What's still needed for v0.4?

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eleazar
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What's still needed for v0.4?

#1 Post by eleazar »

We've made a lot of progress in the past few months, lots of bugs squashed, a major speed bump, major new features like ground combat, monsters, and minor species implemented, along with content balancing and improvement. FreeOrion is more fun that it has ever been. Our progress is in part due to a new batch of play-testers and coders who have come along and contributed.

There are of course lot more that could be done, but it seems to me that we are close to the point where we could do a major point release: v0.4. We've been on v0.3x for years, and i think it is time to signal that we've FO has progressed far beyond v0.3.

Besides a through round of testing before to root out any new bugs, what do we need to take care of for v0.4?

The two main things i'd like to polish off are:
  • * Streamlining the shipyard/repair situation
    * Further development of domesticate-able monsters

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

My previous list of stuff is done, but the new starvation system has only been added to one species (Human) and needs some testing to determine if it's working well, and needs to be added to all species if it is working. (Presently most species don't actually need food...)

I'm working on adding animated system selection indicators.

I'd like to get meter change predictions to show up properly; presently they ignore the influence of effects, and likely refueling, although this isn't essential.

The progress bar rendering quirk should be fixable. It might be nice to fix some other tech tree rendering / layout quirks, but that's not essential.

The issue with Python / AIs on OSX should be fixed before a release.

I'm a bit worried about the serialization code - used to save games and communicate between server and players. It doesn't seem to allow saving and loading games on different OSes in many cases. It might be worth switching back to larger but portable saves, although this would break save backwards compatibility that we've sort-of had since v0.3.17.

There are probably a few places where it's still possible to crash the game by trying to issue orders between turns. Fixing those would be nice.

Tweaking the fleet / system / indicators rendering orders would be nice.

There's a somewhat obscure bug with removing all ships from a fleet that has been ordered to move on the first turn before changing the zoom level that leads to a crash or weird graphical issues. It's been around a long time, but never really looked into.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#3 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I think most of the recent parser-related problems have been resolved, and I don't know of any other major reproducible problems with FreeOrion as of the latest SVN (4592). Other than a few issues with specific bits of content, are there any other major issues that should hold up a release? I'm thinking the next release will be v0.4, as the major features are implemented.

Recent Windows and OSX recent builds are available on sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeori ... rion/Test/

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OllyG
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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#4 Post by OllyG »

Since it is now possible to play a game and 'win', I think that the game should end when all enemies are defeated.

To aid playtesting it should be possible to continue playing after victory, as an option from a sitrep message.

I don't know what currently happens, but when an AI looses all it's colonies and/or ships it should be removed from the game. This would make the game run quicker, which could help when lots is going on later and would make it easy to tell when victory is acheived (when only one player remains in the game).

v0.4 will have space combat, ground combat and colony capturing, so player elimination and victory seem to be the next step to implement.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#5 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I've uploaded some candidate releases for v0.4. Downloading and testing of these would be appreciated.

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eleazar
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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#6 Post by eleazar »

Hurrahs!
I'll give it a good spin-- excited to see what's been fixed while i've been mostly elsewhere.

EDIT
revision 4594 "fixed broken 'cannot colonize planets' string in 'pedia."
revision 4595 "added missing space to ship built message."
revision 4596 "fixed broken Juggernaut hull string."

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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#7 Post by Vitank »

Oh oh oh, trying now. Great job.

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eleazar
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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#8 Post by eleazar »

It looks like "Can_Colonize" and "Can_Produce_Ships" are switched.

If you look at a species that can do one but not the other, like the Acireme, if the tag in species.txt says "CanProduceShips, ", the 'Pedia will say: "Cannot Procuce Ships, Can Produce Colony Ships."



revision 4610: "Removed obsolete references to torpedoes in tech descriptions."
revision 4611: "fixed creation of duplicate guard monsters at important specials."

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eleazar
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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#9 Post by eleazar »

Minor species may not be able to build the ships they are described as being able to build.

For instance the Gis Guf G'thrim are listed as "Cannot Produce Ships, Can Produce Colony Ships" (This is in the 'Pedia. As per previous post, the species.txt is the opposite.) However, they cannot build any kind of ships, even after building an Orbital Drydock and basic shipyard.

All ships are greyed out on the "Producible Items" list, however the tooltip lists everything as "Passed"

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#10 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:...listed as "Cannot Produce Ships, Can Produce Colony Ships" [...] However, they cannot build any kind of ships, even after building an Orbital Drydock and basic shipyard.
If they can't produce any ships, then being flagged as able to produce colony ships won't override that.
All ships are greyed out on the "Producible Items" list, however the tooltip lists everything as "Passed"
If a species can't produce any ships, then the location conditions being passed by a particular planet won't matter, since they still can't produce any ships. (Similarly, if a part or hull of a ship isn't unlocked, the location condition being passed also won't matter.)

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eleazar
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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#11 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:...listed as "Cannot Produce Ships, Can Produce Colony Ships" [...] However, they cannot build any kind of ships, even after building an Orbital Drydock and basic shipyard.
If they can't produce any ships, then being flagged as able to produce colony ships won't override that.
Hmm. It's not especially useful for the tags to work like that. If "CanProduceShips" means any/all ships, instead of any non-colony ships (as i assumed when tagging everything)-- then there is no possibility of a species that can build ships, but can't be relocated to a new homeworld, like the Acirema

Anyway, my misunderstanding aside, it's still messed up because the Gis Gus G'thrim and Acirema are tagged in species.txt as "CanProduceShips".
Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:All ships are greyed out on the "Producible Items" list, however the tooltip lists everything as "Passed"
If a species can't produce any ships, then the location conditions being passed by a particular planet won't matter, since they still can't produce any ships. (Similarly, if a part or hull of a ship isn't unlocked, the location condition being passed also won't matter.)
I guess then location conditions should be in that tooltip too. It is misleading to give a bunch of green "passed" conditions and still not be able to build anything.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#12 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:Hmm. It's not especially useful for the tags to work like that. If "CanProduceShips" means any/all ships, instead of any non-colony ships (as i assumed when tagging everything)-- then there is no possibility of a species that can build ships, but can't be relocated to a new homeworld, like the Acirema
I don't follow... If a species is marked as able to produce ships, but not able to produce colony ships, then it can produce ships but can't be relocated. What's the problem?
Geoff the Medio wrote:If a species can't produce any ships, then the location conditions being passed by a particular planet won't matter, since they still can't produce any ships. (Similarly, if a part or hull of a ship isn't unlocked, the location condition being passed also won't matter.)
I guess then location conditions should be in that tooltip too. It is misleading to give a bunch of green "passed" conditions and still not be able to build anything.
The location conditions are all that are in the tooltips. The problem is that the tooltip doesn't indicate whether something has been unlocked, or whether the species on the selected planet can produce ships or colony ships. For the unlocking case, the Available / Unavailable toggles hide things you can't produce, but there's presently no feedback about species restrictions that prevent ships from being built.

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eleazar
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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#13 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:Hmm. It's not especially useful for the tags to work like that. If "CanProduceShips" means any/all ships, instead of any non-colony ships (as i assumed when tagging everything)-- then there is no possibility of a species that can build ships, but can't be relocated to a new homeworld, like the Acirema
I don't follow... If a species is marked as able to produce ships, but not able to produce colony ships, then it can produce ships but can't be relocated. What's the problem?
You seem to be contradicting yourself, or i just don't understand.
Can you explain explain exactly "CanProduceShips" and "CanColonize" each are supposed to do?

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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#14 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:Can you explain explain exactly "CanProduceShips" and "CanColonize" each are supposed to do?
* CanProduceShips allows ships to be produced at planets with that species.
* CanColonize with CanProduceShips allows colony ships to be produced at planets with that species.
* CanProduceShips without CanColonize, or CanColonize without CanProduceShips don't allow colony ships to be produced on planets with that species, as both are required to produce colony ships.
* CanColonize allows existing colony ships with that species to colonize.

Even if a species has CanColonize and CanProduceShips, a particular ship design might not be producible at a planet due to other location conditions in the ship design's hull or parts.

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Re: What's still needed for v0.4?

#15 Post by eleazar »

I see sitrep messages for krill spawning that happens in unexplored systems.

IIRC we discussed a way to make sitrep messages go only to empires that have visibility of the event. Is that currently possible, or should i just remove all the monster spawning sitrep messages for now? I don't think i want to spam the player with useless messages, stuff that doesn't matter to him, and isn't specific enough to do anything about if he cared.

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