0.118 "Of Shots And Hidden Mechanics" quick release notice.

[x4000]

I've gotta build in time for writing up my notes better.  But here's the release notes: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Earlier_Than_Early_Alpha#Version_0.118_Of_Shots_And_Hidden_Mechanics

Cheers!
Chris

[BadgerBadger]

Is there a way to dramatically reduce the number of ships generated in the game? That might make it easier to debug problems with the lerp code. I glanced briefly through the AI External code but there didn't seem to be any obvious levers. I suppose one could change the fuel costs of each ship to be enormous in the XML?

[x4000]

I'm not aware of a way to do something like small 1v1 scenarios or whatever, but it would be potentially helpful on a number of fronts I suppose.  I ultimately don't think I'll really be needing it to get these things ironed out, though, so I wouldn't suggest we do it just for this.

[BadgerBadger]

So the "model isn't there but it's still doing damage" thing has definitely been noticeable with Guardians. I've hit it just by starting a new game and watching guardians approach my ships.

I also note that it seems strongly correlated with the Guardian first taking damage and releasing its fleet ships.

I tried changing the Number Of Ships Per Squad variable (I turned all the numbers down to 2), which had the unanticipated side effect of allowing me to have a much higher number of squads. I seem to remember Pumpkin (and others?) questioning the squad notion, but I think if you turn "Number Of Ships Per Squad" to 1 then you basically don't have squads anymore, which is cool.

[x4000]

Yep, it does seem related to guardians in particular.  I'll have to instrument them to find out when they are getting a "clear your stuff" command, and why.

And yes, for Pumpkin and anyone else who wants to avoid squads, simply having a ship count of 1 per squad maps for a squadless game.  You can set the overall squad caps (number of squads) much higher as needed, and suddenly you're back to AI War Classic in terms of no squads and tons of icons.  I make no promises that will perform well in huge battles, but we shall see I suppose, because I know someone will try it.

[Chthon]

I just rode 21 km in 52 minutes, walked 5 km in 53:03, and then rode 23 km home in 1 hour. I'm tired.

Did you know that the unit used to measure the strength of a magnetic field is called a Tesla, and the magnetic flux through a loop of wire is measured in Webers?
Just to put in perspective, 11-13 Teslas describes the strength of the magnetic field in a practical use MRI machine. Our magnets in our project were .527 T each, and we had 4 of them, bring it to just over 2.1 T of magnetic field. However because we were turning them by hand, the change in the magnetic flux over time was a measly .0004 Wb/s. I was greatly disappointed

We were making an electric generator based on Faraday's disc generator, where the motion of a conductor through a magnetic field (or in our case, the motion of a field through a coil of wire) produces a current. We were able to generate about 6 mV of potential with .008 mA of current. That measly amount was not enough to light a LED despite our strong magnets. We only had 50 dollars to work with as well and less than a week to build it once we had the parts. Still we were able to demonstrate that it produced a current, and that was a success.

Anyways, that's why I haven't said much in the last week or so. Looks like you've been doing well here guys!

[BadgerBadger]

Chthon, that sounds like a cool project! We might need something larger to stop the AI though....

[kasnavada]

I don't have power in that last update.
It's always at  0.

[daktaklakpak]

The vanishing model thing is looking like something is off in the calculations that are figuring out how many units should be in a squad.  I've noticed that for fighters/bombers/missile they fairly consistently stop rendering when they drop slightly below 50% health (but not always).  Guardians often vanish after the first shot lands on them, but again not always.   

When you capture a controller, it vanishes when it's almost dead, and doesn't re-render when it rebuilds (switching to galaxy map and then back seems to fix this one).

Heres what I'm talking about (attached screenshot) - pointer is hovering over the unit of fighters just to the right of the "PAUSED!" text.  The squad status text is saying that there should be 7 units, but it's only rendering 4.  I think this mismatch is whats making it stop rendering any units before the squad is really dead.

[daktaklakpak]

Heres what I'm talking about (attached screenshot) - pointer is hovering over the unit of fighters just to the right of the "PAUSED!" text.  The squad status text is saying that there should be 7 units, but it's only rendering 4.  I think this mismatch is whats making it stop rendering any units before the squad is really dead.

Forgot to add:  After taking that screenshot, when I went to the galaxy map and came back, it was then rendering all 7 units in the squad (never unpaused the game).

[BadgerBadger]

One thing that would be cool is if there was a little graphical effect when a shot impacted a shield. It looks a bit weird when the shot just stops.

[BadgerBadger]

So how's .119 coming? Anything exciting heading down the pipe? Or just steady progress but nothing finished yet?

[Cinth]

So how's .119 coming? Anything exciting heading down the pipe? Or just steady progress but nothing finished yet?

I finally finished up a batch of goodies for you all to play with 

[Cinth]

Here are two of the new ships!   



Those will look a bit better once Chris has a chance to adjust the shader to his liking.  The shader being used is a bit beyond me as far as making it look good consistently.

[x4000]

So how's .119 coming? Anything exciting heading down the pipe? Or just steady progress but nothing finished yet?

Steady progress from Keith, Blue, and Cinth.  I've got a couple of other things I have to take care of in the first half of this week, so I'm slower than usual right now.  But I'm not holding anyone else up -- the release notes just look empty because Keith is doing so much invisible stuff right now.  He's given me a timeline estimate that surprised me (in a good way), but I'm not about to repeat that sort of thing here, just in case.    Anyhow, things are very much moving.