DEBUG: Pbem?

[EPW]

Both players had the same problem. I don't know if the computers were effected.

[J Bytheway]

Bizarre...

[J Bytheway]

Well, thanks to fromafar (see posts here and here), PBEM is a little more healthy. City growth and science now work to a certain extent.

I've also just fixed the problem with the saved turns always saying "Turn 0" - I'll upload the source for that in a moment.

There's still a problem with the research - the research completion event occurs while the game is still under the control of the previous player, so they get to see what you researched and choose what to do next. I think it would be pretty difficult to get the dialog into the next players turn, so I think the best solution is probably to scrap it entirely for PBEM games and just put a message in the message tab instead.

Does this seem an acceptable solution (at least for the short term...), or does someone have a better idea?

[Maquiladora]

I see what you mean. Would it be possible to have those msg popup symbols on the left-hand side of the screen for science (ideally for everything) like CtP1, or would that appear on the previous players turn too like in CtP1? I say that because I dont check the msg tab often, if at all sometimes. Of course if a msg popup cant be done then in the msg tab is fine, as long as it works.

[J Bytheway]

I sorely miss the symbols down the left-hand side of the screen too. I've no idea how we would go about reimplementing them, though... I think if we did manage to implement them at all, we would be able to make them hide themselves properly - but that's a big 'if' .

[Maquiladora]

You can reenable some of the symbols now in script.slc but they dont work/appear in pbem.

I think either way theyll be useful for working diplomacy like CtP1 uses them to show proposals.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
You can reenable some of the symbols now in script.slc

Really? How?

[Maquiladora]

From the faw in general:

Originally posted by Locutus
Q43 I find it really annoying that I can't see when my cities are not producing anything, is there a fix for this?
A43 There are a number of ways to see which cities have empty build queues.

• Press the 'o' key to cycle through your units with movement points left. Once all units have moved, this key will cycle through all cities with an empty build queue.
  
• Scan your empire for cities who's name is yellow, their build queues are empty.
  
• Check the message tab in the control panel, messages are displayed here when something is built and a queue is empty.
  
• Scroll through the list of cities in the city tab (on the control panel) or City Screen (F3).
  
• Open the City Manager (F2) and click the Build tab.
  
• Open the file ctp2_data\default\gamedata\script.slc. Now search for '38UnitCompletedQueueEmpty', '38BuildingBuiltQueueEmpty', '38WonderBuiltQueueEmpty' and '38EndgameBuiltQueueEmpty'. Insert the following line after these texts:
  

  Code:

  Show();

  Now you will get a pop-up message whenever there is an empty queue somewhere.

but actually I jusy tested in single player and it didnt work.

It definitly worked in 1.11 i did it everytime i resintalled, perhaps there is something different in the sourcecode playtest?

On second thoughts maybe it just gives a popup (none when there is multiple). but im sure it gave the sybmols on the left too.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
There's still a problem with the research - the research completion event occurs while the game is still under the control of the previous player, so they get to see what you researched and choose what to do next. I think it would be pretty difficult to get the dialog into the next players turn, so I think the best solution is probably to scrap it entirely for PBEM games and just put a message in the message tab instead.

Why should it be so difficuilt to move the reasearch event to the next player?

-Martin

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
Why should it be so difficuilt to move the reasearch event to the next player?

Becuase we've just gone to some touble to do precisely the opposite . The auto-save game happening before the research is what was causing the useless-research bug in the first place. Pending events don't get saved with the savegame, so the fact that the research occured was just lost.

I think a better solution is probably have the research actually happen when it is happening now, but arrange for the research dialog to appear when the game is loaded again and it notices a research has occured somehow. If we start trying to make everything happen after load then we'll run into endless confusion - indeed I believe that is exactly what happened to the original development team.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
but actually I jusy tested in single player and it didnt work.

It definitly worked in 1.11 i did it everytime i resintalled, perhaps there is something different in the sourcecode playtest?

Well, I did change the source to stop it from happening in PBEM and hotseat when the wrong player was "in control", but I thought I'd checked that it still worked under SP...

On second thoughts maybe it just gives a popup (none when there is multiple). but im sure it gave the sybmols on the left too.

No, I'm fairly sure it only ever gave a popup.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
Becuase we've just gone to some touble to do precisely the opposite . The auto-save game happening before the research is what was causing the useless-research bug in the first place. Pending events don't get saved with the savegame, so the fact that the research occured was just lost.

I think a better solution is probably have the research actually happen when it is happening now, but arrange for the research dialog to appear when the game is loaded again and it notices a research has occured somehow. If we start trying to make everything happen after load then we'll run into endless confusion - indeed I believe that is exactly what happened to the original development team.

Maybe the solution to the whole problem is to move the BeginTurn event to the load event, actual they did this, but unfortunatly for scenarios instaed for Pbem. The only problem I might see here is that it could cause some other unwanted side-effects.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
Well, I did change the source to stop it from happening in PBEM and hotseat when the wrong player was "in control", but I thought I'd checked that it still worked under SP...


No, I'm fairly sure it only ever gave a popup.

Yeah youre right it was only a series of popups but its definitely not working in SP either at the moment.

I could live without those build complete popups if only diplomacy proposals and science progress popups were there.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
Maybe the solution to the whole problem is to move the BeginTurn event to the load event, actual they did this, but unfortunatly for scenarios instaed for Pbem. The only problem I might see here is that it could cause some other unwanted side-effects.

The most obvious side effect would be the same bug that plagued scenarios - whenever you loaded a PBEM game saved in mid-turn you'd get a whole new free 'beginning of turn'. Similarly for hotseat games unless you diverged the handling of the two types even further, which is something to avoid unless necessary.

In any case, upon investigation, I discovered that there was already in place a system for postponing the science dialog until the next player began their turn - it just wasn't working properly due to one minor error. So I've fixed that, and it works fine under hotseat, but I forgot to test it under PBEM.

There might be side effects to this fix meaning that the science window will no longer pop up in hotseat / email games when the advance currently being researched is obtained via other means (ruins, diplomacy). Nevertheless, I think it's another step in the right direction, and I think PBEM (and certainly hotseat) should be playable now.

If it passes 'in-house' testing satisfactorily, would anyone be interested in a trial PBEM game to search out new problems (I'd upload a new playtest version)?

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Yeah youre right it was only a series of popups but its definitely not working in SP either at the moment.

Curious. Something else to look into...

I could live without those build complete popups if only diplomacy proposals and science progress popups were there.

Ah well, diplomacy is a whole different problem... Not for the faint-hearted to tackle .

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
If it passes 'in-house' testing satisfactorily, would anyone be interested in a trial PBEM game to search out new problems (I'd upload a new playtest version)?

Of course!

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
In any case, upon investigation, I discovered that there was already in place a system for postponing the science dialog until the next player began their turn - it just wasn't working properly due to one minor error. So I've fixed that, and it works fine under hotseat, but I forgot to test it under PBEM.

Might this postponing of the science window also possible for postponing the diplo window. To do human-human-diplomacy something is needed to make the diplo-proposal popup when the addressed player's turn start. That should be stored in something like a queue. As the proposal can be called by a slic event only the event and the arguments must be stored. At least something like this was the idea of the fix attempt.

-Martin

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
Might this postponing of the science window also possible for postponing the diplo window. To do human-human-diplomacy something is needed to make the diplo-proposal popup when the addressed player's turn start. That should be stored in something like a queue. As the proposal can be called by a slic event only the event and the arguments must be stored. At least something like this was the idea of the fix attempt.

Quite possibly.

The delay is instituted through the SLIC engine (which seems like a strange choice, but I guess it was a way to get the information into the savegame easily).

As to doing something similar with diplomacy, I guess that it would be necessary to add more similar info to the SLIC engine class (which might cause backwards-compatibility issues...) and then altering the way the diplomacy window works so that it can store proposals and resume them rather than concluding them all at once.

Not an insurmountable task, but probably not trivial either.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Of course!

OK, thanks . I've got a couple of loose ends to tie up and then I think it might be time to try a 'real' game.

[J Bytheway]

What opinions do people have on the format of the PBEM save game name?

At present it's:

CTP2 Email To email (Turn turn-number)

...but if there's one thing I've learnt from playing CTP PBEM, it's that players come and go, and even when they don't, email addresses still change, so it's silly to have the email address permanantly fixed into the filename.

One possibile fix is to introduce some way of altering the emails as the game goes on. This is what I'd most like, but I don't know how best to go about it. My gut tells me to extend SLIC to be able to access and alter the emails and also to be able to procure textual input from the user, and then implement the feature through SLIC, or at least using the same routines directly from the source. Unfortunately, I wouldn't know how to do this offhand.

Another possibility is to not put the email in the game name (indeed, not bother with emails at all in CTP2 - let the user worry about them), and use rather the player name of civ name. This also has the advantage that it prevents problems if two players have the same email (they are both living in the same household, for example).

Another aspect of this issue is that the format of the save game name should not be hardcoded, it should be exposed in the text files somehow. Again my gut tells me this would be best done through SLIC for maximum flexibility, but that may be excessive, and perhaps just a string with escape sequences which are replaced by various texts at save time as appropriate. For example, the template for the current format could be:

CTP2 Email To %e (Turn %t)

In this case, what character should be used for the escapes. I used % here, but for consistency it might be better, perhaps, to try and match the sort of templating used in the GL.

Even if the format is exposed in this way, we still need to choose a sensible default. The most significant choice (IMHO) is what order to put the different components. If the turn number appears before the email (or other player-identifying string) then when the files are sorted alphabetically they will appear roughly in the order they were played, but if these sections appear the other way around then the turns will be sorted first by player, and then by turn number. I've become used to this latter state of affairs in playing CTP PBEM, but does anyone have a good reason to favour the former?

(It's amazing what a big deal I can make out of a seemingly trivial issue .)

Any opinions?

[Maquiladora]

It would definitely be useful to be able to change emails or players names through the game. Maybe a "Player Setup" tab under options only for hotseat or PBEM games. This kind of in-game info could also be used to see what humans are controlling what civs, so you can PM or email them privately, without having to ask for an updated playerlist on the forum so you know whos who.

I dont see any reason not to have the email in the file name if we will be able to edit it in the middle of a game. For possible double email addresses then maybe we should include the player name like "CtP2 PBEM to Maquiladora (Email Address) - Turn #"

For the order of the parts of the name it doesnt make any difference, just sort them by date if you want them in order. I think its easier to spot a save if the player name or email is nearer the beginning, if the turn # were nearer someone might double-click the wrong turn, well its a possibility.

I dont really like the idea of exposing the format, then we might get games where everyone chooses a different format and it would be annoying to sort the saves after the game or for a moderator to sift through, things like that.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
I dont see any reason not to have the email in the file name if we will be able to edit it in the middle of a game. For possible double email addresses then maybe we should include the player name like "CtP2 PBEM to Maquiladora (Email Address) - Turn #"

Yes - that would probably be fine.

For the order of the parts of the name it doesnt make any difference, just sort them by date if you want them in order.

Good point .

I think its easier to spot a save if the player name or email is nearer the beginning, if the turn # were nearer someone might double-click the wrong turn, well its a possibility.

Well, I've sent the wrong turn before even in the present system, so we shouldn't do anything to make matters worse!

I dont really like the idea of exposing the format, then we might get games where everyone chooses a different format and it would be annoying to sort the saves after the game or for a moderator to sift through, things like that.

I see your point. Of course, with the source code anyone could make the the format anything they want anyway, but most people would not bother to go that far.

If we did allow variable name format, I guess it would be better to save the format in the game so all saves for that one game look the same, which should make the moderators job simpler (especially if they start the game and choose the format they like ). But I'll take any excuse to avoid work, so I think I'll leave it hardcoded for now.

[J Bytheway]

Just a note to say I haven't forgotten about this - I just got rather sidetracked by the svn server issue. Hopefully that will soon be sorted out and normal service can resume. I still want to get PBEM working properly .

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
Just a note to say I haven't forgotten about this -

Never thought so

[J Bytheway]

Just bumping this thread to remind myself that this issue still needs to be dealt with...

[Maquiladora]

What else is there to fix here John, besides the diplomacy?

[J Bytheway]

Well, I was referring to PBEM in general, rather than anything in particular. I *hope* that diplomacy is all that's left to fix. I would also like to allow alteration of player emails in mid game as mentioned above.

[Maquiladora]

Would it be possible to have only 2 players? When i select 2 it defaults to 3.

Also theres the battle reporting for the next player, not something really to fix but can something like in CtP1 be done?

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Would it be possible to have only 2 players? When i select 2 it defaults to 3.

Really? I thought I'd got that working properly... I'll take a look.

Also theres the battle reporting for the next player, not something really to fix but can something like in CtP1 be done?

Well, it should be SLICabble, but perhaps a source-code solution might be better.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
Really? I thought I'd got that working properly... I'll take a look.

I see what happened - it was working when you started a PBEM or hotseat game, but not an SP game. It's fixed now in svn, and with luck I'm about to upload a playtest in which it works.