Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » BattleSim with arbitrary tech
BattleSim with arbitrary tech |
Sun, 26 February 2006 15:25 |
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wumpus | | | Messages: 114
Registered: September 2004 | |
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Hi all,
I've just hacked together a little program to "fix" the techs in a given HST file to whatever I like; in paticular I see this being semi-useful for the good old battlesim, which is nice enough for testing with max tech, but sometimes the super-miniaturisation costs are actually inconvenient.
Do many people still use battlesim? If so, I can probably whip up a quick webpage to request a paticular tech set (which will, however, apply to *all* races - at least for now) and DL the HST, XY and M files.
Quote: | Important: This will only work well after tech 8ish or so - ie, after the point where techs cost more than 4k (a year's production in battlesim); however, I guess most of the really interesting battles do occur after this point.
| -- This has been corrected using LEit's Mineral Alchemy suggestion [18/3/2006].
Quote: | But it'd be another one of my so-much-loved exercises in making a web-interface, however trivial - so I won't go to the effort unless people actually want it
ETA would probably be a couple of weeks, mind you - I'm still entirely too busy with real life
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-- It's done now, obviously [18/3/2006].
UPDATE 4.3.2006:
Here we go: http://wumpus.mine.nu/stars/battlesim_tech.php
UPDATE 18.3.2006 (Thanks Ashlyn and Micha ):
If the page is unreachable and I know about it and can reach the 'net, I'll put a notice on http://das.wumpus.googlepages.com/battlesimgeneratorstatus
[Updated on: Sat, 18 March 2006 02:23] by Moderator
Michael "Wumpus" Zinn
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Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech |
Sun, 26 February 2006 23:55 |
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I'd certainly be willing to test drive the tool Wumpus. I've been waiting to start Xdudes game but apparently we don't have anyone to set up the galaxy.
Ptolemy
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Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech |
Mon, 27 February 2006 03:50 |
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Micha | | | Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002 Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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wumpus wrote on Sun, 26 February 2006 21:25 | Do many people still use battlesim?
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I hardly ever use it, I make new testbed for almost every game, with the "correct" races ... (PRT, LRT, player#, ... )
Reasons being:
- minituarisation costs
- player positioning, this is a very important aspect and can completely alter the battle result ... (and playing mostly team games there are often 4+ players on the board)
So my *ahum* request would be: could you make an online utility that allows you to just upload any .hst file and fix it to the right tech levels? At first global techs, but per race would even be better of course.
mch
[Updated on: Mon, 27 February 2006 03:50] Report message to a moderator
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Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech |
Mon, 27 February 2006 08:15 |
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Only problem here is that all players don't have a copy of the .hst file. The .hst file would need to be sent to all players to make the tool useful for everyone.
Ptolemy
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Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech |
Mon, 27 February 2006 12:28 |
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wumpus | | | Messages: 114
Registered: September 2004 | |
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Micha wrote on Mon, 27 February 2006 09:50 |
wumpus wrote on Sun, 26 February 2006 21:25 | Do many people still use battlesim?
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I hardly ever use it, I make new testbed for almost every game, with the "correct" races ... (PRT, LRT, player#, ... )
Reasons being:
- minituarisation costs
- player positioning, this is a very important aspect and can completely alter the battle result ... (and playing mostly team games there are often 4+ players on the board)
So my *ahum* request would be: could you make an online utility that allows you to just upload any .hst file and fix it to the right tech levels? At first global techs, but per race would even be better of course.
mch
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Sure, that would work; the advantage to me of using the "standard" battle.hst is that I can just host the original on the server, and copy+modify+zip+send out when somebody requests something. No files need to come *in* to the server. Not that uploading files etc is difficult per se, but it opens up a whole slew of fun security issues that'd need to be tackled.
So: again, in the short term it's not going to be that way, but definitely possible.
Michael "Wumpus" Zinn
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Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech |
Mon, 27 February 2006 12:36 |
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wumpus | | | Messages: 114
Registered: September 2004 | |
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(I think I covered Dogthinker's other questions in other replies, but:)
Dogthinkers wrote on Mon, 27 February 2006 01:09 | On a side note, did you ever decide to release your .h file merging tool? I think most of the teams waiting to start xdude's huge packed remapped team game would be pretty keen to take that tool for a drive around the block.
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No, it stalled for two reasons; first because - to do it the way I want - requires a reasonably involved interface, and as is probably know by now, I'm not at all a fan of doing interface stuff. And secondly because it turns out that this problem is a great deal trickier to do "just right" than I realised at first. Planet reports can contain different levels of detail (The usual 4: Just owner, owner/pop/defenses/climate/min concs etc, that+surface mins, everything (the owner's version)). And, paticularly if the most recent scan was only of the owner, then the report may be of a given year but actually contain, eg, pop information which is *much* older, and there is no (static) way of noticing this.
At the beginning of January or so, I finally got to the point where I can load most file types into memory and hold them there in a reasonably sensible structure (rather than just handling the data in the file one element at a time and throwing the elements away after processing - which meant that relationships between elements could generally not be used at all for useful results); it may be worth coming back to the H file thing now. But as I said, it has some thorny issues, so even if I had plenty of time available, it would still take a while to produce something properly usable.
Michael "Wumpus" Zinn
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Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech |
Mon, 27 February 2006 12:58 |
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wumpus | | | Messages: 114
Registered: September 2004 | |
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wumpus wrote on Mon, 27 February 2006 18:22 |
PricklyPea wrote on Mon, 27 February 2006 14:56 | If you download my non-encrypted version of JRC4, you can edit the techs directly in the HST file. I do this all the time for various testing. It's also possible to edit who has what MT items etc.
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Hmm, granted I know such a beastie exists, but is it *supposed* to exist? IE is it sanctioned by the Jeffs or whoever feels responsible for stars! these days? It doesn't seem to be *readily* available, so I assume not?
Perhaps an irrelevant point to some, but I imagine not to everyone. *shrug*
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Gack, ok, two additional things:
First, I missed the "my" in your post - I guess the tool is yours. Please don't take my reply personally; it wasn't meant to be an attack on you, but I think that there really are some people who would not feel using such a modified EXE is "ok". I personally wouldn't really care, but then, I'm not the best person to ask ;P
Second, I would strongly encourage you *not* to make the tool readily available (although maybe it's too late already). The single biggest reason I'm still holding onto my code, as much as I'd like to release it and let other people play, is not that it has the encryption details, but because it has so many of the *other* details that are much easier to work out once the encryption is removed. This makes it (for reasons I'll go into in a PM if you really want to know) far, far easier to cheat in existing stars. I'm working on workarounds for that, but it's quite difficult in places; see http://stars-util.sourceforge.net/split_fleet_cargo.html for one of the really thorny current issues).
Michael "Wumpus" Zinn
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Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech |
Mon, 27 February 2006 14:38 |
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PricklyPea | | Lieutenant | Messages: 534
Registered: February 2005 | |
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wumpus wrote on Mon, 27 February 2006 12:58 | Second, I would strongly encourage you *not* to make the tool readily available (although maybe it's too late already).
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Too late (see above reply). Although the reasons for releasing are:
1) to allow easier custom game set up
2) make it easier for others to help decode the X, HST, M files etc.
I'm still setting up my website to coordinate efforts on the 2nd part, although there's already some progress on this. Also makes it easier to create tools to tinker with the various files e.g. adding and editing wormholes:
http://darkcluster.com/worm/
In the wormholes example, the mod enabled easy editing of HST file to give race max tech (was joat so could get good penscans of universe).
The tool also allows easy editing (i.e. no need to decrypt, edit, encrypt) of HST file to chain wormholes, insert additional wormholes etc.
[Updated on: Mon, 27 February 2006 14:44] Report message to a moderator
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Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech |
Thu, 02 March 2006 04:11 |
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m.a@stars | | Commander | Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004 Location: Third star to the left | |
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wumpus wrote on Mon, 27 February 2006 18:58 | The single biggest reason I'm still holding onto my code, as much as I'd like to release it and let other people play, is not that it has the encryption details, but because it has so many of the *other* details that are much easier to work out once the encryption is removed. This makes it (for reasons I'll go into in a PM if you really want to know) far, far easier to cheat in existing stars. I'm working on workarounds for that, but it's quite difficult in places; see http://stars-util.sourceforge.net/split_fleet_cargo.html for one of the really thorny current issues).
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Hi,
I get the feeling the cat has got out of the bag more than once already. Perhaps the sanest tack would be to get as much help as possible with your own "turn-policing" tools and finish them soonest for AH to use in avoiding cheats.
Surely you know what happens to "security by obscurity", yadda, yadda...
As a spinoff of the effort, I'd bet some "automation" scripts can be evolved too, to help ppl skirt heavy MM which puts them off the game.
So many Stars, so few Missiles!
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Re: BattleSim with arbitrary tech |
Sat, 04 March 2006 13:13 |
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Quote: | your own "turn-policing" tools and finish them soonest for AH to use in avoiding cheats
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IMO that is the best approach, don't allow cheats to happen. Even if tools were not out there, enough clues are out that if I wanted to I could likely make my own cheat tool... I am not going to go into details how here...
That is part of why I am interested in coverting the data between current stars and freestars xml style formats, etc. Work done for one side can help other side in many ways.
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