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Topic: a big thank you and some suggestions

soulless
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Joined: 2017-04-09, 13:20
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Posted at: 2017-04-09, 13:56

First a big thank you to the developers. A really great game. Some suggestions (or wishes) after all the time I spend playing the game: Seafaring: a checkbox "Search for port places" which by default is checked but you can uncheck so your ship will just explore the unknown Island without "Port Space found" every few minutes. Attack: remember when a attack message was send by a military building and suppress those messages for X Minutes from the same building. If one attacks the enemy and the soldiers of the enemy walk by your military buildings to join the fight every military building for every soldier walking by sends a "TATA ATTACK" Message. In the end you have up to 20 attack messages between 2 enemy defeated. But a urgent message like "No Iron" is just a little "ping". AI: foresters / rangers should not be build if there is only desert. Or at least it should dismantle foresters and lumberjacks if the lumberjacks don't work after a while.


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2017-04-09, 20:36

Hi soulless and welcome to the forums face-smile.png

Seafaring: a checkbox "Search for port places" which by default is checked but you can uncheck so your ship will just explore the unknown Island without "Port Space found" every few minutes.

+1

Regarding the AI: The AI is a work in progress....

What version you are playing?


Fight simulator for Widelands:
https://wide-fighter.netlify.app/

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soulless
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Posted at: 2017-04-10, 12:21

kaputtnik wrote:

Regarding the AI: The AI is a work in progress....

What version you are playing?

I played build 19. I know the AI is work in progress, followed some discussions in the forum. I mostly look if the ai gets it economy working and thats why I put the foresters in my suggestions. Which version should I try for AI-progess? Is it in development lp:widelands or do I need lp:~widelands-dev/widelands/ai-post-b19-2? Perhaps I find the time to make a manual install and check it out.


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2017-04-10, 12:47

New AI advances are mostly in lp:~widelands-dev/widelands/ai-post-b19-2, which is still in an experimental state.

I also like the idea about less messages from the buildings being attacked - we could add a timeout there. How long should we make the timeout (gametime) - 5 minutes?


Busy indexing nil values

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soulless
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Posted at: 2017-04-10, 13:16

Yes, I know it is experimental. But I think the more people give it a try and report their experience the better the progress could be. But that could take a while. There is a lot of work during the next weeks and also the sun is shining so not that much time to sit in front of a pc and watch workers carrying wares over roads.

Less messages would be very, very, very, very nice. I sometimes disable sound completely to avoid those attack-massage-spam. But than you must watch the message box carefully to not miss those "no more resources".

And a quick off topic: Is there a other way to donate than paypal?


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2017-04-10, 15:43

soulless wrote:

First a big thank you to the developers. A really great game. Some suggestions (or wishes) after all the time I spend playing the game: Seafaring: a checkbox "Search for port places" which by default is checked but you can uncheck so your ship will just explore the unknown Island without "Port Space found" every few minutes.

Letting ships explore without stopping at port spaces is a very nice suggestion. But maybe it could be achieved by just one more click on the explore-buttons or something like this? (instead of using such a box)

And I would suggest to introduce one further mode: Exploring islands without stopping after exploring the whole island. (patrol-mode)

(could be implemented by one further click on the buttons?)

But now concerning the attack messages discussion: It is good to try decrease the attack messages. But if you would like to implement your suggestions with X minutes, I would prefer to chose in the menu if i would like to have this message behaviour or something else.

The problem which I see: If you don't get attack messages for X minutes, you have to keep that in mind and you have to check all the time if there will be further attacks. In general I consider this as quite suboptimal....

I see that there is a problem that hostile soldiers are reported as attackers in cases where they just walk around in your territory.

Another problem: If you have many military buildings at one spot, they all will send the attack message, even if they are not under attack at all. One message would be fine there, right?

Suggestion: Showing attack spots for a while at the mini-map.


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2017-04-10, 21:23

soulless wrote:

And a quick off topic: Is there a other way to donate than paypal?

No, unfortunately not.


Fight simulator for Widelands:
https://wide-fighter.netlify.app/

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Tibor

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Posted at: 2017-04-10, 22:03

soulless wrote:

AI: foresters / rangers should not be build if there is only desert. Or at least it should dismantle foresters and lumberjacks if the lumberjacks don't work after a while.

You are right here, they does not distinguish the terrain, part of problem is that there is no single number that would be easily queried and would represent the fertility and/or such fertility is tree specie dependent. This feature is not touched by experimental genetic algorithm so can be modified regardless of it, with some caution of course. It of course requires bit of testing and tweaking so if anybody is able and willing to help I will provide needed information...

Edited: 2017-04-10, 22:03

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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2017-04-11, 12:26

WorldSavior wrote:

soulless wrote:

First a big thank you to the developers. A really great game. Some suggestions (or wishes) after all the time I spend playing the game: Seafaring: a checkbox "Search for port places" which by default is checked but you can uncheck so your ship will just explore the unknown Island without "Port Space found" every few minutes.

Letting ships explore without stopping at port spaces is a very nice suggestion. But maybe it could be achieved by just one more click on the explore-buttons or something like this? (instead of using such a box)

And I would suggest to introduce one further mode: Exploring islands without stopping after exploring the whole island. (patrol-mode)

(could be implemented by one further click on the buttons?)

We could also use keyboard shortcuts (CTRL-click - ignore port spaces, ALT-click: patrol mode).

But now concerning the attack messages discussion: It is good to try decrease the attack messages. But if you would like to implement your suggestions with X minutes, I would prefer to chose in the menu if i would like to have this message behaviour or something else.

The problem which I see: If you don't get attack messages for X minutes, you have to keep that in mind and you have to check all the time if there will be further attacks. In general I consider this as quite suboptimal....

This is why we would need to keep the interval quite short.

I see that there is a problem that hostile soldiers are reported as attackers in cases where they just walk around in your territory.

We also have the converse problem: https://bugs.launchpad.net/widelands/+bug/1665083

Another problem: If you have many military buildings at one spot, they all will send the attack message, even if they are not under attack at all. One message would be fine there, right?

Yes, one should be enough.

Suggestion: Showing attack spots for a while at the mini-map.


Busy indexing nil values

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soulless
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Posted at: 2017-04-11, 12:40

Tibor wrote:

soulless wrote:

AI: foresters / rangers should not be build if there is only desert. Or at least it should dismantle foresters and lumberjacks if the lumberjacks don't work after a while.

You are right here, they does not distinguish the terrain, part of problem is that there is no single number that would be easily queried and would represent the fertility and/or such fertility is tree specie dependent. This feature is not touched by experimental genetic algorithm so can be modified regardless of it, with some caution of course. It of course requires bit of testing and tweaking so if anybody is able and willing to help I will provide needed information...

As I am no programmer I could not help very much here. I try to read the code and if I understand it correctly DefaultAI::check_productionsites checks the production of a building. So if lumberjacks don't work after a while and there are foresters nearby ai can dismantle both and try it somewhere else. I mean if there are foresters and after 30 minutes the lumberjacks nearby don't work there is something wrong. I saw this happen sometimes on other maps but frequently in the map https://wl.widelands.org/maps/europa-11/ on position 3, yellow (spain). I played the map several times and after I saw this the first time I every time went to spain and see what is going on there. This always took me a while, get my economy working, build a port, shipyard, ship and go there ... so I am there after about 1 hour gametime and the ai has up to 4 foresters and 1 or 2 lumberjacks in the desert, try to build the first military building on better terrain but has no wood (validated this if possible by building a forester near the border on the better terrain and if the lumberjack from the ai can reach the growing trees the economy starts to work again)

Also I saw there often the ai building a shipyard near a sea with no connection to open water. The Sea is a little bigger but not open water. I think this is the code building the shipyard:

else if (bo.is_shipyard) {
// for now AI builds only one shipyard
assert(bo.total_count() == 0);
    if (bf->open_water_nearby > 3 && seafaring_economy) {

Shouldn't instead check if a port space is nearby? I mean I always build the shipyard near the first port, there is always enough space for a shipyard. And I understand to build a shipyard early so the ai started seafaring early but there is no need for a shipyard if you don't have a port and also a sheep-farm and a weaving mill. You need some cloth to build a ship and start an expedition.

So I think that the ai could do:

If portspace nearby and seafaring_economy and started to build a port and a sheep-farm and a weaving mill or have them
    build shipyard

That's just some thoughts of me to get the ai working on difficult maps .... there are a few maps where the ai has problems getting the economy working


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