* New Windows Installer
@ 2004-09-12 23:07 Eric McDonald
2004-09-12 23:14 ` Eric McDonald
0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread
From: Eric McDonald @ 2004-09-12 23:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: xconq7
Hello Xconquerors,
A new Xconq installer for Windows is now available at:
http://xconq_hacker.home.comcast.net/
It is the 2004/09/12 installer.
There have been a number of improvements:
(1) The AI should now do a better job at researching advances. (Thanks
to Lincoln Peters for taking the first step in this direction.) More can
still be done on this subject, but if you want to see what the AI is
capable of now, then play the Advances game. You may find that at least
one AI-controlled side has War Chariots (powerful units) by turn 22 or
23, and that several will likely have Elephants (very powerful units) by
turn 30.
(2) If you use the graphical setup windows in the Tcl/Tk interface, you
will notice that most of the games now have screenshots filling in the
game picture in the upper righthand corner of the game selection window.
This is because Elijah Meeks has been quite diligent and has taken the
time to play each game to a point where he felt he could get a good
screenshot. We should all give him a big round of applause for his efforts.
(3) The Galaxy and Galaxy II games have better-looking images now.
Thanks to Elijah for this as well.
(4) Elijah has also provided an update to his A World Lost Slowly game.
(5) I have made numerous improvements (I think) to the SDL interface.
Many of these were mentioned in an email I sent to the list last Tuesday
or Wednesday, IIRC. The ability to select research topics for side
research is among the new capabilities. In addition to being able to
select a new topic to research, there is also an "Auto R&D" button,
which tells the computer to select the next research topic for you, if
clicked. (This is a good way for testing improvements in the research
picking code, among other things.) If folks find the automatic R&D stuff
to be useful, I can make it the first research button instead of the last.
As always, bug reports and other forms of feedback are welcome.
Regards,
Eric
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: New Windows Installer
2004-09-12 23:07 New Windows Installer Eric McDonald
@ 2004-09-12 23:14 ` Eric McDonald
2004-09-12 23:21 ` Elijah Meeks
0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread
From: Eric McDonald @ 2004-09-12 23:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: xconq7
Eric McDonald wrote:
> There have been a number of improvements:
> (1) The AI should now do a better job at researching advances. (Thanks
> to Lincoln Peters for taking the first step in this direction.) More can
> still be done on this subject, but if you want to see what the AI is
> capable of now, then play the Advances game. You may find that at least
> one AI-controlled side has War Chariots (powerful units) by turn 22 or
> 23, and that several will likely have Elephants (very powerful units) by
> turn 30.
I just found a serious bug in the advance picking code. I would suggest
that Opal not be played against AI opponents until I fix it. So much for
all the testing I did....
Eric
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: New Windows Installer
2004-09-12 23:14 ` Eric McDonald
@ 2004-09-12 23:21 ` Elijah Meeks
2004-09-13 23:55 ` Eric McDonald
0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread
From: Elijah Meeks @ 2004-09-12 23:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Eric McDonald, xconq7
> I just found a serious bug in the advance picking
> code. I would suggest
> that Opal not be played against AI opponents until I
> fix it. So much for
> all the testing I did....
That sounds serious, what happened? (I mean, I didn't
think I put in support for thermonuclear war, yet)
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: New Windows Installer
2004-09-12 23:21 ` Elijah Meeks
@ 2004-09-13 23:55 ` Eric McDonald
0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Eric McDonald @ 2004-09-13 23:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Elijah Meeks; +Cc: xconq7
Elijah Meeks wrote:
>>I just found a serious bug in the advance picking
>>code. I would suggest
>>that Opal not be played against AI opponents until I
>>fix it. So much for
>>all the testing I did....
>
>
> That sounds serious, what happened? (I mean, I didn't
> think I put in support for thermonuclear war, yet)
I accidentally was scrubbing an array to -1 only out to 'nummtypes', the
number of materials, instead of 'numatypes', the number of advances.
(For some reason, I had materials on my brain when I was working in the
research improvements yesterday.) Thus, if there are more advances than
materials, as is true in Opal, then part of the array was initialized to
-1 as it should have been, but part of it was other values. This had a
profound impact on the research decisions. In the case of Opal, this was
essentially causing automatic research to fail.
I'm about to check to see what impact the bugfix will have on the
Advances game.
Eric
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* New Windows Installer
@ 2004-11-12 2:05 Eric McDonald
0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Eric McDonald @ 2004-11-12 2:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: xconq7
Hello Xconquerors,
After a nearly a month drought, a new Xconq installer for Windows is
now available at the usual location:
http://xconq_hacker.home.comcast.net
I have not yet released a new source tarball. That will hopefully be
forthcoming tomorrow night (relative to my timezone).
Elijah has provided some updates to some of his games. He can say
more about these if he wants. I just made sure the games still worked. I
have a bad tendency to get drawn into playing the games, if I take the
time to test them. And that leads to wasted development time....
Other than that, there is not too much to see. A couple of unit
action buttons have been added to the SDL interface.
I was preparing for a conference one weekend and ill the weekend
after I got back from the conference, so my development was somewhat
curtailed. Also, I spent a fair amount of time researching various
options for the future of Xconq. I think the research paid off; I am
very much looking forward to putting ParaGUI to use in the SDL interface.
Enjoy,
Eric
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* New Windows Installer
@ 2003-12-15 4:19 Eric McDonald
0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Eric McDonald @ 2003-12-15 4:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: xconq7
Hello fellow Xconquerors,
It is finally here, _after weeks of saying that I was going to
release a new one.
The new installer can be found at:
http://xconq_hacker.home.comcast.net
Note that this is a new location. Previously it had been
available at:
http://eric_mcdonald.home.comcast.net/xconq
I will update various links on the Xconq Web site and my old
Xconq depot to reflect the change.
Things new in this release:
(1) Peter's path-finding code. (More work still needs to be
done on this, but it is quite functional.)
(2) Hans' module loading and network game improvements.
(3) New games from Lincoln Peters and Elijah Meeks.
(4) New file naming convention from Hans and myself.
(5) I have made it so that .xcq and .g files can now be launched
by simply double-clicking on them.
(6) Various fixes and improvements from Jim, Hans, and myself.
There are still some graphics glitches on Windows Xconq,
including a particularly nasty one that manifests itself during
the restoration of saved Bellum (and possibly other) games. Other
saved games restore fine without any problems though....
Enjoy,
Eric
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2004-11-11 3:42 UTC | newest]
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2004-09-12 23:07 New Windows Installer Eric McDonald
2004-09-12 23:14 ` Eric McDonald
2004-09-12 23:21 ` Elijah Meeks
2004-09-13 23:55 ` Eric McDonald
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2004-11-12 2:05 Eric McDonald
2003-12-15 4:19 Eric McDonald
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