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Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Wed, 06 December 2006 05:37

ken-reed

Senior Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 92
Registered: December 2006
Location: Oxfordshire, UK

Hi,

For an explanation of the project and how it's going see:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ken-reed/Ken/Nova.htm

Basically, I started building a Stars! clone as a "hobby" project to learn C# and .Net. I got a little carried away and it is now a playable game. Nowhere near the functionality of Stars! (no minefields for example) but the "guts" are there. Ships can be designed and built, planets can be explored and colonised, battles can be fought, etc.

I'm now going to move on to another "hobby" project and I'll pass this one on to someone who would like to carry it forward (that will be the subject of a separate post). However, before I do that, I'd like to make sure that what is there so far is actually playable (even if it is not bug-free nor fully featured).

So, I'm looking for someone who will help me try it out. Ideally, I'm looking for someone who is not only a Stars! fan but also a "coder" and, even better, knows C#. At the very least, I need someone who can install the free Microsoft Visual Studio Express tools (C# and Web) and build the programs.

Any takers?

Ken

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Wed, 06 December 2006 06:00

Ptolemy

Commander

Messages: 1008
Registered: September 2003
Location: Finland

I'll be more than happy to take this on Ken. This is probably much farther than the current freestars project has gotten to.

Please e-mail me at whsmith <blah> welho <blah - the common>

Ptolemy

Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Wed, 06 December 2006 10:20

Ptolemy

Commander

Messages: 1008
Registered: September 2003
Location: Finland

A note to all the Freestars community. Ken has sent me all the code and he's done a tremendous amount of work. As I examine and compile this - and do some play testing with him I will post results here.

The current name of this project is Nova

Ptolemy

Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Thu, 07 December 2006 04:59

m.a@stars

Commander

Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left

ken-reed wrote on Wed, 06 December 2006 11:37

Greatly interesting! Cool

I wasn't planning to learn a new language this Xmas, but perhaps your work deserves it! Nod

You can write to me at:

ma Very Happy

stars

gmail

com

So many Stars, so few Missiles!

In space no one can hear you scheme! Deal

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Thu, 07 December 2006 12:49

sirgwain

Senior Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 86
Registered: March 2004
Location: Tucson

Ken's project is cool! Smile

It's also inspired me to create a small webpage about my own C# copy of Stars!, named narcissistically enough, CraigStars!.

I haven't posted source code to it yet because it's not GPL'd or anything like that. It's also not quite in a releasable state.

The website is here: http://members.cox.net/ilovestars

- sirgwain ( Very Happy

Craig irl)

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Sat, 09 December 2006 16:34

sirgwain

Senior Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 86
Registered: March 2004
Location: Tucson

After much playtesting with the networking code I have implemented an AI. I was avoiding doing so because no one plays against computer players these days, but holy cow has it been an invaluable tool to test functionaly. AI players don't care how bad the user interface is. Smile

Anyway, if you want to see screenshots of a ton of AI generated players scouting and colonizing, you can check the above website.

Also, if anyone is interested in trying it out, I can email binaries. The one caveat is you need to download the managed DirectX redistributable from here and call it with the /InstallManagedDX command line option. It's kind of a pain and should be easier to do when I move to using the XNA framework.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=013 C0F78-3C9B-44DC-B8BE-46783BCAC3CB&displaylang=en

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Wed, 13 December 2006 23:16

Coyote

Lt. Commander

Messages: 906
Registered: November 2002
Location: Pacific NW

Awesome. Does the AI utiilise any sort of strategy or does it follow scripts? Note that while a scripted AI will probably do well at economy building it won't be able to handle warfighting very well as its behavior will be predictable and exploitable...

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Thu, 14 December 2006 01:46

sirgwain

Senior Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 86
Registered: March 2004
Location: Tucson

It's a complete hack at this point. It loops through every planet and if they have over 100k pop it sends out scouts, otherwise it builds mines and factories. When the planets get to 200k it builds colony ships to colonize any habitable planets the scouts have found. Once I implement battles and conquest I'll have it start building bombers and warships to fight the enemy with.

I have the hope that people will be able to write their own AI players that use the API to talk to the server. The API right now just retrieves turn data from the server when a turn is available and sends back a set of actions to perform. The interface is very simple.

While implementing the AI I figured out that I could have the AI process the human player turns as well, but leave the human player with the final say on what actions are taken. This could open up a whole world of "turn processors" developed by c# programmers to perform micromanagement tasks for you. I'm going to have to implement some plug-in type architecture for it. I'm actually working on that very type of thing at my day job right now, so it shouldn't be too much of a leap to do it for CS. Smile

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Sun, 31 December 2006 14:53

m.a@stars

Commander

Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left

ken-reed wrote on Wed, 06 December 2006 11:37

Basically, I started building a Stars! clone as a "hobby" project to learn C# and .Net. I got a little carried away and it is now a playable game. Nowhere near the functionality of Stars! (no minefields for example) but the "guts" are there. Ships can be designed and built, planets can be explored and colonised, battles can be fought, etc.

I noticed you're using the "classical" math for planet value calculation and fuel usage. You may want to take a look at the "modern", more accurate formulas for both, depending on the degree of closeness to Stars!2 you want to achieve. Very Happy

So many Stars, so few Missiles!

In space no one can hear you scheme! Deal

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Sun, 31 December 2006 14:55

m.a@stars

Commander

Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left

sirgwain wrote on Thu, 14 December 2006 07:46

Imteresting! But I'd rather use cap as the actual deciding factor for pop movement. I hope your API will allow that. Rolling Eyes

So many Stars, so few Missiles!

In space no one can hear you scheme! Deal

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Mon, 01 January 2007 06:47

ken-reed

Senior Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 92
Registered: December 2006
Location: Oxfordshire, UK

> I noticed you're using the "classical" math for
> planet value calculation and fuel usage.
> You may want to take a look at the "modern",
> more accurate formulas for both,

I'd love to. Can you give me a pointer to where I can find the algorithms?

Ken

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Mon, 01 January 2007 10:57

sirgwain

Senior Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 86
Registered: March 2004
Location: Tucson

That'd be easy enough to do. It's just a matter of adding a few API helper functions. This is just an AI to help test functionality and multiplayer capabilities of the game. I am hoping that when the actual clone is released other folks will write more well thought out AIs to play against.

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Tue, 02 January 2007 12:01

m.a@stars

Commander

Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left

ken-reed wrote on Mon, 01 January 2007 12:47

Of course! Very Happy

You can search the Forums for "Planet value calculation" or just go to http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/index.php?t=msg&th=229 9&rid=625&S=ee625fe2bec617564d7c694e9c5379c5&pl_ view=&start=0#msg_19643

(which was mostly a lucky spin-off of http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/index.php?t=msg&th=227 1&rid=625&S=ee625fe2bec617564d7c694e9c5379c5&pl_ view=&start=0#msg_19354)

And for fuel you can browse: http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/index.php?t=msg&th=227 1&rid=625&S=ee625fe2bec617564d7c694e9c5379c5&pl_ view=&start=0#msg_19354 (several ppl added quite interesting ideas there Cool

)

So many Stars, so few Missiles!

In space no one can hear you scheme! Deal

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Re: Looking for a tester (or two) for an open-source Stars! clone

Thu, 18 January 2007 19:57

GreyMatter

Petty Officer 2nd Class

Messages: 57
Registered: September 2004
Location: USA

Hi,
I have a whole bunch of nice graphics I developed for my own mod - if you are interested I could contribute those to your project.

PM me. (or better gmail me at 6reymatter)

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