changes in the patch project

posted on December 21st, 2008, 8:57 am

is it possible to the get ai to use the replace weapon

posted on December 21st, 2008, 12:45 pm

its kindda possible in fo3 as there is a code that makes the ai auto use the weapon (used to select the avatar) but i dnt think it can be done so it uses it in battle but just as soon its avalible

posted on December 21st, 2008, 10:21 pm

ok so i have to wait for 1.3 patch project.

posted on January 27th, 2009, 8:03 am

I know theres no way this will make the next PP release but do you think is would be possible to do 2 new AI processes? One for fight spawning and the other for fighter sqadrons. I know that the replace weapon can already do fighters but let explane my thoughts here. I have recently started looking at ships outside the Trek universe and large numbers of fighters play a way biger role in stargate, star wars and B5 just to name a few. And while you can do fighters with PP 1.2.5 it doesn't do large numbers very well. THere are some real and practical limits because of the type of classlable used. So what I seggest is moving fighters and carrieres to a seperate setup like what EAW uses where a ship or station is coded to have a "hanger" and in this "hanger" spawns a specific number of squadrons of whatever types are coded in the odf. The Squadrons will probably be the harder part. While they could be done as an SOD made up of however many fighters the person wants it would be better if the indvidual fighters in each squadron would behave a bit more independently. I know programing headache. I don't know all the programing particulars but I supose the first question is is this possible?

posted on January 27th, 2009, 1:09 pm

i guess it cud b posible but the squadrons cud be harder as hps dnt move so a single sod with the fighter squadron mayb more difficult. however mayb making a new odf code for squadrons that tell the code how many ships are in the squadron then it spawns that many and they move together (acting as one unit) but all seperate this cud help to allow each ship to move information but move more realistic and wouldnr mess up the hps

posted on January 27th, 2009, 5:42 pm

that should be close to impossible from our current point of development. not impossible, but very close to it

posted on January 27th, 2009, 8:33 pm

Thats why I'm thinking new AI process like the starbase process and minner process. The prcess would use an SOD of single fight and have multiples in the squadron. There behavior would be preprogramed and hardcoded as part of the process making things like destroying indivdual fighters possible. THe particulars of the compsition of the squadron and single fighter characteristics would be odf coded and the hardpoints would be setup as a single ship unit in the SOD. The AI process would bring it all to gether.

posted on January 27th, 2009, 8:40 pm

yea, squad moving is on the todo list. however i haven't taken a look into it. i guess that will take up a lot of time for it to work properly... but it's something i really would like to do

posted on January 28th, 2009, 6:15 am

And the squad spwaning? Is that on the todo list?

posted on January 29th, 2009, 8:50 am

yes, however it will take some time before i begin working on this feature. there is a lot more i have on todo first

btw. i was working on the savegame feature yesterday for fleet operations, which of course also affects 1.2.6 development and found a major problem with it: if i properly implement the savegame feature in 1.2.6 all maps for armada 2 would get incompatible and would have to be converted. this is because even in regular maps the same information as in the savegames for each object are stored (maps and savegames are essentially the same) and as armada stores all information in these files with binary records, they are not backwards compatible...

posted on January 29th, 2009, 9:21 am

does this mean that 2.6 wont b able 2 happen

posted on January 29th, 2009, 7:29 pm

So what are you changing that makes the system lose compatibility?

posted on January 31st, 2009, 4:26 pm

does this mean that 2.6 wont b able 2 happen

I really hope thats not the case, I was really hoping to get the experiance system and race-specific shield effects this time around.

posted on February 1st, 2009, 11:26 am

each craft, each map setting, each weaponstate has it's own save and load function. the same functions are used to save a bzn (as a savegame and a bzn is literally the same). now i added a lot more parameters for the new weapons, these have of course when saved a bigger size in memory. now while armada with those enhanced save and load parameters tries to open an old map, these values don't 'fit' into what armada tries to put them to, informations get corrupted.
when developing 1.2.5 i wasn't aware of this issue, the replaceweapon isn't affected much in this version. it's settings are just set to the default value each time you load a savegame. as those replaces happen in just a blink of an eye, there isn't much that could go wrong there. in the current version of the weapon and especially the experience system a proper load and save function is essential, otherwise the game would just crash without proper load information.
i am still trying to figure out if it is possible to write a "compatibility mode", so that old maps can still be read, but savegames and new maps are saved in the updated format...

posted on February 1st, 2009, 1:16 pm

Hi. I'd like to comment to. I think it's not a disaster, that the stock A2 maps won't work after patching, because for my private mod, i will/have to make my own maps. If I need a few older maps, I can still edit them on my own. But that's just my opinion.