2014-06-22 12:30:53 (edited by arjan 2014-06-22 12:32:41)

Is it possible that something isn't working right with allied upgrades? I see in the documentation several times that allies can benefit from your upgrades, I tried this yesterday and it didn't seem to work. I was traditional and keyIsFull was dark, so I researched the melee and archer upgrades for him as well as myself, but his units never appeared to get the upgrades, nor the improved wood gathering.
Is there something else you need to do or is something broken? and has anyone actually managed to get this to work?

2014-06-22 13:48:11

@arjan: From the documentation:

Allied players share the knowledge of the map, the victory, and their units can help each other. A worker can use an allied warehouse to store a resource (the resource will still be added to the worker's army).

2014-06-22 14:10:10

I was referring to the crazyMod documentation, where this was written several times. Looks like this is incorrect, although I'd still like to see this feature in a future update.

2014-06-22 15:24:08

@arjan: OK, I have found one of them:

This race does not possess research of its own. However, it can benefit from blacksmith and sawmill research, which must be obtained either by converting enemy buildings or through an ally that can perform the necessary research.

This also shows that converting buildings is a significant part of the game. (By the way, I have to say that my role here is just to make sure that the Python code allows what the designers want to do, not to tell them what to do.)

Sharing tech upgrades is not that difficult to code. The simplest way might be to do the sharing at the end of every turn. While this is not the most efficient way it doesn't matter because the computer would have very few things to do. And the code would be simple and sturdy. So actually I can add this quickly. I'll try to avoid adding a "can_use_upgrades_from_allies" variable for the moment and allow this by default.

2014-06-22 15:45:03

Hi.

Oh, we were convinced that the allies shared research. Maybe it was the case in a previous version ?

The custom flags are very interesting. With this possibility, we will probably modify some races greatly. Do not hesitate to give us your ideas.

2014-06-22 16:18:14

This mod is awesome! It has encouraged me to play SoundRTS again. I kept following topics concerning the game, and updated it if a new version was available, but I haven't really played it in the last time. You've done amazing work Pragma by creating this mod! Thanks for that.

Here is the link for the German translation I've made for the CrazyMod. You're welcome to include it in the next version of the mod Pragma.

Finally, I've got some bugs for SoundMUD regarding the game SoundRTS itself:

  1. If you minimize the game while you're in a match, after alt+tabbing back to the game, you aren't able to control any units or buildings anymore. You have to open the game menu and press escape to restore the ability of controlling your units or buildings.

  2. It is not possible to have braille output on SoundRTS, when using NVDA. While the game is opened, the braille display reads "Unknown". The speech works fine; JAWS isn't supported at all.

Errare humanum est!

2014-06-22 20:32:36

Really? I'm using jaws15 just fine to play the game.

2014-06-22 20:38:06

hello,
Just wow, this mod actually made me go back to playing sound rts. Nice work, guys. So I noticed the webpage doesn't have a Spanish translation. Would you be interested in having one? I could translate both the webpage and the documentation if needed.

A fight we cannot lose.
An enemy we cannot defeat.
A destiny we cannot escape.
Follow me on twitter @guilevi2000

2014-06-22 23:47:14 (edited by Pragma 2014-06-22 23:53:58)

Thank you for your encouragement. The German translation is now available and integrated in the archives thanks to you the blasting GD.

EDIT
I have forgot... Of course, we are open to new translations for the website or for the documentation. I think the translation of the documentation is more usefull.

2014-06-22 23:50:00

Is there anything I need to do to do that? Do I just kind of copy the website and translate it and send it over?

A fight we cannot lose.
An enemy we cannot defeat.
A destiny we cannot escape.
Follow me on twitter @guilevi2000

2014-06-23 00:43:27 (edited by SoundMUD 2014-06-23 00:47:47)

@pragma: I have just added shared research for allies, and I'm quite sure it didn't exist before.

The latest development version is at:
https://github.com/soundmud/soundrts/archive/master.zip

The RSS of the commits is at:
https://github.com/soundmud/soundrts/co … aster.atom

The main recent changes are:
- now allies share their upgrades
- bug fixed: asking a building to use an ability on an unreachable target would cause an error
- bug fixed: trying to convert a target in the fog of war would cause an error if the range of the ability is "anywhere"

I think that I will make ScreenReaderAPI the new default instead of SAPI 5, because:
- most if not all the players have a screen reader (and it falls back to SAPI 5 anyway)
- the screen reader is already set with the favorite language (not the case with SAPI 5)
- a screen reader probably allows to get the exact spelling of an unknown word
- even if the game doesn't know exactly when a message is finished, the result is good enough for many players who even choose it, so for a first experience it's better than a SAPI voice in the wrong language

ScreenReaderAPI seems to work, but eventually I'll try accessible_output.

Edit: I have restored the script to build a Windows installer, but I will soon restore the portable zip Windows version too because it's better suited to the current way the Crazy Mod is packaged.

2014-06-23 05:43:07

Well, my large ppost was been ignored t-t.

@soundmud:

The latest development version is at:

this version have a tag in the repository?
Or isn't marked as a new alpha update.

about the sharing of upgrades. Well is a good idea, but at same time, isn't a good idea. It provides advantages on teams that uses same races. One can dedicate to obtain rapidly the best upgrades, and the other, can mass units.

Well, I set up a fork of soundrts repository at:
https://github.com/sanslash332/soundrts
With a branch named Crazy, including the current mod in version 8.2
Is basically for provide a easy method to download and setup the game with the mod, in a remote machine  to host a game server including the mod in a few steps.

I tried to make this in the official soundrts repository, but I don't have write permissions... And is obvious that I  don't have these permissions xD

Well, when the mod updates to the 8.3 release, I'll update the repo.

2014-06-23 10:13:26

Thanks for the updates SoundMud.

2014-06-23 13:26:10

Would the ability to teleport ally units and load ally units into your transports also be easy enough to implement? I think that could be interesting

2014-06-23 14:34:20

I agree zakc93. It would be interesting, but this would mean that the player of the loaded units wouldn't be able to control his/her own units anymore, since the flying machine or whatever unit is used to load them, would be controlled by the allied. That makes me think of how nice it would be if it were possible to chat with your allied during a game. Would that be possible to implement SoundMUD?

When I'm using JAWS and launch the game, it immediately sticks to SAPI - yes, I've ScreenReaderAPI enabled.

Lately, I've played with three ally computers against four ally computers as the other team on a private server. I chose the map - ONJ1 -, selected a different race for each of us and started the game. I set all computers to defensive. Nevertheless, they started attacking each other quite soon. I presume this was because they all wanted to gather the anyways very few resources. After the fight had obviously calmed down, I checked what was going on and realized that some computers, which were of a weaker race, stopped doing anything. They just stopped recruiting workers and soldiers and without units, they couldn't even do anything else too. The strongest races - but also only some of them - kept working though. I'm convinced that this is a bug, since they ought to have had enough resources left so that they would have been able to keep working, and thus I hope that you will be able to get it fixed for the next update.

Errare humanum est!

2014-06-23 17:39:48

my guess is that there was an inaccuracy in the AI directions that the crazy mod developers wrote, not a bug in the game. I know that the normal non-crazy mod default AI instructions had a hole in them that could cause the AI to stop recruiting units too. I created a custom AI file that never stopped recruiting things if it had the resources for my own personal use though

I like to sleep, Sleep is good,
This is how I do it: Lie on a nice warm cozy bed, and dream dreams about how to rule the world!
Follow @TheGreatAthlon5 on twitter for humorous facts and game updates!
If you like my posts, thumb me up!

2014-06-23 17:41:22

That's odd, it worked fine for me straight away with JAWS.
Transportation of allied units sounds like a good idea, but somebody could really mess up your strategy if they did it without the concent of the other person, so maybe not unless we get either a chat function or an accept/decline system. This of course is easily solved by a program like TeamTalk, but not everyone has that or the other person. And personally I find the chatting mechanism in SoundRTS rather clunky, also because there can sometimes be quite a delay even in the starting room.

2014-06-23 17:42:41

I can't promise which feature or bug fix will be done next.

@sanslash332:

This version is just the development version. I'll tag it when I release the next alpha version. More changes have to be done before. At the moment, the recent commits are either simple changes, or bug fixes, or private branches rebased and squashed into one commit.

Your large post wasn't ignored. I just need more thinking before implementing custom flags.

If the practice shows that sharing upgrades is a bad idea, I'll remove it from the code or add a variable to activate or remove it.

@the blasting gd:

Which version of Jaws are you using? Maybe I'll add accessible_output to the output methods.

@zakc93:

Allowing allied transports would be a bit tricky, while teleportation would be simpler. But all those simple additions make the code more and more complex, especially since the code is not always perfectly structured.

2014-06-23 19:08:14

Hi.
I'm a little late to the party, but I'm really beginning to love this crazy mod. It really adds so much to this game, not sure if I can ever go back to the old soundRTS smile
Thanks for your awesome work Pragma! I can't wait to see what more will be added in the future.

Brendan
-----
There is one rule above all others for being a man.  Whatever comes, face it on your feet.
@bcs993 on twitter, feel free to follow!

2014-06-24 06:10:06

@soundmud:

This version is just the development version. I'll tag it when I release the next alpha version. More changes have to be done before. At the moment, the
recent commits are either simple changes, or bug fixes, or private branches rebased and squashed into one commit.

perfect, thanks for the answer :3

@:

If the practice shows that sharing upgrades is a bad idea, I'll remove it from the code or add a variable to activate or remove it.

well, it's that only need is a  period of testing. The testing in allied battles says if the shared upgrades are a good feature.

@:

Which version of Jaws are you using? Maybe I'll add accessible_output to the output methods.

what is exactly the accessible_output that you are thinking?
A window that its elements are readable using screen readers, or a kind of text box (readable by the jaws) in that you put all of the output of the game?
Currently, NVDA works better than jaws during a game. The capturing method of keys of jaws trap the arrows keys, making the press of it very laggy.
Can you put in the game some hook interrupt  for the keys, to destroy the detect keys of the jaws?
I try it with j13 an 14. I know one game that uses a hook install over the jaws, to can use without jaws interrupt the keys, without close the jaws.
Adventure at c:



@:

Allowing allied transports would be a bit tricky, while teleportation would be simpler. But all those simple additions make the code more and more complex,
especially since the code is not always perfectly structured.

hmmm before add all of this features, is good option work in to structure the code.

Thanks for all :3

2014-06-24 15:05:39

hi guys. I've created a new map for this game, z6. I designed it in mind to be playable with this mod so no additional buildings are available. I think the map is pretty nice, the only ressources are in the middle of the map and you have to fight for them. test it out and tell me if you like it. I hope it will be added into the game. the link to download is https://www.sendspace.com/file/3a7s43

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
Stephen King

2014-06-24 15:13:47

Hi,
Congratulations for the crazy mod! I love it, but I also love the original one, so please don't remove it.
Another thing:

keyIsFull wrote:

my guess is that there was an inaccuracy in the AI directions that the crazy mod developers wrote, not a bug in the game. I know that the normal non-crazy mod default AI instructions had a hole in them that could cause the AI to stop recruiting units too. I created a custom AI file that never stopped recruiting things if it had the resources for my own personal use though

The easy AI seems fine (I don't understand

goto -1

though). However, in the aggresive AI:

label rush
get 9 peasant 5 footman 8 knight
attack

No goto statement under this.
This may be a bugg, not sure though.

2014-06-24 15:30:59

@sanslash332: accessible_output is a Python library similar to the ScreenReaderAPI dll. It's a "Library to provide speech and braille output to a variety of different screen readers and other accessibility solutions."

2014-06-25 19:18:30

@Pragma: can you take a look at technical? I think that anti-air batteries might be overpowered, given that they can do 8.32 damage (after upgrades) per second with a damage radius of 1 metre. Maybe its rate of fire could be reduced to once every 1.5 instead of 1 second? The damage radius of bombers might be too high as well at 4 metres, and should be reduced.
Grenade launchers are also really overpowered, because they can do 13.32 damage every 4 seconds after upgrades with a damage radius of 2 metres. Technicals are supposed to have a weakness, but right now, there's not really a lot of strategy required to play them properly because of their insane offensive capabilities, spying airships being easy to make, hospitals, and upgrades. If you have grenade launchers and a few anti-air batteries, you essentially get the offensive power of robots without the massive resource and time cost, with hospitals making the grenade launchers really hard to take down.

2014-06-26 10:24:58

Hi,
I've noticed that the package which only contains the Crazy Mod doesn't have the maps that are included in the other one.