Author Topic: Can I see the graph?  (Read 8089 times)

Offline Pumpkin

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Can I see the graph?
« on: April 11, 2016, 06:03:17 am »
This is a request for Arcen.

I was doing some graph generation (here) and I really wondered how you guys did some of the official AIW's ones. For instance, how do you make the simple and realistic, or the lattice one? How do you generate the cluster one? (The existence of the microcosm hints there is a first pass of graph generation and after that each vertex get smashed into a simple or whatever subgraph.) Also, how do you make the random holes in the honeycomb? Just a blind "pick a random vertex and delete it"? Then how do you ensure the graph is in one piece?

My main question is: am I allowed to know that? Are you, Arcen, willing to give away one of your dev-secret? I can totally understand the answer would be no.

Thanks in advance, anyway.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #1 on: April 12, 2016, 03:47:29 am »
I think a bunch of them are force-arranged.  The early map types ("simple"?) are just "randomly select two systems and connect them, repeat until fully connected."

Offline Pumpkin

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #2 on: April 12, 2016, 06:51:20 am »
I think a bunch of them are force-arranged.  The early map types ("simple"?) are just "randomly select two systems and connect them, repeat until fully connected."
I doubt so because I ran tests with graphviz and the "randomly pick two" is (1) a nightmare to balance because the slightest modification of the probability immensely affects the graph and (2) AIW's simple graph is planar and very good looking. I was thinking of something like "give vertices random coordinates* and link them to their nearest neighbors without crossing an already made link** and without making links longer than X."

** but sometimes "simple" galaxies are a rarely a bit tangled.
* elegantly spreading dots on a 2D plan would be made with a "scrambled grid", but AIW's "simple" has too many holes (which is good for a strategy and gameplay standpoint).

Also, the "random pairs" make "logical" graphs that need to be displayed and untangled. "Tree" and "Snake" look like that, but "Simple" and "Lattice" don't: they're already untangled. That's why I think the later's vertices are first spread on a 2D plane and linked with their neighbors.

However, "Snake" is a very interesting case: it has some local "neighboring" pairing but some seemingly random "jumps" that look more like "Tree". My bet is that the algo recursively links a vertex with the nearest (unlinked) vertex, which cause the string to "jump" when there is no more unlinked vertices near. But looking more at it, it appears this isn't the case: just take one end or the other of the snake and see if the next star is the nearest; sooner or latter you'll see a "better choice" when the string "jumps" away.

Anyway.
I'm really curious about this and would much appreciate the least hint from Arcen.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #3 on: April 12, 2016, 02:32:26 pm »
None of them are force-arranged, though the detangler uses force arrangement to do its work.

I don't think there's any problem with people knowing the algorithms, but they're largely not very mathematical or logical or whatever. There's a lot of "randomly put stuff down in places that meet conditions X and Y" and "randomly connect stuff that meet conditions A and B". Some of the later ones that are more geometric are more straightforward.

Anyway, I don't have time to dig them out right now, and a simple dump of the source code would be very confusing because the logic jumps around to different methods a lot. But I'm hoping to move that logic to scripting for the re-implementation when I get there, and that will inherently make them available.
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Offline Pumpkin

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #4 on: April 13, 2016, 06:40:48 am »
AAARHGLRG
Okay, one more reason to crave for it. Will I be able to stand the pressure and wait several months before AIW2?

Seriously:
Thanks for answering. I'm looking forward to get my hands on it.
There's a lot of "randomly put stuff down in places
You know, I know; rand-gen is basically that. It's all tricks and few logic.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #5 on: April 13, 2016, 03:15:39 pm »
AAARHGLRG
Okay, one more reason to crave for it. Will I be able to stand the pressure and wait several months before AIW2?
To be clear, what I'm intending to do is basically a definitive version of AI War (taking that game's design and reimplementing it in a way to get around longstanding problems like moddability, etc), not AI War 2. It's possible we might do an actual sequel, but that would be a different design.
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Offline steelwing

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #6 on: April 13, 2016, 06:57:18 pm »
So a rerelease of AI War, then, with interface adjustments and moddability, with all the existing content present?

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #7 on: April 13, 2016, 07:01:56 pm »
So a rerelease of AI War, then, with interface adjustments and moddability, with all the existing content present?
In general, yes. Exactly what comes out is hard to say, since I've been rewriting it basically from scratch using our engine from earlier this year.
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Offline Aklyon

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #8 on: April 13, 2016, 08:23:49 pm »
So a rerelease of AI War, then, with interface adjustments and moddability, with all the existing content present?
In general, yes. Exactly what comes out is hard to say, since I've been rewriting it basically from scratch using our engine from earlier this year.
Considering the release notes pages all together are the size of a small book, that sounds like a ton of effort.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #9 on: April 13, 2016, 08:28:20 pm »
Considering the release notes pages all together are the size of a small book, that sounds like a ton of effort.
It is a lot, but bear in mind how many of those changes are superseded by later ones.
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Offline Pumpkin

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #10 on: April 14, 2016, 06:30:50 am »
what I'm intending to do
I've been rewriting it
Do you mean "will be ***ing"? I believed SBR was going first.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #11 on: April 14, 2016, 01:10:49 pm »
what I'm intending to do
I've been rewriting it
Do you mean "will be ***ing"? I believed SBR was going first.
I worked on it a bit here and there towards the end of last year, so there's a working skeleton with MP and mod support and what not. But it's very skeletal, basically just the human command station, a space dock, fighters, waves of enemy fighters, and the AI command stations :)

But it is going after SBR.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2016, 02:11:19 pm by keith.lamothe »
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Offline steelwing

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #12 on: April 14, 2016, 03:37:01 pm »
How will sales of the reboot be handled?  Will people who own the current version get the new one free, or will they have to pay?  If they have to buy the new version, will there be a discount for people who own the old?

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #13 on: April 14, 2016, 03:40:36 pm »
I don't know the details of how it will be sold, but it would be a new stand-alone product.
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Offline Teal_Blue

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Re: Can I see the graph?
« Reply #14 on: April 14, 2016, 04:53:30 pm »
this is just my two cents, but i would suggest from a business stand-point of charging for the AIWar 1A product, and giving perhaps a 10% discount to owners of the original.

Reason being, players can get AIWar original on sale and get the second at 10% off. But it doesn't have Chris and company putting in hours on a project and giving it away. Its all nice and polite for existing customers, but you don't want to lose the farm just because you want to be nice.

Anyway, I'd say an update is worth at least a DLC cost. If the work is a complete re-write of the game, then that sounds like a whole new project and its cost should reflect that to. Maybe the $19.99 that the original game charged when it was new. That is of course my opinion.

Maybe this way, the core of Atcen's followers can help keep the company alive and we still have Chris and company around to make new games that we all love.  :)

-Teal


 

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