Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments)
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Sun, 11 July 2010 07:05   |
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 m.a@stars |
 | Commander |
Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left | |
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| Captain Maim wrote on Sat, 10 July 2010 01:05 |
why are you so interested in decoding the messages? Is it to tell the helper to check those things? Ship build notices, confirmations of player actions? Or is this just for the sake of total understanding?
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 better understanding, including of earlier versions.
possible bug-fixing.
offline reporting, info-dumping, info-converting, analyzing tools.
improved intel gathering.
satisfy a crave for all things Stars! 
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I remember a tool that used to zoom through your messages (if the game was open) and save out the mail for you. I assume it stole it out of RAM when the mail message was the current message. That was probably more of a hack compared to this anyway.
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A huge hack, even, based on peeking around Win3.1 RAM usage. 
Reminds me: where are the player-to-player message blocks? 
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Is it a preturn processor, a post turn processor (I'd rather it wasn't this.)
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Why? Both have its uses. Pre-filling production Queues would be cool, but checking for mistakes (What do you mean target for that packet was not set, Scotty?) would be cool too. And cheat-checking and stomping even cooler. 
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Do you intend to make a freestanding AI? or perhaps at least a wrapper for one?
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So many Stars, so few Missiles!
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Sun, 11 July 2010 08:27 |
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| wasp |
 | Crewman 2nd Class |
Messages: 16
Registered: January 2008
Location: Finland | |
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I think I've mostly figured this out. Looking at an example
| XyliGUN wrote on Sat, 10 July 2010 13:47 |
3604 0401 04 0401
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Low 9 bits of 0x0436 are message id 0x36 meaning format "You have built \i factories on \p." with 2 arguments.
High 7 bits (here 0000010) indicate argument encoding sizes, 0 -> 1 byte and 1 -> 2 bytes. Here only the second argument (\p) is 2 bytes.
0x0104 is the goto target. Highest bits are zero meaning it's a planet ID.
0x04 corresponds to the \i (16-bit integer) and 0x0104 is formatted as a planet name (\p).
The formats taking a 32-bit argument like \V count here as two argument slots.
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Sun, 11 July 2010 13:03 |
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yeah like message 002, the game doesn't actually LET you send people to uncolonized worlds anymore, it instead reads something about the bridge crew rescinding the order.
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Sun, 11 July 2010 19:46 |
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Wow this really heated up, like a whole page of posts just exploded out on this forum.
I was thinking only a preturn processor would be useful, but actually a continuous processor might also be useful. if not more so. Cause like every time you save it checks and pops up notices if you did something stupid or need to pay attention.. Sorta like the hated paperclip but actually maybe not so hated, "Hey, it looks like your gating those ships to their deaths!" "Hey it looks like the <race name> are about to destroy <planet name> with <fleet ID>." Alright maybe just the preturn processor, it could be all 3 though, post if you submitted, pre if you have no X and concurrent if your just saving and haven't submitted. Though I tend to "save" by pressing F9 so.. It'd post process me to death. :\
The post turn processing seems like just a bit of "oops" insurance. But preturn would get all the trade routes and menial dribble out of the way as well as maybe send you self to self mail informing you of incoming enemy fleets you should pay attention to.
I'm glad that the message system (as far as non player generated messages go) is decoded now. I think it could give an AI (helper or freestanding) at least a 1 year memory of what it's been doing.
Heh, course if you want a freestanding AI with a longer memory, I wonder if you could drop 7-bit encoded files into the chat boxes. You know the kind that do binary as only type-able characters? It saves a limited amount of data for itself in self to self mail this way so it can recall what it's doing. That'd be kinda cool I think. Mailing it's important memories to itself. Naturally you limit the size of the memories have it drop stuff when they cease to be important. But then it could have maybe a 5 year memory or a 10 year memory or more depending on the compactness of the memories, which would make it much more fun to play against. 
[Updated on: Sun, 11 July 2010 19:49]
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Sun, 11 July 2010 23:46 |
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I think it's a 2 byte value, since there's 999 names and I've never been able to sample galaxies larger than 960 (with 007 duplicated once to make a round 1000 names.)
There's 10 bits that appear to be used for this. The first and second bit of the 2nd byte I think are used for the planet number (you need 10 bits to cover 1024 value range), while the other 6 bits I think are used to mark which tech you get for colonizing the planet. (It's one of the few differences between uninhabited planets that isn't marked. That one is just a guess however, but it's plausible that it's part of the map. But whatever those 6 bits are they are usually 111 111 on uninhabited planets, but some have a few 0's, so I'm guessing their meaning, 6 bits, 6 tech types.)
[Updated on: Sun, 11 July 2010 23:48]
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Mon, 12 July 2010 00:13 |
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| XyliGUN |
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Messages: 325
Registered: July 2004
Location: Russia, St.Petersburg | 
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| m.a@stars wrote on Mon, 12 July 2010 06:07 |
| XyliGUN wrote on Sun, 11 July 2010 15:41 |
Based on what wasp finds out, it looks like everything is correct, since FD (253), which is planet id, fits into 1 byte and format says that for that arg will be 1 byte used.
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What if planet id > 256?
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Answer is in wasp explanations. Stars uses 2 bytes id for goto (it's always in bytes number 3 and 4), but for rest of the args it's possible to have 1 or 2 bytes, depending of what you need in each sitiation. In my examples above planet id was 253 which fits into 1 byte, but when planet id is higher than 255 then it uses 2 bytes. So, it's variable size.
[Updated on: Mon, 12 July 2010 00:18]
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Mon, 12 July 2010 07:02 |
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It should be with map2xy, I know that's one place to get it. It's also listed with my planet renaming thing I made. Both are on the stars wiki that was linked here earlier.
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Mon, 12 July 2010 11:43 |
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| Micha | 
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Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002
Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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| m.a@stars wrote on Mon, 12 July 2010 17:32 |
| Micha wrote on Mon, 12 July 2010 09:31 |
just last week I happened to be looking for the list with planet names, couldn't find it (nor at home, nor the forum, nor the rgcs, nor the wiki) ... anyone has it?
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Generate a big universe with most possible stars. Dump Universe Data to file. Repeat a couple times to make sure. Sort/merge. Done.
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Thought of that but the list is already "out there", and I'm patient. 
Got it now, thanks XyliGun! Captain, right, your "planet renaming thing" must have been one of the places I saw it.
Possibly a direct link to the list somewhere on the wiki could be useful ...
mch
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Mon, 12 July 2010 14:21 |
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This is my utlity, it has all 1000 names, which I mapped manually. And 007 should appear twice on it. So there's only 999 unique names. Biggest universes I found were when I generated on Huge and Dense, as opposed to what you'd expect which is Huge and Packed. Packed was for some odd reason, slightly less dense with huge maps, go figure.
Here's the tool I made, since I only had part of the name decoded, there were like 2 bits I didn't have so you can change the name within a quarter of the list. I had to include an explicit file denoting all that. It's more manual than map2xy, I think it requires you put in a planet ID and then a name number off a chart I provided.
http://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/files /StarNameChanger.zip
Here's the other tool I mentioned, this one will rename anything to anything.
http://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/files/map2xy.zip
And the place I got them from as previously posted:
http://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Utilities/Index
Edited by ccmaster
[Updated on: Wed, 26 January 2011 04:37] by Moderator
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Mon, 12 July 2010 15:33 |
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| Marduk |
| Ensign |
Messages: 345
Registered: January 2003
Location: Dayton, OH | |
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You know, as long as you lot are getting so familiar with the files... if you are still feeling industrious after this is 'done' what about a tool that generates a turn file for the year that includes data from all races? People could see exactly what fleets were where, what state all the systems were in, and so on.
If that sort of thing would work and all the .x and .m files were available, it probably wouldn't be too hard to make a routine that would update an individual player file with info from the others and put it info a .m00 file, and possibly a .h00 file, and copy that players .x file into .x00. That way people could see what the players saw at the time with the unaltered .m file, and load the .m00 file to see the actual situation at the time, still from that players perspective.
Hmm. How is the information about what messages to hide stored? If you could access that and set it for any given player file, you could include a checklist for which messages to display in the above tool and alter all player files appropriately. Good for making sure you don't have to wade through reams of unimportant messages.
All this together would let you use Stars! itself as a viewer to study a game afterwards. You'd have to pop in and out of Stars! to have the tool update the uber-file whenever you wanted to look at it or change the viewpoint player in it, but it would still be a much easier way to examine a game after it was over. I'm thinking mostly of demonstration games for newbies, but it would also be nice to see a war you fought in from the other sides.
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Mon, 12 July 2010 15:52 |
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| Marduk wrote on Mon, 12 July 2010 12:33 |
You know, as long as you lot are getting so familiar with the files... if you are still feeling industrious after this is 'done' what about a tool that generates a turn file for the year that includes data from all races? People could see exactly what fleets were where, what state all the systems were in, and so on.
If that sort of thing would work and all the .x and .m files were available, it probably wouldn't be too hard to make a routine that would update an individual player file with info from the others and put it info a .m00 file, and possibly a .h00 file, and copy that players .x file into .x00. That way people could see what the players saw at the time with the unaltered .m file, and load the .m00 file to see the actual situation at the time, still from that players perspective.
Hmm. How is the information about what messages to hide stored? If you could access that and set it for any given player file, you could include a checklist for which messages to display in the above tool and alter all player files appropriately. Good for making sure you don't have to wade through reams of unimportant messages.
All this together would let you use Stars! itself as a viewer to study a game afterwards. You'd have to pop in and out of Stars! to have the tool update the uber-file whenever you wanted to look at it or change the viewpoint player in it, but it would still be a much easier way to examine a game after it was over. I'm thinking mostly of demonstration games for newbies, but it would also be nice to see a war you fought in from the other sides.
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.hst files contain all the data for everything everywhere.
The ships you see are in the M file, the planets you saw are in the H file.
It wouldn't be nice to sync filtering between players, they need to be independant. And filter is done by message type anyway. Filtering may be stored in the H file. I think.
You already can do that, I made a utility to save all M, X and H and HST and XY files per year. It reads the year automatically and makes a directory by the name of the year and saves it there. And another utility that auto enters passwords that you write to a list. You then just drag and drop the M file onto the program and it reads the player number from the file name and enters the approrate password. So you can easily watch things from allied perspectives.
[Updated on: Mon, 12 July 2010 15:53]
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Mon, 12 July 2010 16:38 |
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| Marduk |
| Ensign |
Messages: 345
Registered: January 2003
Location: Dayton, OH | |
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| Captain Maim wrote on Mon, 12 July 2010 15:52 |
.hst files contain all the data for everything everywhere.
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.hst files aren't available if you play on AutoHost, so that isn't good enough.
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The ships you see are in the M file, the planets you saw are in the H file.
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But what about the ships and planets you don't see? The information is there in the files of the other players, but not available in a single file.
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It wouldn't be nice to sync filtering between players, they need to be independant. And filter is done by message type anyway. Filtering may be stored in the H file. I think.
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Ah, you've missed the point. This would be for viewing a game after the game has ended. Setting up the same filtering for all players would mean you don't have to do it manually for each one in turn.
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You already can do that, I made a utility to save all M, X and H and HST and XY files per year. It reads the year automatically and makes a directory by the name of the year and saves it there. And another utility that auto enters passwords that you write to a list. You then just drag and drop the M file onto the program and it reads the player number from the file name and enters the approrate password. So you can easily watch things from allied perspectives.
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Again, there is no access to .hst files if you play on AutoHost, and loading in the files of another player will not give you all the information - only their information. For instance, I would find it interesting to be able to see what was actually at the enemy system when the player whose turn I am viewing was preparing their attack. Looking at their typical turn files just shows me what they saw there, which could be entirely incorrect.
What I'm talking about would be like an improved version of X-borders, using Stars! as the viewer. You would lose out on the 'sphere of influence' feature, in return for being able to see ships and watch battles.
Edit: I assume the battles could not be combined, so that you would only be able to view battles that the viewpoint player participated in.
[Updated on: Mon, 12 July 2010 16:40]
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| Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments) |
Mon, 12 July 2010 16:56 |
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| XyliGUN |
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Messages: 325
Registered: July 2004
Location: Russia, St.Petersburg |
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| Marduk wrote on Mon, 12 July 2010 23:33 |
Hmm. How is the information about what messages to hide stored? If you could access that and set it for any given player file, you could include a checklist for which messages to display in the above tool and alter all player files appropriately. Good for making sure you don't have to wade through reams of unimportant messages
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Marduk! You just gives me a hint! I was wondering what is stored in block #33 (which is only present in h files) and why it's always 49 bytes long in any game. You asked about message filtering and ... BAH! ... 49 bytes is 392 bits and there is 386 messages in Stars! And now, I'm pretty sure block #33 is message filtering, where each bit corresponds to one message id. If message bit is set to 0 then message will be shown and if it's 1 it will be hided. If you lost your h file you will also lost info about other races names, designs, planets and ... filtering (it can'tt be in any other place since all others already discovered)! Thanks!
PS: So far of 46 blocks these 6 remain unknown: ## 11, 15, 18, 22, 25, 41. But to be fair I've never seen them in files that I have, so I probably have to make some sort of Stars! file analyser, which will do nothing (no decrypting required), but just checks and logs, which blocks are in specified file, and asks you to check files you have.
[Updated on: Mon, 12 July 2010 16:57]
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Re: Micromanagement Tools (was Fledgling Admirals 2: EoG Comments)
