From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 19800 invoked by alias); 26 Sep 2004 08:20:58 -0000 Mailing-List: contact xconq7-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: xconq7-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 19765 invoked from network); 26 Sep 2004 08:20:53 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO sccrmhc12.comcast.net) (204.127.202.56) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 26 Sep 2004 08:20:53 -0000 Received: from [192.168.181.128] (c-67-172-156-222.client.comcast.net[67.172.156.222]) by comcast.net (sccrmhc12) with ESMTP id <2004092608205301200fl1ghe>; Sun, 26 Sep 2004 08:20:53 +0000 Message-ID: <41567BE4.7010804@phy.cmich.edu> Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 13:35:00 -0000 From: Eric McDonald User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7.1 (Windows/20040626) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: xconq7 Subject: New Source Tarball and Windows Installer Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SW-Source: 2004/txt/msg01245.txt.bz2 Hello Xconquerors, I have released a new installer for Windows and new source tarball. They can be gotten at: http://xconq_hacker.home.comcast.net Please keep in mind that this is a work in progress and that there are some rough edges: (1) Xconq will refuse to load the Opal game because of the way advances are set up in it. (2) Xconq will take quite a while to load the Civ2 game. This is because it is doing some validation on the advances, and the way the validation is currently done takes some time. I will attempt to decrease the time used before the next release. That said, what are the improvements? (1) Most games now have a menu image associated with them. If you select a game during game setup, you will likely notice that a cropped screenshot of the game is displayed, instead of the generic Xconq logo. (Thanks to Elijah for this improvement.) (2) Matthew Skala's 50km scale map of Antarctica is showcased in the Antarctica game. (3) The Xconq games factory known as Elijah Meeks has produced not one, but three (or four) new games. The basic game is known as Starfleet Battles; it has three derivative games: Battle Tester, Kobayashi Maru, and Wrath of Khan. These games are quite fun, and are one of the reasons I ended announcing this release in the wee hours of the morning. (4) I have added the concept of research goals to the sides. These are used by the AI to guide it down various research paths so that it does not merely research the advance that appears best to it at a given moment, but considers advances more strategically. (5) In conjunction with (4), I have added a new advance property, 'ai-next-goal'. If an advance is researched as a research goal and it is completed, then a new reserach goal is selected from a weighted list that can be supplied to 'ai-next-goal'. Game designers can use this to give the AI nudges in the directions it should research first. Example for Advances game: (add leatherworking ai-next-goal ((4 saddle) (4 horse) (2 elephant) sledge navigation)) (6) Per Elijah's request (and borne of some necessity), I have implemented an 'advance-precludes-advance' table. This allows game designers to tell Xconq to "prune" a side's advances tree as certain advances are researched. Example: (table advance-precludes-advance (life-magic death-magic true) (death-magic life-magic true) ) (7) Probably some other things, but I am now too tired to think clearly.... I still have not gotten around to taking care of any of the other bugs or concerns that have been mentioned on the list over the past week or two. I'll start tackling some of them next. Enjoy, Eric