incremental patch discussion

Ahriman said:

A weird thing; every time I build an improvement, the AI wakes my worker one turn before it finishes, and I have to re-issue the order.

Is this from BBAI changes somehow? Its irritating. Pointless extra micromanagement.

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Did I read somewhere that they added the ability to "pre-chop" forests to BBAI? So that workers would stop chopping the forest a turn before it is done. Perhaps this issue is related to that functionality somehow...

Did I read somewhere that they added the ability to "pre-chop" forests to BBAI? So that workers would stop chopping the forest a turn before it is done. Perhaps this issue is related to that functionality somehow...

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oh right - it might be the cause - if so, it can be removed as an option, i can do that if you want.

Did I read somewhere that they added the ability to "pre-chop" forests to BBAI? So that workers would stop chopping the forest a turn before it is done. Perhaps this issue is related to that functionality somehow...

Click to expand...

That sounds very likely. Good find!

Deliverator said:

Did I read somewhere that they added the ability to "pre-chop" forests to BBAI? So that workers would stop chopping the forest a turn before it is done. Perhaps this issue is related to that functionality somehow...

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I'm not sure if it's BBAI or BUG, but you are right! I am very relieved. Please use ctrl-alt-o to view the bug options screen:



I'm not sure why this option defaults to "on", but you can turn it off with this screen. Please confirm this does what you want.

I'm not sure why this option defaults to "on", but you can turn it off with this screen. Please confirm this does what you want.

Click to expand...

I will test tonight, but I am 99% sure that turning this off will fix the issue, and that we should just change the default.

I have located the information to change the default. A user may edit My Documents\My Games\Beyond The Sword\Dune Wars\UserSettings\BUG Actions.ini and change PreChopImprovements. A developer may make the permanent change in <mod install dir>\assets\config\BULL Actions.xml. I will make the permanent change.

davidlallen, yap you got it,

its also possible to vanish those options from the screen at all - via init.xml.

I have significantly improved the installer since the thread on it in the BUG forums. The script is in the source code of the new RevDCM installer. You can get it here:

https://revolutiondcm.svn.sourcefor...k/RevDCMInstall/RevolutionDCM v2.62 Setup.exe

Also that's the current version of RevDCM on the SVN, it's updated from the current 1.61 official release. I'd recommend using that in your merge, as it will improve performance quite a bit (all python callbacks have been removed). The installer should automatically uninstall any previous version of Dune Wars if you use this script (obviously you will need to change the script to DuneWars from RevDCM and account for the changed paths on whoever's computer compiles the installer, as all the folder paths in the script are for RevDCM on my computer).

phungus420 said:

I have significantly improved the installer since the thread on it in the BUG forums.

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Thanks for letting me know. I will use this installer instead. I had to hack up the previous installer since it requires one "option". I guess you install the source code as a separate option. I removed the requirement for the option. So I will remove it again from this new version.

Also that's the current version of RevDCM on the SVN, it's updated from the current 1.61 official release. I'd recommend using that in your merge, as it will improve performance quite a bit (all python callbacks have been removed).

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Unless I am completely confused you wrote "1.61" when you meant "2.61". Unfortunately doing a new merge of RevDCM is a lot of work for us due to all the overlapping modpacks already in DW. We tried several times before getting 2.61 merged successfully. So, since 1.7 is going out tomorrow, I will not merge the post-2.61 version of RevDCM. We will keep that in mind for a future version, however.

Hello how all and mod doing?
I am still busy with RL cashy project... Perhaps will be free at middle of this week, then will get back to icons and stuff
keep it up

We are making good progress. Deliverator has redone all the wonders. Keldath has ported the insides ot he mod to use more modern versions of the modcomps for RevDCM, BBAI, BUG and BULL. I have added a lot of unit diversity changes. All of this will be coming out in 1.7, hopefully today. (Waiting for some buttons from deliverator).

Do you have any interest in going back to the action button project?

davidlallen said:

All of this will be coming out in 1.7, hopefully today. (Waiting for some buttons from deliverator).

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Not far off now. Just need to make sure that the Barbarians can't build the new wonders.

I haven't had time to do any pedia stuff. If I leave the entries with TXT_KEY... are you OK to create the stub entries?

Deliverator said:

I haven't had time to do any pedia stuff. If I leave the entries with TXT_KEY... are you OK to create the stub entries?

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Actually I have done that already.

Ok then, here is the refined wonders patch (over 1.6.5 again) with a few additional changes:

+ Updated wonders according to Ahriman's feedback in the Wonders thread - see pedia for full details.
- It is not possible to have a building give +1 water in every city (there is a GlobalYieldModifier field but no GlobalYieldChange), so I made the Fai Water Tribute give 0.2 water per Groundwater instead.
- Making the House Shield Generator and Weather Control Satellite work as intended is outstanding - these require Python/SDK coding.

+ Removed Distrans and Holtzmann Generator techs. We can bear these in mind for the late tech tree rework. Satellites moves to the position formerly occupied by Spaceports - which is removed. The Spaceport building moves to Frigate Transportation.

+ Decided to update the interface a little bit - see screenshots. I took the brown from the promotion button backgrounds for the main HUD colour which seems to work pretty well. The new theme is in Assets/Modules/Interface/BrownTheme - the Dune Theme folder is no longer required. I have used the Albertus font that was used for the 1984 film for the heading. As far as I can tell fonts are not dynamically loaded so people will have to manually install the two fonts from the Assets/Modules/Interface/BrownTheme/Resource/Fonts folder to get the full effect of the updated interface.

+ Renamed the pedia to Dune Encyclopedia instead of Dune"O"pedia/Sevopedia.

+ Removed Facedancer tentacles

+ Renamed Sand Farms to Adapted Agriculture and made Desert Plantation an AND requirement.

+ Tried to make the Rhombur leaderhead more Dunish and desaturated the very orange looking Alia.

+ Changed the Stone bonus to Ore - a number of wonders now build 25% quicker with Ore.

I think that's it...

DOWNLOAD LINK

Deliverator said:

+ Decided to update the interface a little bit - see screenshots. I took the brown from the promotion button backgrounds for the main HUD colour which seems to work pretty well. The new theme is in Assets/Modules/Interface/BrownTheme - the Dune Theme folder is no longer required. I have used the Albertus font that was used for the 1984 film for the heading. As far as I can tell fonts are not dynamically loaded so people will have to manually install the two fonts from the Assets/Modules/Interface/BrownTheme/Resource/Fonts folder to get the full effect of the updated interface.

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I do not understand about themes. There are hundreds of files which add megabytes of size to the download. Can you please look into 1.6.5 and see if there are some other theme directories, which are no longer used, and we can delete? There is a huge top level directory "resources" which has many of the same hundreds of files, but I do not want to have to binary compare each of them to see which can be removed.

EDIT: There was a long discussion about themes, related to the vista / windows 7 crash. The reason keldath submitted the top level "resources" directory was because Modules/Interface/... files get written during xml initialization, which causes a vista / windows 7 crash. Can you be sure that your new theme does not re-introduce this crash?

- It is not possible to have a building give +1 water in every city (there is a GlobalYieldModifier field but no GlobalYieldChange), so I made the Fai Water Tribute give 0.2 water per Groundwater instead.

Click to expand...

By itself, this doesn't work. Wells do not actually give the groundwater resource. The groundwater resource is only accessible if you build cities or forts on a groundwater resource (and ideally we could remove it from the fort improvement).
I don't think that enabling the resource from wells is desirable either; its weird to have a resource that is completely useless except for a single wonder.

Maybe +5% water in all cities would work better?

+ Renamed Sand Farms to Adapted Agriculture and made Desert Plantation an AND requirement.

Click to expand...

Sounds fine. It should also give +1 commerce to windtraps, and be an AND requirement for the next Ecological tech (I forget the name).

davidlallen said:

EDIT: There was a long discussion about themes, related to the vista / windows 7 crash. The reason keldath submitted the top level "resources" directory was because Modules/Interface/... files get written during xml initialization, which causes a vista / windows 7 crash. Can you be sure that your new theme does not re-introduce this crash?

Click to expand...

I edited the necessary files to point to the new theme, so the old Dune Theme is no longer needed. Apparently you need to have a copy all those files in the theme folder otherwise the theme doesn't work. The structure of the new theme folder is just the same as the old one and I updated all the references so it shouldn't be a problem. Leave it out until 1.7.1 if you are nervous.

Maybe +5% water in all cities would work better?

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Sounds good.

Deliverator said:

I edited the necessary files to point to the new theme, so the old Dune Theme is no longer needed. Apparently you need to have a copy all those files in the theme folder otherwise the theme doesn't work. The structure of the new theme folder is just the same as the old one and I updated all the references so it shouldn't be a problem. Leave it out until 1.7.1 if you are nervous.

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Nuts. I have already merged in Brown Theme before I realized this, and it definitely will crash under vista / windows 7. The specific problem is in this post. The same file is being written under "Brown Theme".

Keldath and the WOC team solved this problem in Dune Wars 1.6.4 as described in the release note. I do not understand WOC, modules and themes well enough to migrate your theme to their directory structure. I gather the key is to move the theme files into the top level resource directory.

I will try to "back out" the Brown Theme change, hopefully I won't break anything.

I would like two volunteers to please download the 1.7 installer and make sure it works for you: this link. I just want to make sure the installer itself works; please rename or delete your Dune Wars install directory, run the installer, and bring up a game. Let me know whether or not it works. Since this is a "major" one dot release rather than a minor "two dot" release, I just want a sanity check.

EDIT: Thank you deliverator and ahriman for confirming. Several problems were detected, and I have taken down the link. Look for 1.7 probably in the next four hours.

davidlallen said:

Nuts. I have already merged in Brown Theme before I realized this, and it definitely will crash under vista / windows 7. The specific problem is in this post. The same file is being written under "Brown Theme".

Keldath and the WOC team solved this problem in Dune Wars 1.6.4 as described in the release note. I do not understand WOC, modules and themes well enough to migrate your theme to their directory structure. I gather the key is to move the theme files into the top level resource directory.

I will try to "back out" the Brown Theme change, hopefully I won't break anything.

Click to expand...

How is this issue actually fixed then? By the installer?

If I edit the Dune Theme rather than create a new one does that get around the problem?