AI War Beta 5.042 Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain

[keith.lamothe]

(Crossposted from this blog post)
This one contains a lot of engine improvements backported from AVWW.  Rendering is now more efficient, and in theory a lot of the textbox issues should be dealt with now.

There's also a bunch of little fixes to recent stuff like the energy rework, drones, and the line-place context menu.  And some balance changes to carriers and turrets that should make defense a little more pleasant from the human perspective.

But (and here's the reason for the release name) the majority of the work that's gone into this release isn't even in the notes or visible in the game, because it went into the framework for the major feature of the upcoming expansion.  Still not ready to talk about it, but it's coming along well.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you  launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found  if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.

(additional note: we'll get to the results of the latest worst-ship poll soon, but we wanted to get these changes out for testing sooner than later)

[doctorfrog]

Neat! Looking forward to these little interface refinements.

[Mánagarmr]

Winsauce!

[TechSY730]

Well, you asked us if we saw any continued funnyness with textboxes and UI, so, here I am.

Backspace and delete still don't work in textboxes.
-Some fields highlight selected text, and others don't (which is a step up, as pretty much no textbox highlighted previously) (similarly, some fields show the current cursor position, others don't)

-In dialogues with multiple textboxes, I have not been unable to reproduce issues where the cursor tries to adjust itself to the last character position of another textbox in that field, or other such situations where the cursor's would get confused with multiple text fields. (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2807), so hopefully that is fixed

-In the "number only" textboxes in the control screen, not only does backspace and delete not work, but highlighting doesn't either. (Not that it doesn't show highlighting, but nothing gets highlighted). This is a moderatley severe regression, as at least before you could highlight and type over numbers, but now you can't clear these boxes at all
EDIT: Like many of these kinds of UI issues, this one managed to fix itself upon a game restart. 

-On a similar note, in those number only textboxes, you cannot place your cursor elsewhere

-When a text box has focus, clicking a button does nothing but cause the textbox to lose focus. You have to click the button again for the button press to actually do something


But in any case, thanks for taking some time and trying to nail done some of the longstanding UI issues. They were sorely needed.

Let me know if you want any of this on mantis.

[keith.lamothe]

Are all of those issues that don't happen in AVWW?

[TechSY730]

Are all of those issues that don't happen in AVWW?

Hmm, it's been about a week since I've fired up AVWW, so I can't remember for sure. Let me check there.

EDIT: Then again, AI War is a bit more "textbox heavy" than AVWW is, so any textbox based bugs are much more obvious in AI War, even if they appear in AVWW as well.

[TechSY730]

Are all of those issues that don't happen in AVWW?

A quick check across two seperate runs, both before and after loading up a world, I was not able to able to reproduce any of the issues I mentioned. The only textbox issue I found was that trying to select a region of text while the textbox is not active does not work (in most UI "widget" libraries, if you try to do this, the textbox will gain focus AND start to select from where you started dragging). Instead you have to get the textbox to gain focus, and then you can drag.

But other than that, backspace, delete, selecting, highlighting the currently selected text, etc all work fine.

[Buttons840]

You moving into major changes without ever having done an official release it looks like?

[keith.lamothe]

Backspace and delete still don't work in textboxes.
-Some fields highlight selected text, and others don't (which is a step up, as pretty much no textbox highlighted previously) (similarly, some fields show the current cursor position, others don't)

It worked fine in the editor for me (which is like fullscreen mode in some ways, like windowed in others), but in my steam copy (in windowed mode) I did see some textboxes not highlight/show-cursor.

-In the "number only" textboxes in the control screen, not only does backspace and delete not work, but highlighting doesn't either. (Not that it doesn't show highlighting, but nothing gets highlighted). This is a moderatley severe regression, as at least before you could highlight and type over numbers, but now you can't clear these boxes at all
EDIT: Like many of these kinds of UI issues, this one managed to fix itself upon a game restart. 

Yea, I couldn't reproduce this at all, it always responded to backspace and delete as I expected it to, even in numeric textboxes that weren't getting highlighted/cursor'd properly.

-On a similar note, in those number only textboxes, you cannot place your cursor elsewhere

Works fine for me

-When a text box has focus, clicking a button does nothing but cause the textbox to lose focus. You have to click the button again for the button press to actually do something

Yea, I think that's true in AVWW too.

You moving into major changes without ever having done an official release it looks like?

I've been making major changes for a number of months now; I had wanted to do an official a few weeks ago but it didn't wind up working out timing wise, and now the expansion is scheduled for October release so we're just planning on that being the 6.0 official.

[Wanderer]

Errr.  Ummm...

I applaud the attempt at radar dampening, and I agree, it'll keep snipers from laying waste to it.  however, this roughly... errr... defeats the purpose.

Allow me to model this with an image...



You'll note from memory, I hope, that to hit most of the inbound wormholes, you need to leave 1-2k in range of overlap for the 'circle' of invaders.  The image above presents a 'shallow' version.  It would leave a good 1/3rd off of an inbound fleet, at least.  Notice where the dampening line hits at 1000 less than its range (roughly).  Over half the fleet is still going to be able to pound the crap out of it.

This helps in that ships can't sit outside their range and pummel them, but for a Basic to even be IN range, the Frigates are going to pound them to pieces.   MLRS is basically defended from everything at range now, that's handy, but those were just really icing.  Usually you'd drop them and their 15,000 range at about 12k out to cover the wormhole.  Lasers, at 11k dampening and 12k range, have a similar problem as the basics, just less fleet can do it immediately and you'll need to position just right.

This will help a hair, but it certainly won't be anything near a cure to death by alpha strike.  Dampening needs to be brought to a 4k - 5k range difference so you can cover the wormhole without inhaling the alpha, or it's moot.  Under most circumstances, you typically drop a FF I (or 5) across the wormhole to disallow escapees.  They're 4k across as well.

I see roughly no difference between these turrets and the old ones except that they won't be sniped down on non whipping boy worlds where you run the turrets close to the command station instead of the wormholes.

Sorry Keith.  I realize you didn't go nuts with it for balance reasons and if that's far too much dampening I can understand, but without it you're not going to cure the issue you'd hoped to.  You still will have to deploy outside of 'covering range' of the wormhole or eat the alpha.

[TechSY730]

Backspace and delete still don't work in textboxes.
-Some fields highlight selected text, and others don't (which is a step up, as pretty much no textbox highlighted previously) (similarly, some fields show the current cursor position, others don't)

It worked fine in the editor for me (which is like fullscreen mode in some ways, like windowed in others), but in my steam copy (in windowed mode) I did see some textboxes not highlight/show-cursor.

-In the "number only" textboxes in the control screen, not only does backspace and delete not work, but highlighting doesn't either. (Not that it doesn't show highlighting, but nothing gets highlighted). This is a moderatley severe regression, as at least before you could highlight and type over numbers, but now you can't clear these boxes at all
EDIT: Like many of these kinds of UI issues, this one managed to fix itself upon a game restart. 

Yea, I couldn't reproduce this at all, it always responded to backspace and delete as I expected it to, even in numeric textboxes that weren't getting highlighted/cursor'd properly.

-On a similar note, in those number only textboxes, you cannot place your cursor elsewhere

Works fine for me

-When a text box has focus, clicking a button does nothing but cause the textbox to lose focus. You have to click the button again for the button press to actually do something

Yea, I think that's true in AVWW too.

You moving into major changes without ever having done an official release it looks like?

I've been making major changes for a number of months now; I had wanted to do an official a few weeks ago but it didn't wind up working out timing wise, and now the expansion is scheduled for October release so we're just planning on that being the 6.0 official.

Sigh...

I think I am hitting some of the platform differences brought about by Wine (on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which BTW, they actualy did a good job with if you know how to turn off the "space age UI'ness" of Unity and the default layout of the new versions of Gnome)
Sadly, I don't have a Windows box around I can use to compare.
I do have some Mac boxes I can test on though.

[keith.lamothe]

Interesting about the radar dampening; yea, I can increase that 4k is a bit more than I'd like, but it's worth a shot.

[TechSY730]

This will help a hair, but it certainly won't be anything near a cure to death by alpha strike.  Dampening needs to be brought to a 4k - 5k range difference so you can cover the wormhole without inhaling the alpha, or it's moot.  Under most circumstances, you typically drop a FF I (or 5) across the wormhole to disallow escapees.  They're 4k across as well.

I see roughly no difference between these turrets and the old ones except that they won't be sniped down on non whipping boy worlds where you run the turrets close to the command station instead of the wormholes.

Sorry Keith.  I realize you didn't go nuts with it for balance reasons and if that's far too much dampening I can understand, but without it you're not going to cure the issue you'd hoped to.  You still will have to deploy outside of 'covering range' of the wormhole or eat the alpha.

4k seems like a bit much,  we don't want to make turrets super safe. But bumping their radar dampening to range - 2k might work well, especially if the basic turret line got a bit of a range buff. (they could use it)

However, the point that is brought up indirectly by this is an interesting one. Waves tend to get so big, especially in higher difficulties, that surviving an alpha strike is pretty much a binary yes or no (unless you are something ridiculous like a superfortress or an armored golem, and even they will start feeling some good pain from a focued alpha strike). This is sort of an unfortunate consequence of how the combat mechanics work. See 3174: The problem with golems (and other large ships/structures) for discussion about how the absurd number of units the AI can use cheapens health and survivability to this sort of "binary" survival effect, even for large stuff and defensive stuff. It's not quite the same topic, but many of the same issues involving alpha-strikes insta-gibbing things cheapening things apply there as well.

[Wanderer]

Interesting about the radar dampening; yea, I can increase that 4k is a bit more than I'd like, but it's worth a shot.

At range - 2500 dampening you'd be able to 'halve' the circle relatively safely.  I'd say most of a huge inbound wave deploys within ~5000 range worth of space, judging completely by eyeball due to them forming up next door to a FFI which I believe is 4000 range from the old flak turrets.  This would let you get about half their inbound fleet 'safely' into turret range and be able to avoid the alpha.  That's about the bare minimum I see being useful in this scenario.  The 4000 basically gives you a bit of vig so you don't have to be completely anal about placement.

[chemical_art]

That alpha strike is not pleasant. It was why I requested forts getting a 30k damp range in the past. No fun losing something valuable in the first 10 seconds of a wave.