Sentience: VB Game (comments please)

Code:

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Open PickEitherOne(Woman.Holes) For Input As #1
    PUT#1,,somekedaman
Close #1
Debug.Print "Was it good for you ?"

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... I am aware of the programatic discrepencies ;)

:rolleyes:

Kedamans size is twelve? Wishful thinking there boy!

So, besides being able to edit save game files, what else can it do? Come on - really sell it to me!

You can score with alia when you use it.

Alia?

Kedaman's avatar.
She's a character from a series of books entitled "Dune" by frank herbert.

Alia is Paul Muad'Dib's Sister.
She was prescient and intelligent from before she was born.

Ah yes.

I bet she'd look nice kneeling down, gazing up at me with those cute little eyes.

Ok, Stop, stop!

This is degenerating into filth now.

This is my lovely thread, stop polluting it with Irish smut!

She's arrakeen, not irish ;)

Plej has some serious problems, we should bann him from this thread :p

Well savegames? hahaha, that would be a bit uselesss, you can use it for storing the game data as well, and for editing this data in particulary handy ways you can make plugins, i've thought about activeX controls that will be displayed instead of the listview. Referencing the SEHM library and the gui, and implementing a specific interface IPlugin it will recieve events from SDIP. A SITEM object will be passed so that you can manipulate the data accordingly.

Ked, I don't under stand what your program is good for. From what I have read in this thread, it seems it just is a hard way to do easy stuff.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Gaming_World
Ked, I don't under stand what your program is good for. From what I have read in this thread, it seems it just is a hard way to do easy stuff.

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Kedaman defined.

;)

indeed, what is not understandable?
I agree a similar task could be achieved easier but that would limit the customisation with plugins

Go on Ked, whack 'im!

Sort PlenderJ out - yeah!

So don't mess wiv Ked or e'll clobber yer! Yeah.

Ok, I'll stop trying to cause a fight.

Well people, the new version should be online shortly with a small herd of bug fixes and....

drum roll......

wait for it.....

Unit pathfinding!

And Combat!

And other cool things!

I know, I know, you can barely contain yourselves! But you must, you must - it won't be long now.

Are you all excited?

HO HO HO!!!!

New version is uploaded!

All in one easy downloadable file.

Fantastic! Highlights are:

Bug fixes.
New, improved mech design screen.
Pathfinding (of sorts).

Damn, it's looking good!

Get your copy now, while they're still warm and keep those comments/suggestions coming in!

Sentience wouldn't be where it is today without you guys!!!!

Download from www.btinternet.com/~bstap

I'll have a look this weekend ;)

While its still warm ?
Pfff! I'm into necro...... ahh I see.

OK I'll have a look :)

I knew I could count on you two! Thanks guys!

I'm going to put you two down as the lead testers as you've been testing this since I uploaded the first version, unless you have any objections....?

Yes I do have objections.

"Lead Smartass Git"


Bah! Call me what you want :)

Hi,
Little bug for you. My monitor runs at 1152x864, 32bit color and 85Hz refresh rate. Everytime I load your game up and then quit out, it drops my monitors refresh rate down to 60Hz, which does not do the eyes very good :(. Anybody else experienced this??

Haven't played the game properly yet as I have not figured out what to do :rolleyes:

Cheers

S@NSIS

Hey there!

Thanks for looking at the game.

Your refresh gets changed when the game crashes or when you quit out using the quit options? I never even considered the monitors refresh, I'll look into that one.

Sorry about the lack of instructions, we've not got round to making a manual yet. If you have any questions then feel free to ask them all here. I'll answer them as soon as I see them...

At last the tacky fog of war is gone :)
Ok a few points :

I finally figured out how to build mechs.
It'd be nice if it didnt take a turn to produce each component.
Took me about 8(?) turns to build the parts.

Then I went into the mech design screen.
Quite nice once you figure it out :)

I had created all 3 types of chips ; but only two were showing in the drop down menu for the chips part of the mech screen. It could just be that they were cut off by the bottom of the screen.

I then went to add weapons to the mech. I had only created one gun, but was able to use that gun for each 4 mounts on the particular mech.

Then I noticed "ding" to the right of the weapons part and was wondering *** it was. Its the right hand side of the Building button on the main screen. Anyway I clicked on it and the mech screen lost focus. I tried to Alt-Tab (desperate attempt I know) back into that form but I was brough into windows.
So I managed to get back into the active game, and clicked on the Mech design button and was brought back into the screen ; but then the game crashed with RE53 : File not found.

I was brought back to the desktop with res = 800*600 :(

Anyway, its coming along nicely.
Keep up the good work :)

PlenderJ,

Thanks for looking at it so quickly!

I got rid of the tacky FOW just for you...

Yeah, the components do take a bit to produce. You get 150ind points per turn and that is used to make stuff. If the component at the top of the queue takes 100 pts then 50 are moved onto the next one. (unless you have distributed industry turned on in which case the points are spread across all components in the build queue).

The figures used are not the final figures, everything will be changed at some point when we move into play testing proper to get the balances right.

To bring back the mech design screen if you click off it, simple call it from the menu again. It will return in exactly the same state you left it.

Currently there is no billing for components. You can make as many mechs as you like from one of each component. This is just for testing so you don't have to make millions of components to make some mechs.

Not sure what the file not found was for... I've never had that one.

So, did you make a mech? Did you move it around and use its pathfinding? Whaddya think?

The mech design screen still needs an awful lot of work but it's getting there now. Behemoth's still plugging away with the component graphics. Some of them look really cool don't they?

PS - how's craft coming along?

Well the game crashed, and then I came on here to report my findings, and then my boss came in, so I never got to make the mech.

I'll be looking at the game later + over the weekend anyway.

And craft ; well thats been put on the long finger for the while.
I put an updated version on the webpage the other day. But I wont be working on it until after june 1st (last day of exams).

Well, make that about june 10th, I should have recovered from the hangover I get on the 1st by then :)

A nine day hangover... Nice!

That sounds like a douglas adams quote at the bottom of your sig ...

I have no idea where it's from.

It came from my mind but it's entirely possible it based on something I've read or seen elsewhere.

Bwahahahaahah you've read books before !?!?
hahahahaha.


... sorry ;)

Button it parrot face - I've read the whole of the Dick and Jane series!

nice game for VB. I did notice, don't know if it was justme or not, but when I put the map to whopping, the mapin the center stayed the same size and the map on the bottom right (the square) got real small. is that the way it was suppose to go? I didn't figure out how to make a mech yet , so I will keep trying later. Plus play around with everything else.

all in all it looks like it is coming along real good, and hats off to the graphics maker.

keep up the good work. :D

Scoutt

Hey, just a couple of suggestions:

Change the background, ok? The game has nothing to do with space, so why do you make the background a NEBULA?! :p

Also, you should make building mechs more intuitive. It seems that no one can figure that out :D

Another thing, related to AI: How are you gonna make the AI build mechs? :p
I have an idea, in case you haven't thought of that before: the AI starts with a standard mech, with nothing in it (except for the really basic ones). Then it tries to put some random stuff on it (but only the ones available to it!) (NOTE: I said SOME. Changing it only a bit at a time will get you better results). Each frame or so, it would change the mech a bit and test it against each one of the player's mechs (the ones it has seen, to make it more realistic and not a cheater). If it can beat it, try to change it a bit next frame (so it improves). If not, change it back and try again! This kind of AI would be really smart, because it would counter the player's mechs, even though they are built by the player. There's no such table as "this mech is good against this other one" at first, like in most strategy games. It would be built as the game progresses. What do you think? ;)

Scoutt,

Thanks for looking.

The map in the centre will remain a constant size (unless zoomed) but the map in the bottom left will resize dependant on the map sizes chosen. The map in the bottom right is the minimap and gives you and overview of the world as you see it.

Details instructions on how to create a mech are posted a little further up. They may help you if you get stuck. :)

Behemoth has done all the graphics in the game so far and I think he's an incredible job.

Once you've had a play around, I'd like to hear any comments you may have with regards to any aspect of the game (user interface, format, speed, things you'd like to see etc).

The more comments we get, the better the game will turn out.

Thanks again!

Jotaf,

Thankyou for looking as well!

The game is vaguely space related it's just there's no manual or background supplied yet. The intro movie (that's right - intro movie) gives a brief intro to the game (ie where you're there etc) and involves spacecraft and other such stuff. :)

Building mech's is intuitive - once you know how to do it. I must have made about 8 billion in testing so far. Once you have the components, you can make a mech in about 7 clicks. It's just there's no instructions :rolleyes: . I'll get round to them one day...

We're still working on the concepts for the AI at the moment. I'm thinking of making it based around models, whereby each mech can have a different role, i.e. aggressive, passive, coward, sniper etc

The computers 'overview AI' is going to be hellish to code as I do not want it to cheat in any way shape or form. The mechbuilding stuff you've outlined is a good idea, we'll have to look at that and see how it can be implemented.

If you're interested in the conversations Behemoth and I have to thrash out the games workings then have a read in the communications forum. It may or may not interest you, but it's no secret. AI is quite a while away at the moment, but any other suggestions you have will be gratefully received.

Thanks.

You're welcome ;)

BTW, where's the communications forum?

http://forums.vb-world.net/forumdisp...?s=&forumid=15

It's accessible from the main forums list. It's right down near the bottom...

I've been reading this topic for a couple of days, but only just got a chance to DL & try Sentience. I'm having a new problem with it: I can't work out what to do :rolleyes:! What do I do after adding a whole bunch of components to the build queue?

Also, can I please, please, please, please, please, please (etc) help with some of the basic AI code? I've never had a chance to really look at AI, but I've found it very interesting for quite a while.

Very stable, Arbiter!

I like ;)

Every time I go to make a mech, and have prepared all the parts, and tell it to build it, when I complete my turn and the game screen is about to appear I get the file not found error.

A tad annoying :)

PlenderJ,

Yeah sorry about that. Quick fix - make an empty file (using notepad or whatever) and save it in the root of C (C:\) as temp.bmp

This will solve the problem in the short term (I've fixed it already but haven't uploaded the new version yet.

Sas,

Glad you like it - I'm looking forward to seeing how you've been getting on with ToW...

Matthew,

Common problem - we really must make a manual!!!!

Firstly do as per PlenderJ, make a blank file on C:\

Ok, once you've added the components to the build queue. Wait a few turns for them to be complete. You can check if they're done by either opening the build queue from the industry option on the main menu or looking to see if they're appeared in the warehouse (under manufactured).

You'll need at least one torso, one chassis and a reactor. Everything else is optional. Then, right click on the top right building and choose mech design. Design a mech, save it and then next turn it will appear!

We're still quite a way off from beginning AI coding but when we start, any suggestions will be gratefully received.

All,

I've been burning the midnight oil recently and have fixed the problems with path finding routes, fixed numerous bugs, combat is good to go and you can also define and reuse templates for mechs. There's also some behind the scenes stuff (like a scripted help file - I figured we needed one) and more!

The next version is going to kick arse!

Not much luck here guys :(

When I went to options, I got a Out of memory error :(

and when I clicked on New Game i get a "cant create autodraw image" error :(

Hey Simon,

Thanks for trying...

I get that occasionally when I've been testing and the games crashed, so I re-run and it crashes again. After I've done that a few times I get the out of memory error. I exit the VB IDE and reload it and it's fine then.

Now, this can't be the problem with you as you're not running it from within the IDE. You haven't had your machine running for the past 8 days without a shut down have you?

It's not really an out of memory as it runs fine on my laptop (P133 with 16mb of ram - woohoo). Try running it straight after a bootup without having ran anything else.

PS - just as a thought, you don't have the world and its dog running in the background do you?