Lets start with vastly improved Evolution RTS gameplay. Working with Foreboding Angel, we’ve improved performance greatly, adding support for newer units, and general efficiency improvements. I’ve also added extra behaviours to prevent massive factory spamming.

Numerous API changes are included as well! A handful of additions, such as unit resource usage are added, and a major change to the existing structure with the addition of a map object, and the movement of numerous API calls to the new object.

Various bugs in 0.25 have also been fixed, and more safe guards are now in place. I have also added extra optimisations, and rebuilt Shard in release mode, meaning a massive performance boost when idle.

You can find the full API listing in the ai/preload/api.lua folder, and I have added a Shard page to my projects section which I will be filling over the next 2 months.

Download here

• Fixed a bug causing the spring API call for UnitDamaged to be sent to Shard as a UnitIdle call. UnitDamaged calls should now work correctly, and phantom UnitIdle calls should no longer exist.
• UnitDamaged calls were never passed along from the AI object to all units and behaviour objects
• Removed numerous debug messages
• AttackHandler now maintains attack group sizes above a minimum value to prevent attack group sizes degrading to that of a single unit or two
• Minor fixes to task queue management and certain failure cases that were never accounted for

Optimizations:

• Checks added to prevent processing after the game has finished
• Attack targeting now only checks for targets every 6 frames not every single frame
• LUA_PATH is now set up correctly. Instead of calling game:ExecuteFile(file) or ai:ExecuteGameFile(file), you can now use the standard Lua library functions/keywords:
  • require – note if this fails the AI will exit and take the engine with it after printing a stacktrace to infolog.txt
  • include

Features:

• Added game:IsPaused()
• UnitDamaged now has a second parameter indicating the attacker. If the attacker isn’t available, nil will be passed and must be checked for
• Added game:MinimumWindSpeed()
• Added game:MaximumWindSpeed()
• Added game:TidalStrength()
• Added unit:IsCloaked()
• Added game:GetResource(idx)
• Added game:GetResourceCount()
• Added game: GetResource(name)
• Added Resource object
  
Resource {
name,
income,
usage,
capacity, -- how much we can store (-1 for unlimited)
reserves, -- how much is stored
gameframe, -- the game frame these stats were recorded at
},
• Added a new api.lua with a proxy object implementing game
• Added a preload folder, and moved api.lua, class.lua, and aibase.lua into it
• game:GetEnemies() now returns the enemy units in a normal lua table
• game:GetFriendlies() now returns friendly units in a normal lua table
• game:GetMapFeatures() now returns features in a normal lua table

Functionally, the game play should be near identical to 0.21, with only tiny improvements, however, performance should increase slightly, as well as stability. I’ve also added a lot of things that were requested by content developers using Shard, which allows them to do even more things!

Download it here

Now that I’ve finished my dissertation, course works, I need to think about getting a job! So I need to get on with fixing up darkstars to show to employers, and I can’t do that with misaligned containers, and dodgy typography.

So to start off, I recently set-up a clone of my WordPress theme and started shifting the structure of my pages over to Blueprint. I’ve now inherited a new set of css layout and typography, and fixed all those issues with nested white boxes and semi translucent boxes and hyper link colours.

Once the transition was completed and some hiccups where fixed, I deployed the site and started work on more changes. Gone are the ‘I like this’ buttons and the almost working breadcrumbs! We use page impressions now to measure popularity, users won’t take the time to click a ‘like’ button, it’s easier for it all to be done automatically. For those who want to help share, I’ve put a box with buttons for Facebook Twitter and Google Buzz

In line commenting now works again, and I put in a jquery preview plugin! Alternate styling is back, with author posts being highlighted by a yellow band on the left.

Gone is the stamper link in the header, the menu is now cleaner, and it’s in the footer too. Blog posts are listed on the front page beneath the fold, and a lot of other pages have had subtle re-layouts.

Future Work

I’ll be doing more work to the front page. As it is, the site still doesn’t do enough to sell me as a potential employee. It also has a certain ‘grayness’ to it that could do with a splash of colour. I intend to do this with content so that the site itself doesn’t distract from the content.

I’m also moving the projects section under a new page called ‘My Work’, which will be magazine like in showcasing what I’ve done. The current page is too methodical and tree like.

One criticism I’ve had for a long time is:

“What’s your website for?”

I will put a rest to this question once and for all. My site is about my projects and me, and namely getting me work. My skills need to be put to use if I want cookies, so I’m going to makeit obvious using my front page. More updates as they come!

It doesn’t stop there!

New from 0.2RC1:

• EvoRTS overrides
• Ported kernel panic NTai config
• Support for The Cursed
• Empty overrides for S44
• EvoRTS now has behaviours for rebuilding factories that have been destroyed, and making engineers throw up light defence towers when under fire
• Spacing code adjusted to account for unit size and increased to prevent factory entrance blockage
• Attack handler bug fixed regarding MoveAndAttack ( Its MoveAndFire!)
• Attack groups are now initially smaller but the desired group size will now grow and shrink as new gorups are built and units die
• Attack behaviour and task queue behaviour modified to allow deactivation and activation.
• Units now have behaviours and can elect a primary active behaviour. For examples of adding custom behaviours, look at the EvoRTS folder.
• API Units can now attack repair and reclaim other units
• API Units can return max weapons range now, amongst other things
• One can now check if A can build B, also incorporated into taskqueuebehaviour
• Extra safety checks in the API on parameters
• Added a UnitDamaged Callin

New in 0.21:

• Added a behaviours.lua, it is no longer necessary to use attackers.lua or for overrides of behaviourfactory.lua
• Added a defaultbehaviours function to be called when a unit doesnt have a list of behaviours defined
• Area Reclaim added to the API
• Behaviours can now query friendly units and map features
• Improved BA Core taskqueues ( thanks to Kaiser)
• Improved EvoRTS fixes for latest version ( thanks to Forboding Angel )
• Improved Cursed task queues ( thanks to Azeremoth )
• Bug fixes to attackhandler
• Added an example Auto reclaim behaviour to the EvoRTS files
• More sanity checks in the Shard API
• Removed some debug console messages

Download here

Based on the golden sun logo used by Satirik for tasclient, the spring downloader icon adds a red arrow underneath pointing downwards, and there’s little else to it. There are no high resolution versions. There’s also the issues with clashing colour schemes with my own icon set which is used by the spring engine itself.

So I set about correcting this and have come up with the following offering to the CA developers:

You can see more and download the source psd here

]]> http://darkstars.co.uk/2010/spring-downloader-logo/feed/ 0 http://darkstars.co.uk/2010/pwnys/ http://darkstars.co.uk/2010/pwnys/#comments Sat, 27 Mar 2010 23:12:37 +0000 Tom Nowell http://darkstars.co.uk/?p=1253 After the disastrous day at SCEE where upon my return to work the kaempfer had been damaged, requiring dissasembly, I have made fixes!

As some of you might know, I placed my Zaku and Kaempfer on my desk at work, leading to such pictures as the Zaku prophet, and the Zeon Cavalry photos. So I was ill and took a week off work and upon my return I find both mobile suits doing heil hitlers over the side of the desk. In attempting to reposition them I noticed that the kaempfers arm had become dislodged and required taking apart and re-assembling ( leading to another photo and a mass mail which went to the whole building accidentally ). I also found out the joint connecting the torso and the hip was damaged, resulting in it snapping when I tried to place the kaempfer in its new pose.

Now thanks to smoths advice, I have fixed it! To celebrate the Kaempfers triumphant return to health, a procession of Zeon Cavalry is in order! Here we can see the Zaku and kaempfer, riding their pwnys for epic win:

• game:FileExists() now works correctly
• game:SendToContent(string) added, communication with lua gadgets is now possible
• unit:MoveAndFire() added
• unit:Build now returns a boolean success if true, failure if false
• Taskqueue behaviour bugs squished with some idle builders
• A task queue can be a function now
• A task item in a task queue can be a function now
• Units can no longer declare themselves recruits twice, fixes a bug in attackhandler
• Added a basic CA override set for Arm ( Thanks to General Kerr), Shard now beats RAI in CA
• AttackerBehaviour now uses MoveAndFire instead of Move, this fixes bombers landing in enemy bases

Download here

Rather than name it an acronym like all the other spring AIs, I called it Shard. Seeing my university supervisor attempt to say NTai out loud may be fun, but it would be harsh to subject him to more lingual gymnastics.

So What is Shard?

Shard is a spring AI, written using a mixture of lua and C++. It can be used as an interface for speeding up writting new AIs, or it can be used as a starting point.

This is possible because Shard searches for each file it has by first checking a subfolder to see if a game specific version is provided. This way you can override any part of Shard, add to Shard, or build entire AIs on top of it.

For example, Shard by default uses a basic NTai style task list, defined in taskqueues.lua, but you can override this. For example, for XTA, you could create an XTA subfolder, with an XTA specific version of taskqueues.lua. You could then go further and include a customized BehaviourFactory.lua and add a custom behaviour for commanders, such as an auto-dgun behaviour.

Thus one can reprogram Shard to do what they want. Shard is also written in such a way that the APIs are all engine agnostic. The primary example being that Shard 0.2 or 0.3 will also work under Starcraft Broodwar.

Shard uses the Spring Engine C++ wrapper, and all the API calls available make use of cheating interfaces at the moment, so that means it has a map hack. You can find a short description of the API available in api.lua, and if you wish to override code, the sub-folder goes inside the ai subdirectory, and has the same folder name as the games ‘shortname’.

What do I need to use this?

You need a copy of the Spring Engine. Currently Shard works under the game Balanced Annihilation and provides only a basic configuration. It’s not intended to play competitively at the moment.

Download it here

I tend to think of this as a silly question because of the absurd answer it has, but I keep getting asked this and it seems to be the one holdover from having the long-winded alias it replaced, but then when I answer it I get the same question applied to the next one. So to answer this once and for all I have devised this ingenious little diagram to explain all my alias/names:

Well your probably thinking I’ve gone mad and this is all a waste of time. But then again I get asked that often, and explaining it each and every time is silly and time consuming. So why do I have all these alias? Well aside from the problem of having 7 Toms in a chat room and figuring out which ones which, I did not like using my actual name online for a long time and used my alias instead, the most well known of would be Alantai Firestar or AF.

It wasn’t until a few years ago I realized that all my work is unrelated to my name, and googling myself or my work would give two totally different results. So, wanting credit where due, I started putting my name on my work. I tend to use AF or Tarendai for forum user names now, and don’t use the mountain of other user names, although they do crop up randomly in places were I have yet to move on to new accounts or were it would be too troublesome to switch such as msn.

Other incarnations include AFDEV, Atlantia Magnifica (lulz) and AF. which arose thanks to youtube & co being unable to support user names with 2 letters in them.