I've never played multiplayer BOTF, so I didn't know the multiplayer combat turns was implemented like that. In my mind I always assumed multiplayer combat proceeded in a "phased time" way, to use the term that poster used, so I plan to make it work like that anyway.

well it runs "phased time" already in botf mp, but I was just pointing out the superiority of this rather old approach over the initiative one from good old Master of Orion in case someone wants to make a similar combat to MoO2 . anyway just forget the page I linked here, looks like the FreeOrion project can't help us anyway since they lack of dedicated programmers..

Ah okay was an interesting read nonetheless.

The FreeOrion guys put in a good number of hours (though not as much as us)--they've just spent a lot of time on UI refinements, adding Python support for AI hooks, and now porting the engine over to OGRE (presumably for combat integration). I update my local copy of their source repository every once in a while just to check on their progress . To their credit, they did design their entire UI library from scratch.

A silly thought here, but one worth considering.

Taking an assumption here as I am not sure exactly how the three technolgies interact, and am not familiar with WPF or XNA.

Setting the XNA and WPF forms as seperate, and have the WPF completely transparent and sitting on top of the XNA form. Set the WPF form to lose focus whenever it completes a process, so as to keep focus on the XNA form(for 3d controlled combat).

or an even heavier undertaking. Create a 'proper' interlay control for XNA in WPF ... however that may be beyond us here

oh well ... my combat is going to be akin to MoO2 anyways. I prefer tactical control over idiot control(botf) anyways. But it will be in 3d space as opposed to a 2d plane in MoO2.

Hell, at this rate my game will end up being what MoO3 SHOULD have been ... minus the big green 'VICTORY' for winning combat LOL ...

Unfortunately, that's precisely what we can't do. There is an "airspace" problem in that a single pixel can only be owned by one graphics provider (e.g. GDI (Windows Forms), WPF, or XNA/DirectX). If the two overlap, there cannot be any transparency or translucency, as that would require shared ownership. Thus you end up with an opaque background filling the bounding box of any UI that you attempt to overlay atop an XNA control.


There's another project aimed at recreating MoO3 as it was originally envisioned. It's called Majesty of Omega, and I've done a little bit of work on it. I think it has promise. You should check it out.

Seems like a lot of people have been talking about Masters Of Orion lately. Is the game really that good?

well the first one was a real breakthrough in space strategy games back in 1993. the second also had a great fellowship, but it was beginning to overboard with micromanagement. the third was a flop simply put. The first one is abandonware and you get it from various sites over the net. the second ain't but I got a zip compressed 192 transferrable version (no-cd) if someone needs it badly ..

If the third was a flop then how come so many people keep talking about it?

simply enough: they want to make it better!

No, I mean why are so many people talking about how good it is? Like a certain someone did whose name I'm not going to mention.

Moo3 game isn't worth of talking about but MoO 2 was and is pure perfection, that is reason why all MoO sequels are and going to be worthles. No offence.

Agreed MOO2 was the pinnacle at the time, each game was differant and it was a blast playing it hotseat with friends, ahh the memories.

Regards Wolfe

I put a link to the new combatsim version in my first post. It's the same that can be downloaded from the download section of this site here.
On first glance, it hasn't changed much but the underlying code is now optimized to let the simulation run multiple times as fast as before .

I want the DefiantDemo download ^^

sure I'd like to have it look as good as that one too but that question is better asked to Strings itself once he found his way again to the forums here. Though things in that regard don't look that good I fear. He wasn't much around after January this year when the old forums were still online so it might be he got other pressing issues that keep him away from site for an unspecified period of time unfortunately..

The BotE Combat Simulator has been updated to newest Alpha 5.1 version: http://www.botf2.com/bote/Shared%20Documents/Files/CombatSimulator.zip

Short installation hints: 1. unzip; 2. copy Alpha 5.1 shiplist.data from ..\bote\data\ships\ to your new Combat simulator folder; 3. run the exe; 4. you can set different options in CombatScript.txt like who's fighting whom with how many ships and if the combat should be shown graphically (REPEAT=0) or you want more statistical output then set REPEAT to whatever value comes to your mind (300 is a good one mostly). You can also set combat speed there when having REPEAT on zero.

The above link or download does not seem to work.

Paddy

The link doesn't work for me either, Mal. It doesn't work because it's abbreviated. It shouldn't have those dots in it. The full link is:

http://www.botf2.com/bote/Shared%20Documents/CombatSimulator.zip

HOWEVER, your attachment above is only 13 bytes. Something isn't right there. The file on Sharepoint was tiny as well, but I downloaded it anyways. When I tried opening it, I was told the file was corrupted. Are you sure it's zipped correctly, Mal?

yeah, I always forget to add url tags to links I post on forums, mainly because Opera can load them anyways regardless of the dots which must be added by phpBB3 somehow to untagged urls.

Attachment was corrupt indeed, seems like the upload ceased somehow. Now both link and attachment should work. Plus I added latest english shiplist.data so Step 1 from the installation hints above can be disregarded and you can just fire it up by clicking the exe after unpacking. Btw. it would kind of interesting to get feedback if it runs on each machine. It's a rather untested (development) tool so maybe you can test it out too a second.

Ok then, tested.

Pentium 4 @ 3.2Ghz
1Gb RAM
512mb Radeon 3850 HD

It loaded...and I was met with bouncing dots. Didn't have a clue what was going on for about 5 seconds, then I guessed the dots were random ships firing at each other. Combat completed after about 1000 "ticks". I assume ticks means frames?

...And then I was bombarded my messages telling me Race 5 had one. I clicked ok, and the message reappeared about 20 times. Guess there's a problem there.

I also noticed that Close Program still has a German label. "Beenden".

Otherwise it worked fine.

actually not random ship, but those pre-set in combatscript.txt. Any ships can be edited in there by writing ship class name in one line.

The clicking after Race 5 won is due to torpedos still flying around after the last ship blew up. Kind of a bug.

alright, seems to work on more machines than previous builds.

I know this was asked before, but didn't find any answer, could this be implemented into Supremacy, and if yes, before the August update.

If Mike wants he can adapt it to Supremacy but this combat simulator is tailored to BotE and its ship stats etc.. Don't think it'd be that easy to do so, besides, it isn't really beautiful to watch those dots for the regular player. Maybe as a dev tool like it's used in BotE.

Also the other things mentioned in this thread like Strings' game and so on weren't really worked on since then. It's a bit sad since Strings' game looked really promising, but well you can't do anything about it can you .

SirP corrected the 20 clicks combat end bug. New version in attachment.

It is just great to me, for Supremacy's pourpoces we could replace dots with Race emblems, it would be great for now, until we have a 3D combat engine.

plus it is very similar to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXF_3Zlq ... re=related

go to 1:42

good idea with the race emblems. SirP said, having graphics in it slows it down seriously when having 25+ ships fighting each other, at least in its current state. Maybe there's room for optimization.

good find on the youtube vid. Yeah, together with some UI elements it would look like a console-viewed fight from the series .

btw. the FreeOrion guys are working on a 3D combat engine in OGRE (mock-up art based upon engine screenshot): . They aren't as far as cdrwolfe is when it comes to controls and actual weapon fire but still they are at it. Since it's C++ it's suitable to BotE especially.

Cool. Reminds me a bit of Homeworld, and that's a definite compliment.

Part 4 of the episode vjeko linked to is even more useful. Look at 5:01. 6:10 might also be useful but the image is small and hard to see due to the angle.

the triangles would be much better to implement performance-wise. good find .