XTA Development discussion - Page 14

XTA Development discussion

Discuss game development here, from a distinct game project to an accessible third-party mutator, down to the interaction and design of individual units if you like.

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Better then v7?

Poll ended at 08 Nov 2006, 03:04

Yes
23
82%
No
5
18%
 
Total votes: 28

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AF
AI Developer
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Post by AF »

press tab for autcomplete

aka

.give cor_

press tab

a list of all usernames starting with cor_ is displayed.

But this is definatly a big annoyance for AI dev and user defined data.

Could we have a generic tool to convert? I know napkin has a perl tool he used todo it, tho I'd much prefer to use a C++ or java version than go through the trouble of installing perl for windows and figuring out howto use it. That and I dont know howto get the perl conversion program anyway.

That and there are XTA variants people are currently using, that're totally f*cked up by this name change.

Changing the names gives us absolutely no advantage, and brings with it a large number of issues. You've opened a big can of worms for no reason at all.
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AF
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Post by AF »

And if you dont do it then the option of forking XTA with a version that does do it would be a very enticing idea indeed.
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AF
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Post by AF »

Also, can we make use of the new arm solar collector models?
[KnoX]ElementalGizmo
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Post by [KnoX]ElementalGizmo »

The new fbi naming system was created for a very big reason, to help the devs! This version of naming is more simpler and apparent in respects of relevance to the intended unit/s

New users to the .give commands will find it easyer to learn, its faster to find units fbi's and the details correctly spaced out within. Which means faster modding speads! So i have more time to do more accurate balances.

For the players, old dogs new tricks ??

"x1ecarmjtorn.fbi" being renamed to "arm_radar_jamming_tower.fbi" Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight thats BAD because ¿

Yes it means a slight adjustment on the vet players part, but honestly this is not a reason to scream your head off.

And as for the AI, as far as i know the spring devs are sorting things out so the player wont have to delete any files or generally exert one's energies thinking at all. Good news for the noobs!

The version 8.1 will replace v8 when Yeha and such have finished testing and deving there end. (There taking forever!?!)

NTai:

The XTA dev team works to the schedule of the spring devs, in turn you work to us. This is just how it works; not myself or others intentionally being a pain. To pressant from the past, i have tried to keep you up to date with development of the mod. Ultimately your NTai is not my primary concern. If you have a problem with something in this update, i suggest you chaise me up for information for next update. I cannot develop, co-ordinate other peoples input, hold debates on balance issues, update, test + chaise you up! You work to the conpatability of us, in the past i was just being polite by involving you and working with you. At pressant i have no interest in reverting back to the old fbi names, i am sorry for the inconvenience.

Giz
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AF
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Post by AF »

And as for the AI, as far as i know the spring devs are sorting things out so the player wont have to delete any files or generally exert one's energies thinking at all. Good news for the noobs!
Among this you have made a HUGE assumption about AI development.

First of all, the spring devs arent working on this, the spring devs dont deal with AIs exept tobi doing the odd bit of linux porting and bugfixing,a nd perhaps the odd groupAI.

It is AI devs that do AI stuff. As far as I am aware the noobs will still have to go delete the AAI learning data and put in the new AAI config, and when NTai is released they'll be lucky that the tag was changed from XTAPE, altho if the tag still says XTAPE then there'll be some nasty side effects.


AI developers do not work for modders at all, and quite frankly that is an insult.

The target audience of AI developers is not modders. It is not the engine. It is the users. Its the players. And in some cases other AI devs.

In the end it is your responsibility to make sure that your mods AI support isnt broken by your actions. Me and lindir the green goto great lengths to support XTA at no real cost to you, and quite frankly the XTA buildtree for NTai should be your responsibility as a mod maker, because it is a part of your mod, and the same for CSAI and AAI configs.

You are extremely fortunate that I and lindir have devoted a lot of time to an XTA buildtree at the expense of other mods, and that we've done it for free with nothing in return, and at times at a detriment to NTai, and your fortunate that other people have done the same for AAI, but we're not working for you, and you are not our target audience, and that XTA buildtree or the XTA AI config files are not our responsibility, they're yours, we're giving you them out of good will.

AI releases dont co-incide with anything exept engine releases that break AI compatability.
"x1ecarmjtorn.fbi" being renamed to "arm_radar_jamming_tower.fbi"
I dont think lindir has an objection to those being renamed though as they're a nuisance to everybody.
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Argh
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Post by Argh »

Not to get involved in this argument very heavily, but I completely agree with AF. I've been building, testing and maintaining NanoBlobs scripts for NTAI since that was possible, and I think all modding teams should expect that falls under their responsibilities... after all, they are the ones who (supposedly) understand their game designs.
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AF
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Post by AF »

It also leads to a much better buildtree given the time spent on them. It would be much easier for you to build an XTA buildtree to the level of lindirs buildtree than it has for lindir because you already know XTA better being the mod maker. As a result lindir has had to put in much more hardwork to get his buildtree where it has.

Argh did his nanoblobz buildtree himself and as a result got very good results out of it. If he did come across problems he'd ask me and I'd add stuff to the featureset to help him and maybe suggest changes.

KDR did the same with CvC, though I didnt have any immediate dialogue with him, he asked a question about something then he released it with his first version of CvC, and since then every now and again I check if something I did break it and change a tag.
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Lindir The Green
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Post by Lindir The Green »

[KnoX]ElementalGizmo wrote:"x1ecarmjtorn.fbi" being renamed to "arm_radar_jamming_tower.fbi" Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight thats BAD because ¿

Yes it means a slight adjustment on the vet players part, but honestly this is not a reason to scream your head off.
I don't mind that; I think it should be called the armrj or armradj or armradjam or armrjam. Probably the last one.

But what I *do* mind is the renaming of corfast and armfast to... core_freaker and arm_zipper, and the renaming of coralab to core_advanced_kbot_laboratory, and the renaming of the corsfig and armsfig to... whatever the hell they are now. core_voodoo and arm_... tornado?

And I am not arguing that the old naming system was perfect, but that the new one is worse than it. In both systems you have to memorize the names of the units. In the old way, those unitnames were shorter (more convenient) and easier to memorize. What you are arguing is that the new unitnames are easier to transition to for someone who knows the in-game unitnames. But the old unitnames are easier to transition to for anyone else, and also most current TA modders know them already, and so don't need to transition.

And, additionally, the old ones were much easier to work with for someone who knew them, because they were shorter.

In a programming language, you don't say:

Code: Select all

if the variable x is larger than the variable y, then do this
You say instead:

Code: Select all

if (x>y){
Because it is easier to work with. This is the same thing. The unitnames are used only by modders, and they should be designed to be as convenient to use as possible, not as easy to learn as possible.

But the new unitnames aren't even easier to learn, IMO.
Myg
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Joined: 05 Oct 2005, 19:05

...

Post by Myg »

AF, although I share giz's sentiments as to the true priority of responsibility here. I wish to extend a hand of understanding.

I would like the following:

- Basic info/files which concerns making NTAi compatable with XTA (v8.1)
- Any other bits of info or tips which would aid us in the above.

Please e-mail it to me:

krock (at) eircom.net
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rattle
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Post by rattle »

New users to the .give commands will find it easyer to learn, its faster to find units fbi's and the details correctly spaced out within. Which means faster modding speads! So i have more time to do more accurate balances.
You can say what you want about AA, at least it got it's filenames proper. What's wrong with "cordday" or "cordoom" instead of "core_doomsday_machine"? I'm currently making a mod and I made a habit of using the first three chars of the race it belongs to and then only abbreviations. For better readability you can make use of uppercase letters, so core_advanced_air_factory could be shortened to CorAdvAirFac or CorAdvAF. It's easy to memorize and way easier to type out mainly because it got no underscores. What you do is your thing though...
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FoeOfTheBee
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Post by FoeOfTheBee »

Were you aware that you had taken anti-brawler damage away from all anti air?

This latest version is seriously flawed, and this flawed version is apparently going to be inflicted on all XTA players in the next release, overwriting the less-flawed version 8.

It's time to fork the mod or elect new mod maintainers.

Current dev's are not getting it right, and are not being careful and paying attention to detail. You can overlook a few missteps, but not a habit of doing dumb things to the mod.

Also, this new version really needs it's own filename, so it doesn't replace superior versions of XTA when we run the updating installer.
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AF
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Re: ...

Post by AF »

Myg wrote:AF, although I share giz's sentiments as to the true priority of responsibility here. I wish to extend a hand of understanding.

I would like the following:

- Basic info/files which concerns making NTAi compatable with XTA (v8.1)
- Any other bits of info or tips which would aid us in the above.

Please e-mail it to me:

krock (at) eircom.net
A start would be lindirs buildtree, and the XE7 documentation at http://www.darkstars.co.uk
Myg
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Joined: 05 Oct 2005, 19:05

...

Post by Myg »

- Foe, this version is going in wether you like it or not. That "bug" is not an issue, it was intentionally left in because it didnt seem to upset the balance.

- AF, I didnt get an e-mail from you. I take it as a very impersonal response to a humble request for someone to do all the dirty work for you, im insulted. I never stated my intention to learn what you do, nor do I care much about its functionality or ideaologies, I just wanted to replace the stuff that needs to be replaced (old strings with new strings). If you can't deal at a human level and can only respond at one which mirrors the usual "google it" responce; it seems "you are what you eat" definetly applies here. Deal with your own AI problems from now on. If you dont have time to fix it up for XTA when changes come along, then you shouldnt be working on your AI.
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FoeOfTheBee
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Re: ...

Post by FoeOfTheBee »

Myg wrote:- Foe, this version is going in wether you like it or not. That "bug" is not an issue, it was intentionally left in because it didnt seem to upset the balance.
Are you out of your mind? You've reduced damage from 292 to 80 for the flak tower, and you think that won't affect balance?

Is it that hard to say whoops, we should have discussed that, and change things back until there's some consensus?

This illustrates my point - you're making XTA your clan mod, making changes and not putting them in the change log, breaking compatibility with the ai's - it's a disaster.

It's not XTA anymore, it's the KNOX clan's mod. It shouldn't be released with Spring in its current state.

If it goes in the next release or not doesn't have anything to do with me - it depends on how much attention the dev's are paying. Hopefully they're paying attention, and it won't go in.
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FoeOfTheBee
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Re: ...

Post by FoeOfTheBee »

Myg wrote: - AF, I didnt get an e-mail from you. I take it as a very impersonal response to a humble request for someone to do all the dirty work for you, im insulted. I never stated my intention to learn what you do, nor do I care much about its functionality or ideaologies, I just wanted to replace the stuff that needs to be replaced (old strings with new strings). If you can't deal at a human level and can only respond at one which mirrors the usual "google it" responce; it seems "you are what you eat" definetly applies here. Deal with your own AI problems from now on. If you dont have time to fix it up for XTA when changes come along, then you shouldnt be working on your AI.
This would be the less-than-ideal attitude in a modder. You broke AI compatibility without being aware of it and now blame the AI developer, who, let me think DIDN'T BREAK ANYTHING.

AI support is non-trivial. Unit names are trivial. How about some rational priorities?
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1v0ry_k1ng
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Post by 1v0ry_k1ng »

ARGHH OH MY GOD THE FLAMES BURNING.. MOD... ALIVEE!!
*drops and rolls*

seriously gentlemen, there is too many accusations flying. lets get this straight.

@myg: c'mon man you cant just explode and say no more AI. lots of people use AI and XTA to test BO and the like. that would be crippling.
I think what AF was trying to say was everything ou requested is avaible for free download off the NTAI website. that basicly is Lindirs buildtree which is numerous notepad files containing ordered lists of unit names for the old xta. it could actually be changed in about 20 minutes by copying it into word, and using the "FIND AND REPLACE WORD" function. ie, find corcom, replace with cor_commander etc and whacking it back into files. hell id do it if someone sent me all the files just to stop this fecking up XTA development. give AF another chance. AF or Lindir, can you give send a link to the files that need changing?

@foethebee: I dont see why removing the brawler tag is going to cripple anything. I never understood its purpose anyhow, maybe im retarded but I swear there was no purpose in having missles do extra damage to just brawlers.. or is it rapiers too?
more to the point its not really fair to point at knox and say they are messing everything up. 90% of the balance changes have been perfect. XTA plays far better than it ever did before. the only current fault I noticed is the flea is cheaper, faster to build and only costs 6000E. Im certainty that its nwo too mass producable, its actually ultra dangerous in swarms. it should have an energy cost of at least 10,000, preffrable 15,000, to ensure it is very difficult to swarm early game.

@rattle: Agree that the filenames change was less than ideal. probably should have thought that through better. is it easily reversable?


@lindir+AF: again, agree that the name change is nit so goot. a link to the buildtree would be tres helpful, and anything else that needs changing?
Chojin
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Post by Chojin »

Foe, maybe you should update your knowledge of weapons.tdf and armor.txt, before you scream like that, here:
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Mod_Development:Armor

So, what did that :%g /ARMBRAWL/d on weapons.tdf exactly do to the balance of XTA? right, nothing...
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AF
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Re: ...

Post by AF »

Myg wrote:- AF, I didnt get an e-mail from you. I take it as a very impersonal response to a humble request for someone to do all the dirty work for you, im insulted. I never stated my intention to learn what you do, nor do I care much about its functionality or ideaologies, I just wanted to replace the stuff that needs to be replaced (old strings with new strings). If you can't deal at a human level and can only respond at one which mirrors the usual "google it" responce; it seems "you are what you eat" definetly applies here. Deal with your own AI problems from now on. If you dont have time to fix it up for XTA when changes come along, then you shouldnt be working on your AI.
err
- Basic info/files which concerns making NTAi compatable with XTA (v8.1)
- Any other bits of info or tips which would aid us in the above.
But thats a very good starting point for what you asked. The XE7 documentation gives a lot of info, and then the very best documentation you can get would be Arghs nanoblobz buildtree which is all nice and pretty, and lindirs buildtree which makes use of nearly every single feature there is, then to ask me and lindir any questions about tags.

But simply put, thats what you'd have got in your email anyway, and I'm of the opinion that such a thing would rather be said publicly as other people may find it useful, or even better, someone else may decide to do your dirty work for you.

Lindir is of the opinion that his XTA buildtree was pretty much finished before we found out about the unit name changes.
Chojin
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Post by Chojin »

AF, please post or send me (pm) links to the latest versions of your files, which need the unitnames to be replaced.
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AF
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Post by AF »

Here is the latest buildtree lindir last sent me:

http://www.unknown-files.net/index.php? ... &dlid=1952
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