hmm.. I am having some problems with this version.. it is saving every map no matter what options I set it to..
Am I doing something wrong?
Am I doing something wrong?
- Thread starter Moonsinger
- Start date
Gyathaar said:
Make sure the value of "Save ALL maps of domination limit >= this number" in the File/Setup/Extra tab is at least equal or greater than the Minimum Domination limit of the acceptable map.
//Edit: Just change it to v5.7. There wasn't thing different between v5.6 and v5.7 except for extra syntax check on the new options to make sure they are valid; otherwise, if you forget to set them correctly (or not setting them at all), all a lot of maps will be saved.
Link to the latest:
MapFinder 2005 v5.7 (updated Jan 24, 2005)
ah.. I get it.. it was the minimum cow count.. when I left that at -1 it would save all maps with -1 or more cows 
Gyathaar said:ah.. I get it.. it was the minimum cow count.. when I left that at -1 it would save all maps with -1 or more cows
My bad! I had already fixed that one in version 5.7 too.
Perhaps instead of implementing complex logic, i.e.
(2 cows) OR (1 cow AND 1 wheat) OR ...
the user could assign his own values for each resource or luxury, such as cow=10, ivory=5, and also require the total to be above some number for a map to be saved.
The same would work for terrain, but here the user might put negative values for tundra and desert, positive values for grassland. The "maximum" column could mean count only this many squares towards the total, for example, only count 1 fresh water square towards the desired total.
This would allow freedom for the user to select which maps to save and wouldn't be hard to program within the current MapFinder framework.
What do people think?
(2 cows) OR (1 cow AND 1 wheat) OR ...
the user could assign his own values for each resource or luxury, such as cow=10, ivory=5, and also require the total to be above some number for a map to be saved.
The same would work for terrain, but here the user might put negative values for tundra and desert, positive values for grassland. The "maximum" column could mean count only this many squares towards the total, for example, only count 1 fresh water square towards the desired total.
This would allow freedom for the user to select which maps to save and wouldn't be hard to program within the current MapFinder framework.
What do people think?
I second bluejay's suggestion, I'm thinking something more along a weight. But this would take a not minor redesign of the UI.
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing a generic collection of criteria that I can set to decide to save a game. Currently its a "all of this stuff" which is hit or miss IMO, you either get lucky, or you set your criteria down and end up not benefitting much from the process.
With a generic collection, I could set the first to 2 cows minimum, the second to 3 bonus food, the third to 3 gold generating luxuries. This borders on whats been suggested with adding some minor conditional code.
Not sure how your code binded with Diantius's(sp?) dll, but I think I could write up another small dll that would parse a file with these conditionals or weightings, and sit there ready to be called and calculated. All you would need do is say what you need returned and what data you would send.
(For the weighting option)
It could be something as simple as the number and variety of resources, and you'd expect a single number back. Say you weigh grassland cows at 1.0, plains cows at 0.25, grassland wheat at 0.75 and plains wheat at 0.75. And you have bonus food set to 1 or greater to save. With a grass cows, 4 plain cows, and 2 of either wheat you would save, and of course any combination of these.
(For the conditionals option)
This is effecively the same as the weighting, but its more straightforward for the average human. The above example would be more clearly: grass cow or plain cow >= 4 or any wheat > 2.
Both achieve the same purpose and both are better suited in different cases. I would personally prefer the weighting option, because with conditionals I would have to think too hard to be sure I got all the options, whereas the weights I just give every object one and let math do all the work.
On another note, I had some problems running this initially and I figured I would share (and hope this wasn't already raised in pages 7-17), using the WindowsFileBox option in the .ini file causes the game to crash everytime a map is saved.
And one final suggestion, change the Setup text "delay for Loading Game" to "delay for Creating Game" or better yet "delay for Generating Map", for the longest time I was completely confused by this. I though it was related to the conquests restarting thing (ie actually loading the game). I was setting it to 35s and wondering why the app was so damn irresponsive. This coupled with my earlier problem with it crashing the game, I didn't immediately realize that that crashing was unintentional.
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing a generic collection of criteria that I can set to decide to save a game. Currently its a "all of this stuff" which is hit or miss IMO, you either get lucky, or you set your criteria down and end up not benefitting much from the process.
With a generic collection, I could set the first to 2 cows minimum, the second to 3 bonus food, the third to 3 gold generating luxuries. This borders on whats been suggested with adding some minor conditional code.
Not sure how your code binded with Diantius's(sp?) dll, but I think I could write up another small dll that would parse a file with these conditionals or weightings, and sit there ready to be called and calculated. All you would need do is say what you need returned and what data you would send.
(For the weighting option)
It could be something as simple as the number and variety of resources, and you'd expect a single number back. Say you weigh grassland cows at 1.0, plains cows at 0.25, grassland wheat at 0.75 and plains wheat at 0.75. And you have bonus food set to 1 or greater to save. With a grass cows, 4 plain cows, and 2 of either wheat you would save, and of course any combination of these.
(For the conditionals option)
This is effecively the same as the weighting, but its more straightforward for the average human. The above example would be more clearly: grass cow or plain cow >= 4 or any wheat > 2.
Both achieve the same purpose and both are better suited in different cases. I would personally prefer the weighting option, because with conditionals I would have to think too hard to be sure I got all the options, whereas the weights I just give every object one and let math do all the work.
On another note, I had some problems running this initially and I figured I would share (and hope this wasn't already raised in pages 7-17), using the WindowsFileBox option in the .ini file causes the game to crash everytime a map is saved.
And one final suggestion, change the Setup text "delay for Loading Game" to "delay for Creating Game" or better yet "delay for Generating Map", for the longest time I was completely confused by this. I though it was related to the conquests restarting thing (ie actually loading the game). I was setting it to 35s and wondering why the app was so damn irresponsive. This coupled with my earlier problem with it crashing the game, I didn't immediately realize that that crashing was unintentional.
Smirk said:
Originally, the program was designed to look for one set of criteria: map with high domination limit with cattle and river visible at the starting location. That was it! Since then, it has evolved like crazy; therefore, the only way to fullfill everyone wish is to have a logic interpreter (fully supporting AND, OR, open and close bracket, and the whole nine yard that goes with it) so that users can configure/setup their own set of criteria. IMO, that would the next step in this evolution!
If you happen to find any source code for a simple calculator, please post the link...because I could easily adapt it into this program to interpret logic instead of numerical operators. For example, instead of handling + or -, it will be handling AND, OR logic instead. A piece of cake! That would be much easier than having to write a recursive routine from scratch to parse user conditional inputs.
Just want to let you know version 5.7 seems pretty stable.. just came back home after a week away, and its still running, and has done 37k map generations
Moonsinger said:
I've written code of this nature many times, what sort of interface are you looking for?
The simpliest I think, and would solve the most problems, would be to have a number of drop down boxes with your operations, one would be a terrain, the other would be the resources, others would include your operand (<,>,=,etc) and your control (a number typically). This with an Add button would add the current selected traits to a list, which could be manipulated by selecting a rule and deleting it (the only other action would be to edit, but that would require you updating the boxes which isn't essential, delete and readd is easy enough to start).
For instance ([] is to denote the drop down box selected item):
[grassland][cow][>][0] Add
[plains][cow][>][1] Add
[grassland][wheat][>][1] Add
[plains][wheat][>][3] Add
Then in the list you would have 4 items:
Save when there are:
more than 0 cows on grasslands OR
more than 1 cows on plains OR
more than 1 wheats on grasslands OR
more than 3 wheats on plains
So that leaves AND as the only logical operations left out of this description. So the last box would contain AND/OR, OR would be default and contained here only for consistency. Adding AND would make the list order based, so to accomplish and AND case you first enter your condition with AND selected, then add the next condition (adding AND again here would make it a 3 conditon AND). Deciding whether this is before or after the case makes no difference but can be important since once an AND is preset the list then depends on the order, and thus editing a condition then becomes more essential.
The point of this interface description is that 1.) you do need to parse text nor error check since you cannot create an erronous conditon using the interface, and 2.) its a simple interface that I've seen many times and its pretty simple to code. It would be easier to write it than search for it I would think. Of the top of my head GameSpy uses an interface very similar to this for dealing with its filter rules (filtering servers).
Also I have some code that deals with this sort of issue, although on a completely different problem set, so I can search my backups and find it. Let me know if you want this, or if you prefer pseducode. Its possible that I could rewrite my code to something in english easier than you could read the code, specially if you are a pascal/delphi coder predominately.
So let me know if this is the sort of thing you are thinking.
It's been real stable for me too, running every day while I'm at work and over the weekend while I'm away. Nice one Moonsinger!Gyathaar said:Just want to let you know version 5.7 seems pretty stable.. just came back home after a week away, and its still running, and has done 37k map generations
I do have a suggestion though. I think this should be easier to implement than many of the others. I've been using the "Minimum # Food Bonus" recently rather than "Minimum # Cattle" as I'm also interested in Grassland Wheat or Floodplains Wheat for +4 food in Despotism. I'm getting lots of other types of food bonus though, such as Fish/Game/Oasis. I'm wondering if you could allow us to specify an amount of food that qualifies as a Food Bonus. That way I could set it to +5 (=+4 in Despotism) to find maps with 3 or more tiles with 5 or more food in them. What do you think?
Smirk said:
Well, I could give that a try to see what happen. Since I have been dealing with many users who don't understand anything about mutual exclusive, if we allow them to pick their own logics, they would some how cancel each other out with the AND rule, then screem at me that the program doesn't work.
To make sure that this doesn't happen, I would still have to code a sophisticate user interface for rule selection.I could read any type of codes. I haven't yet encountered a code or a programming language that I couldn't read. Anyway, you don't have to dig up your backup because the core of that is simple enough. When I have time, I will work on that user interface.
Dianthus said:It's been real stable for me too, running every day while I'm at work and over the weekend while I'm away. Nice one Moonsinger!
I'm really happy about that too!
Btw, have you encountered any more problem with the screen shot issue? If you are not in any hurry, I will take care of this in a couple of weeks when I redo the user interface to alllow users to specific their own logics (as mentioned on the previous post). If you need this done right away, I'm sure that won't be a problem - you know that I will do almost anything for you, you know.
No problems at all, it's been solid as a rock!Moonsinger said:I'm really happy about that too!
No hurry. Whenever you get a round tuit, or feel like it, or whatever. It's pretty easy to find the ones I want by sorting, I'm just being lazyMoonsinger said:If you are not in any hurry, I will take care of this in a couple of weeks when I redo the user interface to alllow users to specific their own logics (as mentioned on the previous post). If you need this done right away, I'm sure that won't be a problem - you know that I will do almost anything for you, you know.
.Moonsinger said:...they would some how cancel each other out with the AND rule, then screem at me that the program doesn't work.
Yeah, it can get complex, but its kinda important, for instance the app currently is all AND logic. I have an idea that may solve the problem as you see it, split the interface, have a list of OR rules, and a list of AND rules. (That with some clear text such as "All things in this list *must* be present for the map to be saved", should prevent many confusion problems.)
My main concern is being able to specify the bonuses, but at the same time I want to exclude whole groups of maps based on absense of river, freshwater, existance of desert or tundra etc.
dan14444 said:For some weird reason the program cannot restart my Civ, so I have to use it in about 100 map increments
Where is your autosave folder? Is there a fille "Civ3Conquests.exe" in the "..\save\autosave" of your autosave directory for C3C? Note: There are three different autosave directories for Civ3, one for vanilla Civ3, one for PTW, and one for C3C; make sure that you select the correct one for the version of Civ that you are running or it won't work!
And a question Moonsinger missed, but I think's worth askingdan14444 said:For some weird reason the program cannot restart my Civ, so I have to use it in about 100 map increments
. Which version of MapFinder are you using?
Is it possible with the latest version of MapFinder to accept maps with only rivers? (viz. Exclude Lake-only maps.)
(I've been setting "Fresh Water Minimum" to TWO as a way of eliminating "1-tile-Lake-No-River" maps.....is there a better way? )
(I've been setting "Fresh Water Minimum" to TWO as a way of eliminating "1-tile-Lake-No-River" maps.....is there a better way?
)
Dianthus said:And a question Moonsinger missed, but I think's worth asking
Thanks Dianthus! That's a very important question.
EMan said:Is it possible with the latest version of MapFinder to accept maps with only rivers? (viz. Exclude Lake-only maps.)
(I've been setting "Fresh Water Minimum" to TWO as a way of eliminating "1-tile-Lake-No-River" maps.....is there a better way?
You should be able to look for just river and much more after I implement the new user interface to allow users to customize their own search formula (in a few weeks).
Thanks Ms. MS. 
Will you then also change the heading: "Terrain criteria for 9 tiles at the starting location" to something like "Terrain criteria for ALL viewable tiles at the starting location"?
Wish List: Are you planning on giving options like:
1. All viewable tiles
2. All viewable tiles excluding Settler Tile
3. All viewable tiles excluding starting-9 tiles
4. 9 start-positon tiles only
5. 8 start-positon tiles only (viz. exclude Settler Tile)?
Will you then also change the heading: "Terrain criteria for 9 tiles at the starting location" to something like "Terrain criteria for ALL viewable tiles at the starting location"?
Wish List: Are you planning on giving options like:
1. All viewable tiles
2. All viewable tiles excluding Settler Tile
3. All viewable tiles excluding starting-9 tiles
4. 9 start-positon tiles only
5. 8 start-positon tiles only (viz. exclude Settler Tile)?
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