The "secret" project unveiled - Page 4

The "secret" project unveiled

Discuss the source code and development of Spring Engine in general from a technical point of view. Patches go here too.

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UI Lua Mod system or traditional system?

UI Lua Mod system
30
50%
"Traditional system" with layout and looknfeel (skin) defined externally
30
50%
 
Total votes: 60

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AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Post by AF »

Ok just to clear it up

We have a slider in our fancy new spring 2.0 with new GUI absed on CEGUI

We want the sldier todo soemthing, this is where the 2 options come in

Slider gets moved....

Either:

The logic telling the engine what todo when the slider is moved is inside the engine.

Or:

The engine calls a lua script telling it the sldier moved and it's upto the lua script todo the job, allowing the suer to define different behaviours..

Example 2

We have any empty GUI we need to populate it do we::

Have a standard GUI defined in the engien and we can change hwo ti looks by skinning it

OR

look in a folder of lua scripts and make the lua scripts populate the GUI, allowing users to define multiple GUI's that look and behave differently, instea dof just havign a different skin.
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
Posts: 14673
Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43

Post by Forboding Angel »

ya know the irritating thing is... I see a lot of writing but I don't see any physical work being put into the gui yet.

If you want to start a discussion about how the gui should be there are already tons of threads about it.

Is any work ACTUALLY being done on it at this moment. For some reason I'm thinking no, which means we are no closer to getting a new gui than when this thread started.

A little irriting to see just talk and 0 action. Heh, look at american congress on illegal immigration. All talk, no real action = frustrating.
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SwiftSpear
Classic Community Lead
Posts: 7287
Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29

Post by SwiftSpear »

I think you missed the point of the thread forboding.

Juro is working on something or other, otherwize the thread wouldn't need to exist in the first place. He was asking where springers wanted to go with a partially implimented feature set.
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BigSteve
Posts: 911
Joined: 25 Sep 2005, 12:56

Post by BigSteve »

American congress get paid, these guys do this work for free!
how can you possibly write a post like that FA without being drunk or high?
Bah!
Some people... pffft I dont know...
What would you say if someone wrote a post like that about your next map? I can guess :)
jouninkomiko
Posts: 436
Joined: 26 Aug 2004, 08:11

Post by jouninkomiko »

Before I can actually start I'm going to have to redo part of the control system so that I can make it flexible enough to stick in a new gui without hacking it in, like was previously done. It's the reason there is no "new gui" even though 95% of the code was written. Now all of that code gets to be scrapped so CEGUI can be incorporated. When it happens, you'll get screenies, no sooner.

(I'm balancing a full time summer job as well as my last summer with my friends and family EVER. I'm moving 3000 miles away. Work will occur in spurts when I have time, which is lookin something like 15 hours a week)
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AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Post by AF »

Does this mean the Command structure and CommandDescription type system will be replaced?

I'm not sure but something more abstract for that would be useful, aswell as the ability to handle sending messages using it to get stuff and returning it without having to format it as an vector<float> or resorting to void*.
jouninkomiko
Posts: 436
Joined: 26 Aug 2004, 08:11

Post by jouninkomiko »

No I'm keeping it the same, it just needs to be restructured. Nothing should break
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AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Post by AF »

aw, too bad

Will we at least ahve soem sort of way fo sending around messages betwene different components that could be integrated intot he AI's and used byt he GUI?

Or are you keeping the hardcoded links between components everywhere?
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jcnossen
Former Engine Dev
Posts: 2440
Joined: 05 Jun 2005, 19:13

Post by jcnossen »

The command system is quite flexible IMO, and not many commands are being sent so it does not influence performance.

Changing it would also require a lot of changes in all the unit CommandAI classes.

I think what you're looking for is a message based AI system, but that can be done independently of Command (The Commands would be generated by the thing that handles the AI messages).
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AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Post by AF »

At this rate the sub AI you speak of will be changed anyways, if there are enough bugs in their logic as it is and a lack of changes to support several other things then I'm going to have to rewrite and arrange them in the summer and port as much off into dll's like has been done with groupAI and globalAI.

One other problem is the way data is shunted around, aside from having to typecast to get rid of compiler warnings all over the place, there's no way of communicating with other AI's in multiplayer games if they're on different systems, or of transferring non numberical data
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jcnossen
Former Engine Dev
Posts: 2440
Joined: 05 Jun 2005, 19:13

Post by jcnossen »

Splitting things of in DLLs is not necessarily a good move, look at the AI dll chaos. Putting things in DLLs brings in a whole set of versioning problems, with little advantages.
Scripting is the way for unit AI.
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AF
AI Developer
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Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Post by AF »

Agreed, though maybe not for the same reasons, most AI chaos is caused by the AI's themselves rather than the fact they're in dll's
jouninkomiko
Posts: 436
Joined: 26 Aug 2004, 08:11

Post by jouninkomiko »

BTW I said control, not command system.
Krysole
Posts: 9
Joined: 26 Nov 2005, 06:44

Post by Krysole »

I don't think it really matters if we use dlls or not...(the issues with using dlls have more to do with well defined interfaces and project files and any technical limitations). But the ability to add functionality into a scripting system would probably make a more flexible gui api.

One thing I fully understand about what your trying to do is put the api just in dlls like the ai stuff is at the moment or just in a scripting language...or did i miss the point?

Wouldn't it make sense to do both and worry about the dll loading mechanism later (I'm sure I'll have a look at that before we hit 1.0 to simplify the way dlls/so/dylib/bundle's are loaded). Especially since the interface would pretty much be the same if you just export the class's interfaces directly using a subsystem approach.

Lorenz (Krysole) Pretterhofer <krysole@internode.on.net>
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jcnossen
Former Engine Dev
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Joined: 05 Jun 2005, 19:13

Post by jcnossen »

AF brought in the discussion of DLLs for unit AI, it has nothing to do with the new GUI code of jouninkomiko.
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Das Bruce
Posts: 3544
Joined: 23 Nov 2005, 06:16

Post by Das Bruce »

So you're going with lua?
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AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Post by AF »

As far as I am aware commands as in Command and CommandDescription are used by

GlobalAI
GroupAI
SubAI/GameAI
GUI
jouninkomiko
Posts: 436
Joined: 26 Aug 2004, 08:11

Post by jouninkomiko »

What I am going to do is just get you all a new gui, then convert the code over to a lua based one. Prepare for it to be ugly, because thats what the default skin is.
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Zenka
Posts: 1235
Joined: 05 Oct 2005, 15:29

Post by Zenka »

Don't worry, as soon as anyone other then devs can do anything for the new GUI: we will (if nobody, I will).

If that means we can skin the GUI, we will!
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AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Post by AF »

Oh well, here we go again

*readies a leash to tie around jouninkomiko*
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