Ideas for Automatic Document Generator utility

[TedJackson]

Originally posted by SpiderZord
Here is PTL v1.1:

1) Fixed the subscript error - before first city the current research value was being passed to the Tech name array as FFFF, it's now trapped and tech is reported as "N/A"

Glad that's out of the way

2) At the 'end of turn event', I copy the turn, sliders & researching text to the new 'Last turn log' text box, along with the turn notes of the original text box. I then 'open' the PTL to show the log so that the 'Last turn log' can be copy and pasted per Ted's suggestion. Again, format of log??? I just took a stab based on old GOTM16 logs. The 'Goody Hut Event' button can still be used to append an entry to the turn notes, but you'll have to manually update things like 'techX'.

Great stuff!

I'll have a look and get back to you.

I guess it's time for others to make suggestions about log-file format. The more people involved at this early stage will mean fewer revisions later.

3) Moved the position of PTL to right side per Ted's suggestion. I don't know if it's any more out of the way, but it can be 'hidden' altogether with the H button for seeing underneath it.

I guess we'll soon find out!

Let me know what you think. (The attachment contains BOTH versions 1.21f & 1.14f compatible).

Thanks for the 1.14f version. I'll get back to you later.


regards

Ted

 

[RufRydyr]

You rock SpiderZord!

Here's what I'd love to see in the final version:
Log x,y position of workers/settlers/etc.
Log worker actions--moved from x,y to x,y. irrigated x,y. mined x,y. road or railroad built on x,y.

If you could make another utility that would allow someone to view the log on top of the game AND show the x,y coordinates in say the lower left as the cursor is moved that would make it possible for other users to study someone's log in a previously unprecedented manner.

Is it possible to log what a city builds? How about when the build order is changed for a city and maybe how many turns to complete?

I know I'm asking a lot, but it never hurts to ask, does it?

Thanks again for your amazing work. I'm prepared to use what you've got now for QSC18. If you could have it log to a .txt file after every turn it would save me a heck of a lot copy/pasting. I would alt-tab between civ3PTW1.21 and notepad.

Also, thanks to everyone for such inciteful suggstions. Between your work and their ideas, this is going to be something that is going to be used as much as Mapstat used to be if not more.

 

[TedJackson]

Originally posted by SpiderZord
Here is PTL v1.1:

Hi again,
I've run through a quick 15 turn assessment and everything seems to be as expected.

I dropped out of PTL for a couple of turns then reloaded PTL. It picked up fine.

I have 2 small comments:
1. I think it needs a CR/LF after the researching:topic instead of the comma (others may disagree)

currently:
000: 4000 BC science 90%, lux 0%, research: Pottery, Settler founds Entremont at start position
Worker N

preferred:
000: 4000 BC science 90%, lux 0%, research: Pottery
Settler founds Entremont at start position
Worker N

2. turn number currently starts at 0. It doen't bother me but some people may be used to calling 4000BC turn1

Thanks for speed of progress so far. I think you might be on to a winner!

regards


Ted

 

[SpiderZord]

Thanks Ted & RufRydyr -

Ted Comment 1 - Format definitely needs some thought & community concensus... for example:

000: 4000 BC science 90%, lux 0%, research: Pottery [others here? gold?]
[Unit Movement Actions Section]
[?Separate Worker Movement/Actions Section]
[Techs discovered]
[Hut results (if any)]
[Diplomacy results]
[New Cities founded]
[City - Production, food, pop etc.]

I noticed that the GOTM logs had certain items in bold, such as city names & techs - do I need to upgrade the text box to a rich text box? Using the forum collective experience, a final form which is easy to read with the right balance of detail and logical grouping of data should be determined.

Comment 2 - I report the value directly from memory, so turn 0 = 4000 BC is Civ3 design, not my choice... I can change that if it bothers people.

RufRydyr - most of your comments can be done. I'll focus on getting the rest of the data available to the class (I've also told cracker that I can ultimately integrate the QSC scoring calculation by turn - which requires quite a bit of stat gathering...)
Once I get there, we can start testing the limits

 

[Jurimax]

@Spiderzord:

If you need help testing for Civ III 1.29f, I'm always prepared.
I really appreciate what you're doing for the community. It's people like you (and cracker, ... many many others) who take the Civ III experience to another level.

Thanks

 

[TedJackson]

Originally posted by SpiderZord
Thanks Ted & RufRydyr -

Ted Comment 1 - Format definitely needs some thought & community concensus... for example:

000: 4000 BC science 90%, lux 0%, research: Pottery [others here? gold?]
[Unit Movement Actions Section]
[?Separate Worker Movement/Actions Section]
[Techs discovered]
[Hut results (if any)]
[Diplomacy results]
[New Cities founded]
[City - Production, food, pop etc.]

I noticed that the GOTM logs had certain items in bold, such as city names & techs - do I need to upgrade the text box to a rich text box? Using the forum collective experience, a final form which is easy to read with the right balance of detail and logical grouping of data should be determined.

Comment 2 - I report the value directly from memory, so turn 0 = 4000 BC is Civ3 design, not my choice... I can change that if it bothers people.

RTF could be useful but only if it makes things easier to understand. Personally text only seems fine.

I think people will want different things from PTL. For myself I would rather have more information than less, though not all the info I would like is strictly required for a "Timeline"

Personally I would like a kind of "SitRep" (Situation Report) that gives an instant overview of my game: listing each City, it's population, production, food and commerce outputs, what s currently in production. A Summary of Research, Happiness, Domination and Culture status (Although the last two might be considered "too much info" by Cracker. We'll need to check.).

Following the above a list of unit moves converted along the lines:
Alice(worker) completes road, moves N, starts irrigation.
Bert (vet warrior, 4/4) moves SE.
Morning Cloud (reg Galey, 3/3) moves NW

I prefer the use of compass directions rather than absolute co-ordinates. That way, anybody can follow a timeline without haviiing to have a copy of PTL loaded. Sorry about the extra work

Hut results would be great as would contact/trade details. In fact everything in RufRydyr's post would be welcome.

Edit:

I forgot to mention:

Required stuff (quoted verbatim from: http://www.civfanatics.com/doc/civ3/cracker/quik_start/timelines.htm

You can go into lots of detail or you can just hit the minimum information that will help people follow your great examples of management and leadership skills. If you go into detail, try to follow an example that includes the required information up at the front of your timeline entry for any given year and then expand on that information in subsequent sentences, paragraphs, or cells.

Six events are so important to understanding the game, that we wish to label them as required elements in any timeline:

When you locate a goody hut report its location, when you open it, and what you get out of the hut.
Example: “3950 BC – popped hut on mountain east of town and got a settler.”

When you meet another civilization, describe the encounter and what you learn about your rival.
Example: “3750 BC – Our scout caught sight of a Chinese warrior and we met Mao.
Holy crap! Mao already has five cities, knows Abe, Libby, and Joan and is ahead of us by six techs.”

When you engage in >any trade event, describe the exchange whether it succeeds or fails.
Example: “3600 BC – contacted a polite Mao and bought Pottery for 45 gold leaving 15 gold in our treasury.”

If you establish embassy/conduct diplomacy describe the events, the costs, and anything you learn.
Example: “3700 BC – established an embassy in Beijing for 25 gold & revealed that Mao has Silks near his capital.
Plus the town is already at pop 3 and Mao is building the Pyramids. How’d he do that?”

Describe any adjustments you make to research or luxury spending rates.
Example: “3450 BC – turned research down to 0% to build cash
3200 BC – treasury is now up to 52 gold so turned research up to 100% for Alphabet in 6 turns.”

Describe any technology research decisions.
Example: “3900 BC – popped alphabet out of a goody hut, so switched research from the Wheel to Writing.”

There are a couple of other points made on the page, so you might like to have a look yourself.


Again, anything I can do to help just let me know.

regards


Ted

 

[ControlFreak]

Gone on business for a weekend and look at the progress! SpiderZord, you are awesome

I haven't been able to download and try yet. Hope to this afternoon. Meantime, heres some initial thoughts.

I agree with Ted that compass movements would be easier to follow if someone doesn't have PTL.

I think that the log should have a rich text box because many people like to highlight techs, AI civs or city names. A refined version might even provide a list of things you want highlighted and provide user defined formats for each of those things. (Way future wishlist.)

My logs usually incorporate the results of the goodyhut and the founding of cities right after the unit that did it moves. However, I can see the value of all unit moves being in an area that could be skipped if it becomes to much info. Maybe there could be a selection filter that would include or not include the various catagories. (Forgive me if this is already the case as I haven't downloaded and played yet.)

I agree with RufRydyr that build changes should be tracked. I also think it is useful to indicate micromanagement but I'm not sure how. Timelines have MM-food, MM-sheild, MM-gold/commerce when a player chooses different tiles to work for some intended purpose. Maybe if the worked tiles in a city change, a comparison to what its old production was with its new production would be enough. (MM from 4f,3s,2g to 2f,4s,1g)

There are a few purposes of the timelines. One is to allow other players to follow what you did in an attempt to find things they could have/should have done in their own game. Its a learning tool. Another is to provide some of the "Whys" when comparing two games that got different results. (Oh you got a settler from that first hut, or Oh, you chopped that forest and irrigated the game tile.) The more info the better.

Keep up the good work. I'll check back in after I've tried it.

 

[RufRydyr]

Incredible progress!

How bout an options panel that lets each user select the details to report?
How bout options beside each item that allows individual users to select the font, size, and even color? Or maybe it would be easier to follow if they are standard. I think colors would be nice, though.

 

[ControlFreak]

Forgot I haven't patched up to 1.21.

If its not to much trouble, could you post the 1.14 version sent to Tom when ready. Thanks.

 

[RufRydyr]

I just thought of something else. I don't even know if it's practical, but it would be pretty cool.

It would be cool to have an add screenshot button. When you press it, it changes the mouse cursor. Then you click on the map in the upper-left corner of your intended screenshot and drag a box to the lower-right corner. When you release the screenshot appears in the notes section and some options appear. Reduce by X percent, discard, keep.

I'm just starting to teach myself VB and I don't even know if this is doable or reasonable like I said, but adding screenshots is another one of the time consuming tasks that players are doing.

 

[SpiderZord]

Originally posted by ControlFreak
Forgot I haven't patched up to 1.21.

If its not to much trouble, could you post the 1.14 version sent to Tom when ready. Thanks.

The attachment at this post:

PTL 1.1 Post

has both versions in the zip...

 

[RufRydyr]

4000BC is turn 0 of 540 and 1000BC is turn 80. You can see the crappy excel spreadsheet i made with the turn numbers at:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48286

I used the DateScoreCalc thingy to see the years/dates. It's html and I used view source.

 

[ControlFreak]

@SpiderZord

I tried it last night. I think the interface will work great. It was easy to hide and bring back. The year and data always updated. I'm looking forward to the more fleshed out version to see if I can really keep my timelines using it.

Thanks for the work you're doing.
I guess I'm going to have to learn VB so I can help and don't feel so bad about making suggestions for further modifications.

 

[RufRydyr]

Just wondering what the status is.

Also, have you seen CivLackey's Civ Assistants? There's a spot for a Historian Assistant that is under devopment. Maybe you guys could get together, because the concept for this program and that one are pretty similar.

Regarding colors and stuff: I used cool colors and bold and stuff for QSC18 in Excel, but it all disappeared when converting to .txt I wound up just taking screenshots of the spreadsheet and converting to .jpeg So, having this program create a text file would be best for posting in the forum I think.

 

[ControlFreak]

Actually the forums have their own VB commands like "color=red" and bold (B)

You could have the export include the tags for those things.

 

[SpiderZord]

Originally posted by RufRydyr
Just wondering what the status is.

Also, have you seen CivLackey's Civ Assistants? There's a spot for a Historian Assistant that is under devopment. Maybe you guys could get together, because the concept for this program and that one are pretty similar.

Regarding colors and stuff: I used cool colors and bold and stuff for QSC18 in Excel, but it all disappeared when converting to .txt I wound up just taking screenshots of the spreadsheet and converting to .jpeg So, having this program create a text file would be best for posting in the forum I think.

PTL Status: I've been busy with a couple of PB issues - chasing down a bug in reading the city data (which is now fixed, but would have impacted PTL too). I can now focus on the remaining data.

I haven't heard of the Civ Assistant - but I'll check it out.

I like ControlFreak's idea on the color tags - a control panel with options for each data type, etc.

 

[kring]

Civ Assistant Link

There is a beta version out that includes the Historian and Snapshot Assistants, you can PM CivLackey for the links to them. They also seem to work for PtW (not sure about the Combat Calculator since I don't use it much).

 

[RufRydyr]

@ControlFreak- Ditto. Great idea on the tags. I wonder how difficult it would be to have this program output 2 versions of the data. 1 with the tags that you've selected for copy/pasting into the forum and 1 with the tags removed for easier reading in notepad. It wouldn't be that hard to have a little utility that would remove all the '['s, ']'s, and everthing inside them, would it?

@Kring - Downloaded Civ Assistant last week and I'm using PTW 1.21 Combat Calculator works fine and it even lets you manually add in the new UUs from PTW. edit: oops just reread your post. I'm not using the beta with the historian and screenshot assistant in it.

 

[ControlFreak]

@SpiderZord
Any luck finding the diplomacy stuff for the AI in memory? I'm still wondering how we'll get the trade info, first contact info and embassy info.

As far as having output files with or without tags, it might be a good idea to have PTL save its log in its own datafile with the options to load a log (so we can continue from a save game). Then have an output window that will post-process the datafile adding whatever formating was selected from the tag options screen. (Is that enough extra work for you yet SpiderZord?) If you have advice on a quick and cheap way for me to start VB programming, I'd be happy to try and help with some of this stuff. Otherwise, I'll just keep contributing to the comments from the peanut gallery.

Rock on.

 

[RufRydyr]

Originally posted by ControlFreak
If you have advice on a quick and cheap way for me to start VB programming, I'd be happy to try and help with some of this stuff. Otherwise, I'll just keep contributing to the comments from the peanut gallery.

Rock on.

I picked up html pretty quickly, but VB is another story. I've had a textbook for quite awhile and have been making slowwwwwww headway in it. Guess I'll be sitting beside you throwing popcorn @ you.