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New TWGS beta up for testing
https://mail.black-squirrel.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=32096
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Author:  John Pritchett [ Fri Aug 19, 2011 6:29 pm ]
Post subject:  New TWGS beta up for testing

I'm finally finished with a battery of TEDIT fixes/changes/improvements and I've posted it on twgs.classictw.com. Nearly every data file was modified to make room for new settings added to the editor, as well as some empty space to make adding fields easier in the future. This requires the game data to be imported into the new version. I think any data corruption resulting from this will stick out like a sore thumb, but please be on the lookout for it.

V'Ger and Vid Kid are testing the editors to see how I've broken their server-side scripts, and I will work with them to try to smooth the transition to the new editors. Anyone interested in checking out the editors to see what's changed/new can connect to the sandbox game on port 2003 with password "sandbox".

If anyone has an extensive library of TWAs on hand and would be willing to help me out, I could use some testing of the file imports. The game should properly import data going back to v2, but I don't have data on-hand for most earlier versions so it's difficult to test and guarantee that nothing is broken. I'd be happy just to have the most popular TWAs tested to make sure the most common ones are going to work. Keep in mind that some TWAs have corrupt Gold files and TEDIT will report this. Use the TEDIT option to fix the corruption, then check the Gold editors to see that the records are intact. If they are, and other data appears normal, then the import worked properly.

In order to test TWAs, you'll either need to get the beta from me or wait for the final release. I've tested it on a few TWAs and last release's data, so I'm comfortable with a release without further testing. I'd just like to know if any TWA versions are failing to import and get that fixed.

Author:  ElderProphet [ Sat Aug 20, 2011 8:20 am ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

At the moment, twgs.classictw.com isn't loading.

Author:  Vid Kid [ Sat Aug 20, 2011 8:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

The new TWGS 3.22 has a problem with the <N> planet editor.

You can look at planet one , the go to planet 2 and initialize it , give it a sector and who owns it (sometimes)

then go back to planet one and see it has gone to sector zero and no owner or its owned by EXTERN

either way its hosed.

Author:  John Pritchett [ Sat Aug 20, 2011 9:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

Ok, thanks for catching that, Vid.

Author:  John Pritchett [ Sat Aug 20, 2011 9:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

Ok, that's fixed. I'm glad that one didn't make it out the door :)

Author:  Vid Kid [ Sat Aug 20, 2011 4:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

Two things , one .. in big bang ... setting to Default to reset
I thought all settings in Tedit would result in a reset.

It does not.
Can I get a complete stock game again without my changes .. so I see what really is settings as default ?

I set podless to Never and sub prompts to Yes .. after resetting and Default in big bang they were still the same as well as my settings set in Access manager
settings stayed intact.

Shouldn't they resort back to default ?
But only because I sent Reset or Default in big bang.

Second .. if you delete Terra and then activate it to sector one .. it asks for a name ... after giving the name ..it shows up as a terra planet settings but without the name you had been asked for .. no name at all as a matter of fact.

Author:  John Pritchett [ Sat Aug 20, 2011 5:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

I'll check. I probably just left some settings out of the reset function. I'll have a look and make sure everything is included.

How did you destroy Terra? I don't want it to be possible to deactivate it from TEDIT. I know you can do it in the flags list by setting it as inactive. Since it's a game-managed planet, I don't want those flags to be configurable for Terra, so I'll change that. But after deactivating, when I created it again, it took the name just fine.

Author:  John Pritchett [ Sat Aug 20, 2011 5:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

Actually, I'd like to just pull the flag settings area entirely. Anything you can do with the flags that's supported by the game really should be provided in a setting. I put those in there as a way to manipulate those flags until I got around to adding to the editors to support those flags, things like having all of the possible options in the "set owner" command. Now is the time to get that right. In the case of Terra, you can set the owner in the menu commands, and you shouldn't be able to deactivate the planet, so there isn't any other reason for these flags. I'll look at other editors to see if I need to add any functionality if I pull this flags setting out of them as well.

Will this cause a problem? The issue for me is that these flags are typically not meant to be toggled in isolation, but are part of a variety of data settings associated with a state.

Author:  John Pritchett [ Sat Aug 20, 2011 5:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

I'm sure this will break some scripts, but I'd really like to prompt the op for "Login name" and "password" on initialization of a user record, rather than just setting to "UNKNOWN". I'd also prefer changing to "Login name" instead of "BBS name". In general, references to BBS are no longer accurate.

Author:  T0yman [ Sat Aug 20, 2011 7:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

John Pritchett wrote:
Actually, I'd like to just pull the flag settings area entirely.

Will this cause a problem? The issue for me is that these flags are typically not meant to be toggled in isolation, but are part of a variety of data settings associated with a state.


Yes it would break my sweeper script but I am sure I can find a way around it. I used the flag area to remove a planet if a player got caught with their planet in a "No Planet Area". Any setting beside the flag area left a loophole that if the player was on the planet they could still move and relclaim it. Using the flags I just set inactive and if they were on the planet they could move but once they lifted it was deleted and no one could land even it it was moved.

Author:  John Pritchett [ Sat Aug 20, 2011 10:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

This is the kind of thing I need to clean up. I should properly account for what happens if a planet has players or ships on it when it is deactivated. Players should be dumped to the sector cleanly. I'd just rather get that fixed right than continue using this flag.

Author:  John Pritchett [ Sun Aug 21, 2011 1:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

Ok, I've cleaned up the "deactivate planet" option. Now it'll pop a player cleanly back to the sector if on the planet.

Now I'm going to see about cleaning up some other situations, like what happens if you deactivate a ship with a player in it, or deactivate a port with a player on it. Port should be easy to deal with, just pop the player out to sector. But if the player is in the ship, I guess that would #SD# the player, right? Probably need a warning there.

Author:  jaybird [ Sun Aug 21, 2011 1:33 am ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

Be careful with that though. What if someone else is towing the ship? Or worse off, attacking it? I can just see this...

The ship you are attacking is suddenly not there! Your fighters fail to realize this, and attack the ship anyway!

Your fighters handily tear down the fourth wall and destroy the server on which the game is running!

For pissing off the server owner your allignment becomes -4,500,000.

Comm... NO CARRIER

Author:  T0yman [ Sun Aug 21, 2011 9:40 am ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

John Pritchett wrote:
Ok, I've cleaned up the "deactivate planet" option. Now it'll pop a player cleanly back to the sector if on the planet.


Thanks :)

I looked a little while ago and it looks as if the flag options are still there, I am guessing the newest version is not up yet? Or will that flag option still be in the same spot. It was 2.08 3.22 @ 9:41am CST

Author:  John Pritchett [ Mon Aug 22, 2011 3:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New TWGS beta up for testing

Right. I'm still cleaning up some of these deactivate/activate commands. They can be tricky.

TW can generally deal with the case where a ship disappears while you're attacking it. That can happen under normal gameplay. But I do need to consider all of the repercussions of deactivating an asset in TEDIT. It's not as simple as just setting the ACTIVE flag to false, and I'm sure there has been a lot of subtle game corruption caused by using these flags in this way.

Hopefully the next update will be on the beta site tonight.

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