NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Empires in Arms is the computer version of Australian Design Group classic board game. Empires in Arms is a seven player game of grand strategy set during the Napoleonic period of 1805-1815. The unit scale is corps level with full diplomatic options

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batteri2
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by batteri2 »

My condolences to you Bill.

DonCzirr there is a function in windows that helps our tired eyes even inside the empires in arms game. Yoy can activate a zoom function just by clicking the windows button and the "+" button.[:)]
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DonCzirr
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by DonCzirr »

ORIGINAL: batteri2


DonCzirr there is a function in windows that helps our tired eyes even inside the empires in arms game. Yoy can activate a zoom function just by clicking the windows button and the "+" button.[:)]

Thanks for the tip Batteri2.

I got it working on my Android tablet and that has a nice pinch and zoom feature of it's own.


@ Bill - re: Marshall Ellis - (if you happen to know) Are they still a functional Dev company or do they just dip back into the game when

real life etc allows ?
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by pzgndr »

ORIGINAL: DonCzirr
@ Bill - re: Marshall Ellis - (if you happen to know) Are they still a functional Dev company or do they just dip back into the game when real life etc allows ?

I remain in touch with Marshall and occasionally ask for his guidance on certain things, like when I'm stuck on some coding issue and don't understand what his original coding is doing or whatever. And he does respond and gets me back on track.

I expected him to dip back in last year but he didn't? I'd still like to finish v1.23 development work and get that out this spring sometime. Everyone needs to understand this is a pure hobby effort on my part (I am not a professional C++ programmer), mostly satisfying to make the game better but also frustratingly slow dealing with Marshall's code and a 2007 compiler. But at least EIA has some support and continues to slowly improve. Don't we wish all of our old computer wargames had some support?
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by pzgndr »

I have a brief update. I continue to poke at code development when I can, but my time is limited. I had hoped to get v1.23 wrapped up by now but I remain stuck on loaned unit issues.

The screenshot shows the problem I am trying to find and fix. I've set up a situation where Prussia and Austria are allied, and France is at war with Prussia only. France has moved into 4 areas, and the only combat that occurs is in Thuringia against a Prussian corps, which is correct. Southeast of Nuremburg France has moved into an area occupied by an Austrian corps and no combat occurs, which is correct. However, France has moved into Kassel with a loaned Prussian corps and into Ansbach with a loaned Prussian-minor Saxon corps and no combat occurs, which is not correct.

I am struggling to resolve this. It seems straightforward enough. I will continue to poke at this as I can and sooner or later I will figure it out. Once I get this to work correctly and verify that both land and naval combats involving loaned units is at least working correctly, I intend to wrap up v1.23 for release.

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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by pzgndr »

Happy dance. I am now getting the attacks against loaned units at war to work correctly. Methinks it is therapeutic for me to talk out the code problems, to get me to consider other options. Whatever. Hopefully I did not mess up anything else with the code change, and further testing will confirm or deny that. For the time being, my elusive sense of accomplishment is satisfied and I can move forward.

What I ended up doing is going a step beyond just checking for loaned hostiles. It should have generated a battle but did not, and I assume the restriction lies in the loaned nation status of the unit, such that if not at war with the loaned nation then the unit is considered neutral. So, for cases where the lending nation is at war but the controlling nation is not, I added code to reset the loaned unit back to its original nation status. Seems to work. Loaned units are reset anyway at the end of a turn, so this should not unduly affect most operations. For cases where both lending nation and controlling nation are at war and acting in unison, this should not disrupt the loaned unit status.

The only other thing I'm not seeing working correctly is for neutral units to withdraw from a battle area, per the rules. I have tried adding code to make that happen but just not seeing it work. In the big scheme of things, this is very minor and I won't spend much more effort on it. Neutral parties are allowed to co-locate in an area, so I'm not too concerned about this.

Image

UPDATE 4/25/2019

My continued testing revealed a flaw. The check for loaned hostiles and reset back to original nation failed to also check if a friendly unit was present in the area. So I had Prussian loaned units being reset without French units entering their location. The easy fix was to add a check for friendly unit(s) at the location being checked for hostiles, and if so then to reset loaned enemy units. OK. My next concern was how this would happen during movement and whether players could undo their move after causing a reset.

What I found was if a reset occurs then you cannot undo the move, so caution is warranted. Example #1 was moving a loaned Prussian corps during the Austrian move phase into a French area and trying to undo the move. Nope, control was reset to Prussia. No combat occurred during Austrian turn. During the Prussian turn, the Prussian corps was locked in and could not move out (ie, set for combat) and then combat occurred during the combat phase. Example #2 was moving a French corps into a loaned Prussian corps area and trying to undo the move. Nope, control was reset to Prussia and then combat occurred during the French land combat phase. All in all, I think this is acceptable now and players will have to be cautious with situations like this. I will of course be updating the manual to help clarify loaned unit behaviors. With land combat more or less settled, I will move on to naval combats involving loaned fleets which is somewhat more complicated with interceptions occurring during movements.
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by Daniel Amieiro »

Good job Pzggnr.

If you are on minors, please, check the minor leader placement for a player. A Sweden Bernadotte leader as neutral, computer can place it, but player can only place it if already a major nation general.

Other question. This version will have room for more units in database or the database are the same for compatibility?
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by pzgndr »

ORIGINAL: Daniel Amieiro
the database are the same for compatibility

Yes.
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by pzgndr »

I owe an update. Back in April I pretty much resolved the loaned unit issues for land combat and then shifted to loaned fleet issues for naval combat. Along the way my playtesting identified problems with interceptions not working and then I check naval combats and discovered they were not working either. Obviously some of my code changes screwed things up. It took a while to find and fix the naval combat problem and then (finally!) the interception problem. Good news is that I should be back on track now to slowly reintroduce some of the code changes and verify they work.

There is a significant difference in how naval stacks are handled in the game and how naval combats occur. Additionally, interceptions occur during the move phase and gets tricky. I now have a good idea of what changes do not work, so I will proceed carefully to resolve the original issues I set out to find and fix.

Once I get loaned fleets and naval combats working to my satisfaction, I will wrap up v1.23. There are still some documentation updates I need to make (once I verify loaned unit/fleet behaviors and can describe them accurately) and other tasks to prepare an installation package for Matrix. Hopefully sometime later this summer.

UPDATE 7/8/19: Good news to report! In my test case, I have a neutral Spanish fleet loaned to France and a Dutch fleet loaned to neutral Spain. The code already had a function to check for loaned hostiles, but did not have one to check for loaned neutrals to be excluded from interceptions so I added it. Now, the British did not intercept the neutral Spanish fleet under French flag, but did intercept the enemy Dutch fleet under Spanish flag. These were the primary issues I wanted to resolve. I am encouraged, and continued playtesting this month should allow me to start wrapping up v1.23.00.
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by Maple Leaf »

way to go Bill!! That loaned fleet bug was annoying - and one of the last outstanding issues that I'm aware of. Once again - thanks for all your efforts.
Looking forward to v1.23 release
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by pzgndr »

ORIGINAL: Maple Leaf
way to go Bill!! That loaned fleet bug was annoying - and one of the last outstanding issues that I'm aware of. Once again - thanks for all your efforts.
Looking forward to v1.23 release

Yeah, complicated little bugs too! I still need to work through my playtest plan to verify lots of things involving loaned fleets and transporting troops. Interceptions, naval combats, blockade battles, invasions, etc. Keeping my fingers crossed that I can work through all that in the next few weeks.
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by Daniel Amieiro »

Great Bill. It's a luxury having people like you fixing the code and evolving it
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by Agathosdaimon »

wow this is great, such good work on ironing out the little issues on such a grand game. With all these fixes like the Loaned units - are these fixes that are just for the multiplayer or are they fixing issues for the singleplayer also?
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by pzgndr »

Some good news and bad news for this past week. I made good progress on fixing several of the loaned fleet bugs. Naval interceptions and naval combats are working well. I still need to verify some of my fixes for blockade actions.

The bad news is that I did something to corrupt my development version such that the main screen is not displaying any of the action buttons on the top menu bar. I've reinstalled twice and not getting it to work right. This is frustrating beyond words. I was optimistic that I would wrap things up yesterday but now I've spent a day trying to recover and not getting anywhere. [:@]

FWIW, the "problems" with loaned fleets is that the code deals with unit nation, and loaned fleets under control are seen as units of the controlling nation. There is an 'oldnation' setting which was sometimes used for land units but not so much for fleets. So the grunt work involved has been to find and update all sections of code to also check for oldnation status, whether at war with another target nation or not. For naval interceptions, for example, the code needs to check for both loaned interception fleets that may not be at war and for loaned target fleets that may not be at war. It's been a challenge to find and fix all of these code sections.

I will continue to deal with my development version and get it running again sooner or later.
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by DonCzirr »

Thanks for your continued efforts Bill and good luck with the recovery.
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by pzgndr »

Alright, I am back on track. Apparently I did something to corrupt one of the files in the \Data folder (Wars of Napoleon, wgs_default_settings, or wgsfunctions), so when I reinstalled v1.22.02 and copied over my development files from v1.23 I also brought over whatever problem I had. I knew it was not a code change issue but it wasn't clear what the issue was or how to fix it. Anyways, all is well now for the time being.

So here's what I've been doing. If you go back to Loaned Unit Behaviors, that Mantis issue #772 provides my a test plan. I've been running the case where Spain and Turkey are at war and Turkey is allied with neutral Britain. Most of these bugs are now fixed. I still have a couple more to resolve. And then there are cases with Turkey loaning corps to Britain, and with Britain and Spain at war and Spain is allied with neutral Russia. I am stepping through these cases to verify bugs are fixed. That's the plan. There is light at the end of the tunnel...
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by pzgndr »

Latest update. I am cautiously optimistic that all loaned unit changes are now implemented and working satisfactorily. This has been complicated, involving all aspects of loaned corps and loaned fleet movements and combats. Most movement and combat issues were straightforward. Naval interceptions were tricky. Port blockade and city siege actions were trickier. I am not 100% sure that everything is correct for all cases, but I've playtested most situations and things appear OK. I do want to continue with some other playtesting to ensure gameplay looks OK.

So. I need to spend a couple weeks updating documentation and preparing files for Matrix. I would like to wrap up and have all that done by end of September, so then we might be looking at a beta release in October. With all of the changes in v1.23 and the addition of updated 1812 scenarios, I would like a couple of months of community feedback before going final. Plus, I can work on some more minor improvements for official release. So that's the plan.
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RE: NEW: State of the Game and Future Plans as of June 2018

Post by pzgndr »

OK, user manual and in-game manual updates are pretty much done. Things are looking good for v1.23. I am continuing to playtest some loaned unit situations and fixing what I can.

Here's an example of what was nagging me this past weekend with playtesting. France at war with Prussia, Prussia allied with neutral Austria. France besieges Weimar. Austria moves a loaned Prussian corps to Weimar and the move into the city is blocked. That's fixed; the loaned Prussian corps was previously able to move into and out of the city despite the siege. Odd. Next, a Prussian corps moves in to lift the siege and field combat ensues. The loaned Prussian corps previously did not join the battle. It should; what, a Prussian corps would stand by and watch? The code has other checks for units moving into an area with enemy units present, but moving out of a city (besieging box) was not checked. So I added another check to return any loaned friendly units in this case, and now both the lifting siege corps and previously loaned corps join the battle. If this sounds confusing, believe me the code is more confusing. Trying to find and fix little stuff like this involving loaned unit status and getting these odd situations to work correctly is challenging. The good news is that most of this is working now and I don't have any other obvious nagging concerns. Except naval interceptions; I want to playtest a couple of situations to verify those are working after other changes I made earlier. We're getting close!
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