Symoon wrote:Game completed fine in a solo game against computers here ! (on a 1.5 years-old computer)
Cool! Did you try loading a game?
Symoon wrote:Too bad it won't work on older graphic cards, would some lower graphic option allow Coconet to run, or would it be too much pain to program for only a few players ?
I tried 2 alternatives:
- GDI+: no need for 3D card, average performance at 640x480 (40 fps), poor performance beyond that (10 fps). My desktop resolution is 1920x1200.
- D3D: need a "little" 3D card (GeForce 4 Ti, ATI having more trouble), good performance for all resolutions.
Even if i remove all 3D fancy effects, it's still a problem for old cards because they miss the pixel/vertex shader processor (needed to render a single triangle).
The map is drawn differently between the software rendering method with GDI+ and the D3D pipeline. I'll try something with GDI+ but i think i will get 10 fps at best.
Symoon wrote:Only small thing: I think the neutal countries' flag are sometimes too hard to notice. For instance, see South Africa: one has to guess where to click to go there.
You mean for Spying, Ecocomic Aid or Subversion? If so, i'll make the transparent hint less transparent.
Symoon wrote:Also, nothing dramatic here but it would be cool to have somewhere a reminder that Spring is the building phase. Like "building phase" in the top of screen, next to "give your orders". Yes, I know, there's the statisitcs display as reminder, but (maybe I'm not focused enough) I missed the building phase 2 or 3 times during the game. I was focused on moving my troops and ships and suddenly realised I forgot to build on the previous season.
You're right, i missed it several times too. You've good suggestions, i'll try them.
Monty wrote:cosmetical: the info box has a little bit too less width for the name "equatorial africa"
Good one. Fixed!
Monty wrote:the load dialog: my fault, i overlooked it at the start screen. but wouldn't anyone expect a load opportunity (additionally) in the "file" section?
I thought about that, but it's a lot of coding because of the client/server framework (closing connections, waiting for the system to release the ressources, opening back the connections...). But i can change the game type combo-box to a list box. This way "Saved Game" will be visible right away. What do you think of that.
Monty wrote:can you give a little explanation about the test ai? what have you implemented there? i can't say much about it but it seems to be more aggressive than the st version (like attacking the human player without being attacked before even if the player has low victory points). what's the algorithm behind it compared to the other versions? early retreats still seem to happen (not 100% sure).
In fact this AI is exactly the same as the 800XL AI but without the diplomacy part (so unfinished).
I added this AI to test (and show) how to add an AI at the runtime. You can see this AI source code in the "AI Plugins" folder. It's compiled at runtime.
Actually, without the CoCoNet source code and visual studio (coding hint & compiling help), it's hard for anyone to change/create a new AI.
But the idea behind this is to develop an AI with the full source code of CoCoNet, then to put the AI in the "AI Plugins" folder of the server binary (without compiling CoCoNet). When a client connect to a server, the client downloads automatically all the files located in the "AI Plugins" folder of the server, then the client is relaunched to compile all the new AI.
This way it's easy to share new AI:
- without sending manually all the files to clients.
- without recompiling CoCoNet and having N version of CoCoNet because each one has it's own AI.
Monty wrote:and you implemented the thing, that a target of yours isn't attacked if the major country who occupies it changes during the battle phase and before you attack it, didn't you? (result: no unwanted war)
Yes exactly. I did that because <right now> i don't see any advantage to attack an area for which the owner has changed between the moment the order was given (the player turn) and the battle. When i played in my childhood with my brother, we started again a LOT of games because a war was unintentionally declared against a level 9 AI...
Monty wrote:do you plan to further enhance the game by giving more options concerning the starting conditions? i'm referring to my very first post about colonial conquest...
I confess i should read all the posts/mails again to gather all ideas/suggestions. As soon as the GDI/D3D problem is solved, i'll compile a list of all of them. Thanks to point this out!
And again, thanks to both of you for your time and support, it helps a lot!