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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Tue, 01 April 2014 12:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
vmanuel is currently offline vmanuel

 
Chief Warrant Officer 3

Messages: 187
Registered: October 2004
Location: Dallas, TX USA
As for me, I don't usually go for a fair fight, but then again I haven't played in the DareDevil games until now. So I'll cast a vote with circular universe (and logic) as well. As for time, it's a non-renewable resource of relative import to your other functions. I'll take a little now to ensure the rest is not squandered.


"Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight... or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight, or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman, or if I'm gettin' paid - mostly only when I'm gettin' paid." -Mr. Cobb



Editor in Chief of the Kaynan Space News.
All Space, All The Time - Kaynan!
www.myhood.biz

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Tue, 01 April 2014 12:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
LittleEddie is currently offline LittleEddie

 
Lieutenant
Helped track down one or more Stars bugs

Messages: 517
Registered: February 2011
Location: Delaware
Our Races are in,

The circle worked out good in DD5, we can go with it again

Ed

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 02 April 2014 12:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008
Location: Alabama
All races are in and verified.
All teams have specified the inside/outside order of their races.

I have randomized the player order.
Several races had the same icon. I randomized those so that all races have unique icons.

I am now beginning the universe gen process.

Watch this thread for further updates.



What we need's a few good taters.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 02 April 2014 12:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
XAPBob is currently offline XAPBob

 
Lt. Commander

Messages: 957
Registered: August 2012
Not usin team icons then? Shame...

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 02 April 2014 12:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008
Location: Alabama
XAPBob wrote on Wed, 02 April 2014 11:46
Not usin team icons then? Shame...


I may have left it alone if they were matched by team. But they weren't. They were matched by laziness; few people bothered to change from the default.



What we need's a few good taters.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 02 April 2014 12:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008
Location: Alabama
Need to double check something.

The game advert says "PPS being turned on at 2500."

I believe that this is achieved as follows:
1) Uncheck the PPS box
2) Set a single victory condition of "highest score after 100 years"
3) Set winner must meet 1 of the criteria.
4) Set minimum years to victory as 100


Will someone with more certainty than I have confirm/correct?

Thanks.



What we need's a few good taters.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 02 April 2014 13:00 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008
Location: Alabama
For purposes of SAH (don't get too excited, I'm not that far along yet, just asking ahead of time), do we want the race/player names anonymized?


What we need's a few good taters.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 02 April 2014 13:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
XAPBob is currently offline XAPBob

 
Lt. Commander

Messages: 957
Registered: August 2012
skoormit wrote on Wed, 02 April 2014 17:57
Need to double check something.

The game advert says "PPS being turned on at 2500."

I believe that this is achieved as follows:
1) Uncheck the PPS box
2) Set a single victory condition of "highest score after 100 years"
3) Set winner must meet 1 of the criteria.
4) Set minimum years to victory as 100


Will someone with more certainty than I have confirm/correct?

Thanks.

Pretty sure that's right. Not used it myself...

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 02 April 2014 13:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ManicLurch is currently offline ManicLurch

 
Lt. Junior Grade

Messages: 462
Registered: May 2009
Yes, this correct. I confirmed with the DD5 settings.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 02 April 2014 15:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
craebild is currently offline craebild

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 568
Registered: December 2003
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
I have a comment about race the icons.

If two or more races have the same icon, then Stars! will change race icons when the game is generated to ensure that all races have unique race icons, so it isn't possible to have team icons.

I don't know whether one of the races keeps the chosen icon or all of the races get other race icons, and I don't know whether the new race icons are random or the next unused icon in the list. That would be easy to test, though, just set up a game with many instances of the same race and check what race icon each instance gets.

Incidentally, I once got a different race icon at a time when I had not chosen the default "peace dove" icon but a race icon further down the list. Apparently someone else liked that race icon, too.



Med venlig hilsen / Best regards / Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Christian Ræbild / Christian Raebild

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 02 April 2014 15:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
neilhoward

 
Commander

Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023
There are some icons thematically similar, like the two birds.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 02 April 2014 15:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
craebild is currently offline craebild

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 568
Registered: December 2003
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
I just did that test with 12 instances of the same race.

Race 12 got the selected icon (which wasn't the default "peace dove"), the other 11 got random, different icons. There was no order to which icons they got that I could see.

Race 1 got the selected race name, the other 11 got race names from the list Stars! uses for AI races. I don't know what order those names might normally be in, the race names assigned by Stars! for races 2 to 12 were:

Nairnians
Eagles
Valadiacs
Crushers
Uberts
Picardis
Cleavers
Felites
Kurkonians
Berserkers
Ferrets

Does anyone know whether that is in any kind of order ?



Med venlig hilsen / Best regards / Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Christian Ræbild / Christian Raebild

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Thu, 03 April 2014 10:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008
Location: Alabama
Update:

I have the game.def working (had to work around a Stars bug regarding depth of nested folders).

I have genned several universes from the command line and rejected each of them after manual inspection (HW min cons, local planet balance, etc).

I am going to automate as much of the inspection as I can (with batch files and C#) to increase iteration speed. More iterations means I find a good universe sooner. I've already got some of the automation complete (I did it before the races were in), but I need to revise and fine-tune it.

Like most software developers, I tend to be overly optimistic in my estimates. It is possible that I have a universe done by this time tomorrow. But more likely it will be at least three days. (Like most software developers, I have learned to give vague estimates.)





What we need's a few good taters.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Thu, 03 April 2014 10:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
XAPBob is currently offline XAPBob

 
Lt. Commander

Messages: 957
Registered: August 2012
My version of automated checking - I use a linux server, with XVFB configured to reduce the X interaction from Stars!
#!/bin/bash
cd $1
for file in `ls *.m[0-9]*`; do
  starsjrc4.exe -dpm $file
done
IFS=','; for HW in `grep -h Starbase *.p* | grep -v Type | cut -f1`; do grep $HW *.map; done | uniq | awk '{print $2,$3}' > HWS
echo "set term dumb 96 48; set xrange [1000:2200]; set yrange [1000:2200]; plot 'HWS'" | gnuplot > HW.grid
echo ====
cat HW.grid



Basically plots a text grid (see the xrange and yrange parameters) of the universe, wth just the HWs marked.
I do have one that marks secondaries as well (although not their affiliation).

Allows for some serious automation - you could use the p files to verify the mineral concentrations are as you want to find as well.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Thu, 03 April 2014 12:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008
Location: Alabama
XAPBob wrote on Thu, 03 April 2014 09:34
My version of automated checking - I use a linux server, with XVFB configured to reduce the X interaction from Stars!
<primo code>


Basically plots a text grid (see the xrange and yrange parameters) of the universe, wth just the HWs marked.
I do have one that marks secondaries as well (although not their affiliation).

Allows for some serious automation - you could use the p files to verify the mineral concentrations are as you want to find as well.


Aye, I recalled that you had done this type of thing for one or another game...was it Homeless?

Unfortunately my practical Unix competence is nil, so I'd have to reinvent this wheel for Windows anyway.

That said, since I'm remapping the HWs, I don't particularly care to know where they are to start with. Instead, I intend to check several other facets of each generated universe, to provide as much as possible an equally viable starting position for each team.



What we need's a few good taters.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Thu, 03 April 2014 12:37 Go to previous messageGo to next message
neilhoward

 
Commander

Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023
skoormit wrote on Thu, 03 April 2014 07:07
Update:

I have the game.def working (had to work around a Stars bug regarding depth of nested folders).

I have genned several universes from the command line and rejected each of them after manual inspection (HW min cons, local planet balance, etc).

I am going to automate as much of the inspection as I can (with batch files and C#) to increase iteration speed. More iterations means I find a good universe sooner. I've already got some of the automation complete (I did it before the races were in), but I need to revise and fine-tune it.

Like most software developers, I tend to be overly optimistic in my estimates. It is possible that I have a universe done by this time tomorrow. But more likely it will be at least three days. (Like most software developers, I have learned to give vague estimates.)



Will you be remapping the universe? If you remap it as requested, once a seed is found for desired HW min conc, and the xy stretched, UC 1.3 redistribs planets every time you click generate, so is much easier to get a balanced planet distribution.



[Updated on: Thu, 03 April 2014 12:41]

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Sat, 05 April 2014 15:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
neilhoward

 
Commander

Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023
Skoormit,

I appreciate the work you are doing.

For what it is worth, here is a batch open turn files example:
"start [path to stars.exe\stars.exe] [path to m file\m file.m#] -p [file password]" with one for each player. With the Stars.ini and Desktop.ini, you can specify the dimensions of the Stars window at open, and the way multiple windows are opened at once (eg tiled of cascade). I assume you already know this, but perhaps it might help someone else. With DD5 I made 2 bats, opening one player from each team respectively, so that the players of each team were stacked together in 5 tiles.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Sun, 06 April 2014 11:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008
Location: Alabama
Thanks, Neil.

I'm trying to balance not just the available number of planets, but also the mineral availability.

I genned a copy of the game long enough to scan all the planets. I saved the planet data.

Now, each time I click Generate on the remapping utility, I dump the p file for this map (via command line), open the p file with Excel, and copy into my analysis spreadsheet, which checks everything about the universe that I am trying to balance, including relative access to stars for each team, and relative balance of minerals. I'm not trying to make everything perfectly equal, just trying to get the variance between teams beneath a reasonable threshold.

I have one candidate universe saved off that is pretty good, but has a couple minor flaws. I'm spending some time looking for a better one.

I know you guys are itching to get going. Give me another day or two. I hope you'll be glad for it in the long run. Smile



What we need's a few good taters.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Sun, 06 April 2014 17:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ccmaster is currently offline ccmaster

 
Lt. Commander
Dueling Club Administrator

Messages: 985
Registered: November 2002
Location: Germany

Hi.
Dont try to balence too much. Not that the HP plaer with 1 in 16 Planets has the same Nummber of planets like the -F with 1 in 2.

Also it is unlikely that the the HP Player has a green planet in range.

Hope you balance with the look of the races.


Ccmaster

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Sun, 06 April 2014 17:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Braindead is currently offline Braindead

 
Officer Cadet 2nd Year

Messages: 237
Registered: April 2005
Location: Ohio
skoormit wrote

I'm trying to balance not just the available number of planets, but also the mineral availability.

What exactly does this mean? I thought minerals were evenly distributed across the universe.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Sun, 06 April 2014 17:55 Go to previous messageGo to next message
neilhoward

 
Commander

Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023
Braindead wrote on Sun, 06 April 2014 14:05
I thought minerals were evenly distributed across the universe.

That would be nice. There is always some variance, and sometimes it is quite extreme.

ccmaster wrote on Sun, 06 April 2014 14:03

Hope you balance with the look of the races.


I am sure skoormit has this in mind.

When I was looking at similar issues for the last game, I never took away any boons bestowed by the random number gods (like the 70%+ green the Joat can see at 2400, or the 121, 64, 121 mineral conc planet one year away from the AR HW) but I did compensate for extremely poor luck concerning number of planets within 81 & 162ly, number of expected habitable planets within those distances, and average of each min conc within 162ly. I found the expected averages from genning a few dozen games and compared that to what each player actually had. Using the Zero Mod was helpful for doing that quickly. I didn't bother fixing anything unless it was at least 15% below expected average.



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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Tue, 08 April 2014 21:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
neilhoward

 
Commander

Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023
skoormit wrote on Wed, 02 April 2014 10:00
For purposes of SAH (don't get too excited, I'm not that far along yet, just asking ahead of time), do we want the race/player names anonymized?

I am not bothered either way.

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 09 April 2014 00:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Braindead is currently offline Braindead

 
Officer Cadet 2nd Year

Messages: 237
Registered: April 2005
Location: Ohio
vmanuel wrote
As for me, I don't usually go for a fair fight, but then again I haven't played in the DareDevil games until now. So I'll cast a vote with circular universe (and logic) as well. As for time, it's a non-renewable resource of relative import to your other functions. I'll take a little now to ensure the rest is not squandered.


"Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight... or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight, or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman, or if I'm gettin' paid - mostly only when I'm gettin' paid." -Mr. Cobb


"If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck"
- John Steinbeck

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 09 April 2014 05:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Asmodai is currently offline Asmodai

 
Officer Cadet 1st Year

Messages: 214
Registered: February 2012
How setup is going?

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Re: Dynamic Duos 6 Wed, 09 April 2014 18:19 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008
Location: Alabama
Almost done!

I have a universe set up that meets my parameters.

I want to rest my brain and make a final check tonight before I ship it.

Look for another (hopefully final) update in about five hours.






What we need's a few good taters.

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