It looks as if all features have been implemented in MTSec.  Since my last post I have done some cleaning up of the code, and it is much more presentable now.

All features are currently supported, this includes:

• Building Ships
• Building Weapons
• Production Capability
• Enhancement of Production Points
• Sending of Production Points to Another Planet
• Merging Fleets, Splitting Fleets
• Colonising a Planet
• Loading / Unloading of Armaments
• Combat

For a more detailed description of each feature, you can visit the MTSec Wiki.  I will still be keeping up with MTSec development post-GSoC period and hope to iron out any bugs that have been found.  For example today I found that Aaron’s compiler was giving no newline errors, but mine was not.  With a simple bash for loop, this has been fixed and committed.

Testing each feature is pretty self explanitory but I will go over a test scenario:

1. On the first turn, the “Build Fleet” order is a good one to try.  You can either use the design window in the TP04 client or use one of the predefined designs.
2. On the second turn, it is useful to build some sort of weapon.  As with the build ships order, you can either pick from a predefined design or create your own.  Right now I have the mining requirements off so that we can test a bit easier.  You can create more than one weapon here which will be useful for testing.  Please note that you can only Design Weaponry using the TP04 pywx client (make sure you select the Weapons Category!)
3. Now that you have (a) fleet(s),  and weaponry, it is useful to use the “Load Armament” order here to load the weaponry onto your ship.
4. Move to another planet.
5. Colonise the planet you moved to.
6. Unload some weaponry here.
7. Here you can test the enhance order.
8. Test the “Send Points” order by sending some of your production points to another planet.
9. Move towards another player’s planet/fleet.  This will initiate Combat
10. Success.

If you find any problems in this test scenario, please notify me immediately.  Please note that some of the features above require Greywhind’s TP04 pywx client. My mentor Aaron and I will be playing some test games over the next week, and I’m sure we will uncover some things that I will need to fix.

That’s about it for MTSec, hopefully we can get it pushed into the master branch and make it the default game of Thousand Parsec soon!

This Week:

This week I finally got all of the extra orders sorted out.  During my testing phase I have not actually been removing the resources needed to make the missiles and torpedoes, but adding this will not be a problem at all.  I’m leaving it out now because it is a pain in my ass and makes my testing phases take longer.  We can now create a missile/torpedoe from a design and load and unload it from a ship/planet.  The economy seems to be going pretty well in my testing and looks like it’s according to the MTSec spec.

Next Week:

In this next week I will be focusing on the combat aspects of MTSec.  Since this will make or break the ruleset, it is of utmost importance that everything works correctly.  There is already an AVACombat class which I will be furthering until it is completed according to spec.  I will need to work on this quite a bit to get everything working by the GSoC pencil-down date of August 10th, which is about a week and a half away.

This Week:

In the past week I have commited a Send Points order for the tpserver-cpp.  I am a bit behind in that I need a working “Built Missile/Torpedoe” order.  I expect it to be completed by Wednesday, hopefully sooner.  After speaking with Lee it has been decide that my Send Points parameter needs to be changed to a list of a player’s owned planets.  I found a great reference for this in the risk ruleset.  This change isn’t a big deal and has been put onto my todo list.  Also, I need to write some code that will account for production points in all orders — but I don’t think that this will be too hard.

Next Week:

My next deadline is August 9th and this requires combat to be fully featured.  I will finish up all economy stuff this week and then proceed to combat.  Mithro has told me that this will be the hardest part to debug, so I’m going to have to make sure that I have the economy stuff fully completed ASAP.  I have taken some preliminary looks at the AVACombat class and it seems comprehensible so I think that I wont have too much of a problem with combat initially.

This Week:

The deadline is almost here!  This past week was quite a good one for me.  While debugging an issue that I was having with the server I had to hit much of the tpserver-cpp code and I think that learning many of the underlying pieces of the server is a great thing for my ruleset development.  llnz recently produced a patch that will fix some issues I have been having with the tpclRequirementsFunctions while building a design.  This issue was a dealbreaker for me, so I am quite glad that it is now fixed.  I will be merging tomorrow and will test these changes.  On Sunday I committed a few changes that are pieces of the MTSec economy.  Now, planets will add one Factory per turn that they are owned.  Also, there is now an Enhance order to use Factories to build more Factories.  Gameplay will dictate just how many points that will be required to produce a factory, but I have tentatively set this value to one Factory for every 10 factories used in a turn.  I also added an order queue to the player’s home planet as I don’t think we can really progress in the game without it.

Next Four Days:

My midterm evaluation is in four days (10th), so I will be publishing another post on that day.  Between now and tomorrow I plan to merge the stable branch changes into the mtsec branch.  This will bring in tinyxml as well as the fix llnz has made for property values (setting them to 0).  Once I have done this I will first have to ensure that the design window is functioning properly now that we don’t have Requirements Issues.  Once this is done my Build Fleet order will allow MTSec to build the ships that have been designed by the player — a major part of this ruleset.  By the deadline I should also have Torpedoe/Missile designs and building working as well.  I had a good conversation with mithro about exactly how this is going to happen.  Unfortunately I’m coming down with a nasty case of the flu, but this shouldn’t keep me away from the keyboard in the next few days.

This Week:

This week I’ve been messing around with the client.  First, I found a unicode error with the tpcl functions that mithro handled for me.  After this was fixed, I was receiving KeyErrors when adding various components in the tpclient-pywx design window.  Not knowing python, I couldn’t do much here.  Over the weekend I studied some python code to figure out what was happening.  With the help of ezod I was able to add some print statements (printing capabilities are amazing in python) and find out exactly where my problem was.  Basically, I was missing a property that the client was trying to call.  When you don’t match on a property it returns an index of 0, which is a huge problem when the client tries to use it.

I spent most of my week starting the work on my next milestone, which will commence on the 24th of this month.  I created some of the missing components and properties for MTSec.  In particular, I believe that I have an issue with how I implemented missile/torpedoe racks.  While I am starting to get a grasp on how scheme works, I still have a long way to go here.  I don’t think the racks are implemented properly.

Also, I have to look into why I am getting errors when adding tubes and the proper way to add them.

I will have another blog post tomorrow with more information on the work I’ve done and a use-case to show that it’s implemented properly.

Next Week:

The work will continue.  I think for my next milestone to be successful, I need the design window to work properly.  This will add a lot of fun to my ruleset, who wants to pick from pre-existing ships?  Not me.  I will need to get into missile/torpedoe design and have that working by July 10th.  This is going to be a tough one, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.   This iteration will also require me to work on the AVACombat class.

This is probably the most important part of the MTSec GSoC period for me, so I will be most likely be putting in the most time here.

<ComponentIDName>Ships</ComponentIDName>

Next Week:

Next week will mark my busiest under the GSoC period, and it will continue at a steady pace until the completion of the SoC period — and most likely beyond that period.  Getting down to design ideas of this game is very interesting and it seems that the MTSec ruleset will be the most advanced ruleset to date.  I would like to find a workaround for the “compMax” variable in the mtsec.cpp file so that it is easier to add and remove components without a problem.  Once all of the components are thoroughly tested (I am worried about the scheme) I will move onto the actual missile and torpedo design.  As per llnz’s suggestions there will be a second design category for weaponry, and a component that can be used in a ship.  Once this is done I can work this into orders and combat.  I was originally worried that the ship designs would not be possible in any client but according to llnz there is a design dialog in tpclient-pywx, which is the client that I test with.  This will allow advanced ship designs and will make the game enjoyable.