DESIGN: CTP2 Bugs and alterations [fix list]

J Bytheway · July 27, 2003, 11:41

With the prospect of having our hands on the source, Maquiladora suggested that we try to compile all the bugs and assess their importance. So, I'll start that here. Any you wish to add, please feel free to post, but I think it would be best if we focus on bugs and removing hard-coded limits like 200 sprites, rather than daydreaming about things over and above what is already there (of course, the line between these two is very blurred).

Stick to simply listing bugs here. Discussion should go in Solvers thread at:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=93170

For the moment I'll just try and list them, and not worry about importance. These are primarily taken from the posts in the thread about the source starting with Dales post:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...43#post2190743

I may or may not collate the contributions. Either way, I won't do it soon.

I've divided things into categories in a manner suggested by Locutus. This gives a rough order of ease of implementation, since bugfixes are easier than improvements, which are easier than additions (with many exceptions, obviously).

Fixes

- Fix infinite rush build bug
- Fix Sea city sprite bug
- Fix boni of undersea tunnels for sea units bug
- Fix PBEM
- Fix pillage neutral tileimprovement bug
- Fix all the non-functional functions (If anyone wants to determine exactly which these are, it would be welcome, but it's probably not worthwhile right now).
- Fix goods.txt to allow for other bonuses besides gold.

Improvements

- Increase the sprite limit
- Increase the limit of wonders, improvements, and any other files with low limits we don't know about.
- Expand the scenario support so that it can handle mods.

Additions

- Fix the AI's air useage
- Fix the AI's naval useage (including marine invasions)
- Make the AIs more nuclear aware
- Add human-human diplomacy in PBEM/Hotseat
- Allow handling of the other variable types in SLIC so that we can call functions like the one about trade routes.

Tamerlin · July 27, 2003, 12:06

[BUGS] (?)

- Fix the revolution bug (the game crashes when a new civilization is created after a revolution in a city)
- The game does not center on pirating units during the turn of the AI involved (you can hear the sound but you don't know where the h*** piracy is taking place)
- Fix the Wonders without any effect
- Fix the outdated improvements still appearing in the Build Lists (example: after you have built the Central Matter Decompiler wonder, the Matter Decompiler improvement is still available in the Build List)
- ...

Peter Triggs · July 27, 2003, 13:32

1) The AI prepares a big list where it matches it's armies against possible goals. It then does a number of passes (5 to 7, IIRC) through this list depending on the difficulty level that's been chosen. This number is hard coded and Azmel2 once commented that he regretted that he hadn't exposed it. It needs to be exposed and increased at each level; this may be the single most easy thing to do to get a better AI. (There's a SLIC event, ProcessMatches, for this; but I've never been able to generate it.)

2) When players get killed the player sequence in the Cheat Editor gets messed up. This needs fixing.

3) In DiffDB the resource adjustment co-efficients for the AI are set for 5 ages (and this can't be changed). OTOH, you can add more ages to age.txt; 10 ages is now common. I've often wondered if there's a clash here, it needs looking into.

4) AFAIK, there's no way, via SLIC, to determine how many units a transporting unit is carrying. We really need this for cross water invasion scripts.

5) It would be good to be able to add new proposals to diplomacyproposal.txt. This will enable us to flesh out the diplomacy system.

Edit: I'll probably keep adding to this as things that other people say remind me of things that I wanted to do but was unable to do.

SMIFFGIG · July 27, 2003, 13:34

fix the bug where if u want to sell an advance for say 500

the AI get the advance but you never recieve your 500 gold

*this of course happens with any amount of gold*

fix the bug where AI dont use naval units

fix the bug where if ur on an island the AI will never attack u (related to above)

Implement mines and mine clearers etc

Dale · July 27, 2003, 18:13

- That's right, further to what SMIFFGIG said, make sure all the gold diplomacy options work.
- Put a scroll bar on "Give City" city list.
- Proper AI-AI diplomacy (even though Peter did fantastic SLIC work on this).
- Allow the AI super-alliance (like in Civ2) for end-game superpower battles.

EDIT: (Missed from my post in the source thread)
- Fix the fact that the AI only builds the most current unit in its build lists of each type (to allow mixed naval stacks, mixed land stacks, etc).

MrBaggins · July 27, 2003, 20:29

two slic issues off the top of my head:

the continent size function doesn't work at all.

the mod functions don't work and would be vastly useful.

also... we should give veteran units advantages, as there is none right now... thats pretty easy and significant in my view.

SMIFFGIG · July 27, 2003, 20:31

so what exactly do veterans do, is this something that has just been overlooked by activision or something that has been broken from CtP1 ?

MrBaggins · July 27, 2003, 20:55

Veteran status does nada, in CtP2, and is just broken in CtP2, and not in C:CtP iirc.

stankarp · July 28, 2003, 02:32

I would like to see more and different combat modifiers, eg
-veteran status that does work,
-attacking across rivers and amphibious assualts being more difficult.
-more tile improvements.
-units with specific functions such as seige trains that can only attack cities and forts.
-cities surrounded by zones of control start to starve and troops are reduced in effectiveness in a few turns.
-counter bombard for defenders only once per turn.

Also bribing cities to revolt and join you, (costing heaps).

groenie · July 28, 2003, 03:54

- Goodie huts from beginner level (since the AI's gonna come to the party from now on)
- Centering on the active unit (if I was in a city when my turn ended, it is sometimes difficult to find active units)

J Bytheway · July 28, 2003, 04:56

- Fix SLIC operator precedence (How (3*4)/4 can give you zero, etc.)

MrBaggins · July 28, 2003, 08:37

-repeatable randomness (with possible seed selection)

Ekmek · July 28, 2003, 09:58

Maybe the first post should be a compiled list of all of our recommendations so you dont scroll through the whole thread.

Fix:
AI not respecting Borders

Improve:
How borders grow (not just population but maybe an improvement, or 'culture points a la civ3)

Addition:
Resources as unit prerequisites
Civ3-ish hidden nationality
Removing the shield and have units that are civ colored

Pedrunn · July 28, 2003, 11:28

Quote:

- Fix the AI's air useage
- Fix the AI's naval useage (including marine invasions)
- Make the AIs more nuclear aware

Give power to slic to do this!!!

finfahey · July 28, 2003, 13:37

Quote:

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Veteran status does nada, in CtP2, and is just broken in CtP2, and not in C:CtP iirc.

That opens a can of worms. If the CTP2 code is to be available, why not the CTP1 code too? For example, it would make debugging this example easier if we can see how CTP1 is handling it.

Of course this could result in someone putting the space layer back in CTP2

Fin

MrBaggins · July 28, 2003, 13:57

I don't honestly see that its going to be *THAT* tough to implement veteran advantage, so as to need to see CtP1.

Seriously... how hard can it be?

(famous last words

)

finfahey · July 28, 2003, 14:13

Quote:

Originally posted by MrBaggins
I don't honestly see that its going to be *THAT* tough to implement veteran advantage, so as to need to see CtP1.

Seriously... how hard can it be?

(famous last words

)

Heh. Or to misquote: 'no battle plan survives the first sight of the source code'. This stuff is going to be scary - we already know that Activision, with plenty of resources, did not really finish the game - it's our main complaint. Imagine what some (not all, I'm sure) of this code looks like, having been produced by a large team of programmers desperately scrambling for a commercial deadline. And remember C/C++'s reputation as a 'write-only' language.

Just a caveat, since the denizens of Apolyton do have the advantage that we are not scrambling for a commercial deadline. But any assistance with code debugging would help and the CTP1 code is part of the development history.

For example (I'm not necessarily recommending it), if the CTP2 code turned out to be an unfeasibly complex nightmare, it might be possible to drop back to CTP1 and produce a CTP2B from that... It's just good to have options.

J Bytheway · July 28, 2003, 15:14

Quote:

Originally posted by E
Maybe the first post should be a compiled list of all of our recommendations so you dont scroll through the whole thread.

I may do, but if people will please keep discussion to the other thread, it should not really be necessary

.

On that note, if any moderator sees this post a few days hence, feel free to delete it.

Martin Gühmann · July 28, 2003, 16:30

Quote:

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG
fix the bug where AI dont use naval units

fix the bug where if ur on an island the AI will never attack u (related to above)

Actual these are not bug this is a new feature.

Quote:

Originally posted by E
Improve:
How borders grow (not just population but maybe an improvement, or 'culture points a la civ3)

Also a new feature culture is not in CTP2.

Quote:

Originally posted by stankarp
-more tile improvements.

Can be done by editing the text files and the tile files. So no source alterations needed here. Or do you mean more buttons for tile improvement?

Quote:

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
3) In DiffDB the resource adjustment co-efficients for the AI are set for 5 ages (and this can't be changed). OTOH, you can add more ages to age.txt; 10 ages is now common. I've often wondered if there's a clash here, it needs looking into.

There is a difference between the ages in DiffDB.txt and age.txt. Age.txt is city style age related, while the age in DiffDB.txt is an age in an comment, it is possibly that with age here is meant period.

In all TIME_SCALEs we have 5 periods, and possibly these "age" coefficients are depending on the number of periods in a difficuilty level. Well so far this is only guesswork, with the source code we see more.

Quote:

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
- Fix the Wonders without any effect
- Fix the outdated improvements still appearing in the Build Lists (example: after you have built the Central Matter Decompiler wonder, the Matter Decompiler improvement is still available in the Build List)

Actual these buildings aren't outdated, if you lose the wonder you need these buildings again, the only problem to solve here is to make sure that noone can build them while he owns the acording wonder, or another solution would be to add these buildings in all cities when the wonder is build and give every new city such a building.

OK that was again some discussion, so new ideas in Solver's thread first then we can discuss them there and if we came to an end espeacilly came to the conclusion that this is a source code problem and determined its type we can post it here.

-Martin

MrBaggins · July 28, 2003, 16:39

improvement: implementing improvements to the UI to give info on more than 8 civs. (horizontal scrolling)

child of Thor · July 28, 2003, 17:17

Ah yes and on that note fix the UI in the MP setup screen where you can not display more than 8 civs at startup.............. In fact all the little UI probs so it can display more info in its lists(with little scroll bars?).

mapfi · July 28, 2003, 18:34

hm, already posted in the other thread in the beginning but got overlooked, i guess:
fix
with a unit selected one can find out if there are any enemy units in a city by pointing on it - if the crossed swords for battle appear then there are otherwise not

and like Maq mentioned there:
fix
the right-click bug - if no terrain info appears there's a stealth unit on that tile

MrBaggins · July 28, 2003, 21:11

fix: flat map support- works in the editor, doesn't save appropriately however
fix: polution bug (in the editor)

p.s.

hmmm... if we get any code.. will we get the editor code? if not we'll need to reverse engineer the data to make one.

if we get any code, will we get the patched version?

I guess we'll have to wait and see

SMIFFGIG · July 28, 2003, 21:12

allow flat map as an ingame option

along with 32 Civs

Harovan · July 29, 2003, 03:13

Quote:

Originally posted by E
Improve:
How borders grow (not just population but maybe an improvement, or 'culture points a la civ3)

Don't do this. Floating borders suck. Stick with the principle of first claim, just make it an act of war to found a city inside another civ's borders. Oh, and reduce the initial "border" of a city to size 2 (pop 7..18(iirc)), or else it would claim too many space.

SMIFFGIG · July 29, 2003, 08:09

oh and add Civ3 style goods and colony logic

centrifuge · July 29, 2003, 11:24

There is a bug concerning city style with the scenario editor. Making it difficult to place custom city styles depending upon the civ.

Solver · July 29, 2003, 18:07

Civ 3 bargaining table!

hexagonian · July 29, 2003, 23:56

There was a food hunger flag in Units.txt that I'd really like to see activated - as well as a possible ongoing gold maintenance cost for units. This would make resource management more critical for having large armies.

Fix the Research Pact.

Solver · July 30, 2003, 08:32

Quote:

Fix the Research Pact.

And, for that matter, the Trade Pact.