Pie Viewer

[Black Sabbath]

...you do realize that's exactly what Warzone Guide does?

Well yes and no. It does provide alot of info and has been a great help in playing the new version of the game but as far as I can tell it just displays info and you have no ability through it to change the actual game data.

By the way, you can have its source code if you want. It might help.

Whats it written in?


I'll give you an example based on your guide. I'm a defencive player so I'll use my favorite example. I'm not sure what your DPS statistic is but here is the info I gathered on my favorite defencive weapon.

Weapon - Mortar
hit points - 600
armour (kinetic)-10 (thermal)-10
strength - Hard
price - 125
Damage -120 (upgraded)-336
ROF -10 (upgraded)-16.7
DPS -10 (upgraded)-60.7
Accuracy -40-50% (upgraded)-52-65%
Range - 9-18
upgraded damage = Damage * ROF
= 336 * 16.7
=5611.2

Weapon - Bombard
hit points - 600
armour (kinetic)-10 (thermal)-10
strength - Hard
price - 150
Damage -240 (upgraded)-672
ROF -6.7 (upgraded)-11.2
DPS -13.3 (upgraded)-80.7
Accuracy -40-50% (upgraded)-52-65%
Range - 9-18
upgraded damage = Damage * ROF
= 672 * 11.2
= 7526.4

Weapon - Pepperpot
hit points - 600
armour (kinetic)-10 (thermal)-10
strength - Medium
price - 325
Damage -28 (upgraded)-78.4
ROF -66.7 (upgraded)-111.2
DPS -15.6 (upgraded)-94.6
Accuracy -40-50% (upgraded)-52-65%
Range - 9-18
upgraded damage = Damage * ROF
= 78.4 * 111.2
= 8718.08

To make everything fair I have taken the upgraded damage and the upgraded ROF for each weapon so we can compare damage for a specified period of time and we get

Weapon - Mortar
upgraded damage = Damage * ROF
= 336 * 16.7
=5611.2

Weapon - Bombard
upgraded damage = Damage * ROF
= 672 * 11.2
= 7526.4

Weapon - Pepperpot
upgraded damage = Damage * ROF
= 78.4 * 111.2
= 8718.08

So clearly Pepperpot does do the most damage and the Mortar does the least damage.......

But I can build almost 3 Mortar pits for the price of 1 Pepperpot pit and 3 Mortar pits could deliver 16833.6 worth of damage

So I like to evaluate damage based on dollars spent so I use the following formula

Damage Per Dollar Spent = Damage * ROF / price

Weapon - Mortar
Damage Per Dollar Spent = Damage * ROF / price
= 336*16.7/125
= 44.89


Weapon - Bombard
Damage Per Dollar Spent = Damage * ROF / price
=672 * 11.2/150
= 50.18


Weapon - Pepperpot
Damage Per Dollar Spent = Damage * ROF / price
=78.4 * 111.2/325
= 26.82

So with this formula it is clearly evident that a Pepperpot is just a waste of money.

I just want to be able to select and compare different weapons/technologies and run them through different formulas that will hopefully make balancing the game easier. I would like to be able to select Mortar, Bombard, Pepperpot from a list and have all the above info displayed on one screen where I can then go in and adjust the damage and/or ROF for the Pepperpot so I can raise its Damage Per Dollar Spent to 55-56 and have the updated data saved in its apropriate file.

[whippersnapper]

.
EDIT: "Chopped liver" it would seem, an acquired taste no doubt, so I have removed it. Sorry for the intrusion in the first place. O_O

L8r, whipper
.

[Black Sabbath]

to get you up to date quickly:

a new terrain renderer will be introduced viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2379 where we don't have to adjust the tiles anymore.


no need to reinvent the wheel
check out WZM_format and viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2156

regards
elio

Thanks for all that info, I have seen gerard_'s post on the new terrain and I would dump my land editor for that terain no problem As far as the PFE editor is concerned I always wanted to write a modeling program so I will probably finish it and a modeling package is really just a way to add/delete/manipulate/animate a bunch of polygons and their textures. I want to use a PFE format because it can be read in by the same code that would read a PIE file but I could also create Save_As_WZM & Load_WZM buttons for the editor. I would have to check and see if the FRAMES (animation) section of your WZM format is the same as Warzone uses in their .ani files.

So I think the work that you guys are doing is great but I have my own ideas and one of my key goals is to make sure that my single player skirmish game will allways support all the data/file structures that came with Warzone 1.10, I will make sure the engine loads PIE files as floating point numbers so PFE files can be supported in the future and allow for multiple levels of tiling for land files but I have spent many many .....years going all the way back to NEWST with this game and a few people have made some new models and a few have made some new maps and a couple good AI's and thats in 10 years so hopefully you guys have better luck at getting better models made & textured. I have always found that there is a definete lack of artists in these projects. I can whip polygons around all day and make some pretty cool looking models but I'm crap at photoshop so I am stuck with crappy looking textures I can find for free so hopefully you guys can find a good combination of artists and modelers to give new life to the graphical side of the game.

So I'm sticking with whats out there and available now and making provisions for what may be available in the future. PFE format allows me to be 100% backwards compatible and so does my land editor. I think gerard_'s land is better than mine so if my engine will work with original editworld files and his new version of land then I will scrap my land editor's future development.

Personally I see no advantage to the WZM format. You may get some benefit from "joint-less" bone animation ("bone heap" animation) with cyborg movement but for vehicles and structures warzones .ani format is fine. I think the amount of work that is going to be needed to convert everything to handle WZM format is going to outway any advantage that is gained

[Zarel]

Well yes and no. It does provide alot of info and has been a great help in playing the new version of the game but as far as I can tell it just displays info and you have no ability through it to change the actual game data.

I can add the ability to change game data, but I haven't yet because the CSV format is going to be replaced with SQLite too soon for it to be worth it.

Whats it written in?

PHP

I'll give you an example based on your guide. I'm a defencive player so I'll use my favorite example. I'm not sure what your DPS statistic is but here is the info I gathered on my favorite defencive weapon.

That's why, if you mouseover "DPS", it'll tell you - DPS = damage per second.

To make everything fair I have taken the upgraded damage and the upgraded ROF for each weapon so we can compare damage for a specified period of time and we get

Weapon - Mortar
upgraded damage = Damage * ROF
= 336 * 16.7
=5611.2

It's actually
max(Damage - Armor, Damage * 0.3) * ROF * accuracy

(My DPS statistic is based on Damage * ROF * accuracy, which is why it's labeled "DPS/A0" for "DPS at armor 0")

Anyway, this is why Pepperpot is actually weaker than Bombard, despite the higher DPS - more of its damage is reduced by armor, so Bombard is effectively always more powerful than Pepperpot.

I just want to be able to select and compare different weapons/technologies and run them through different formulas that will hopefully make balancing the game easier. I would like to be able to select Mortar, Bombard, Pepperpot from a list and have all the above info displayed on one screen where I can then go in and adjust the damage and/or ROF for the Pepperpot so I can raise its Damage Per Dollar Spent to 55-56 and have the updated data saved in its apropriate file.

That's something I'd like to have my guide do, but it isn't in the near future. If you want to do something like that, go ahead.

[elio]

maybe another input download/file.php?id=2652&mode=view

[Black Sabbath]

maybe another input download/file.php?id=2652&mode=view

WOW thats incredible !

- a bigger more detailed mini map
- lots of usefull statistics on components
- upgraded command buttons
- and a nice little reminder in the top right of the screen

Very nice and very well tied in to the original theme. Wish I had that sort of imagination.

[Black Sabbath]

That's something I'd like to have my guide do, but it isn't in the near future. If you want to do something like that, go ahead.

Well I've written lots of code to read PIE files & ANI file and land files so what I really need to do now is go through the rest of the data files like research and weapons and structures.... to get a better feel for it and probably for me the easiest way is to develop some code to read all the data in and then I can link data from one file to another and that will allow me to more easilly see the whole picture and at that point I can make a couple copies of the workspace and use 1 copy to create a ballancing program and the other copy can be the start of the actual game.

The other thing I need to do is to go through the original source and find all the relevant formula's.
I have seen that damage formula in the code before

max(Damage - Armor, Damage * 0.3) * ROF * accuracy

I just didn't bother with accuracy in my formula because it is a constant for all 3 weapons so it really has no effect when comparing the overall value of the different weapons

[Black Sabbath]

Well heres a start at loading some of the data. I've got PRResearch.txt & Names.txt loaded from the original Warzone 2100 ver 1.10.

For now the main screen is a display of all the PRResearch.txt data and that is linked to Names.txt to extract the actual name for each item. On the main screen you can select any topic you like and it will expand its research tree.

wzresearch2.jpg

The second screen will display the expanded tree.

Topics in red are duplicate pre requisites so you will find elsewhere in the tree that those topics have been expanded to show their pre requisites if they have any.

wzresearch1.jpg

If this was available in game you could display all the tittles in green that have allready been researched and the tittles in blue would be the items you have left to research. Anyways its a good start, alot more data to add (costs, time to research...) and display but you have to start somewhere.

[Kamaze]

That colouring hurts my eyes.

[stiv]

That colouring hurts my eyes.

Dark blue text on a black background is the scourge of the InteWebs.