incremental patch discussion

[davidlallen]

I have made about 30 minor changes and fixes and there are no easy ones left. Should I put up a 1.4.9 which includes the Sept 6 art patch? Or wait for some other things which may come soon, such as a building art patch, mercenary system, or magic fix to the "scared settler" problem?

 

[koma13]

Here is the update for the new homeworld screen:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jjmkzcjo5ou

You need Dune Wars 1.4.8. New soundtrack and art patch by Deliverator is recommended.



EDIT:

Ok, now some more infos:

First, I want to say thanks to the lopez. His mercenary mod was a big inspiration and I used a lot of code from it.

Changelog:

- almost everything
- each player have now an unit pool starting with 5 units
- each turn there is a chance of 5% of adding another unit to that pool
- player can now select arrival city for homeworld units
- added a special homeworld promotion (currently has +10% strength but can be changed inside CIV4PromotionInfos.xml)
- added elite units with 1-2 promotions (sometimes even more)
- no more foreign uu
- units needing an offworld resource are only added if player has that offworld resource
- lot of new gfx

To get all the fancy graphics make sure you have your graphic options set up to high.

 

[Ahriman]

Cool, maybe david should go ahead and release the 1.4.9 with those changes?
Does it have the windtrap/well changes? Thats probably worth examining.

 

[davidlallen]

Here is the update for the new homeworld screen:

Great. I notice you have included a cvgamecoredll.dll, but no sdk source files. I have made local sdk source file changes post-1.4.8 for all terrain transport. Have you made any sdk source file changes? Please send the files.

EDIT: Oops. The files are there. Never mind.

Cool, maybe david should go ahead and release the 1.4.9 with those changes? Does it have the windtrap/well changes? Thats probably worth examining.

Koma's update does not have my changes to reduce the water yield of windtraps and wells. I can merge his changes into mine, and release a 1.4.9. I was hoping to get some feedback from the BBAI team about why settlers are so scared, and fix it, but nothing yet.

 

[Ahriman]

I can merge his changes into mine, and release a 1.4.9.

This is what I meant - and I meant the windtrap/well change in your changes. If you prefer to wait for settler ideas, that obviously that would be fine too.

 

[koma13]

I notice you have included a cvgamecoredll.dll, but no sdk source files

No, source files are included inside CvGameCoreDll folder. Only changes I made were removing the homeworld ai.

I will next fix that settler problem ... again. We have to be more careful in future when doing those changes.

 

[Ahriman]

You have some idea of what might be causing the settler problem? Awesome!

 

[Ahriman]

Umm... bug; whatever homeworld purchase AI there is seems to be activated for the human player!

On my turn (very early in the game, long before offword trade), without any intervention on my part, I gained a quad in my capital with the Homeworld promotion, and had a bunch of gold deducted from my treasury.

So the homeworld is functioning:
a) without human intervention
b) giving units that the player doesn't have the tech for
c) before offworld trade and landing stages.

All of which are problems.

 

[davidlallen]

I will next fix that settler problem ... again. We have to be more careful in future when doing those changes.

I am guessing you mean, either keldath or I dropped some of your previous changes, so the same problem has re-appeared. Please give a little more detail so we can be sure it does not happen again. If it is the same problem, I am a little surprised, because I have checked carefully that the problem appears even when settlers are sent elsewhere on the same continent, no water travel involved at all. Your previous changes were to make more colony sites attractive (not the problem here) and to overlook threats from high strength ocean units (also not the problem here).

Anyway I am looking forward to your fix.

 

[Ahriman]

Also: Revolution mod has somehow been turned on again?
I'm getting revolt status messages.

 

[koma13]

So the homeworld is functioning:
a) without human intervention
b) giving units that the player doesn't have the tech for
c) before offworld trade and landing stages.

a) ok, this shouldn't happen - I will look into it
b) I think this is fine. Units are already limited by number, no need for further restrictions
c) I hear that for the first time, but I can do it.

Also: Revolution mod has somehow been turned on again?
I'm getting revolt status messages.

This have nothing to do with my update...

I am guessing you mean, either keldath or I dropped some of your previous changes, so the same problem has re-appeared. Please give a little more detail so we can be sure it does not happen again. If it is the same problem, I am a little surprised, because I have checked carefully that the problem appears even when settlers are sent elsewhere on the same continent, no water travel involved at all. Your previous changes were to make more colony sites attractive (not the problem here) and to overlook threats from high strength ocean units (also not the problem here).

No, I don't have a clue what is preventing the ai from settling. But I will create a custom log file, tracing most settler actions. This will hopefully help to indicate the problem.


Here is another bug:
When I set graphic settings to low and start a new game, all unselected units in main screen have vanilla unit graphics.

Spoiler :

 

[Ahriman]

a) ok, this shouldn't happen - I will look into it
b) I think this is fine. Units are already limited by number, no need for further restrictions
c) I hear that for the first time, but I can do it.

I think b) is a problem, particularly if c) isn't satisfied. Why bother researching a tech to enable a unit if I can just buy the unit? I agree that its less of a problem with the limited units, and less of a problem once c is satisfied; as it stands you can buy a quad or bladesmen in the first few turns and go wipe out a neighbor.
c) Has been discussed several times. I think there is a consensus that you shouldn't be able to order any offworld units until the offworld trade tech; this kindof represents your (re)connection with the rest of the galaxy (including your homeworld). It was also suggested that you should only be able to purchase units that in cities with a Landing stage or spaceport.

@David did your 30 bug fixes or so manage to track down the cause of the magical disappearing landing stage?

When I set graphic settings to low and start a new game, all unselected units in main screen have vanilla unit graphics.

Bizarre never seen this.

Another bug:
I am now getting python exceptions when trying to load the F6 tech screen:
CvTechChooser has no attribute 'sTechTabid"
Attribute error
File "CvTechChooser", in line 786, in updateTechRecords.
File "CvScreensInterface", line 985, in forceScreensUpdate
File "CvTechInput", line 1102, in handleInput
File "CvTechInput", line 956, in handleInput

 

[davidlallen]

Also: Revolution mod has somehow been turned on again?
I'm getting revolt status messages.

Please edit your civilizationiv.ini file according to the previous instructions and turn the 1111 to 0000 again. I wish I understood what was doing this.

Umm... bug; whatever homeworld purchase AI there is seems to be activated for the human player!

I am not seeing this behavior. I gave myself 500 gold using WB and played for several turns, and no units magically appeared.

 

[Ahriman]

I am not seeing this behavior. I gave myself 500 gold using WB and played for several turns, and no units magically appeared.

Well, playing as Bene Tl, I have had *several* units purchased for me without my consent
I voluntarily purchased a single unit in this game, but the game has purchased a settler, 2 scout thopters, a rocket trooper, a quad and a bladesman for me automatically.

Save attached.

 

[davidlallen]

I think there is a consensus that you shouldn't be able to order any offworld units until the offworld trade tech ... It was also suggested that you should only be able to purchase units that in cities with a Landing stage or spaceport.

Evidently there was no consensus on this. Delaying reinforcements till a tech or building will definitely solve the rush problem of purchasing a quad.

@David did your 30 bug fixes or so manage to track down the cause of the magical disappearing landing stage?

Sadly, no. So perhaps we should prevent reinforcements until offworld trade tech, rather than using any buildings for now.

Another bug: I am now getting python exceptions when trying to load the F6 tech screen: CvTechChooser has no attribute 'sTechTabid"

Me too. Also when I start the game, I see addImmediate messages (top center of screen) about reloading python modules, like five times. I know from previous experience that the python for the BUG tech chooser does not like being reloaded. So the key question is, why does the python get reloaded several times at start.

 

[Ahriman]

Please edit your civilizationiv.ini file according to the previous instructions and turn the 1111 to 0000 again. I wish I understood what was doing this.

My game options are currently:

; Game Options
GameOptions = 00000000000110000000000010000

Maybe its not the last 4, because of other mods I have installed?
I previously changed it from

; Game Options
GameOptions = 00000000000110000000000011110

Maybe this is what turned them back on?

 

[davidlallen]

My game options are currently:

; Game Options
GameOptions = 00000000000110000000000010000

Maybe its not the last 4, because of other mods I have installed?
I previously changed it from

; Game Options
GameOptions = 00000000000110000000000011110

Maybe this is what turned them back on?

I dunno what turned them back on. I guess for you, there is one game option after the four revolutions ones; so change that 1 near the end of your options to 0.

 

[Ahriman]

I guess for you, there is one game option after the four revolutions ones; so change that 1 near the end of your options to 0.

This seems likely.

I vaguely remember something like this happening with warhammer, and that there is a way to fix it by going to the Dune reduced configuration settings file in the main Civ4/BeyondtheSword/Mods/dunereduced folder and adding a

; Game Options
GameOptions = 00000000000000000000000000000

(or something similar)

to the to the file there.

I think part of the issue is that these options get changed when you load different mods, so the safest thing to do is to set their defaults all back to zero every time you load the mod again.

So maybe when I played Mars, now! or something my config options were changed.

Does that sound sensible?

 

[davidlallen]

DA61. GUI suggestions for homeworld screen:

a. The title of the screen should be "Purchase Reinforcements" and the title should always be visible.

b. Please put a title "Select Destination:" above the list of cities so it will be more clear that you must do something with this list.

c. Please put a title "Select Units:" above the list of units.

d. If there are no units available, please put a text "No reinforcements presently available" instead of a blank space.

e. Although the launch button is an interesting idea, "Purchase" is more clear. This button should always be present, but if no units or city is selected, it should be greyed out.

f. Is it possible to give dynamic hover help for the "Purchase" button? It is useful to grey out buttons which cannot be selected, but it may be frustrating for a beginning user to understand why a button is greyed out. If possible, when it is greyed out, the button should have hover help which says "Select units and destination first".

g. Perhaps the buttons should be at the bottom; this is much more common in GUI design.

h. I can select more units than I have money. Is it possible to dynamically grey out the units which can not be purchased due to lack of funds, to prevent the user from getting into this situation?

i. I guess elite units are shown in orange color. Is it possible to add a way to see what promotions it has before purchasing?

 

[koma13]

Well, playing as Bene Tl, I have had *several* units purchased for me without my consent
I voluntarily purchased a single unit in this game, but the game has purchased a settler, 2 scout thopters, a rocket trooper, a quad and a bladesman for me automatically.

Save attached.

True! I enabled ai handling for human player for testing purpose and forgot to turn it off again before uploading. But as you can see, the ai is buying units.