SITREP

[john connor]

But the boxes we're talking about are tiny. I think there's barely room for one legible letter in there.

 

[jimcarravallah]

That worked.
I like the assembly icon, it would make for a pretty cool task icon. The reserve one looks rather like a formation symbol, imho.

It's supposed to. It's supposed to reflect organized and ready to act.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Good stuff guys. I need to look up the icon dimensions. I'll be back.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

OK, the task icons are a box shaped icon measuring 16 x 16 but that includes a shadow line to the right and below. So, that leaves a 15 x 15 square in which to draw. But the space you have to work within the black lines square is 13 x 13 pixels. So it's not much to work with.

 

[jimcarravallah]

OK, the task icons are a box shaped icon measuring 16 x 16 but that includes a shadow line to the right and below. So, that leaves a 15 x 15 square in which to draw. But the space you have to work within the black lines square is 13 x 13 pixels. So it's not much to work with.

Here is a jpg format to the 13 by 13 pixel standard with a one pixel outline on the top and left and two pixel outline to the right and bottom.

 

[john connor]

They're nice, Jim.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

SITREP Fri 18 May 23

Hi all,

Long day at the office. I've now got the Tutorial running till Day 2, 06:41. I've been working on a range of issues this week relating to the new attack code. I've written new code to prevent a force attacking in line if its flanks are going to take too long moving through bad terrain. Instead they will attack in echelon. I've fixed a number of issues with the scheduling of the plan tasks within an attack, mainly addressing a number of esoteric cases like what happens when we end up with only one unit at the assembly and everyone else is close to the reserve or FUP. Things like that.

I also discovered and fixed a problem with the way a helper function was behaving. It was the IsSeniorSub(), which determines if a force is the senior subordinate for its boss and acting as his proxy while the boss is based. This wasn't handling cases where we were developing a plan from a new boss and were yet to reset our currUnit task. As a result it was relying on its current super force, which was different to the new boss.

Anyway the sun has long set on this Friday here in Canberra. I'm signing off for the week.

 

[Tommy.w]

Friday? The 18th in my country is a Thursday!

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

LOL, you are right, and I still have another day to work before the weekend.

 

[Tommy.w]

Every cloud has its silver lining, at least the update will move on a tiny bit more

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Tommy,

And it did. I got well into Day 2 of the tuorial before encountering an issue. But that means I have to wade through about thirty minutes of replay in my debug version of the game just to get to it. So I opted instead to focus on another issue at game start, namely why my dug in defender code wasn't working as it should. The code is supposed to hive off units that are within their objective's perimeter and dug in or better and assign these an in-situ defend task so they don't move. I found and fixed a couple of issues on Friday but it wasn't till today that I found the main culprit, being that inside the SetLocatioin() of a task it calls relies on the formation type to be set properly and in a several cases it wasn't. I've spent the day wading through the cases. I'm about two thirds done. Hopefully this will prevent a lot of the movement by defenders at game start. Fingers crossed.

 

[Tommy.w]

Dave,

Hats off for your stamina and commitment.
I have worked on a few things before where I made assessments, then new information comes to light and you have to adjust/change your work. It can be frustrating and makes me want to 'wash my hands' of the work. But then I power through and look back with a bit of pride.
May I ask - what drives you to continue? Where do you find your resilience?

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Tommy,

Good questions. I think by nature I'm a perfectionist. That helps in keeping me motivated to improve things. But I learnt earlier on when I started in the games business that determination and persistence matter, often more than brilliance. It's the old adage, that when the going gets tough, it's the tough that get going. I had no choice earlier on and like everything else, once you practice it enough it becomes indelibly etched into your character. After all, we are the sculptors of our own character and we need to keep chipping away and polishing it.

 

[jimcarravallah]

After all, we are the sculptors of our own character and we need to keep chipping away and polishing it.

Well said, Dave!

 

[john connor]

The defence code improvements sound very hopeful, Dave. AI units moving around wholesale at scenario start is definitely something that would be better off fixed! I hadn't realised you were also doing things like this, as well as all the attack code stuff.

 

[JArraya]

Sounds like good progress, Dave! Will any improvements you are making make the game run smoother? Just tried getting through another game but it was like watching a slideshow with three second pauses between each game minute, on a very high end computer......

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Sounds like good progress, Dave! Will any improvements you are making make the game run smoother? Just tried getting through another game but it was like watching a slideshow with three second pauses between each game minute, on a very high end computer......

Ooh that doesn't right. I run the debug version which has a plethora of extra code in it and it runs very smooth on my dev machine. It's a high end machine but it should have no jerking like you describe. What game speed are you running - ie slow normal or fast?

 

[JArraya]

Ooh that doesn't right. I run the debug version which has a plethora of extra code in it and it runs very smooth on my dev machine. It's a high end machine but it should have no jerking like you describe. What game speed are you running - ie slow normal or fast?

I run the game at all speeds, and it's definitely there on all of them. Happy to upload a video for you if you want to see what it looks like.

Spec:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 16 GB RAM Windows 10

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Yes please. Can you also provide a dxdiag report.

 

[JArraya]

Here's the DxDiag report