b5 key mapping bug

[zydonk]

The "send message" command is mapped to the Return key, which means that each time you save the game you lose contact with your kboard until you hit Ret or esc again.

Remapping the command does the trick, of course, but perh the dev can amend the code.

[Kamaze]

http://developer.wz2100.net/newticket

[zydonk]

Done. Thanks for the pointer.

[Buginator]

Yeah.. we don't "eat" the return key...
I guess that is why it was "t" for chat before, and not the return/enter key.

[zydonk]

Sure. I remember an earlier beta set the message command to "enter" (not "return"). The question I refrained from asking this time was: Who on earth set it to return?

I don't need an answer, I just wanted to ask the question. Anyway, what's wrong with "t"? Aren't there better things to do than fiddle with what already works? (Don't answer that either.)

[Zarel]

Sure. I remember an earlier beta set the message command to "enter" (not "return"). The question I refrained from asking this time was: Who on earth set it to return?

I don't need an answer, I just wanted to ask the question. Anyway, what's wrong with "t"? Aren't there better things to do than fiddle with what already works? (Don't answer that either.)

Too bad, I'm answering it.

It's because most other games set it to Return, because that's the most logical button to set it to. Since Return is "send message", you can't assign anything else to it, anyway, and it kind of feels easier to press Return, type your message, and press Return again, than it is to type "tHello everyone!" and press Return.

[zydonk]

Sure, zarel, but the Return key serves to complete a save (rather than Enter), so - as detailed above - hitting Ret to complete a save also activates the message line, which then awaits your next key stroke - which might be b for base or whatever - when all that happens is that b is entered in the message line, and then the message command awaits your next key stroke, and so on and on, until you hit either Return, Enter or Esc.

Yes? Now, I assume the dev know all about this, so - my question again, rhetorical as before - why go and map the message command to Return - given the above circumstances - especially when hitting "t" is both familiar to everyone already and not that difficult to do?

And of course there is still that other rhetorical question of mine to be answered: don't people have better things to do than fiddle with peripherals? For instance, sound still drops out when the game gets busy in the betas. Never happens in 1.10, and that is yonks old and didn't have eax etc at its disposal. Or why the AI is still so slow? Have the decision loops been knocked out in some way?

See, things like that.

[Zarel]

maSure, zarel, but the Return key serves to complete a save (rather than Enter), so - as detailed above - hitting Ret to complete a save also activates the message line, which then awaits your next key stroke - which might be b for base or whatever - when all that happens is that b is entered in the message line, and then the message comnd awaits your next key stroke, and so on and on, until you hit either Return, Enter or Esc.

Yes? Now, I assume the dev know all about this, so - my question again, rhetorical as before - why go and map the message command to Return - given the above circumstances - especially when hitting "t" is both familiar to everyone already and not that difficult to do?

Actually, whoever changed it probably just didn't realize that it did that. We'll just change it so Return doesn't get passed to the key assignments when the save menu is being opened, then the problem's solved.

Either way, if you don't like it, you can go change it in options...

[EvilGuru]

And of course there is still that other rhetorical question of mine to be answered: don't people have better things to do than fiddle with peripherals? For instance, sound still drops out when the game gets busy in the betas. Never happens in 1.10, and that is yonks old and didn't have eax etc at its disposal. Or why the AI is still so slow? Have the decision loops been knocked out in some way?

Not really. Not everyone knows enough about a specific sub-system to be able to fix a problem with it — so saying "why bother changing this when <xyz> is more important" is of the same ilk as me asking you why you do not go and cure cancer. We don't because we can't. People only work on segments of the code which they know.

EAX would not really help the sound problem — which occurs when your hardware/OpenAL vendor does not provide enough channels. There is no way to fix this without dropping something, although currently we do not put much effort in deciding what to drop. The sound mixing done by 1.10 is done via Qmix, which is stereo sound — we use OpenAL which is full 3D surround sound, so it is in effect comparing apples and oranges.

I am unsure about the AI being 'slower' (or how you derive that metric). It is quite possible that something else is slower and that is causing the AI to appear to be slower in reacting to stimuli.

Regards, Freddie.

[Buginator]

The "send message" command is mapped to the Return key, which means that each time you save the game you lose contact with your kboard until you hit Ret or esc again.

Remapping the command does the trick, of course, but perh the dev can amend the code.

Fixed in r6132.

[zydonk]

buginator: right. Thanks for the word.

evilguru: sound - I speak from experience in the game. I appreciate the complexities involved, tho' without knowing the mechanics of it. I use PowerDVD and it is pretty good at expanding stereo to map to surround (some of this opera pcm going back thirty years). That is, there are effective sware solutions. What I'm talking about are sound drop outs, such as when arty and cannon audio would drop and there would be eg only the pumping of the wells. Even our friendly announcer of good and bad news drops out, which is a pretty serious failure. Sound cues are esp good in WZ, and I for one have come to depend on them when the going gets tough. As I say, I'm still not persuaded that this is an "Audio" problem (I'm using an X-Fi card, which seems as good as it gets), but some kind of sware sorting issue.

And if there is a problem mapping WZ original stereo output to surround, then why not leave it in stereo until the issue is fully resolved? X-Fi will then map it to all my speakers and that would be good enough to be going on with. I don't expect a 1999 game to be turned into a 2008 game; I don't think this is possible without making an entirely new game. What I thought the dev was about is making a 1999 game as compatible as possible with 2008 equipment. You can't get DTS out of 1970s pcm. So face it, maybe you can't get surround out of WZ stereo.

AI speed: again I compare exp of 1.10 with the betas. There is a palpable sense that the 1.10 AI is busier, a sense that more is going on. It's as simple as that. By "decision loops" I mean how often does the engine review a given status in the game, and has this rate changed - for whatever reason - between 1.10 and the later releases. I have sat though a number of games in the beta releases and seen very little of the AI players until I go out to kick arse. In 1.10 they are all over me from the start and only let up to do some majopr research (which is a really good feature in WG, how the AI actually pulls back when not effective). One of my pet suspicions is that this slowness is unconsciously influencing modifications in other parts of the game. For instance (a herring here?), the rebalancing that is under way might be so influenced: missiles look pretty powerful in slo-mo, less so when you have a couple of dozen big boys climbing over your fence...

I have drawn the distinction between elsewhere the prob with pathfinding (which btw seems largely resolved) and this business of the general slowness of the AI itself.

ciao

[EvilGuru]

And if there is a problem mapping WZ original stereo output to surround, then why not leave it in stereo until the issue is fully resolved? X-Fi will then map it to all my speakers and that would be good enough to be going on with. I don't expect a 1999 game to be turned into a 2008 game; I don't think this is possible without making an entirely new game. What I thought the dev was about is making a 1999 game as compatible as possible with 2008 equipment. You can't get DTS out of 1970s pcm. So face it, maybe you can't get surround out of WZ stereo.

That would not solve the problem, I'm afraid. It has little to do with surround sound vs. stereo sound — it is to do with how many channels can be mixed simultaneously. The number of speakers, is, for the most part, irrelevant.

The original game used the software only Qmix library. Not only does it only work on Windows, provide stereo sound only, is completely unsupported it also does not make use of hardware mixing. (A very nice feature to reduce CPU load.) OpenAL, which is the industry standard, does. The problems Warzone faces are no different to those of any other modern game — fewer sources than sounds to be played. We just need to better decide how to handle it.

You most certainly can get DTS from 1970s PCM. No question. I (am lucky) to have some early quadraphonic mixes from the mid-late 70s which, although currently encoded in FLAC could easily be encoded to the (inferior) DTS. High quality analogue mixes/recordings are often superior to that of modern digital mixes — easily being convertible into the latter.

There is a huge difference between what Warzone does and what an up-mixer does to the point where there can be no comparison. (In Warzone we have information such as positions of sounds, so where they occur in 3D space, movement information, allowing for the Doppler effect to be taken into account — all of which an up-mixer does not). Furthermore, there is no such thing as WZ stereo, it is just not a valid concept. All there is are a series of simultaneous mono sound sources in 3D space.

Regards, Freddie.

[Buginator]

For what it is worth, the original game also has this sound problem, but, it isn't as bad as what we have. I verified this the other day.

You also can't really compare the original with this version, they are using totally different APIs, and since MS doesn't want to let other platforms use their libs, then we are stuck with things that do work on all platforms.

And also remember, that pumpkin has a full time job with this, and since most of us only spend our free time with this, things are done as fast as we all want. We will get there, it just takes a longer time.

[zydonk]

Thanks for the detailed responses.

The pcm I had in mind was made for TV stereo that was probably transmitted in mono. The main example of 1970s audio converted to modern surround is DG's upgrading of their RIng. Their recording equipment would obviously have been first class, but the result now is flat and stretched, so much so that I prefer to stick to the original stereo version. (My comparison here are contemporary recordings specifically geared to DVD audio.)

I took your point about mixing channels, but I wanted to push at the idea of stereo conversion to see what was to be further said on that subject. As for drop outs, my experience is one of sound loss. If it was simply a matter of choosing what would go into x number of channels, then I would expect the overall sound "density" to remain the same - in other words sound coming constantly from the x number of channels, even if it was obvious that some events were not being relayed. What happens seems more like an overload that leads to an almost complete cut off of sound. This will last as long as the high level of activity in the game.

If this is a real problem, then the WZ dev has to take stock of its priorities, for with these sound problems the game is strictly unplayable beyond a certain level. The original Pumpkin game may have similiar problems, as buginator says, but they do not interfere with the quality of the gameplay.

I fully appreciate that the dev is voluntary and probably time-consuming, but perhaps the preoccupation with modifying the game should be left until these essential core problems (slow game, too) are addressed. As I said, the state of the game as it is can easily influence any by-the-way modifications being made at the moment.

adieu

[Buginator]

Thanks for the detailed responses.
If this is a real problem, then the WZ dev has to take stock of its priorities, for with these sound problems the game is strictly unplayable beyond a certain level. The original Pumpkin game may have similiar problems, as buginator says, but they do not interfere with the quality of the gameplay.

True enough.
Here is the short of it...on 2nd thought, I won't bore you with the technical details, but I will say that instead of 16 channels that *windows* people have a limit with now, we now have a limit of around 256 channels.
This drastically improves the sound problem that *windows* people have.
(The irony here is that on vista, this wasn't a issue, since the drivers were already doing 256 channel support).

The fix will be in both trunk & 2.1 shortly.