I are thrashing out the spec's of the components to make it realisticish, and I still have a little coding to do.

Well, as you know, the research works, the combat works (the RMV's used to be able to attack each other), slurping works, the industry works and once mech creation is online - we'll have a game.

Research techs, harvest resources, build components, design mechs, whoop ass!

The game will still be limited as you can't build any more buildings at present, but that will be coming shortly.

When building a mech you'll need to take into account certain things...

Weight: the heavier a mech, the slower it goes and the more power it requires to move (leaving less for firing).

Reactor: the more powerful a reactor, the faster it will move and the more energy will be available for firing.

Armour: Added in 0.1 ton chunks, the armour is what will absorb damage when the shields are gone. When armour is 0 or less, the mech dies.

Shields: The primary defense. Shields absorb damage until they are eroded. They regenerate a little each turn, based on their recharge rate and any benefits provided by chips. The power they use recharging is drawn from the reactor.

Chips: These improve the efficiency of the mech and provide other benefits such as improvements to accuracy, damage etc.

Processor drain: The mech will draw a certain amount of processing power from the command nexus. This is removed at the beginning of the turn. If there is a deficit in processing power then some mechs will fail to work. As research speed is determined by the number of processor points remaining after the mechs have taken their slice, the more mechs there are - the slower research will proceed.

Power drain: Each mech requires a certain amount of power. If this power is not provided by the reactore, it will draw power from the global energy grid. If insufficient power exists then the mech will either be unable to move, fire or both.

More info shortly.

Hi arbiter, looks like you've been working really hard on your game now, i'm looking forward for the next release. Sorry about the ActiveX problems, i've been busy myself with easter holiday and upcoming tests, so i couldn't get time to work on it, but i'll try today.

Okey dokey,

Could you mail it me again to the same address when it's done please?

What a hero!

Just two points to make.

1. Regarding the armour of the mech.
Once the armour reaches 0, I think the mech's should sustain damage to their component parts as opposed to just blowing up.
So if there are no shields, and you get hit by a single bullet, then maybe your reactor output drops.
But if you get hit by a rocket, then yeah you would blow up.

2. Regarding the weight of the mech.
I think the heavier the chassis of the mech the more you should be able to fit on it.
Ya know, kinda like the bigger the battleship the more guns you can stick on it ;)

- jamie

PlenderJ,

Thanks for the comments...

1) We were originally planning that but decided against it as the game is already very complicated. If there was sufficient votes for it we'd consider implementing but it would require an incredible feat of engineering to change the framework at this stage.

2) That's exactly what happens! :) . There are several different chassis types each requiring different materials to construct and able to support varying weights.

This is what I want to hear!! Any more comments?

em "send me money" ?
;)

I'll send you a letter bomb.... ;)

Surely you want to help merely to see a decent game written in VB, something that can't be done according to general concensus of opinion....

A sandstorm is approaching again? ;)

ok, here's what you need to do, open notepad, paste this:

d:\winnt\system32\regsvr32.exe /s TVGUI.dll
d:\winnt\system32\regsvr32.exe /s sehmx\kedaarrayhandler.dll
d:\winnt\system32\regsvr32.exe /s sehmx\sehm.dll
d:\winnt\system32\regsvr32.exe /s Plugin\kedamenu.dll
d:\winnt\system32\regsvr32.exe /s Plugin\sehmplug.dll

note, change the path according to where you have your regsvr32.exe

save it as register.bat in the directory with KESGUI.exe

now do the same thing with unregister.bat:

d:\winnt\system32\regsvr32.exe /s /u TVGUI.dll
d:\winnt\system32\regsvr32.exe /s /u sehmx\kedaarrayhandler.dll
d:\winnt\system32\regsvr32.exe /s /u sehmx\sehm.dll
d:\winnt\system32\regsvr32.exe /s /u Plugin\kedamenu.dll
d:\winnt\system32\regsvr32.exe /s /u Plugin\sehmplug.dll

(the /u flag will unregister in case you need that which i hope you don't need hehe :p)

run register.bat and run kesgui, select load in the plugin menu and load sehmplug in plugins folder

Okey dokey - I'll do that when I get home.

ill put it threw the worst i can and if anything goes wrong ill let u know

after playing with it a few minutes a broke it i got a run time error :mad:

Wazup,

Thanks for taking the time to look at it, even though you broke it!

Runtime error? That's not good!

OK, let's narrow it down a bit...

What screen were you on when you got it and what were you doing?

Arbiter, we seem to be getting a lot of runtime errors dont we ;)
Id just check all of your arrays 10 times over, and then any string manipulation you're doing.

lol, thanks for the moral support....

There are some areas of the game which are a little unstable, but these are normally the 'in-progress' areas. If errors pop up elsewhere then it irritates me.

Once I've got mech construction complete, I'll draw a line in the sand and fix every error that crops up. Then, when I proceed, I can be fairly confident that it's going to be stable.

Trying to fix faults is getting to be great fun! There's over 20 screens, several hundred variables and thousands of lines of code.

Scary........

runtime error nine

Gotcha - Remind me, which particular runtime error is that....?

Subscript out of range
index out of bounds
element not in array

Ahhh, that old chestnut.

I'm going to have to check my code a little closer. I need to spend some time tightening it up, but I'm so caught up in adding functionality to it, I'm slipping on keeping the code error free.

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy....

yep, theres 2 well known reasons why it appears,

1. you don't keep track on array sizes

2. you don't keep track on array access

since vb puts this array bounds check each time you access an array, it keeps track of when you specify an invalid element but it also drains performance. Surprisingly a DMA process looping trough thousands of elements can be speed up to 6 times by removing the array bounds check from compilation. That's a very good reason to have your own array bounds checks instead, and another is that RE9 isn't a solution to anything, just a notifier. You could handle the error of course but that would only lower performance.

When you access an array with a numeric expression pointing at index, you have to know exactly what possible values can be assigned, and what size the array might have. Even one of 10000 possibilities could be a dangerous bug, and without array bounds checks could cause your app to crash or run further and malfunction later.

Using LBound and Ubound to determine size of array you get #9 if the array is empty. A good reason to not have or to have a counter variable.

More Rarely: accessing collections you can get #9 if you specify a wrong key, there's no way but to trap this error, but it shouldn't be removed when compiled without array bound checks.

I rarely ever get RE9 these days with dynamic arrays, whether they're multidimensional or not ...

Oh, 'cos you're so perfect. ;)

Well, I do need to tighten up the code a bit I guess, but there's so many arrays it's painful. Thanks for the info Kedaman.

Nah, they just get easier as time goes by.

hehe, we all know what plenderj is talking about ;)

:confused:

now there's the face we've been waiting fo :p

I have no idea what is going on here ;)
One minute we're talking about arrays, the next about my experiences with fish ?!?

You guys are just too weird.

was j/k plenderj hehe

as was I regarding the fish .... ;)

its really hard to understand y dont u make a intro file so it gives the new player an idea of whats happening

Thanks for the suggestion wasup!

A colleague of Behemoths is working on something very similar as we speak...

We're also working on a manual, and I'm eventually going to get around to a tutorial.

Good idea, it at least proves we're on the right track with what we're doing...

nobody ever said you were on the right track ...

;)

At least I'm on a track boy.

Why don't you just get back to Wanda, or whatever your aquatic friend is called....!

;)

The link is not working. :(

you can imagine what the code looks like then ;)