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For a given day's pictures, it is best to start at the bottom and work your way up.
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April 15th (saturday) Picture 177 (jpg). Same Kzinti empire, but a little latter on. Notice all of the bases, and all of the fleets. The selected hex contians a base and convoy, set to deploy, as do all the hexes forming the horizontal line at that height. This empire must have well over a dozen convoys and mobile bases. Picture 176 (jpg). A Kzinti empire that refuses to play second fiddle... they are Stapler controlled. Picture 175 (jpg). A picture of the same Frax empire a little latter on, showing the network of bases. Picture 174 (jpg). A Frax base-line being built at lightning speed. Picture 173 (jpg). The line of Gorn fleets to the right side of their territory is in fact a line of concoys and mobile bases. The selected hex contains only a convoy. Picture 172 (jpg). A hex value picture showing why the Kzintis were not placing any more bases. Notice that no hexes with a value greater than zero (zero = black) are within two hexes of a base, and so the convoys are unable to put the bases anywhere valueable, and so they just sit. Picture 171 (jpg). This Federation Stapler empire is the first to build a number of bases that scales to its income and the current ratio of bases/hexes. Picture 170 (jpg). Look at these fleets that the huge Kzinti empire shown below built (in one turn). We see upgraded survey cruiers (SR+), drone war destroyers (DWD), top of the line frigates (FFK), heavy command cruiers (CCH), and the first Dreadnought I have ever seen in this game (DN). Notice the Kzinti and Hydran capitols, which are only 4 hexes apart. Picture 169 (jpg). This is by far the largest empire I have ever seen, and yep, its Stapler controlled. The reason this happened was because the purple Zintiks and light gray Gorns are both Fungi controlled, and they served to block in smarter AI's that could have gotten the territory before the Kzintis. In addition to that, the Kzintis out-powered the yellow Lyrans, who were Spot-controlled, and could have been a challenge. It turns out that the Kzinti capitol is close to the green Hydran border... Picture 168 (jpg). The great survey mob has split to pursue different frontiers. Picture 167 (jpg). Another shot, a little latter. Picture 166 (jpg). The Stapler Kzinti empire's survey effort. Picture 165 (jpg). Here's some empires that show some good variety of shapes characteristic of their AI. |
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April 14th (friday) I think I took too many pictures... Picture 164 (jpg). Full-map view of another long game. This time the Staplers were beaten by the Spots (only the blue ISC and the bottom-center off-red Kzintis are notable Staplers). Picture 163 (jpg). A very nice base deployment pattern by the ISC (a Stapler). Picture 162 (jpg). Two standard issue Spot base deployments. Picture 161 (jpg). This is the first empire to have multiple working convoys, I believe (Stapler). Picture 160 (jpg). Closer-up shot of the Hydrans so we can see the way they placed their bases (Stapler). Picture 159 (jpg). The (green) Hydrans and the (sligtly greenish) Spartans are both Staplers, and have done very well this game. Usually staplers do not do this well, since Spot is a ruthless explorer, and even Fungi can do things surprisingly well from time to time. I hope to add more features to Stapler soon that will set it ahead of the competition. Picture 158 (jpg). The same base line latter on... look how long it is. Also notice the fleets at the map bottom. Stapler fleets get stuck like that sometimes; I need to fix it. Picture 157 (jpg). A backbone of bases layed out by the Romulans, who are Stapler controlled. This is after various tweaks to how values are assigned to hexes designed to draw bases more away from the planets. Picture 156 (jpg). A Stapler Spartan "ant trail" going to the main survey effort. Picture 155 (jpg). Quiz: two of the three center-most empires are Stapler, one is Spot. Which is which? Picture 154 (jpg). The Stapler Spartans with a few bases out and a nice exploration effort. Picture 153 (jpg). More Spot base deployments, which are not always ideal, as you can see. Picture 152 (jpg). Base deployments (from the game pictured below) which are characteristic of a Spot. Picture 151 (jpg). Zoomed out view of the below game, at a latter time. Notice how far the Spartans have expanded. The largest races in this game are the Gorns (who look like a Spot) and the Tholians (orange, who look like a Spot also). Not far behind, however, is the Stapler-controlled Frax, who are the brown empire north of the Spantans. Picture 150 (jpg). The Stapler Spartans making a run for open space. Very concentrated effort. Picture 149 (jpg). Here we see the Stapler Frax, their base pattern, and some empires they are bigger than. Picture 148 (jpg). This shot shows the Stapler Tholians concentrating their survey efforts. |
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April 13th (thursday) Picture 147 (jpg). Here is a zoomed-out picture of the two Stapler map-evaluating threads working towards each other. Bases are now (going to be) placed according to the internal hex values (external values are shown). The formula is quite a bit more advanced now, and is designed to avoid over-dense clusters of bases around valueable areas (such as planets). This has obviously not come into play yet in the game shown in this picture, because the game has not gone far enough for any empire to build bases. Picture 146 (jpg). A little Stapler-controlled Hydran empire. Notice the concentrated survey effort up north. Picture 145 (jpg). Intenal hex values for the same Zintik empire, five turns latter. Notice that the value of the hexes in and around the planets is pretty high. Picture 144 (jpg). Internal hex values for the Zintiks, after some formula changes. The bases are not yet being deployed based on these values. Picture 143 (jpg). Internal hex values of the Kzintis, purple (as always) being the lowest, and green (to yellow to red) the highest. Picture 142 (jpg). Here we have the Frax, Hydrans, Kzintis, Intinks, Klingons, Romulans, and all of their bases. Good to see things working correctly. Picture 141 (jpg). Here we have the Spartans and their bases. |
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April 12th (wednesday) Picture 140 (jpg), (gif). Here we have a zoomed in shot of a little Federation empire, with the Frax and some other empire also visible. I took it because I thought it was sorta pretty. |
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April 9th (sunday) Picture 139 (jpg), (gif). Here we have another picture where the jpg is terrible. What this shot shows is how the Zintiks view hex values near the start of a game. Another pretty picture. Picture 138 (jpg), (gif). I forgot to set the jpg quality to 100%, so this shot looks terrible in jpg. The bmp is fine, of course. Anyway, this is a damn pretty picture, as far as they go with this game. It shows the values of various hexes from the point of view of the Frax, a Stapler. |
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April 8th (saturday) Picture 137 (jpg). Still more coloring. I just think it looks cool. Picture 136 (jpg), (gif). More coloring. Picture 135 (jpg), (gif). The Romulans, with some nice Stapler value coloring visible to the right. Stapler only colors undiscovered hexes right now. Picture 134 (jpg). The first proof that I got the multi-threading working. I had each thread assign a different value. Picture 133 (jpg). Here we have the Zintiks and their empire, showing a nice loop of interesting hexes. Picture 132 (jpg). Now things are fixed. Notice the brighter greens near planets and other areas that Spot likes. Picture 131 (jpg). This is a shot from when I was running about trying to figure out why I was getting black hexes in the middle of everything. Took a while to track it down. The pink/purple has no value, just drawn so I can see what is being seen by the fleet. Picture 130 (jpg). An early shot showing the Federation and how much they value the local hexes. |
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April 7th (friday) Pictures 124 and 125 I actually took a few days ago but didn't post then. Picture 129 (jpg) This just about how things are staying. What we have here mighnt not make a lot of sense to most people, but is pretty useful to someone trying to figure out why their AI just moved over somewhere for no apparent reason. Examination of this picture shows fleets from the Zintiks, Hydrans, Lyrans and Tholians. The Tholians and Lyrans are not Spot AI's since they are not assigning values to the hexes around them. The reason why there is so much red in this picture is because the Hydrans are at war with the Lyrans, and so they value Lyran territory very much. Picture 128 (jpg) This shot shows the best hexes, in yellow-ish colors, near planets. This shows what Spot is seeing when it is looking for where to go next. Picture 127 (jpg) A different and brighter way of viewing the data. Picture 126 (jpg) Here we have the first picture of my develoing mode that allows the programmer to view the values that the AI's assign to hexes directly. For an AI to take fully advantage of this, some special programming is required. Picture 125 (jpg), (gif) This picture shows the strength of a Spot empire. Notice mass of scouting fleets. Picture 124 (jpg) This shot shows some awfully big empires, the biggest 2 (or possibly 3) of which are Spot. |
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April 3rd (monday) Today I worked on making Spot a better surveyor, following the idea I have formed that Spot's focus will be surveying. Picture 123 (jpg) A good picture to contrast with number 118. This is the Spot Gorn empire, showing just how good they are at getting their ships where they need to be (which is not in the middle of the territory). Picture 122 (jpg) This is a very late game shot of the Galaxy. The Spot empires dominate. The largest Fungi is the Romulans (top center), whereas the Spot's have the Gorns (bottom left) and Lyrans (top left) each of which are bigger than the Romulans, plus the Federation (blue, top right), and Frax (right) each of which are about as large. Also, the orange/brown Intinks show that same sqeezing-though-gaps thing the Frax did, and they do a good job of it. Picture 121 (jpg), (gif) This is a good shot. It shows the Frax (same empire as below) applying all their efforts to the small bit of frontier they have left. Picture 120 (jpg) Here we see a Frax Spot empire flooding to their last bit of open frontier. Picture 119 (jpg) A Spot Gorn empire. Order. Don't ask about the bases... its a bug that I won't fix in Fungi. Perhaps the next AI will know how to put bases in a better manner. Picture 118 (jpg) A Fungi Romulan empire. Notice the characteristic random shape, and the fleets scattered about randomly. Picture 117 (jpg) The ISC and Romulans squabble over the last bits of free space. Picture 116 (jpg) An ISC line, like an ant line, really. Picture 115 (jpg) A line of Romulan fleets headed off to were the surveying is going on. Picture 114 (jpg), (gif) The ISC and Hydrans continue their tangle, while the Gorns declare war on the Federation (futile under the current game engine). Actually I meant to take another shot, but I didn't, so we don't get to see just what things turn out like. Oh well. Picture 113 (jpg) Huuum, looks like the Federation really likes the Gorns. Notice how they just sucked right up to them, and went ahead and surveyed in and around them, as close as they could get. The Hydrans and ISC are also now stuck together. Picture 112 (jpg) The Hydrans and ISC have found each other, and they aggressively move to smother the other with their fleets. Or at least they try, it could stand a bit of improvement. Picture 111 (jpg) I follow these 4 empires through a game. We have the Gorns (white on red) representing the Fungi AI, with the Federation, Hydrans and ISC across the bottom representing Spot. More empires are, as always, off the edges of the map at large distances. Already in this early shot we can see differences in the way the AI's act. Notice that Spot likes to be round, more or less, and also notice how the Hydrans and ISC have already placed fleets to survey around their newly discovered planets (the ISC planet is a bit hard to see, since its yellow and the fleet on it is too). Spot fears a naked planet, or rather, it really likes to survey the hexes next to any planet. Picture 110 (jpg) Just some densely placed empires, really not worthy of a screenshot, I guess, unless you consider that the exceptional is hardly exceptional without the ordinary to compare to. |
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April 2nd (sunday) Well I didn't do much anything with the project today, but I did move all my X-windowing over to skud, which is now clocked down to 2x 366mhz, as an experiment. I took one picture, just cause. Picture 109 (jpg), (gif) Here are the Lyrans (a Fungi), with the Subs (likely a Fungi) and the ISC to the south. You mighnt notice the little colored boxes at the upper left. Those are not part of the game, they are a GLX debuging feature that can be turned off, which I will do. |
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March 30th (thursday) I've been running the game quite a bit today while working on that hex-finder function, and once I ran into a really really bad pathfinding case, and so I just wandered around the map and took screenshots of what was going on... the averge time per game turn was a minute and a half. Picture 108 (jpg), (gif) Here we have an agressive Spot overwelming a Fungi.... notice how the "front line" has been pushed to very near the Frax capitol. Picture 107 (jpg), (gif) A broken Federation under control of a Spot AI. Picture 106 (jpg), (gif) Here's a close up of the Kzinti Spot empire, which is almost round. Notice the capitol is not in the center, however, and this could be a bad thing. Some future AI may improve on that, some day. Picture 105 (jpg), (gif) Same three empires, except zoomed out more and in a different view mode. It is still obvious which is which. Picture 104 (jpg), (gif) Here we see three empires, of which two are Spot, and one is Fungi. It should be fairly apparent which is which. These Spot empires have been improved over the pictures below, but we still see some odd behavior on the Lyran's part, which I do not understand, but its not a big deal. Picture 103 (jpg), (gif) Here's those two Spot-controlled empires again, except this time the Spot-controlled Kzintis have strolled over. Notice the projection from the Kzintis to the Klingon planet. This is because Spot AI's love planets... they are attracted to them, and will tend to explore any space near one, no matter who's planet it is. This is a good thing, cause it allows an empire to better defend its own planets while threatening those of other empires, as the Kzintis have done. Also notice how the Klingons and Spartans tuck all of their planets neatly away inside their empire because of that feature. Also, notice how exploration fleets tend to organize into vitual armies. That'll be good for mutual defense, some day. Picture 102 (jpg), (gif) Here we have a turn 10 shot of the Spartans and Klingons, two Spot AI's with a new territory exploration routine. Notice: very organized. The Lyrans and ISC are Fungi-type AI's, and also very closely packed. And very unhappy. Picture 101 (jpg), (gif) What we are looking at here is a Sub fleet. The WE's are light cruisers, and notice that we see a number of them. Overall, a balanced fleet, although a bit bi-polar with all CL's and FF's. Picture 100 (jpg), (gif) A small Tholian fleet. Notice we have a couple of CCH's in there. Those are heavy command cruisers. I wonder if there's a bug in the game allowing the Tholians to get away with that. Picture 99 (jpg), (gif) Back to the Romulans, and a huge fleet. The SPC's are SP based scouts, and there is a lot of SP's in the fleet too. That is a good thing. Also notice that small ships are not lacking, another good thing. Nice fleet. Picture 98 (jpg), (gif) Here's an ISC fleet. They have done a pretty good job, notice a large number of CL's in there, so many in fact that they seem to have built not a single DD, but they do have plenty of FF's still if they need little ships for something. There is also a DDL in there, which is a destroyer leader, and a pretty nice ship. Picture 97 (jpg), (gif) Here's a couple of Intink fleets. The one on top is older, the one on bottom fairly new. FH's are heavy frigates, and the Intinks like them a lot, it seems. The CS's are strike cruisers, which are bigger than CL's, and are a good thing to have around. The fleet isn't too badly done overall, but it could use more heavy ships. The CDL's are an interesting choice of scouts, since they are drone-bombardment ships that just happen to be able to both be scouts and do some fighting if they have to. They are based on a CL hull, and its interesting that the Intinks didn't build an normal CL's. Picture 96 (jpg), (gif) A Gorn convoy and mobile base go about the task of building the empire. Picture 95 (jpg), (gif) This is what the Federation is actually up to. We see only two CL's and half a dozen DD's, though. This is not a well balanced fleet, although it is better than the Lyrans. Picture 94 (jpg), (gif) This here is the first Federation fleet, just wandering around... its a single frigate based scout. Picture 93 (jpg), (gif) Here's a Lyran fleet. The SC's are DD based scouts. DD's are destroyers, FF's are frigates, and CL's are light cruisers, as is the general naming convention followed by most of the races (with the Hydrans, Klingons, Romulans, Subs, and Spartans being notable exceptions). Notice only a single CL in the whole fleet, and only two DD's, yet many FF's. Bad fleet balance. A fleet with fewer, but larger, ships would be able to form a more concentrated battle force and whipe these guys out, even if the total Lyran firepower was greater. Picture 92 (jpg), (gif) Here's a Klingon fleet, composed mostly of little E4's (frigates) with some F5's (bigger than E4's) and G2's (even smaller than E4's) and a single D6 battlecruiser. The F5S's are F5-based scouts. The Klingon's fleet is not as well balanced as the Romulan fleet I looked at below. Picture 91 (jpg), (gif) What we are looking at here is a rather newly built Romulan fleet. The SP's are the light cruisers, and are of particular interest because the AI has to not only reasearch up to them, but also decide that they are worth building even though they do not have the same bang-for-the-buch ratio as the smaller ships do. A human would probably not build so many scouts (the SKC's), and would instead build more of those SP's, although the overal frigate/destoryer/cruiser ratio is pretty good in this fleet. Also notice the small Frax fleet in the hex of the Romulan fleet. |
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March 29th (wednesday) Only took one picture today. Several reasons for this, one being that what I'm working on now is not possible to take pictures of, and the other is that Fungi and Spot have both been unreasonably aggressive. I just recently found out why and fixed it, but only after I had adjusted other values trying to fix it in another way (I was on the wrong trail). The result of all this is that war/peace is maladjusted, and needs to be fine-tuned again before the AI's are doing anything smart on that front again. Picture 90 (jpg), (gif) What we have here is just a dense bunch of AI's all either at war or on the way. I hadn't found the bug yet, but in this situation war is acceptable anyway. Notice that the Romulan (black on red) capitol is in Lyran (green on yellow) hands, along with the surrounding turf. This is due to the fact the Lyrans just moved (before that all the area was in Romulan hands) and also due to my less-than-stellar territory calculations. Happily, this new function I have been working on for finding all hexes within a certain range will make it reasonable to improve that system, and a more reasonable system will emerge. Odd situations of this type will not be elliminated until I do combat, which I will only do when I stop doing other useful things. |
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March 28th (tuesday) Picture 89 (jpg), (gif) Here's the mini-map after a fix or two, but before I noticed its picture is upside down. Oops. Well its fixed now. Picture 88 (jpg), (gif) The mini-map in the lower left is a new feature. Picture 87 (jpg), (gif) The Federation (controlled by Fungi) confronts the unknown. This is about as scenic as pictures get in this game. Picture 86 (jpg), (gif) Here we see much the same text window, this time showing more ships. The list runs right off the bottom of the window, in fact. The active hex is the Federation's capitol hex, it turns out, and that is why there are so many units there. We can see something of the way Fungi currently organizes things, notice the shipyards all together, the "pOP" and "BS" each in their own fleet, and then the ship fleet, which was just built, and will soon depart. Picture 85 (jpg), (gif) The text has improved. In the main view we see the Federation exploring its universe. Picture 84 (jpg), (gif) Yesirree, that is text. |
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March 27th (monday) Picture 83 (jpg), (gif) Another shot showing off the little side thing, and this time we have some interesting stuff going on in the rest of the picture too. Notice how the Intinks have basically been swallowed up, for one thing. This gives an indication of things to come. Right now, when two fleets encounter each other, they become stuck and cannot move. This is not an error: usually there would be combat to take care of the situation, so this new stickiness is in fact a feature. Picture 82 (jpg), (gif) This is the first picture of what is going to grow into a replacement for the current stand-alone data window. I hope to print text all over this here transparent surface, which can be turned on and off from the keyboard. Picture 81 (jpg), (gif) Here we have more aggressive territory, uh, trading, but apparently the Kzintis haven't noticed what the Subs are up to (which is stealing all of their territory). Oh well. Picture 80 (jpg), (gif) This picture shows some early territory burgulary going on. |
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March 26th (sunday) Picture 79 (jpg), (gif) Here we have another deployment by the Federation, this time with a streamlined pathfinding function. The worst case time, our friend big O, is only changed by a constant, though. Gulp. I think I can drop times more with some, dare I say clever, multithreading. But big O will still stink. Picture 78 (jpg), (gif) A Federation base deployment after I got pathfinding done. Unfortunately, the method is very slow right now, the big O must be terrible. Its nested so deeply inside functions, that I don't even want to try to calculate it. This is even slower than the first nearness evaluation method for Fungi, and that thing scanned the whole map dozens and dozens of times for each race-turn. Picture 77 (jpg), (gif) This is a huge mess, everyone seems to be at war, and everyone seems quite confused. Yep, I need combat, but that's got to wait until after a few more things. Picture 76 (jpg), (gif) Differing base beployments of sevel Fungi empires in tight situations. |
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March 25th (saturday) Picture 75 (jpg), (gif) This shot is also of the galaxy from afar, and of a Fungi empire at turn 250, but this time I forgot to switch of the hex lines before taking a shot, and so its not so clear. The empire shown is the Federation. Picture 74 (jpg), (gif) This picture shows how much Fungi will explore in 250 turns. In the future, AI's should have done better than this in 100. This also adds to my small collection of shots showing the galaxy from afar, which I use to see if these things really are random. The empire shown is the Federation. Picture 73 (jpg), (gif) This picture, although not very interesting, shows the current state of affairs with base placement by Fungi. Notice that there are few bases alone on the map. There are more of them at some of the planets. This could be improved upon a lot, by I'm going to leave that to Spot and Scott's AI. |
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March 24th (friday) Picture 72 (jpg), (gif) This picture shows a partially zoomed out view of the game. What is shows is a huge mess of warfare, as is shown by the different races flying their ships in each other's territory. We also see a lot of bases, particularly in Hydran (white on green) space. Picture 71 (jpg), (gif) Here we have the first picture I've posted that shows a zoomed-in view, although the feature has been around for some time. What your looking at is bases built by the Klingons (white on black) and the Frax (blue on gray) that seem pretty intellegently placed, at first glance. These two empires are at war, it turns out, because their capitols have only one hex between them. |
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March 23rd (thursday) Picture 70 (jpg), (gif) Here we have a picture of the Federation after I disabled part of my code so that it builds more bases (by ignoring some rules). When I add pathfinding to this little program (and fix a bug where the convoy dissapears whenever a base is converted from a MB), Fungi will actually put bases in what mighnt appear to be an intellegent manner! Picture 69 (jpg), (gif) This is the first base to be built with my convoy, mobile base, and base building code. It was built by Fungi, Spot will not be getting this upgrade until I've completed combat and have time to devote to making it more advanced. |
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March 22nd (wednesday) Picture 68 (jpg), (gif) This is what the Spartans got for their stupidity. The Tholians, in red and white, who are also powered by Fungi but have better scouts, have just about surrounded them. The Spartans, at least, have seen this is a bad thing and declared war on the Tholians (hence the ships wandering around in Tholian turf). The actual implementation of combat has been pushed back now until after I get convoys and base building running smooth (which requires that evil path finding), so no blood has been shed yet, nor will any be shed real soon. Perhaps this weekend. Picture 67 (jpg), (gif) This picutre illustrates a major weakness of the Fungi AI when it is paired with low-power scouts and dense territory. The Spartans (grey and black) are moving their ships around before they give them a change to slowly work through an entire hex, leaving partially explored hexes behind, and wasting much time. Picture 66 (jpg), (gif) Here we have a picture of the Federation, powered by Fungi, as the only race on the map. The name fits, I think. |
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March 17th (friday) Picture 65 (jpg), (gif). Here we have two groups of ship spaces. Picture 64 (jpg), (gif). Here we have a square of ship spaces. Picture 63 (jpg), (gif). Here is what the game is going to do when combat breaks out. The contested hex is centered on the left, and movement on the map is disabled. Picture 62 (jpg), (gif). More empires. Picture 61 (jpg), (gif). I cannot now remember exactly what was going on here that was significant. Sort of a nice small empire shot, though. Picture 60 (jpg), (gif). Here we have yet another turn-50 galaxy. Wars are: Intink vs Zintik, Intink vs Romulan, Intink vs Lyran, Sub vs Tholian, Lyran vs Kzinti, and Federation vs Kzinti. Picture 59 (jpg), (gif). For this picture I have finally gotten invasion of territory-means-war working (more difficult than it sounds). Sadly, there are only three wars going on, and those are Zintik vs Lyran, Spartan vs Romulan, and Sub vs Tholian. Picture 58 (jpg), (gif). I didn't actually get who all was at war for this picture (because error messages scrolled a lot of it clear out of existince), but it looks like most of the southern half of the galaxy is at war with one another. Picture 57 (jpg), (gif). Here the Zintiks and Intinks are at war (two way), as are the Spartans and Subs, and Intinks and Kzintis. The ISC are at war with the Subs (but not the other way around), Kzintis with Zintiks, and the Federation with Zintiks (despite how outwardly friendly the Federation is). Picture 56 (jpg), (gif). In this picture we have a very different distribution of territory... much more even. The Spartans are at war with the Hydrans, the Kzintis with the Gorns, and the Gorns with the Kzintis. Picture 55 (jpg), (gif). Here we have a zoomed-out picture from another game. This time, I went in and observed who had declared war on what. The Subs (grey-red, center bottom) and Klingons (grey, middle) had declared war on each other, the Lyrans (yellow) had declared war on both the Klingons and the Frax (dark-brownish grey), and the Tholians (redish brown, west) and Romulans (red, middle) were at war. With the exception of the Tholians and maybe the Subs, no empire of any appreciable size had gone to war. Picture 54 (jpg), (gif). This picture shows those same 14 again, on turn 50. As we mighnt expect, the outlying empires, such as the upper-right Intinks, grow the largest as everyone stuck in the middle suffocates and fights wars. Better AI's mighnt be able to someday see what is going on and form alliances against the large outside empires, or more likely, the game will come down to which outside empire can best conquer all the others. Picture 53 (jpg), (gif). Here we see those same 14 empires on turn 25, with hex density off and borders on. From this picture (and the above one) I can pretty much tell which AI (Fungo or Spot) powers each empire. Picture 52 (jpg), (gif). This is my first picture with a zoom feature. We can see the entire map, with hex borders turned off. The red things are the empires, as they are before the game starts. Picture 51 (jpg), (gif). No, I don't know where the freakish error in the .jpg came from. But anyway, here we see the Intiks who have declared war on the Subs to their east. Good choice. The subs, for their part, have declared war on the Romulans, I think. And the Romulans and Lyrans are at war too, which is why the territory is so messsed up. (They can't actually hurt each other yet.) |
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March 16th (thursday) Picture 50 (jpg), (gif). The Klingons have declared war on the Romulans. This may not have been a good idea, and is in fact a really bad idea, but they felt somehow that their lack of sucess exploring new territory was the Romulan's fault. This is why their ships are now wandering around in Romulan territory. I have not yet implemented any sort of combat, and so this war has not effected the Romulans at all. Picture 49 (jpg), (gif). These Zintiks are an early example of the AI known as Spot, a Fungi-type AI which is to incorporate features Fungi does not, but still operate on much the same plan. Of course the way they are exploring suggests I made a boo-boo. |
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March 15th (wednesday) Now I am getting into more and more intellegent AI behavior, although combat is not yet functional. Picture 48 (jpg), (gif). The Federation has correctly decided that the Intinks to the north are a larger threat than any other neighbor, and also correctly concluded that the Subs down south east are in fact not worth mentioning. Picture 47 (jpg), (gif). The Zintik's threat-o-meter is going off. Picture 46 (jpg), (gif). This Romulan empire is nearly as large as that of the Tholians, who are just visable on the east. The Romulans played a major role is cutting off the smaller Klingon and Zintik empires mentioned below. Picture 45 (jpg), (gif). The Zintiks and Klingons bear sad witness to the chaotic and somewhat random rush for territory. This will be fixed by war. Picture 44 (jpg), (gif). This Tholian empire is possibly the largest empire I have ever seen. |
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March 14th (tuesday) I like pictures. Picture 43 (jpg), (gif). This picutre shows how large empires are getting these days. The purple Zintiks dwarf the Spartans to their south, who where completely boxed in during the initial territory rush and now bouce endlessly around inside their own territory. Picture 42 (jpg), (gif). Here we have the rather large Gorn empire to the east and the Federation to the south pinning the Frax between them, who have no choice but to squish out (flying through someone else's turf is rude, you know). Picture 41 (jpg), (gif). In the center we see the Romulans, who are pinched into a tower by their aggressive neighbors the Tholians and the ISC, and farther south by the Lyrans. The reason why they didn't do the usual trick of walking all over everyone was because I implemented some manners. Picture 40 (jpg), (gif). The Lyran's war-o-meter has also hit tops. Picture 39 (jpg), (gif). Besides being very short tempered, the Intinks have good reason to declare war on someone. They haven't done that yet (cause they can't within their current program), but they know they should. Picture 38 (jpg), (gif). The Klingons are the first documented case of a race that wants to go to war, but possibly the Intinks above where actually first. In either case, I haven't gotten around to doing the actual war-stuff yet. Picture 37 (jpg), (gif). In this picture we see the Zintiks and their empire. If this game was actually done, the Zintiks would stand a good chance of whiping out both of their neighbors... at once. This is due to their nice planet selection. Picture 36 (jpg), (gif). Warning: these files are even bigger than the ones below because I resized the view window. Anyway, in this picture we see the Klingons, Lyrans and Federation around the edges with the Tholians and Intinks (same color... I'll change that) in the middle squashing the poor little Subs between them. The Subs, meanwhile are seeing their exploration suffer, and perhaps tomorrow a race in this situation will attack. Picture 35 (jpg), (gif). The Romulans from the "lowlands" confront the Gorns on their "hill." Noteable in their absence are those empty fleets. Picture 34 (jpg), (gif). This picture shows the new fleet icons for when there are only bases present, except in this case they are all drawn for empty fleets. That isn't really a bug, the bug is that the empty fleets aren't getting cleaned up... but anyway, when the empires start building bases out in space, these are the icons they'll have. |
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March 13th (monday) Picture 33 (jpg), (gif). This picture shows a group of races, Kzinti, Hydran, ISC, Intink, Sub, Tholian and Gorn, on turn 15 of their little game. These pictures should be more meaningful latter on when there are AI's that know how to explore their turf more efficiently. The non-density graphics are looking good, I think. Picture 32 (jpg), (gif). Turn 10 version of the above picture. Picture 31 (jpg), (gif). If only these three knew they hated each other... but for now the Lyrans, Zintiks and Kzintis are just getting along, showing off their new planets that go from yellow to green as they fill up with people. Picture 30 (jpg), (gif). I want even the small differences is race colors to be apparent, so I changed out the red borders for white ones while in the non-density mode. Also I changed a number of race colors around. Picture 29 (jpg), (gif). Were the races' territories not clearly defined to you? Well here is the switchable-on-the-fly alternative graphics mode I just made. I like. Picture 28 (jpg), (gif). Here we see the Romulans, Zintiks, and Kzintis spoiling for war. They really want me to work on the combat so that they can kill each other. Picture 27 (jpg), (gif). Here we see four rather large empires: the Kzintis in the upper left, the Romulans next to them, the Tholians in the lower left, and then the Lyrans next to them. The improved function for placeing races can be credited with the better distribution. Picture 26 (jpg), (gif). This is what the range bands are supposed to look like, darkest being range six and lightest being 0. Picture 25 (jpg), (gif). This is actually the same as picutre 24, except the colors as swapped light for dark. GL made doing this very, very easy, by the way. Picture 24 (jpg), (gif). This picture shows range zones up to six hexes, darkest being range 6. As you can see, it is broken. Picture 23 (jpg), (gif). This picture is the first of the screen shots I took as I tried to make the range function work. Shown are the hexes that register as being at a range of one. This is the power of GL. All I had to do was tell it "if range is such and such, draw the hex this color" and off it went and did that. Very nice. |
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March 12th (sunday) More pictures today. I like pictures. Picture 22 (jpg), (gif). The mighty Hydran empire stretches as wide as the screen. Barbarians (the ISC, actually) are visible to the north. Picture 21 (jpg), (gif). Some interesting terrian generated by the new map maker, with the empires just starting to ooze their way into the screen. Picture 20 (jpg), (gif). Here we have a good example of why I need to implement the combat. As you can see, the empires are just walking all over each other. Picture 19 (jpg), (gif). This is an earlier shot of the same area as the above picture, on turn 5 instead of 50. This picture also shows the problem there is with empires appearing close to each other. |
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March 11th (saturday) I've been taking screenshots whenever I do something I think is cool as I've been working today, we we've got some more pictures for you now. Unfortunatly, these jpg's are just not doing a very good job of keeping the picture clear, so I am including a few bmp's of the pictures I like, and the bmp's really do show things a lot better. If you have a good connection, compare picture 16's jpg and bmp files. Update: Yes, I really did use .gif files for a while, but now they are all coverted to .gif files. The .gif reference is kept for historical accuracy. Picture 18 (jpg), (gif). What we have here is a picture of a few races with thicker borders. Up top we have the Gorns, the ISC is down to the left, the Federation is to the right, the Romulans are the red ones, and the Spartans are over in the bottom left next to the Kzintis that are stuck in their capitol still (duuno why). Lastly, we see the pink and white Zintiks over next to the Romulans, also stuck in their capitol. Picture 17 (jpg), (gif). This picture shows the Intink's little empire all by its lonesome, with the ISC over yonder, begging to be conqured. Notice the borders: a new feature. Picture 16 (jpg), (gif). The Intinks, Zintiks (white and pink, one planet), Hydrans, Spartans (in their new black+grey) and Lyrans with the new planets. Of course jpg is messing up the picture a bit, but at least we can see what's going on. Picture 15. The Tholians and Klingons showing off their new planets. Picture 14. This is not supposed to happen. Very dense. Picture 13. Here we see (from the top) the Lyrans, one Sub ship, the Spartans, the Intinks, the Federation, and a sole Kzinti sitting on a planet. Looks like the random planet maker is broken... too many of them. Picture 12. Here we have the Frax, the Intinks, the Federation, the Spartans, another sole Kzinti on its capitol (why are they broken?) and a number of ugly green, square planets. Picture 11. Here we have the Hydrans (with messed up colors), the Tholians, a Romulan (with messed up colors), and the Federation. Planets don't work yet. Picture 10. Romulans (bad colors), Klingons, Tholians, ISC, and Gorns. Picture 9. Frax, one Kzinti (again), and the messed up Romulans. Actually in the picture, the race at the bottom is in fact two, both with Romulan colors (this is an earlier picture). Picture 8. Empty map. |
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March 10th (friday) These pictures show the progress I made over the handful of hours I spent on the graphics today. Picture 7. Notice that the hex has a sorta-lame "chase" feature with colors. Picture 6. Just some interesting hexes. Picture 5. This picture was an earlier one, notice off-shaped hexes and off-center selected hex. |
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March 9th (thursday) Here are some shots of the rough-draft graphics by Scott. Unfortunately, there is some image degradation apparent in these pictures, and I'm not sure what it comes from, but its not a big deal. Picture 4. Interesting hexes. Picture 3. Hexes by the right edge of the map. Picture 2. More interesting hexes. Picture 1. Fleets of an unknown race. |
