From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 11513 invoked by alias); 17 Aug 2004 11:06:07 -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 11504 invoked from network); 17 Aug 2004 11:06:05 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO av13-1-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net) (81.228.10.104) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 17 Aug 2004 11:06:05 -0000 Received: by av13-1-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net (Postfix, from userid 502) id B076037E4A; Tue, 17 Aug 2004 13:06:04 +0200 (CEST) Received: from smtp4-1-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net (smtp4-1-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net [81.228.10.181]) by av13-1-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id A15AF37E48; Tue, 17 Aug 2004 13:06:04 +0200 (CEST) Received: from [212.181.162.155] (h155n1fls24o1048.bredband.comhem.se [212.181.162.155]) by smtp4-1-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1FE9937E44; Tue, 17 Aug 2004 13:06:04 +0200 (CEST) X-Sender: u22611592@m1.226.comhem.se Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <412194DC.9060907@apple.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 15:29:00 -0000 To: Stan Shebs From: Hans Ronne Subject: Re: Major bug and what to do about it (long) Cc: xconq7@sources.redhat.com X-SW-Source: 2004/txt/msg00922.txt.bz2 >And of course if the view isn't cleared, the AI (or less-intelligent >human player :-) ) could keep shooting over and over at the mirage >aka decoy, which is exactly what the crafty Xconq player wants to >be able to set up, heh-heh. Right. The question of when to clear the view is actually quite tricky. Should a single failed action do it? I don't think so. But there has got to be a point where even a stupid AI realizes that it is shooting at a mirage. Another thing I thought about is to gradually let a unit view fade away as it ages. The views have a dating mechanism, but it is currently not used for anything. The corresponding thing for the AI would be to make a unit view a less attractive target as it ages. It should be noted that most of these problems will go unnoticed in a melee game where the enemy units that you target usually are within vision range. The same thing is true for short range firing units. A game that I am working on has a unit that can fire from 20 cells away. This creates a huge shadow zone which highlights the problems. >So I think if you can change the two actions to always take a view >unit instead of an actual unit, you can solve the problem in a >relatively localized way. Yes. Or we could change the AI code so that it preferentially uses fire-into instead of fire-at (which might actually make it a better player). But this would not provide the simplification that I think would be a huge benfit in the long run, particularly for AI development. There is also the problem of what should happen if the targeted unit is not there, but something else is sitting in the cell instead (not an uncommon situation). My feeling is that fire-at should somehow default to fire-into. The probability of hitting an unseen unit should not be affected by the fact that you think you are shooting at something which is not there. However, this line of thought, when pursued further, also makes you wonder if we really need both actions. >Pruning down the number of actions would certainly simplify >Xconq, and it needs simplification. The most-affected games >would be those at the tactical level, although if the interface >isn't there or is too obscure for players to use much, the >actions' absence won't be noticed. I agree that tactical level games would be the most affected ones. As I mentioned in a reply to Eric, I think that tactical unit deployment (putting a phalanx in the same cell as a chariot to protect it) would become much more important than it is now. But this should make most games more interesting. Hans