TA3D 0.4.1 final is out

Everything related to the code /
Tout ce qui touche au code
Post Reply
User avatar
zuzuf
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 3281
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2006 8:49 pm
Location: Toulouse, France
Contact:

TA3D 0.4.1 final is out

Post by zuzuf » Sat Nov 24, 2007 11:50 pm

Check out the news page!!
=>;-D Penguin Powered

User avatar
Balthazar
Moderator
Posts: 2055
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:31 pm
Location: Russian Federation
Contact:

Post by Balthazar » Sun Nov 25, 2007 8:55 am

Nice, nice. Menu and buttons now looks like it is really TA. All seems work fine, AI - building, units - moving and all that should work - working :)

AI still have some bugs with vehicle factory - it`s just stays open and doesn`t build anything. Also - constraction vehicles/planes should have higher priority so AI could build faster.

User avatar
zuzuf
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 3281
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2006 8:49 pm
Location: Toulouse, France
Contact:

Post by zuzuf » Sun Nov 25, 2007 12:32 pm

It's only a basic AI, only the API with basic fonctions to make it work, real AI will come later.

PS: now we have to make some noise :wink:
=>;-D Penguin Powered

User avatar
Balthazar
Moderator
Posts: 2055
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:31 pm
Location: Russian Federation
Contact:

Post by Balthazar » Sun Nov 25, 2007 12:52 pm

Yeah :) I`ll make some good-looking screenshots :)

User avatar
AF
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 139
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:19 pm
Location: NW UK
Contact:

Post by AF » Sun Nov 25, 2007 3:55 pm

I made a blog post on darkstars.

I would consider renaming ia.h/cpp to ai.h/cpp and maybe moving them into a separate sub folder, and the same for various other files, just to give a bit of structure.

I'd also move as much of the build files into separate folders as possible. Spring has a build folder with sub folders for each individual build process, vs2005, codeblocks etc. atm your initial folder is just masses of random files and it's quite intimidating.

User avatar
zuzuf
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 3281
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2006 8:49 pm
Location: Toulouse, France
Contact:

Post by zuzuf » Sun Nov 25, 2007 4:15 pm

Yeah, I've seen your post.

I'll rename ia to ai, but I am not sure moving all the files would be good, because there is already one file per engine part, if you want to make a structured tree, you'll end with something like:
UnitEngine -> UnitEngine.cpp UnitEngine.h
EngineClass -> ...

and it's lot of changes to the code, I'll add an ai dir when we'll have more ai modules, but for now I prefer it to stay the way it is.
=>;-D Penguin Powered

sieistganzfett
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2007 2:38 am
Location: America
Contact:

Post by sieistganzfett » Sun Nov 25, 2007 9:11 pm

the rename to ai is needed, i thought ia was french for ai. ;) :wink: when i read through all of the files, they were well done structure wise, very modular, good notes in them, in both french and english. :D if zuzuf added folders, i know it would be time consuming to change all the includes to have a bunch of folders for added structure. then it would looking spring style intimidating with all those folders. :wink:

User avatar
AF
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 139
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:19 pm
Location: NW UK
Contact:

Post by AF » Mon Nov 26, 2007 3:49 pm

I saw the release thread on the spring boards.


You do realize that the 'AI' feature has been a newly released feature 6 or 7 times now? That's a lot of re-invention!

Anyways I think it'd be a good idea to release somethign witht he TA3D engine as a demo, not the cavedog content but I'm sure we can piece together a mini-mod using stuff around the OTA community and the odd map.

User avatar
Balthazar
Moderator
Posts: 2055
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:31 pm
Location: Russian Federation
Contact:

Post by Balthazar » Mon Nov 26, 2007 4:45 pm

Hehe, how about randon generic 3D map, maybe using tileset? Like in many games - chose % of water, % of hills and hokus-pokus - random map generated :)

Not very pretty, but don`t need 300 MB files to download :) Generated almost in realtime.

User avatar
zuzuf
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 3281
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2006 8:49 pm
Location: Toulouse, France
Contact:

Post by zuzuf » Mon Nov 26, 2007 5:11 pm

the random map generator is a good idea, but it might not be easy because if you want a large map, generating a "render" map without any identical 32x32 bloc will result in a huge size on the disk and in memory when loaded. So what we can do is :
_compute a random tileset based on the merge of some textures (mud, water, grass, snow, rock, ...)
_generate the height map
_fill the texture map using the tileset
_transform the tileset with 63.44 view angle (so yu might get more blocs than initially because the blocs on the height maps won't be transformed the same way)
_add rocks, trees, metal patches, ...
_save the .tnt file (for later use)
_generate map .ota file according to the data given to the map generator

That way you can test several maps and then improve them if you want. I also want a fast pre-generator that will compute a mini-map using basic data that are fast to compute in order to allow the player to 'chose' the map.

PS: TA3D's goal includes making free resources (compatible with mods that will need them) in order to have the largest player base possible. Maybe we can start from a free mod.
=>;-D Penguin Powered

User avatar
Balthazar
Moderator
Posts: 2055
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:31 pm
Location: Russian Federation
Contact:

Post by Balthazar » Mon Nov 26, 2007 5:48 pm

Hmm, nice, very nice idea. This can be a handfull improvment for one of the next releases - in addition to defence.lua script :)

Stand alive on random generated map... Very Crymsonland-like a game can be :)

User avatar
Balthazar
Moderator
Posts: 2055
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:31 pm
Location: Russian Federation
Contact:

Post by Balthazar » Mon Nov 26, 2007 6:49 pm

Looks like Spring people kinda like TA3D :)

Here`s topic about 0.4.1. FR

http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=12848

User avatar
zuzuf
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 3281
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2006 8:49 pm
Location: Toulouse, France
Contact:

Post by zuzuf » Mon Nov 26, 2007 6:57 pm

Yes that's a good news. It seems that TA3D runs faster and have features they want :P
=>;-D Penguin Powered

User avatar
Balthazar
Moderator
Posts: 2055
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:31 pm
Location: Russian Federation
Contact:

Post by Balthazar » Mon Nov 26, 2007 7:33 pm

The ultimate kick ass would be support of Spring`s maps :) That will be really interesting.

User avatar
zuzuf
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 3281
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2006 8:49 pm
Location: Toulouse, France
Contact:

Post by zuzuf » Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:31 pm

Yes, that can be done, but will require an alternative map renderer since current one is based on 32x32 blocs. That's an idea, but first we should look at specs, to see if it's easy or not.
=>;-D Penguin Powered

sieistganzfett
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2007 2:38 am
Location: America
Contact:

Post by sieistganzfett » Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:40 pm

for the map compatiblity. would a simple if else work. if its a tnt, handle loading with renderer you already made. else use their renderer, after all, they made a renderer to work with their maps, use their code and list it in the credits that you used their code to load their maps. ;) i think a bigger problem would be the way pathfinding works, once you get it working with tnt based maps, you may need another pathfinding algorithm for their maps right?

User avatar
zuzuf
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 3281
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2006 8:49 pm
Location: Toulouse, France
Contact:

Post by zuzuf » Mon Nov 26, 2007 10:23 pm

Hmm, the problem is that the renderer does too much ... it computes the visible area of the map (which is required by units, weapons and features). And worse, the pathfinding system might not be compatible with our ... so I prefer remaking a new code. That shouldn't be too hard since their maps are drawn using a common technique: you've the height map, a set of texture maps, and a texture that describes how to merge those textures (or a similar system). In fact this type of map has only few details, but they are merged with high frequency details that makes you believe there are lots of details everywhere ... Note that TA3D uses a detail texture but you won't see it unless you zoom close to the ground (TA texture map has lots of details).
=>;-D Penguin Powered

User avatar
Balthazar
Moderator
Posts: 2055
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:31 pm
Location: Russian Federation
Contact:

Post by Balthazar » Tue Nov 27, 2007 6:30 am

Hehehe, seems that 'todo' list is constantly growing. We are in desperate need of skilled coders :P :P

User avatar
AF
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 139
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:19 pm
Location: NW UK
Contact:

Post by AF » Tue Nov 27, 2007 6:10 pm

The sm2 format specifies 8x8 texture blocks and a metal map. Unlike OTA mex spots aren't features.

Textures aren't blended either, they're provided as is.

Each 8x8 game square then references a texture block, and specifies the heights of its corners using the height map.

Another possible issue is that in OTA all maps heights are between 0 and 255 whereas spring maps use floating point values. Although this effect is lessened by an AA convention that had caydr making mappers reduce their slopes, some of forbs maps have heights in excess of 3000.

User avatar
zuzuf
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 3281
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2006 8:49 pm
Location: Toulouse, France
Contact:

Post by zuzuf » Tue Nov 27, 2007 7:16 pm

TA3D engine uses floats too, so floats aren't a problem here. That should be interesting to add a loader for sm2 maps.
=>;-D Penguin Powered

User avatar
AF
Administrateur - Site Admin
Posts: 139
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:19 pm
Location: NW UK
Contact:

Post by AF » Wed Nov 28, 2007 7:33 pm

In sm2 maps mex spots are usually represented on the texture itself rather than as features, and some maps have odd metal maps, and rely on mex radii.

If you need to reconcile them into individual points however, the spring AIs had to deal with that issue for mex placement and krogothe made an algorithm that does it very fast.

There's also the issue of s3o features, and future 0.76+ maps could have lua gaia gadgets with graphical effects and other units. Look at trepans snow gadget for example, or the flattening gadget which submarges the map underwater or flattens it into a plane.

User avatar
Balthazar
Moderator
Posts: 2055
Joined: Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:31 pm
Location: Russian Federation
Contact:

Post by Balthazar » Wed Nov 28, 2007 8:13 pm

Sound complex :)

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 32 guests