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Topic: scenario AI

Venatrix
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Posted at: 2016-11-23, 23:58

I only just played the first couple of minutes (not even ten), so I will write some more in the future when I’m through the story (I’m already up too long), but I want to write my first thoughts I got in those minutes:

  • Amalea is Lucius’ sister and not really inclined to call him "sire" or something. Her speech to him is more informal (have a look at the Empire protagonist article).
  • In the second part of the Empire story we already have a step-by-step tutorial what kind of wood we need for the ship and so on. You don’t have to go through the same thing again. In other words: You can shorten the intro to a short description what problems you do face at the moment (no place because of the stones and you want an outpost first) and let the player decide how to accomplish the goal.

That’s about that for now. When I got to play further (at the moment I have to wait for the stonecutter), I’ll write more.


Two is the oddest prime.

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Venatrix
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Posted at: 2016-11-24, 23:07

As promised, here are more thoughts:

  • When Amalea comes in to tell you that you probably should lower the target for marble columns it may already be too late. So it probably is better either to state that at the moment when you get the object to build a stonemason or when the stonemason starts working.
  • I don’t know why and how but at first I missed the big building spot. I had to destroy/dismantle my first shipyard because I built it on the big spot without realising it. Restarted the game (mainly because I lost the big spot after dismantling the farm – I guess the fields were somehow in the way) and this time I knew where to go so I didn’t miss it.
  • I found a bug: After the talk of Saledus and Amalea there was a message in my inbox with the title "Lua Coroutine Failed". Message text: "[../src/scripting/lua_errors.cc:22] Unknown building type: 'barbarian_headquarters' stack traceback: [string "scripting/mission_thread.lua"]:111: in function <[string "scripting/mission_thread.lua"]:3>
  • Now I’m afraid to play further if that means to more or less constantly wait for a target quantity to be reached and to dismantle buildings. It seems the game will take quite a while.
  • BTW I got the expedition objectives even before I built the port.

Now it’s late again. See you later.


Two is the oddest prime.

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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2016-11-24, 23:40

Hi Venatrix, thanks for testing and sharing your thougts. It opened my mind already a lot. Some answers are quick, some are for discussion and I really could need some help.

  1. I'm not a programmer and really new to scripting with lua. Therefore I learned by copying and tuning and adapting already available scripts. Which lead me to start with a real serial strip to tell my story.
  2. I didn't know about the relationships of the persons acting. Many thanks for helping me with that one. Before adjusting my story I'll first read the article you mentioned.
  3. The bug you found was reported to me by private message from another downloader so I'll try to fix this in a quick way (maybe tommorow evening or over the weekend).
  4. After reading your first post I already got the idea of "deserializing" my story. So my idea is to let Saledus set the strategic goals to be displayed in the tasks list. In addition Amalea will provide some good advice from her economical knowledge when reaching some objectives that are not displayed to the player - like demanding the lowering of columns rigth when a stonemason has been built. What do you think about this?
  5. The thing with fields being in the way after dismantling has happened to me a couple of times in other maps games too. So I think we can't avoid that. But with game time running the wheat fields will disappear and the spot will return to be a big building spot.
  6. I just don't understand the last bullet in your second post. Please explain.
  7. I've realized that in some cases the AI plays that well, that the scenario could hardly be won by following my serial story which led me to point 4 as well. Anyhow I really will appreciate any testing of the map itself. Perhaps you or anybody else could play the map in the foreseen constellation: player- empire Ai - barbarian objective conquer all to provide some feedback.
  8. For me the very shortend storyline is: shipwrecked -- little space - learn how to trick arounfd with economy settings - learn about optimizing your economy and the space used for buildings (for example it is helpful to dismantle some of the streets and buildings probably to gain another building place - find iron which needs good planning and exploring expanding - make it not to easy because of shortage of material in the beginning - have fun
  9. I'mespecially intersted in advice which messages Amalea could provide triggered by which event.
  10. in scripting I didn't figure out how to properly find out if the target quantity of a ware had been manipulated.

regards hessenfarmer

PS: I Just don't want to learn about scripting to just tell one story more to come if time allows


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2016-11-25, 18:35

Regarding the lua error, you are getting that because the building is called barbarians_headquarters


Busy indexing nil values

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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2016-11-26, 00:15

thanks for the hint fixed that so far.


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Ex-Member
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Posted at: 2016-12-03, 10:29

I just tried out this scenario, oh what great potential!

I like the idea of learning a bit of micro mangement of wares and the restricted space. Some of the objectives arrive to soon/ to close together and sometimes it is not clear what target you are aiming for.

An exmple you have a target of 50 or more wheat which is clear, you then get told to weave cloth, but not how much or how to find out how much. In my first run through I got my log management wrong and could not finish the smelter or the expedition, I should have kept the wood production running but I had already lost the big site when a forrester built trees around it.

I assume you are not a native English speaker, if you would like some help with grammer / spelling I am happy to help.


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2016-12-03, 19:38

Many thanks. That was exactly what I had in mind when starting to work on the scenario to teach / learn about micromanagement. Currently I fixed the Bug described in previous links and some wording issues. I'm still "tuning" the map to make the AI a worthy opponent. After this I will upload a v.1.1 of the map with fixed but still very serial scenario. Afterwards I will start to reorganize the objectives and the storyline to a more parallel way like suggested by venatrix. My plan is to have saledus setting out the strategic goals and amalea act on trigger events to give some hints about the economy. Roughly spoken the story will be 1. saledus asking for oupost after amalea's intervention about saving ressources. 2. saledus complaining about the stones. Amalea giving the objective to build a quarry. (this will remain as it is currently) 3. Saledus asking to explore and discover a port space. Amalea is recommending to build up a basic building economy (not mentioning which buildings are needed because that has been in other scenarios) Now the parallel things start like in If staements: if a stonemason is build she recommends to lower the quantity for columns (I still do not know how to query this one correctly) if a lumberjack is build and the trees are getting short (which is wanted up to a certain point) she reminds about the forrester but recommends to keep clear the big building spots if more than 3 (or probably 4) military buildings exist she will recomment to dismantle some of them to get back the building spots. after a certain amount of stone is cut she will advise to get some food to prepare for the future as soon as the mountain is dicovered she advises to sen some geologists to be prepared as well. 4. After discovery of the port space Saledus asks for a shipindustry (port and shipyard). Amalea intervenes that there is to less cloth setting up the following objectives. Get 40 wheat, turn them into wool, and then in to cloth. (Amount of cloth depends on player but she will do some maths in a kind of we need x cloth for building a ship for x cloth we will need y wool which results in z wheat. But this will be no objective because we will need cloth for expeditions as well and we will need wheat for beer in the coal mine. 5. when port is build saledus fires his expeditionary missions. Amalea is telling her brother that gold is necessary and to build up a mining industry (if not already done). if water is running out due to the sheepfarm she will advise to build a well if any other ware is running out she will advise as well she will eventually give a hint to produce more wheat to supply a brewery as well. she will eventually remind to cut all the stone possible on every island.

so thats the basic idea I would be very happy for any inputs / suggestions on this. As soon as I'm finished with the whole thing I would be happy for some help with the english texts from a native speaker ( although I thought my english is not that bad ;-)) I can do the German translation meanwhile. Any improvements for the map itself would be welcomed as well, because it's not that easy to make it suitable for a AI opponent. regards hessenfarmer


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Ex-Member
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Posted at: 2016-12-04, 10:19

Your story line seems good to me, perhaps instead of telling the player x, y , z products teach them to use the in game encyclopedia to check quantities.

I am resisting the temptation to check the map until I have played it through as is, currently I have just established an outpost on the North island and I am using the small number of larger building spaces to start a training programme. I noticed that after a few hours the AI seemed to stop expanding, this may be a problem but I will find out later.

I corrected the bug in my local copy, there were 6 errors in total.

I agree your English is not bad, but I am somewhat of a pedant with language, part of life as an author. I also know that proofreading your own work is difficult. There are one or two places where the words are right but the German grammer makes them feel awkward. I am not sure if the name of the map is correct, I assume you are using Neptunus (Latin) as the sea God which is Neptun (German) or Neptune (English). I know we are not dealing with historical facts here and the tribe is only similar to the Romans and Neptun is as good as any other I just want to be sure you knew the difference, most people would probably not notice the spelling differences anyway.

I am quite happy to work on the English and Nederland translations once the texts are set, in the meantime I will finish my play through and then look at the map to see if I can suggest any improvements.


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Ex-Member
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Posted at: 2016-12-04, 15:05

Just finished the scenario, 11 hours total. The elimination of the barbarians was to easy, once cotact was made I just walked through them.

After 3 hours they stopped expanding land, buildings grew slowly and so did wares. About the six hour mark they started to expand land again, from my barrier and tower I could see a string of sentries, I had most soldiers trained with just evade 1 but thought it worth the risk to see how their fighting was. None of them were trained at all so I could walk down the line of sentries and the row of towers almost unopposed, with half their soldiers gone I had lost three but as I had stockpiled spears and helmets my force had doubled and every new soldier went straight to the arena to get evade 1. On my way through their land I saw they had built training sites, axe and helm smiths but they did not use them, they also built a port but no ships. The only thing that slowed my asdvance was they seemed to have removed all military buildings from around their start point and I had to build new ones to get to the last few.. I also noticed they had one gold mine and two iron mines.

Looking at the map later I saw they have very little coal resource, perhaps the need to use timber for charcoal burning as well as blackwood production is what slowed their expansion? The lack of health atnd attack training might be explained due to the lack of coal for smelting, perhaps a bit more coal would kick start their metal production? The lack of evade training is more of a problem, meat and fish should be plentiful which only leaves pitta bread and strong beer as the causes, perhaps they did not have large building plots enough to produce the quantities needed?

Alternativly you could say the scenario is about resource management, initially the story is to build a port and ship to sail home, it only changes to defeat the barbarians later and a simple fight is perhaps good enough in this case.


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2016-12-04, 15:28

Regarding the proofreading, I suggest that we do it in 2 rounds: I do the first round, since I'm also a German speaker and will know what Hessenfarmer means in case there is an expression that isn't entirely idiomatic, and then Tinker can come in and correct my work, since I'm also not a native speaker.


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