What is the status on BAR? what is left and what can the community do to help?

What is the status on BAR? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Balanced Annihilation with remade Units

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smoth
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What is the status on BAR? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by smoth »

So it has been a while, I had to dig several pages deep to retrieve the links to all these threads... that stuff needs to be in a sticky btw.
  • What is left?
  • What can the community help with?
http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/svn/branches/BAR
BAR SVN

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=30537
BAR Arm Models

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=24689
BAR Core Models

IP related to just names/icons/logos

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=27412
BAR Name discussion

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=32502
BAR LOGO discussion. (Sereiya provided an excellent logo, will it be used?)

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=31601
BAR SubForum discussion
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Silentwings
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Re: What is the status on bar? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by Silentwings »

This is my list of the minimum left to be done for a beta release, which I put together some months ago so as there was a visible record (behe & others may have stuff they'd want to add).

http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balates ... ta+release
tzaeru
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Re: What is the status on bar? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by tzaeru »

Both are great work. :)

Thanks for them!
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smoth
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Re: What is the status on bar? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by smoth »

Silent, on these issues:
  • Hard to distinguish between certain units
    http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balatest/ticket/42
    can you pm me the unit names and model files? I can sit down and try to revisit the construction units today. I have dance in 2 hours but after I get back, I should have some time to sit down and fix this.
  • create corsok/armlun models & add unitdefs
    http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balatest/ticket/822
    do they just need models and what is wrong with their defs?
  • sInfo should contain more info about units
    http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balatest/ticket/792
    I extended my unit def descriptions years ago, can probably do a custom version of this, with nice color coding etc for bar. What is the unit info widget name, what needs to be expressed can I get a basic mockup?
    IE:
    (unit name) (faction name)
    (can only target)
    bad at shooting(bad target)
    (gun1name) (damage ###)
    energy(blue colored) metal(brownish grey colored)
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Silentwings
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Re: What is the status on bar? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by Silentwings »

can you pm me the unit names?
I don't have a comprehensive list, or even any list at all, but there are quite a few. Core veh are the worst culprits, iirc.
do they just need models and what is wrong with their defs?
They don't have models & they need them. They are the t3 hovercraft (reasonably recent "new" units in BA). The unitdefs can be made easily from the BA ones, which do exist, but there's not much point making them until the models are there.
sInfo should contain more info about units
I'm not sure, this was behes request (I'd be happy with the current sInfo). There is some info in the discussion on the ticket. I kind of prefer leaving sInfo as it is and making some kind of unit+buildtree explorer inside the main menu.
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smoth
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Re: What is the status on bar? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by smoth »

The explorer concept has been on my to do list for sometime, I really wanted to show the actual model though but sadly about 6 years later I may just have to resort to a prerendered picture. I could take that on as well.
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Silentwings
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Re: What is the status on bar? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by Silentwings »

A prerendered picture is not so bad - the unit icons in bar are quite high resolutions for icons.
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Jazcash
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Re: What is the status on bar? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by Jazcash »

Have you guys decided upon a name yet? :P
tzaeru
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Re: What is the status on bar? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by tzaeru »

Silentwings wrote:
can you pm me the unit names?
I don't have a comprehensive list, or even any list at all, but there are quite a few. Core veh are the worst culprits, iirc. .
Pretty much all the Core vehicles are strikingly similar with one or several other units when zoomed out, yes. Weasel and Spoiler look similar at higher zooms. Wolverine, Lever and Raider look very similar. Garpike and Instigator look similar.

I actually have started to like the models of BAR over time, but the color and material variety in the textures is a little low which, combined with similar scales on units of same "type", leads to issues. How many different units is in this picture?

One further problem may be related to performance. On my GPU (GTX650 TI) which shouldn't be totally out-dated, I get a spike of lag when I select an unit or building that can construct things. Perhaps the texture sizes for the buildable icons are a little too large...? Can lower resolution alternatives be supplied?
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Silentwings
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Re: What is the status on bar? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by Silentwings »

performance ... I get a spike of lag when I select an unit or building that can construct things.
Check the widget profiler when you do this maybe? Does it depend on the faction?

When we did a serious test at the end of the block of work last summer, the performance of BAR under strain was essentially equal to that of BA (modulo http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balatest/ticket/728). It is more dependent on the particular system since BAR has much more complicated gfx requirements.The idling fps when not under strain is lower due mostly to the chili UI, but this is a negligible effect compared to a high sim load. What you are seeing is almost certainly some trivial bug in the UI. (I haven't tried to reproduce.)
Have you guys decided upon a name yet?
Don't be silly :) http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balatest/ticket/579 is the discussion
tzaeru
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Re: What is the status on bar? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by tzaeru »

New Enchanment? I like that one. Got my vote!

...Oooo how funny. *Ahem*

Sorry. Sorry. I'll chip in something to that later..
Silentwings wrote:
I get a spike of lag when I select an unit or building that can construct things.
Check the widget profiler when you do this maybe? Does it depend on the faction?
It's the SelectMenu. I can kneel my computer by just keeping "Ctrl+C" down to continously re-select my commander. Smaller spike of lag is evident after going through a few units and then again selecting an unit that can construct.

In more detail and when profiling, bgu_smenu.lua's loadPanels, AddInSequence and parseCmds take the icing on the cake in regards to performance. My Lua is very poor, but when I skim that code file, perhaps something there was cacheable? It seems to recreate a lot of data every time that the unit menu is opened..

object.Lua's and control.Lua's "New" take a lot of time, too, but I'd suspect that it's a secondary effect caused by the menu reload or profiling.
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Silentwings
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Re: What is the status on BAR? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by Silentwings »

Just to say that myself and Behe have briefly spoke about this and planned too resolve the situation of BAR being 'in limbo' before the end of this summer. We'll discuss how to actually do this in our own time.

So, to answer the question, the status is: contributions welcome!
tzaeru
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Re: What is the status on BAR? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by tzaeru »

That's great news! :-)

I think BAR is very, very close to first full release candidate. I hope I can muster the time to contribute concretely to the codebase.

Are your planning your discussions to be publicly viewable and contributable to by other people? Planning a concrete "These exact things, then release" list?
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smoth
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Re: What is the status on BAR? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by smoth »

I was here all day yesterday trying to reach you blue stone. it may have just been at an award time(timezones, different part of the world etc) or the lobby issues created a problem. Either way, I was there.. just had no one to talk to before I started to work on the issues...

Today I am going to be busy but please, I need to get those models and names before I can look at changing anything.

I would like permission to start a thread for each defect I would like to start on and then get JUST the team's feedback where relevant?
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Silentwings
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Re: What is the status on BAR? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by Silentwings »

My view on what should be done for a beta release is already linked too above, and this thread/forum can be used for discussions & people wanting to contribute or discuss such things. By a complete coincidence, me + Behe end up in the same place for part of the summer (and in the past too), so we'll likely think about the future after a beta release then.

I'm sorry that I'm not very easy to reach in chat - I will be logged in for the next few hours (which is tonight, for me). You may start as many threads as you like :)
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smoth
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Re: What is the status on BAR? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by smoth »

The fiance and I are about to go watch mad max so I will be back in about 3 hours, just missing you :( but I will come back review the thread and see what I can do,
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Silentwings
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Re: What is the status on BAR? what is left and what can the community do to help?

Post by Silentwings »

@smoth: tzaeru has added some notes on similarities to the trac ticket, http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balatest/ticket/42
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