12-01-2003 23:51									#31
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edit a post, cool! who came up with such a wierd concept

	13-01-2003 01:18									#32
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quote: Originally posted by vovansim Another bug that appears in demo 7.2.1, which I think wasn't there in demo 7.1, but I am not sure about demo 7.2.0, is when you select the Carthago delenda est scenario, it says image not found twice, and then whatever you do with the window, it prints out a bunch of debug information in the command prompt. Maybe find which images are missing, and put them there? Or at least turn off the debug switch to make the rest of the game a little faster?

Hi Vovan, you must be missing some images, because I don't have that problem. Please ID what the images are, and look in the bridge zip I sent yesterday to see if they are there and you just didn't get them in the right place. I can send you the images you need, or the whole package of images again if necessary.

	13-01-2003 01:41									#33
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quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson Hi Vovan, you must be missing some images, because I don't have that problem. Please ID what the images are, and look in the bridge zip I sent yesterday to see if they are there and you just didn't get them in the right place. I can send you the images you need, or the whole package of images again if necessary.

Well, since that doesn't happen with any other scenarios, I assume the problem must be with the two scenario-specific images. hannibal.gif, and scipio.gif, which are mentioned in the xml file for the scenario. But they are there. In the same folder as the xml file. And their extension is lower case, and all as required. I can't imagine why the game cannot find them. It is the only scenario that has scenario-specific images though, so maybe they are not loaded correctly, or their path is not correctly stored? Then again, you say you don't have that problem... That is odd. I think I will investigate if / when I have time.

Meanwhile, I am wondering: does anybody else have that problem?

	13-01-2003 02:14									#34
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I do have a JVM but it might be out of date, I tried to update it but it said unable to update. I will attempt to reinstall it. BTW I followed the instructions to the letter. I think its the microsoft version of JVM and it has issues.
-J.B.-

	13-01-2003 02:45									#35
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Well, it might be the microsoft version that is causing the problem, but I am sure there are other people out there who tried to play the game with it, and they probably would have complained.

Now, the fact that you got an error message when trying to update it, is what bothers me. It might mean that there is some corruption there. Which could lead to all kinds of strange behavior in the game. Try to reinstall it and see if that does any good.

	13-01-2003 03:06									#36
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quote: Hi Vovan, you must be missing some images, because I don't have that problem. Please ID what the images are, and look in the bridge zip I sent yesterday to see if they are there and you just didn't get them in the right place. I can send you the images you need, or the whole package of images again if necessary.

I have that problem , I had that problem before as well.

quote: I think its the microsoft version of JVM and it has issues

Question: what version of jave are we targeting, microsoft is 1.14, and won't handle swing on it's own, or a load of other good stuff.

I'm developing with suns 1.4 .

	13-01-2003 03:21									#37
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I went to the suns site and downloaded
JavaTM Virtual Machine (JVM) with Automatic Installation.
I then restarted the game and it worked. Thanks for your help guys! It still goes slow but it works!
-J.B.-

	13-01-2003 03:21									#38
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quote: Another bug that appears in demo 7.2.1, which I think wasn't there in demo 7.1, but I am not sure about demo 7.2.0, is when you select the Carthago delenda est scenario, it says image not found twice, and then whatever you do with the window, it prints out a bunch of debug information in the command prompt. Maybe find which images are missing, and put them there? Or at least turn off the debug switch to make the rest of the game a little faster?

Yes, the bug is somewhere. I added the message to see what image was missing. An image "services" is missing, and it causes lots of overlay=null messages to be printed (not by me this time). Is that services image in the resources (or scenario) folder, or only on Mark's computer?

	13-01-2003 03:35									#39
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Jeremy, glad it worked out! Please let us know what you think, both good and bad, when you have played it a bit!


On the "services" image. . . I have no idea. There is no file of name services.* anywhere in my clash directory. Presumably some other file is then out of date. Images.xml was my first guess, but it calls for no file like that, at least my version doesn't!

If anyone can give me more hints, I'll do whatever is needed. Should I zip up everything I have right now and send it?

	13-01-2003 04:01									#40
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The services stuff happens because of a Feature object (in game/events/features). I don't know what it is used for nor where it comes from, which is why I limited myself to the trace. I think the Feature is called service too (but it is named after the image is attached to it).
I think features are the things like the horse in Dawn.

I can't see why there would be one in Delenda unless the map showed something wrong in it.

The parser somehow calls that but I cannot figure what file it reads that info from. delenda probably.

May be linked to MapFile.setEconomicSiteFeature? It has a f.setImage(sectorName) which smells like it could be the cause of the problem. It is a bit late for me to debug. Mark, do you think it could be that?

	13-01-2003 04:08									#41
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quote: Originally posted by LDiCesare May be linked to MapFile.setEconomicSiteFeature? It has a f.setImage(sectorName) which smells like it could be the cause of the problem. It is a bit late for me to debug. Mark, do you think it could be that?

It certainly does smell funky, but I don't think it is THE source of the problem. I put a debug statement in that method, and I saw that it tried opening the following files:

Reading scenario Carthago delenda est (delenda)
Setting economic site feature to: gold mine
Setting economic site feature to: services
Trying to open image: services
Image not found : services for feature null
Setting economic site feature to: cloth
Setting economic site feature to: tin mine
Setting economic site feature to: cloth
Setting economic site feature to: tin mine
Setting economic site feature to: gold mine
Setting economic site feature to: services
Trying to open image: services
Image not found : services for feature null

As you can see, it can find all the images for gold mine, cloth, and such. The only thing that causes poblems is services. We are in the middle of tracking two bugs down right now, though. So I am wondering, Mark, do you want me to investigate the TF popup menu bug further, or keep tracking this one?

	13-01-2003 04:26									#42
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Thanks Laurent, that is helpful. I use Features to show the images of the economic specials in delenda. So the error does make some sense. I will look into it as time allows. However if I can't find the problem quick I will just make the D7.2.1 jar file, and if it runs fine, I'll go ahead and release it anyway.

	13-01-2003 04:36									#43
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Mark, I have dug further into the thing, and here is what I found:

You know, how the resources are represented in the xml file with one-letter codes? So, for instance G stands for gold, etc.. Well, S translates into services. And the code that translates it that way is SectorInfo.getSectorNameFromAbbreviation.

Also, I looked at the list of file that the game knows of, and the only resource that starts with an S is salt mines. So, maybe that's what it is supposed to mean? Salt mines instead of services?

EDIT: typos

Last edited by vovan on 13-01-2003 at 04:51

	13-01-2003 04:43									#44
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quote: Originally posted by vovansim Mark, I have dug further into the thing, and here is what I found: Also, I looked aty the list of file that the game knows of, and the only resource that starts with and S is aslt mines. So, maybe that's what it is supposed to mean? Salt mines instead of services?

Good work Vovan, a kludge has come back to haunt me. Or at least you. I thought I could just use the first letters and there would be no conflict. But there is the obvious conflict of Salt, which is what its supposed to be, and Services. I will put a band-aid on it for now. Eventually we need to set explicitly which characters to use for which economic good. That is already on my list of things to do.

I wonder why I don't see the problem???

Anyway a fix is trivial, and I'll send it soon, or failing that tomorrow.

Thanks again!

-Mark

	13-01-2003 05:03									#45
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The Great Kludger strikes again!

Please don't use one letter codes for anything. You save a few keystrokes for the XML file, and lose possibly hundreds of hours debugging.

I do realize that I am guilty of

1. A kludge to get the maps easier to manipulate in the XML files,

2. and one letter codes for that purpose.

It was always my intention to have a proper map editor. However, even with that, to make the map readable in an XML file one letter codes were needed.

Are these economic resources held in the map XML in the same way? I do not believe they should be. I would have thought it better to code them as:

<resource>
<location> ... </location>
<name>Gold</name>
<type> ... </type>
<worth> ... </worth>
</resource>

Cheers

Gary Thomas

	13-01-2003 05:29									#46
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Hi Gary, good to hear from you!

quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas The Great Kludger strikes again!

You got it, hard to put anything past you .

quote: Are these economic resources held in the map XML in the same way?

Exactly as you say

quote: I do not believe they should be. I would have thought it better to code them as: <resource> <location> ... </location> <name>Gold</name> <type> ... </type> <worth> ... </worth> </resource>

Sorry, I just don't agree with you. At least I don't agree with you while we are putting these things in by hand. With a density of specials of one per 20 squares soon in the game, I would need to add by hand many tens of locations even for a small map. Once the map editor is working then I've no issue with any way you'd like to save them. . .

Cya,

Mark

	17-01-2003 08:29									#47
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I am not sure this would be the place to say this, but any way:

Since we are going to have a certain set of relations and attitudes, and such nice things between different nations, maybe it would make sense to start thinking about how we are going to incorporate that stuff in the XML files? After all, if we are creating a sccenario, we might want to have some civs know about each other's existance, and maybe have certain attitudes towqards each other, and maybe even some treates already set up? That would be especially useful for the tutorial scenarios introducing the concept to new players, but would add nice functionality for other scenarios as well. Is that something we want to consider, or are we going to have it the way it is in other games - all the civs start out without "knowing" about each other's existance?

	17-01-2003 13:07									#48
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Inserting yourself in the xml files is ridiculously easy. Gary used reflexion to parse the xml files, so you just need to implement one interface for the top level objects that can appear in the xml, then everything is automatic, nothing to code.
You can look for examples by grepping XML in the source code. I'll send you some explanations if needed, but don't worry about it. The amount of code needed to integrate to the parser takes around 10 minutes to do. Just make sure you have methods with understandable names respecting a setXXX/getXXX syntax for those things you will want to show up in the xml.

	17-01-2003 22:25									#49
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Well, I realise there is probably a more or less easy way to do it. And at the moment it is really not needed yet. It's just that I was thinking that since for every object there are essentially several ways to encode it in XML, maybe there is some format you (as in people who have coded the xml data package) would like to follow. In other words, the format could be like this:

code:

<civilization>
    <reputation>
        <trustworthiness>1</trustworthiness>
        <competence>2</competence>
        <tyranny>0</tyranny>
        <aggressiveness>-1</aggressiveness>
    </reputation>
</civilization>

code:

<civilization>
    <reputation
                   trustworthiness = 1
                   competence = 2
                   tyranny = 0
                   aggressiveness = -1
    / >
</civilization>

	18-01-2003 01:56									#50
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Hi Vovan:

Its like your first case that is the standard. You can look at any of the xml initialization files to see further details you might need. They are in the resources sub-directory. There is also a dataformat.html doc that documents what the tags are. When you actually do the xml tags you should update that file with the new information so scenario designers can use your codes easily.

	18-01-2003 01:59									#51
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Mark just answered about the format.

quote: So, I was just thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to just think of the xml schema that we'll use for diplomatic data, as opposed to the coding part, which is more far off for now.

The xml reflects exactly what is in the code. Thinking about it first is a good idea as it will also provide you with the interfaces (api) of the (public) classes you will manipulate.

	19-01-2003 03:16									#52
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Thanks, Mark.

Laurent, I already have the basic design of all the classes, and its just for the coding part now. The reason I was wondering about the xml is I was thinking that maybe there is something really special and uncommon you try to do with it. If not, I'll get right to it.

	22-01-2003 08:17									#53
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We have a potential new coder, and I mentioned this thread to him. I thought I should bump it up so its easy to find.

	22-01-2003 10:03									#54
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Hi all -

Mark mentioned this thread to me as a place to get started by looking at some Clash bugs. Is there a list of outstanding bugs right now in a common place, or anything critical that I should look into to start out with?

- Framnk

	22-01-2003 10:10									#55
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Hello, there, Framnk. And welcome to the team.

To answer your first question: yes, there is a list of current bugs. Take a look at the Demo 7 Download and Comments thread. The first couple of posts by Mark summarize the bugs, and requested features.

	22-01-2003 10:31									#56
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Hi all -

I have a comment which is perhaps related to this feature:

f118 “hide events” should also hide the detailed description boxes associated with events. Actually closing them would be best so that we don’t end up with hundreds of little event boxes accumulated and hidden from view by the end of the game. [medium priority, D8]

I noticed when playing with the demo for the first time that the popup event windows became annoying after a while. Sometimes they would overlay each other, and be out of order. (I'm specifically referring to the tutorial scenario here - I don't know if the other scenarios have as many windows?)

I noticed that by clicking on bulletins you get a nice ordered summary of the windows so far that you can click on and bring them up. I thought it might be a nice idea to combine the two approaches: Create a new toolwindow that would display a list of recent bulletins/events, and to the right of that a scrollable text window containing the text of whatever bulletin/event is currently highlighted.

Sorry, I'm kind of an interface guy and just something I noticed when playing through the tutorial. Please feel free to flame away!

- Framnk

	22-01-2003 15:51									#57
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Hi Framnk, welcome to the Clash forum!

An interfaces guy, that's great, we definitely can use your skills! As you can see there's a lot of gui stuff that needs serious improvement.

On your specific project, it doesn't seem very high priority to me. . . More of a final polish sort of thing. Lets see what others think. OTOH, if it won't take you much time, it certainly wouldn't hurt anything.

My quickie suggestions in the gui area would be (of course these are just things that bug Me mostly )

-165 (Mark) I would like the game to come up maximized by default. It comes up slightly smaller than maximized, which means I can’t see all the detail frame. [med D7.3]

f74 One thing we could use when there are multiple TFs in a square is whether they have movement orders or not.

Good to have you on the team!

See 'ya

Mark

Thanks Vovan for giving Frank the URL for the D7 thread. I should have done it, and in my rush to get him something last night I forgot. . .

	23-01-2003 08:37									#58
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All:

Was looking into this one a little bit:

-165 (Mark) I would like the game to come up maximized by default. It comes up slightly smaller than maximized, which means I can’t see all the detail frame. [med D7.3]

After finding nothing very helpful in the JDK documentation I did a quick search and came up with the following thread: Maximizing a JFrame at Start-up

In a nutshell, you can't do it, at least as of the JDK version I am using which is 1.3.1. The thread proposes two solutions.

1) "Simulate" the maximizing of the JFrame by setting it's dimensions to the largest screen dimensions supported. The drawback here is that the state of the maximize button will not correctly indicate that the Frame is maximized.

2) Use JNI to interface with Win32 (or other native API) to cause the maximization to occur at startup.

As I am kind of new here and I wasn't sure of your design philosophies, I didn't want to start diving in and writing JNI calls to Win32, as I'm assuming that you are trying to keep Clash as platform neutral as possible.

Let me know what you guys think should be the best route (if any) here. My vote is just take the Frame dimensions up to "almost maximized" and make an adjustment or two to the detail window so everything comes up clean and visible.

	23-01-2003 19:50									#59
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quote: Originally posted by Framnk Let me know what you guys think should be the best route (if any) here. My vote is just take the Frame dimensions up to "almost maximized" and make an adjustment or two to the detail window so everything comes up clean and visible.

Hi Frank. Thanks for looking into it. Its Amazing there's no clean solution.

Your approach sounds best to me. We Definitely want to maintain platform independence. One issue is you shouldn't make the detail frame go all the way to the bottom, because FE the icons that show a minimized econ window show up on the bottom and will be buried if the detail frame and main map go all the way. Also the bug notification that says its still running the turn shows up there. So you need to leave maybe 12 pixels worth 'bare' at the bottom for those purposes.

	24-01-2003 01:28									#60
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Yes! An interface coder! Welcome Framnk!

I suggest a few things of my own:
- You could look at whether it is possible to have two versions of the game, one windowed, and one full screen. Not that I like full screen, but some people do, and I have no idea how that is done.
- You can look at the various UIs and come up with brilliant ideas. I think econ is already being worked upon (like it needed it), but there is also the government stuff.
I think you can go with the panels if you find them troublesome, because I find them to be a problem in Dawn too. Other scenarios use very little events, and they come very far one from another, but that is still annoying.

I believe with a fresh eye you could have a few interesting ideas worth trying.