incremental patch discussion

Can you try explaining what the changes *are*?

Cephalo explained his AI changes: for example, he made civs that did not share a border with you use transports when invading, which was a huge advantage.
If you can explain what you did then it is much easier for us to judge whether or not it is an improvement.

well ahriman,

i cant give you all the specs for bbai changes, for that as mentioned you can get into revdcm, or read the docs folder.

i have actually commented 3 lines of caphelo, and also 2-3 lines of koma13, because that sections was completely rewritten by the bbai, and there was no need or place for the old code, i dont know what the lines are needed , for that, i need one of our sdk guys to have a look.

also, many bugs with 1.6.1 bbai , was fixed in 1.6.2, which is another good reason to cross to it.

also, it added a whole new system of bug mod version 4 into the sdk, that made the game use less python files.

more, it made a lot of fixing in the inquisition code (that i know isnt a major part).

so,
what i can say for certain, that the ai is suppose to be better,
theres more bug features included , and the revdcm core files are stabler.


and i also cleaned out unused sdk and python lines from the very first versions of dw.

98% of the xml is the same.

oh and it added out two new commands for units - sentry and heal sentry - units fortify until enemy unit come close.


you guys always said you wanted remove everything, so, if you wish to un revdcm,

we can get bbai 081 and maybe the dale mods (ranged bombardment stuff) , jculturecontrol and improvements, and perhaps some form of influence driven wars.

improving and heading to revdcm better version, is like when you upgrade civ to 3.19, from 3.17, you know theres a lot f improvements, but you where just fine with 3.17, so why go and upgrading to 3.19?

what i have done from the very beginning of dune wars, and the rest of my mods, like probably most of today mods, is using revdcm as a core, and updating it when a new version comes around.

so you, thats why i got upset before, cause it seems there not even an interest to go on the upgrade, i m not saying lets release this as is, of course it needs to be tested and the touch of our sdk people, i dunno, it seems, that i, may have started dune mod, but nothing of what ive made got left, not the 3 units, not the civs, tech tree, civics, not even my funny looking improvements and my foolish running man promotion icon, im not saying im not happy with that, the opposite is right, they way the mods is today is way way , light years way from what i imagined i could have, all thanks to the good people here.
anyways, what ever you decide now, i will follow, i just want to have a better and better dune mod.



( i think i got a bit mushy and emotional there...maybe i should delete that last part huh?....hehe)

Ahriman said:

Can you try explaining what the changes *are*?

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Keldath has pointed out a number of the details, but I think a higher level explanation may help. Sorry if this is obvious. The changes that keldath has made with 1.6.2 are supposed to be all internal and mostly invisible. He has removed some unused stuff, and upgraded the vanilla BBAI to the newest version. The point of doing testing on this is to find any accidental side effects. If something used to work, and it's now broken, then this indicates a problem we have to fix. This is the opposite of many of the releases which deliverator and I have done; we have added features, and we want the new features tested. Keldath basically needs the old features tested.

Does that make sense?

Since I was away this weekend I have not yet had a chance to review the changes which keldath was not able to merge. This is a general challenge with big merges like this. Person A has made a local change to one part of the code, and then person B has separately made a big change including that part and a much larger section. There is no more "anchor" to attach the changes of A when merging them.

In general I think it is important to keep up with changes in BBAI, even if they don't appear to do anything specific for DW. Changes in revdcm I am not so sure about; but the work is already done and the main point of testing is to make sure nothing broke.

thanks for the support david,

i can point you to the 2 files with the commented out,

and as for revdcm, most of its code - wasnt changed actually, - as you wrote its already written and made, so what they did is just add bbai, add another option called barbarian world, and maybe fix some rev code, but just barley.

Does that make sense?

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Yes, but do we know what the BBAI actually does?
"Better AI" is a very abstract term.

For example, more aggressive offensive AI, like some of the stuff that Cephalo has coded, could potentially contribute to the weakly defended cities that Slynn has observed.

If you guys think its an improvement, I'll install and take a look once you've ironed the CTD bug out, but I can also provide better feedback if I know what kind of AI behavior I should be looking for.

the main point of testing is to make sure nothing broke

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Slynn reported IIRC that 1.6.1c and 1.6.2 caused CTD on game start.

CTD is not persistent, but happens time to time, and frequency grows with increasing the map size - more size - more CTD chance. On standard its quite big already.
Also when i started large map i noticed that there is too much tooo much baradye resource tiles around.
Its 1.6.1c + 1.6.2
With 1.6.1b and 1.6.2 its was ok but i played tiny map.

Its 1.6.1c + 1.6.2
With 1.6.1b and 1.6.2 its was ok but i played tiny map

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The only thing that changed from 1.6.1b and 1.6.1c was the infantry graphic fix. The resource placement hasn't changed since 1.6.1 so if there is an issue it is there too.

I have not tested bonus resource placement on the larger size maps, but I can look into it. If I think Baradye might be the last bonus to be placed so maybe that's something to do with it.

i was able to merge every thing david koma and caphelo wrote, wasn't easy , but nothing was lost, except a koma13 part - that the bbai took a large portion of code that koma13 added inside , out = i think this made koma13'S code unneeded. and as i marked , the caphelo code.

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The purpose of my danger count code was to make sure ai isn't keeping settlers inside cities. So as long as ai is expanding in 1.6.2, I would say everything is fine.

The purpose of my danger count code was to make sure ai isn't keeping settlers inside cities. So as long as ai is expanding in 1.6.2, I would say everything is fine. ,

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ahh nice, jdog5000 changed alot in that area.



as for resources - well 95% of the xml of 1.6.2 is the same as in 1.6.1, on the terrain stuff i havnt changed nothing.


ill do some more testing on the weekend to see if theres a ctd on tiny with 1.6.2+1.6.1c.
if the game gets to last tech then i would say its pretty good.

try larger maps, tiny is ok, but on larger ctd chance increase dramatically

Slvynn said:

try larger maps, tiny is ok, but on larger ctd chance increase dramatically

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I am sorry, but there were 200+ posts during the four days I was offline. Is this a problem which occurs right when you start the game? Or does it appear only after some time? Does it occur only with 1.6.2, or does it also occur with 1.6.1c?

When i played 1.6.1a problem wasnt occuring, 1.6.1b too, when i installed 1.6.2 and played few tiny games which were cool (with 1.6.1c) upon changing to small and standard maps i started to experience ctds, not instant by start, after few turns into a game.

Btw i think AI does slightly better with 1.6.2 . Slightly, but i won (i didnt finished but i was unrivailed) Immortal Small map with total 9 civs in 1.6.1, in 1.6.2 it seems bit harder. Though it may be nmot precise, or just i got lucky 1st time, who knows each time its very different.

well, what can i say, thanks for testing,
i guess ill test it more,

for now we should stay with 2.5?

Slvynn said:

When i played 1.6.1a problem wasnt occuring, 1.6.1b too, when i installed 1.6.2 and played few tiny games which were cool (with 1.6.1c) upon changing to small and standard maps i started to experience ctds, not instant by start, after few turns into a game.

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I want to make sure I understand how you installed. 1.6.1 is a "full release" containing all files. 1.6.1c is a "patch release" only containing a few files. 1.6.2 is also a "full release". However, it is a little confusing because in 1.6.2, keldath has *deleted* many files. So if you have a directory with 1.6.1 already installed, and you install 1.6.2 over it, you will have a bad installation. The leftover files from 1.6.1 may be causing the problem with 1.6.2. I do not know if this is true, but it could be.

Did you delete your 1.6.1/1.6.1c installation completely before installing 1.6.2? If not, could you try that and see if you still have the CTD?

Also, sorry for possibly repeating this, but did you already activate python logging and look in PythonErr.log to see if there is any information there?

No, i removed completely 1.6.1 (and any Dune Wars traces) prior to installing 1.6.2
I made all right, thats for sure.

And no, i didnt enabled python logging.

another report: game crashes with current setup (1.6.2 + 1.6.1c) upon exit to main menu command.

edit: i found in CivilisationIV.ini
; Game Options
had 2 "1, now changed to all "0" , will try again.
Ah nvm it doesnt matter - its no tech trading/brokering i playing with.

keldath said:

dune wars 1.6.2 released - for testing purposes only - for now.

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I can confirm that this crashes very often. I renamed my working 1.6.1 installation and installed a fresh copy of 1.6.2. I used all default settings in the custom game menu, arrakis mapscript, large size (9 player), noble difficulty. I started 10 games. In all 10 cases the map came up and I could start to play. However, within the first 5 turns, 7 of the 10 games crashed to desktop. There was no information in PythonErr.log. (Do not start out by blaming the python code. ). It seems that the AI was in the process of founding cities at the time, but that is just a guess.

I am suffering a little bit from "feature paralysis". I have gone through all the 400+ posts on 1.6 feedback in various threads and made a list of all the specific requests. Not counting the 50 items already in the sheet, there are about another 40 new items. They fall into categories:

a. One line, non-controversial xml bug fixes (eg, Devastator cannot be built by any civ).
b. Straightforward python changes (eg, multiple "advisor" popups)
c. Controversial xml changes which need experimentation or thought (eg, review starting techs for civs, or "unit costs seem low".)
d. New special abilities or UU (eg, Ecaz trader, mentats)
e. Research topics into sdk (eg, Fremen early game expansion, or AI poor at defending)

There are a few (a), but by the time I explain them to anybody I could easily fix them. The (b,c) ones only take a few minutes to few hours for each, but there is a lot of discussion around each one so they cannot be finished quickly; plus there are so many it could easily burn days. (d) is the most fun for me, but perhaps the least important. (e) is the most time consuming but ultimately the most important.

Any advice on prioritizing?

e+a with some love to c (you may fix just some of c, having discussion on background) is my vote
Also please check screenshot thrtad - i found some new problem which can be easilly fixed, and thats important imo. There is some readjustment that should be done in promotion aviablility (perhaps tech prequisites added)

Another mini-patch from me, 1.6.1d, this includes everything from 1.6.1b/c plus these changes/fixes:

+ Added Landsraad Shrine, CHOAM Headquarters - see Ahriman's religion design.
- founds the CHOAM Corporation which is exactly the same as the House Spice Corps, but competes with them so cannot be built in the same city.
- Spreads Landsraad Religion
- Can turn one citizen into Merchant
- Can be built by Great Merchant or Great Prophet, must also have at least one Spice resource
- Generates +2 Great Merchant GPP

+ Outpost no longer buildable on Dunes

+ New Wormsign effect

+ Religion buildings now play Dune Wars religion music clip rather than vanilla sound

+ Fixed Python to refer to UNIT_CRYSKNIFE_FIGHTER and UNIT_NAIBS_CHOSEN

+ Fixed 5 soundtrack entries missing from Audio2DScripts.xml and AudioDefines.xml

This is still not tested against 1.6.2, but I'll give it a test soon.

davidlallen said:

a. One line, non-controversial xml bug fixes (eg, Devastator cannot be built by any civ).
b. Straightforward python changes (eg, multiple "advisor" popups)
c. Controversial xml changes which need experimentation or thought (eg, review starting techs for civs, or "unit costs seem low".)
d. New special abilities or UU (eg, Ecaz trader, mentats)
e. Research topics into sdk (eg, Fremen early game expansion, or AI poor at defending)

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It probably makes sense for you to focus on the stuff that I can't do. I am happy to do any XML fixes and changes. If you stick up the spreadsheet I can look at any pure XML stuff that hasn't been covered off.

Maybe get the quick Python wins out the way (b) and then look at (e) the Fremen expansion issue? With a bit of (d) for a change of scene.

Edit: Oh, and I've already fixed the Devastator thing in 1.6.1b.