Any analysis of the Wz CAM Script Triggers ?

[Rman Virgil]

I don't think that's really the meaning Gertrude Stein put into that phase.

It is a repetition as a rhetoric device to trigger stronger awareness of the thing associated with the word being repeated, which is used by Stein. An interesting fact from the point of view of neuroscience btw, as it reveals some aspects of the inner working of the human brain.

* You make a good point there. Such a simple phrase & now that I look a little closer I can see other possible meanings: within mneumonic devices or viral memes, for example.

Well if you have luck someone will volunteer.
There was already an attempt to create wiki pages from the scripting manual on our wiki site. Maybe the author is still interested in it. But, although that's sad, 'solo effort' is a good description of almost all the work done for WZ.

* There does seem to be such a pattern over the years -  solo efforts predominating.

* But i'll keep my fingers crossed because, though in the minority, collaborative efforts have happened and have yielded enduring stuff..... many of my cherished memories involving WZ were affable, fun, joyful, collaborations.

* But.... if it doesn't happen with the Scripting Wiki.... I'll wade thru the extant material and likely build a fully relational db on my PDA as a mneumonic device to help me learn it. Mainly because right-now it is the best way (scriptomatically) to create fresh, more complex & richly challenging GPM experiences than can be found outside the original cam - for in my experience Ski & even MP funnel down to predictable patterns that after a short while yield boredom or some form of gameplay disaffection.


- RV

[Troman]

Because you and I (and speedy?) are the only community members that I know of who have done anything with scripting.  And that one of the community's most elite members, RJ, is asking qustions about it

I see, nothing unintuitive. Well I agree more or less. 

I should be more specific.  By work on the script internals, I mean work on a way to make it easier for upper-novice end users to create maps with scripted behavior.

But what exactly do you purpose, Chojun? What script internals should be tweaked? To be honest I don't see how this can help, but maybe I have overseen something.

In essence, to create a custom map community.  In about 8 years of warzone, people have got to be at least slightly bored of normal gameplay.

After releasing "WarGods" I'm not so sure about that anymore. I think what people really want is the good old WZ, but with balancing issues fixed, with a working multiplayer and all bugs fixed. They want a fully working game. Custom maps and MODs will be a nice addition.

When you say we should fix script internals, it's like having a circus with only a single clown that hasn't made people laugh for the last 50 years and wondering why people don't come. "Their cars must be broken, we should make people fix their cars and then the crowd will come." Well it won't happen. Their cars are ok, but as things are now it's simply not worth it.

I state that in case with modding it all boils down to the community size in our case and it has nothing to do with the moding capabilities, which are huge.

Why all the effort if no one will use it? I keep my work on AIs because I have a slightly different goal.

Have you noticed how NEXUS Cam3 units retreat before they reach 25% damage?  If I remember correctly this is affected by morale.  But it's been a long time since I looked at the cam scripts.

Those morale functions seem to occur in the scripts for the first campaign only, they are not used for Cam3.
Besides that Pumpkin use RUN_DATA struct to store the retreat data and the comment states "// data for barbarians retreating".

[Rman Virgil]

------------------

* This might sound a little weird but here goes...

* Been a fan of Sport Sims for ages: baseball, basketball, soccer, American football.

* My all-time fav is "Madden Football" which as a franchise is appoaching 20 years of a perenially popular existence - multi-millions of unit sales on just about every console & PC platform over that span..

* About 3-4 years ago I had an epiphany: there was much in common between Madden FB and a 3D RTS (maybe that's the root of my passion).

* Then I got to thinking about parallels:  create a player / design a unit, franchise mode / campaign, player moves / pathing, player-coach / field-general, player-specialist positions / diff unit types... and so on.

* But the most telling parallels involved the customizable playbooks (offense & defense) that "Madden Football" introduced in 2003 if I recall...

* Remember a couple of customized offensive playbooks with a total of 11 formations - each with 81 Plays... do the math.

* Then this ? occured to me: "What is a a play..... what is a playbook ?"

* My answer: a play is pre-scripted a.i. you can modify in RT / on-the-fly in game. A Play-book is modular a.i. - a collection of plays (pre-scripted a.i.) that can also be called-up in RT & assigned on-the-fly. And because the gamer can assume control of any player/unit on the field at any time you can create countless variants of play-action...

* Now all this is housed in an iconic menu driven gui that the totally a.i. illiterate can manipulate handily (the likely inspiration for the postulated WZ GCI aka "Global Command Interface").

* Interesting, huh ?

Cheers, RV

[Rman Virgil]

* But.... if it doesn't happen with the Scripting Wiki.... I'll wade thru the extant material and likely build a fully relational db on my PDA as a mneumonic device to help me learn.

* I'm used to making fully-relational dbs for some of my personal projects so this was a knee-jerk response.

* Upon reflection, to transfer such a customized db to the net would be ....painfull..

* Since I always have my pda (unlike my laptop) I tend to do a lot of work on it which I later easily transfer to my laptop.

* So I thought - why not build a Wiki on my PDA instead of a db because I could more easily transfer that to a Web wiki.

* Ergo.... I now have a wiki structure for WZ Scripting set-up on my PDA and no matter if I end-up doing it solo I can readily transfer the results into the public wiki.

* Feels like a viable strat for me personally as well as a possible benefit to the community.

- Cheers, RV

[Troman]

------------------

* This might sound a little weird but here goes...

* Been a fan of Sport Sims for ages: baseball, basketball, soccer, American football.

* My all-time fav is "Madden Football" which as a franchise is appoaching 20 years of a perenially popular existence - multi-millions of unit sales on just about every console & PC platform over that span..

* About 3-4 years ago I had an epiphany: there was much in common between Madden FB and a 3D RTS (maybe that's the root of my passion).

* Then I got to thinking about parallels:  create a player / design a unit, franchise mode / campaign, player moves / pathing, player-coach / field-general, player-specialist positions / diff unit types... and so on.

* But the most telling parallels involved the customizable playbooks (offense & defense) that "Madden Football" introduced in 2003 if I recall...

* Remember a couple of customized offensive playbooks with a total of 11 formations - each with 81 Plays... do the math.

* Then this ? occured to me: "What is a a play..... what is a playbook ?"

* My answer: a play is pre-scripted a.i. you can modify in RT / on-the-fly in game. A Play-book is modular a.i. - a collection of plays (pre-scripted a.i.) that can also be called-up in RT & assigned on-the-fly. And because the gamer can assume control of any player/unit on the field at any time you can create countless variants of play-action...

* Now all this is housed in an iconic menu driven gui that the totally a.i. illiterate can manipulate handily (the likely inspiration for the postulated WZ GCI aka "Global Command Interface").

* Interesting, huh ?

Cheers, RV

You mean something like assigning roles to the units, like: these 2 are going to scout map for oil (while clicking on a button or selecting the appropriate script/behavior pattern from a  drop-down menu), these ones are going to defend the base. That truck is going to get oil it can see starting from the oil resources that are close to the base.

Anthing like that?

[Rman Virgil]

......... I think what people really want is the good old WZ, but with balancing issues fixed, with a working multiplayer and all bugs fixed. They want a fully working game. Custom maps and MODs will be a nice addition.

* I agree with all that. However, with all that fixed WZ will still fall way short of endless GPM tac variety because of it's "Command & Control" mechanics.

I state that in case with modding it all boils down to the community size in our case and it has nothing to do with the moding capabilities, which are huge.

* Agree with that too... however, because of extremely weak & limited "Command & Control" mechanisms WZ "tacs & strats" (even via current "huge" mod possibilities) will continue to boil down to a combo of click-fest & "Fools Mate". This can only be addressed in ways that necessitate fundamental GUI changes.

Why all the effort if no one will use it?

* Reminds me of the riddle: "What came first - the chicken or the egg ?" and the notion expressed by the phrase "self-fullfilling prophecy". Perhaps if it existed they would come - not existing makes it irrelevant.

I keep my work on AIs because I have a slightly different goal.

* A PhD dissertation, perhaps ?

- Cheers RV

[Troman]

* I agree with all that. However, with all that fixed WZ will still fall way short of endless GPM tac variety because of it's "Command & Control" mechanics.

UINS what GPMSF so I can't RCOT.

* Reminds me of the riddle: "What came first - the chicken or the egg ?" and the notion expressed by the phrase "self-fullfilling prophecy".
Perhaps if it existed they would come - not existing makes it irrelevant.

This sounds nice, but it doesn't really fit.
That prophecy can't fulfill anymore, in the same way as a placebo can't heal a healthy human.

If chickens live under good conditions, don't lay eggs and the foxes don't come that makes me think that there is something wrong with the hatchery. For some it may be '"Command & Control" mechanisms' for other ones something else. And getting bigger and better chickens just won't do it.

We are lucky that the game was ported to Linux though.

* A PhD dissertation, perhaps ?

Well, never say never.

[Rman Virgil]

UINS what GPMSF so I can't RCOT.

* Sorry .... GPMs = GamePlay Mechanics

* UINS & RTOC.... I don't grok.

This sounds nice, but it doesn't really fit.

That prophecy can't fulfill anymore, in the same way as a placebo can't heal a healthy human.

If chickens live under good conditions, don't lay eggs and the foxes don't come that makes me think that there is something wrong with the hatchery.

For some it may be '"Command & Control" mechanisms' for other ones something else.

And getting bigger and better chickens just won't do it.

* Holy blue-fin tuna on the barbie !

* I only meant it like so:

* Current scientific evidence seems to overwhelming support Gamow's "Big-Bang" theory of the universe's origin. However what preceded the Big Bang remains unanswered.

* A bigger chicken tends to satisfy the appetite of more peeps as opposed to a scrawny one - assuming they are not a group of vegitarians.

* I could be wrong but I believe the engageing of combined forces on the field of battle is at the heart of an RTS (if it was building structs & managing an economy you could play SimCity or if it was just blowing chit up with new toys then a quality FPS would do) and when insufficient command & control detracts from the deep satisfaction that comes from executing varied & effective field maneuver (varied tacs to support an overall strat of domination) then, win or lose, any other novelties wear thin fairly quickly.

We are lucky that the game was ported to Linux though.

* Yes - an ever growing pool of new peeps exposed to the game keeps it alive and that is a good thing because it may someday result in Pumpkin's dream of a game that is continuously evolving as opposed to a "living fossil" (GPM-wise, that is - as in ECMs, for example).

- Cheers RV

[Rman Virgil]

--------------

* I think it merits stateing that I have NO agenda to persuade anyone to do anything. I merely express my point of view.

* I do freely confess having a personal agenda as far as expressing a variety of new WZ GPMs but I am fairly certain I can go a long ways to effecting that scriptomatically in Cam-mode.

* WZ Coop MP, besides being fun in & of itself, is in good measure a way of addressing Command & Control GPMs that are lacking in mano a mano play action.

* Having the experience of an effective Field General is the core of what distinguishes an Rts from a Squad-Level Tactical (SLT), FPS or RPG, IMHO.

* In mano a mano WZ  MP, without the Command & Control mechanisms to support intelligent combined forces deployment / maneuver / engagement you are compelled to follow, over & over, the same exact "strat": a click-fest arms-race and massive tank rush. While that can be fun for a spell, it soon becomes a boreing dead-end strategically: something I've yet to experience in strat games I've played for decades like Gomoku & Chess.

* So my PoV is merely to highlight  how mano a mano MP could be fundamentally advanced beyond it's present one-dimensional state combat- wise. Since this is beyond the scope of my abilities I am plenty content personally to achieve analogous results in Cam Mode (werein I am not out of my depth, can act with self-sufficiency in the time I have to apply to this end & can do so within a fun-loving spirit which is essential to me as well.)

Cheers, RV

[Rman Virgil]

You mean something like assigning roles to the units, like: these 2 are going to scout map for oil (while clicking on a button or selecting the appropriate script/behavior pattern from a  drop-down menu), these ones are going to defend the base. That truck is going to get oil it can see starting from the oil resources that are close to the base.
Anthing like that?

* Yes.

* Also.....

* Let's substitute "Commander Unit" for "Quarterback" and follow the parallels on Offense Plays, aka "Field Battle Engagements".... meaning that the "Plays" or "Pre-Scripted ais" would be available from the Commander's Screen and the units slaved to the Commander combat group would be discretely identifed within the pre-scriptsv gui iconography as such (for example): vtols, direct-fire, indirect-fire, repair, sensors (in FB, specialist positions)......then pick it up from there to your above GamePlay Mechanism like so -

* VTOL play-action: "Hit & Run" HERE

* DF Units play-action: Advance to HERE and "Fire & Fade"

* IF Units play-action: Hold Position  HERE targeting at maximum range.

* Mechanics play-action: Repair DF Units HERE "Do or Die"

* Sensor Unit play-action: Scout between these Waypoints & Retreat at Med-Damage.

* Trucks play-action: Repair emplacements between these way-points Do or Die

* The beauty of this is that with multiple Commanders you can effectively, intelligently, engage from multiple vectors (& with velocity) thereby opening up the game to innumerable winning tac - strat variants. At the same time the current latent promise of Commanders would be boldly advanced on the fullfillment continuum that would squarely place WZ at the forefront of the current crop of RTSs - methinks.

* If such came to fruition (combined with your already implemented Threat Assessment, Grim's Art, & more robust Net MP) I predict all the major game portals would take note with reviews - & the GNA servers would be strained to keep-up with massive downloads & explosive growth of the WZ fan base....

- Cheers, /R\m/a\n/ \V/i\r/g\i/l\?

[Rman Virgil]

-------------------

* Going thru the process of wikifying the script lang material on my pda is proving to be a good learning MO.

* One question I have is (& it may save hours of head scratching) - where exactly is the divergence between scripting SKI and scripting CAM..... that is - what exactly applies to one but not the other ? Or am I misreading that there is a distinction ?

- RV

[Rman Virgil]

-------------------

* Going thru the process of wikifying the script lang material on my pda is proving to be a good learning MO.

* One question I have is (& it may save hours of head scratching) - where exactly is the divergence between scripting SKI and scripting CAM..... that is - what exactly applies to one but not the other ? Or am I misreading that there is a distinction ?

- RV

* So far CAM only: Timers, Spawning, Morale and Artifacts (if I recall correctly, artifacts in ski can crash the game.)

* The software I'm useing is Note Studio because I can go back and forth between WinXP on my laptop and my Treo 680 pda seamlessly - it is also making the process fun.  ;D

* But during my research to find the best means for me to do this I came across MindTouches OSS Deki Wiki package - in one word, AWESOME. Absolutely brilliant implementation (in a VM), hands down the best (they also provide a free hosting service & aggregated developer community). If I ever do another remote collaborative - community based project this is what I would use over any CMS web framework, Groupware or other Wiki SW i'm familiar with. HIGHLY recommended.

- RV 

[Troman]

* One question I have is (& it may save hours of head scratching) - where exactly is the divergence between scripting SKI and scripting CAM..... that is - what exactly applies to one but not the other ? Or am I misreading that there is a distinction ?

There is almost no divergence. I think only the functions dealing with unit transporter can't be used in skirmish, can't think of anything else right now.

* So far CAM only: Timers, Spawning, Morale and Artifacts (if I recall correctly, artifacts in ski can crash the game.)

Artifacts and spawning can definitely be used in skirmish. I think I also used timers (the transporter timer that is shown in the upper-left corner, I think).
What i'm not sure about is morale, never needed that.

[Rman Virgil]

There is almost no divergence. I think only the functions dealing with unit transporter can't be used in skirmish, can't think of anything else right now.
Artifacts and spawning can definitely be used in skirmish. I think I also used timers (the transporter timer that is shown in the upper-left corner, I think).
What i'm not sure about is morale, never needed that.

* Thanks for those insights.

* "Spawning" you can, I know, but you wouldn't want to in Ski because you want your ai to manufacture their units useing factories just like the gamer (same with structs).

* The last thing I recall about artifacts in SKI is yes they can be there but chances were they would crash the game when clicked on.... granted, it's been a long time so I may not have all the details straight in mind.

* I mainly was concerned about using some SKI stuff in CAM scripting that would skrew-up in CAM mode. I came across some caveats in the extant material that led me to ask. Apparently it's nothing to worry about.

- Kwel, RV 

[Rman Virgil]

______________________________________>

* My goodness what a wealth of material and tools already exists for WZ Scripting.... I had no idea about 2/3s of the tools alone.

* Probably the most coherent ordering to date, IMO, was Karma's consolidation of the original script lang doc with Troman & Chojun's additions.

* Then the 2 tools I was totally unfamiliar with: NIKER's "VSC" (.slo & .vlo console / compiler) plus Bones0 & Troman's "A.I. Editor" (not to be confused with Tro's "Mission Editor" which I was at least aware of.)

* Then Coyote's aggregation of key a.i. docs, yet another treasure.

* Lots and lots of work - and that's not counting all the 1st class SKI a.i.s written on top of those doc and tool efforts. Obvious labors of love - impressive.  ;D

* Now let's see about assimmilating it all to the end of creating new & engageing CAM challenges, in 1-4 mission chunks (at least for me personally that's what this is all about - if I wanna play something beyond the original which thoroughly seduced me, then I'd best make it happen so at least I can enjoy the experience even if no one else likes it...heh.)

* Guess that's it for a spell.

- RV