Best game to use for research?

Eggerslolol
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Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:35 am

Best game to use for research?

Post by Eggerslolol »

Hi, I'm new to Stratagus and the forums so please go easy on me. I've managed to get Stratagus set up, using Win8 and VS2013, but now I'm looking for an actual game to use with it.

This is for a university project where I'm going to be experimenting with the AI.

What would be the best game to use with Stratagus? I initially thought Wargus but I'd need a Warcraft 2 CD? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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cybermind
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Re: Best game to use for research?

Post by cybermind »

You can use Aleona's tales, which is freely available at https://launchpad.net/tales/+download
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Kyran
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Re: Best game to use for research?

Post by Kyran »

Check out my Wargus scripts for some interesting AI examples. You won't be able to directly copy and paste these scripts to work with Aleona's Tales however.

We have some tutorials and such in our education section. Most of that stuff is rather old. For a very quick introduction to AI you can check out my Campaign Tutorial.
04:27 jim4 why haven't you added wc1 support? this project sucks. i'm only going to use freecraft
05:06 jim4 finished wc1 support yet? i've been waiting for 6 years
05:10 jim4 new things scare me
Eggerslolol
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Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:35 am

Re: Best game to use for research?

Post by Eggerslolol »

Aleona's Tales sounds good, I'll try to get that set up.

Thanks for the links too, they look helpful. For the future, if I need help setting up/have questions about using/modding the engine, is this the right place to post?
Eggerslolol
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Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:35 am

Re: Best game to use for research?

Post by Eggerslolol »

Got it running with a stratagus.exe that I've compiled myself, but trying to run/debug it through Visual Studio it always fails early with this as the final output:

Code: Select all

The program '[8860] stratagus.exe' has exited with code -1 (0xffffffff).
This is preceded by a big bunch of:

Code: Select all

'stratagus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\imm32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'stratagus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msctf.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
but I don't think that's relevant, as far as I know they're just warnings.

Any ideas anyone?
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Kyran
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Re: Best game to use for research?

Post by Kyran »

Eggerslolol wrote:Got it running with a stratagus.exe that I've compiled myself, but trying to run/debug it through Visual Studio it always fails early with this as the final output:
Tales comes with 32 and 64bit binaries. Do they work? Dinky is our resident VS expert, provided he still lives here.
Eggerslolol wrote:

Code: Select all

'stratagus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\imm32.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
'stratagus.exe' (Win32): Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msctf.dll'. Cannot find or open the PDB file.
but I don't think that's relevant, as far as I know they're just warnings.
Try Tools > Options > Debugging > Symbols > Check Microsoft Symbol Server.
04:27 jim4 why haven't you added wc1 support? this project sucks. i'm only going to use freecraft
05:06 jim4 finished wc1 support yet? i've been waiting for 6 years
05:10 jim4 new things scare me
Eggerslolol
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:35 am

Re: Best game to use for research?

Post by Eggerslolol »

Kyran wrote: Tales comes with 32 and 64bit binaries. Do they work? Dinky is our resident VS expert, provided he still lives here.
Yeah, it runs fine using the exes, the problem is just with debugging in VS. This is pretty vital, I was hoping to get familiar with the engine and possibly delve into the code rather than just relying on the scripts. And regardless I'll need to be measuring performance at some point so the easiest way to do that would be to have access to put hooks in the source.
Kyran wrote: but I don't think that's relevant, as far as I know they're just warnings.
Try Tools > Options > Debugging > Symbols > Check Microsoft Symbol Server.
Good tip, that seems to counter most of those messages.
Eggerslolol
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Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:35 am

Re: Best game to use for research?

Post by Eggerslolol »

Well I've got it running from VS and breakpoints seem to work, though if I just break using the break all function it can't seem to find the source. But this should be workable.

Now I need to start looking at what I actually need to work on my project. And I guess I should have done more prior research but its hard to find resources, though I'll be looking through the stuff you linked earlier.

For starters, is it possible to set up an AI vs AI game in Aleona's Tales? I guess I should make sure that AT actually has a working enemy AI at this point that can fight against the player/itself, otherwise I've wasted a lot of time in my haste just to get something up and running >_>

Anyway, if its not a default, could I do this by setting up a custom campaign or something? Or is there a simple way to do it?

Also while I'm asking questions, will it be possible for me to turn off rendering in order to have the game play out matches with itself very quickly?

I will be looking into this more seriously in January and after, but my objective until then is just to get it up and running, basically. Which I've more or less achieved, but knowing how to have AI vs AI would be nice. Or knowing how much work it will be to implement :P

Can I just say thanks for the help so far too, its been really valuable.
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Andrettin
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Re: Best game to use for research?

Post by Andrettin »

Eggerslolol wrote:Well I've got it running from VS and breakpoints seem to work, though if I just break using the break all function it can't seem to find the source. But this should be workable.

Now I need to start looking at what I actually need to work on my project. And I guess I should have done more prior research but its hard to find resources, though I'll be looking through the stuff you linked earlier.

For starters, is it possible to set up an AI vs AI game in Aleona's Tales? I guess I should make sure that AT actually has a working enemy AI at this point that can fight against the player/itself, otherwise I've wasted a lot of time in my haste just to get something up and running >_>

Anyway, if its not a default, could I do this by setting up a custom campaign or something? Or is there a simple way to do it?

Also while I'm asking questions, will it be possible for me to turn off rendering in order to have the game play out matches with itself very quickly?

I will be looking into this more seriously in January and after, but my objective until then is just to get it up and running, basically. Which I've more or less achieved, but knowing how to have AI vs AI would be nice. Or knowing how much work it will be to implement :P

Can I just say thanks for the help so far too, its been really valuable.
As far as I know, it is possible to set up games in which you have no units but don't lose because of that, and you can also set up the different AI players to be hostile to each other. You need to remove this trigger from the SinglePlayerTriggers() function in stratagus.lua:

Code: Select all

	AddTrigger(
		function() return GetPlayerData(GetThisPlayer(), "TotalNumUnits") == 0 end,
		function() return ActionDefeat() end
	)
Then edit the map's .smp file to change the first "person" player into a "computer" one, and add a new "person" player at the end. Play the map in Free for All mode and it should work as you want.
Eggerslolol
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:35 am

Re: Best game to use for research?

Post by Eggerslolol »

Andrettin wrote: As far as I know, it is possible to set up games in which you have no units but don't lose because of that, and you can also set up the different AI players to be hostile to each other. You need to remove this trigger from the SinglePlayerTriggers() function in stratagus.lua:

Code: Select all

	AddTrigger(
		function() return GetPlayerData(GetThisPlayer(), "TotalNumUnits") == 0 end,
		function() return ActionDefeat() end
	)
Then edit the map's .smp file to change the first "person" player into a "computer" one, and add a new "person" player at the end. Play the map in Free for All mode and it should work as you want.
This works! Awesome! Though obviously the map becomes completely fogged but... this'll do for now. Thanks!
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