The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other oddities.

[Rman Virgil]

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Part 2 ..... (Part 1)

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* Execution commenced with a few simple directives. *

1.) Create a 250 x 250 totally asymmetric HM with 3D curvature predominating such that from any location, in 3 dimensions, a unique 360 degree ground level vista would ensue, which would also include an irregular horizon from any viewing direction or elevation.

2.) In the textureing phase aspire to depart from the norm in composition effects, both in geometry and surface visual pattern, to conjoin macro and micro asymmetry on top of an overall sense of an organic, natural, landscape as opposed to one of blatant artifice, like a park or a farm or a linear box world of right angles. An illusion for sure, achieved partly in a manner akin to stage magic - aka, the art of misdirection. This goal would necessitate an inordinate amount of tile by tile handwork because FlaMe brushes couldnot achieve the effects I was after.

~ The rationale for # 1 & # 2: Trigger the neuro hardwired circuitry identified in evolutionary biology studies to be linked to human beings various visceral responses to different landscapes so as to further cement total game world immersion and the seduction of a willing suspension of disbelief when it came to the interactive story component.

* From the preceeding simple execution directives would evolve the following, more complex, goals and constructs. *

3.) "Earthworks" (or SAR geo-engineering).

4.) The specifics of the SAR Faction profile, the rationale for thier robust survival and the narrative leading up to the opening situation and GP of "New Pangaea SP".

5.) The creation of a variety of terrain forms whose function are to afford opportunities to excercise the widest range of historic military tacs on offense and defense, from fixed positions or by way of maneuver. These would also promote the visceral notion of puzzle pieces to work out to the players best advantage.

6.) Create distinct, and interlocking, Centers of Gravity to serve as singular arenas for conflicts to play out with a variety of deployment opportunities, from the classic 33 strats of war to modern, truely high-tech, 21st century war making as opposed to WW 1 disguised as 21st century.

It is these Center of Gravity constructs that also provide the opportunity for the weaker force to survive and eventually triumph in a conflict that is asymmetric from the start but towards end game, reverses the roles of the combatants by way of poised and fluid command itself forged in the crucible of resisting multi-vector assaults.

7.) Create finite quasi Supply Lines that could be exploited when up against limited, conventional resource attrition, if one dared to venture forth in the midst of resisting, multi-vector, combined arms, dual enemy onslaughts.

8.) Create the conditions to trigger certain hardwired neuro circuitry like:

* Cognitive biases and heuristics

* Mirror, spindle and oscillator neurons

* Affective Contagion

* The amygdala and the flight or fight response

~ The rationale for # 8 being.... promoting effective situational awareness, command and leadership amidst the seeming chaos of martial conflict by way of effectively dealing with hardwired neuro circuitry responses that are inapproriate or suboptimal to prevailing conditions and pressing decisions involving more than rote memorization or the cost accounting skills of a bean counter. A deeply satisfying process of triumph in the game proper as well the meta-game, me thinks, that harks more to the poised and fluid switch-tasking of a great general excercising grand strategy in battle than a CFO promoting company policy from a cozy corner office with a team of obediant minions.

In short - "YOU must be fully PRESENT to win."

There are 2 splendid examples from RL that illustrate, and summarize, all of # 8.

-> Any of Alexander the Greats performances on the battlefield.

-> The young Lieutenant Winston Churchill's expert horsemanship and leadership on the frontline in the battle with the Dervishes in September of 1898 wherein 20 thousand British & Egyptian troops triumphed over the opposing army of 60 thousand strong.

9.) The dramatic scenario "Triumph in the Balance" would serve the function of presenting, organically, an ethical dilemma in addition to setting the stage for the opening GP of "New Pangaea SP" to unfold. There will be no imposed imperative, or judgement, on the resolution of that ethical dilemma. The player will be free to choose the GP denoument of that ethical dilemma from several possible outcomes which I will not, by design, spellout.

10.) The Player would face opposition from 2 unallied forces simultaneously.

~ The "SAR": An advanced, isolationist, scavenger faction specializing in Earthworks geo-engineering.

~ The "ManGodAi": A next generation Nexus out of the Far East, led by Dr. Reed's son, Jason.

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* So, what it all amounts to in a nutshell.... *

It should be obvious by now that the "New Pangaea SP" GP is almost the complete opposite of how the game is played now, and has been for 15 years. The closest I can compare it to is a something of a mash-up between CAM & Challenges, without a preponderance of strictures, much more free form. But there are some strictures, very, very carefully chosen and by design kept on a minimalist continuum.

Much of what I have done would work way better with the WZ genome subset # 3 in play rather than only the # 1 & # 2 subsets. The # 3 unique RTS subset which I contend is where WZ's greatness resides, unfullfilled. 15 years have passed and subsets # 1 & # 2 have not resulted in greatness by any objective metric. In a sense this is a grand gambit, and work around, because if the # 3 unique RTS genome subset reaches fruition at some point, I may not be in a the position to make use of it, so I felt I needed to try and do something now, while I still can, with what was presently at hand, however less than ideal the implementation.

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* My segue to the supportive "Invisible College" *

After coming up with the detailed components and settling on the totality of what I was doing, but before going full tilt boogie into the home stretch, I felt a need for substantive discourse on all of it. My research first led me to the following works which inturn led me to individuals and communities vested in the subjects and thier practical design applications.

"The Ethics of Computer Games" by Miguel Sicart

"Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay" by Miguel Sicart

"Game Feel: A Game Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation" by Steve, Swink

"Digital Gameplay: Essays on the Nexus of Game and Gamer" by Nate Garrelts

"A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games" by Dylan Holmes

"Uncertainty in Games" by Greg Costikyan

"The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games" by Jesper Juul

"Critical Play: Radical Game Design" by Mary Flanagan

"How to Do Things With Videogames" by Ian Bogost

"Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History" by Matthew Wilhelm Kapell, Andrew B.R. Elliott

"In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation" by Gordon Calleja

"Playing at the World" by Jon Peterson

"Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game" by Graeme Kirkpatrick

"Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World" by Jane McGonigal

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[Rman Virgil]

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Refresher...

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[Rman Virgil]

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First, the graphic frontpiece, directly above re-attached, that presents essential info in the form of an excerpt from a faux Project history by one Omar Grimaldi pulled from the WZ expanded Timeline / Backstory, which is also in this thread on the preceeding page. Info that in a longer fiction, with a different story telling objective, I would dramatize through scenes, that is, show instead of tell.

Now an abreviated dramatic scenario that would set-up the GP of "New Pangaea SP" through an outright interactive fiction strategm.  

YOUR point of view. Your starting COMBAT point of view, to be explicit.
   
<------------------------->      

~ Triumph in the Balance ~  

Year 20 P.C., November 13 .... 0300...    

From the personal logs of Field Lieutenant Immanuel "Manny" Lorn, drafted interim commander of the SAR Mission in SW Gondwana.  

...Like the down drafts of a transport's air lift funnels passing over the biggest pile of crap imaginable, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. A lot worse.   

"We have him stabilized, Commander Lorn, but the prognosis remains the same. Christophe's chances of coming out of it with faculties intact are 50-50, at best."  

"Thanks, doc. Could you give us a few minutes ?"  

"Absolutely."  

Under yellow emergency lights in the flightless transport's sick bay, lights that flickered from glaring bright to sickly dim during SAR and Mangodai assaults, I found a patch of shadow between the curtain ring and bed that suited my present disposition to disappear if only for a few moments. From that darkness I looked down at Commander Christophe's coma induced peace. Forehead freshly bandaged, an irridescent cobalt blue cable attached to his synaptic link spinal junction emerging from behind the right side of the headboard to hook-up to the monitoring console on the night stand and then the less conspicuous life support tubing indicating he was more dead than alive. I wished it was me in his place and there was not a whit of nobility or compassion in that sentiment. Brutal self-honesty was the least I could give voice to within the confines of my skull.  

For the upteenth time since Commander Christophe succumbed two days ago, a minor head contusion turned catastrophic aneurysm, I questioned whatever possessed him to select me as his second in line and why the great Elijah Bearheart supported it before the Project High Council, not seeing me for what I was, just a lucky trooper at the tail end of the NEXUS campaign. Right place, right time, force strength on my side, I tripped into those moments of glory. No real test of mettle, that. Here and now, I had endless time to feel the tightening grip in my chest, the heavy knot in my gut, the dry bile welling in my throat. It's how I awoke in a cold sweat, near jumping out of my skin, from what little sleep I allowed myself the past four days since we were totally blown off the course plotted for us by the Project Protectorate mission planning brain trust.  

Instead of skirting inland to the far west of old Belize and then south to the SAR parlay coordinates, both transports ended up crossing Mangodai air space directly over thier fortified beachead in NE Laurasia. The troop transport powering through unscathed but the super transport took two direct hits aft that led to our forced landing in S.W. Gondwana and the current, collective, predicament; mine, Commander Christophe's and our under-resourced diplomatic contingent. Looking on the upside, we were lucky that it was all the misfortune we suffered that twilight, a direct result of Mother Nature's unpredictable rampage. The same typhoon winds that sent us far astray east also prevented the Mangodai from scrambling thier interceptors. In addition, at least our intel was confirmed that Jason Reed's Mangodai offensive had not yet extended beyond the beachead to begin overwhelming the SAR with thier superior tech to the ends of appropriating  both thier resource wealth and the advanced weather modification facility located in thier Central Gondwana stronghold.

"Commander ?"  

"What is it, trooper Tushenko ?"  

"Per your orders, the Fire Base has been re-upped with 2 engineers and 2 mechanics. The inner perimeter walls completed with the additional gates installed at your designated coordinates.   Should we proceed with the Borg Factory and continue with a mobile defense posture or bring up fixed defense batteries ?  And last.... is Commander Christophe's Troop Transport recon still belayed ?"  

How could months of careful planning and preparation cooked-up by the finest minds of The Project Protectorate go to hell so thoroughly and a purely diplomatic mission become a knock down, drag out scrape for survival. Kill or be killed, pure and simple. All our attempts to reach the SAR high command to reassure them our missing the designated time and coordinates for the parlay was no Project imperial ruse, have so far come to zilch. Of course, they had rejected all our treaty overtures outright and only in the last communique, because of the imminent Mangodai invasion, reluctantly agreed to a very limited in scope parlay.

And what of Jason Reed's Mangodai forces ? Surely they'd continue breathing down our necks, with their interceptors and bomber sorties added to the SAR multi-vector, combined arms ground forces with choppers for gunship air support.

From our clearly weak position and force strength, fighting for survival on two fronts, how long could we continue to hold our own ? Under such conditions how were we to follow through on all our mission objectives ?

Something had to give out of this unmitigated mess !

And yet...

 

(Continued)  

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[Rman Virgil]

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(concluding...)

 

"Commander ?"  

"Yes... get the Borg Factory going. Keep the Fire Base re-supplied, as needed. We have to hold that position or we're done. And have the Troop Transport go ahead with the recon but I want its flight path limited to the southern corridor east to the coast, then hugging the coast perimeter north to our western boundry and back to HQ. And, I want Sarg. Kurt Miller to pilot. Anything else ?"

"That covers it for now, sir. I'll see to it."  

Everything to this point had been driven by the lay of the land, energy scarcity and SAR assault waves that began at daylight day two after the crash and like clockwork ever since, along with these erie reprieves at sunset. Mangodai bomber sorties began the third day after crashing in SW Gondwana. We had bought those extra days of reprieve from Jason Reed's forces by deactivating our transponders after sending that SOS and then running silent before our forced landing, and ever since.

Pure attrition was Commander Christophe's assessment day one and our tactical responses since, for the most part, still his command decisions. But now with Commander Christophe effectively out of the picture, I would have to step up big time, make critical choices under fire, and out of the weakest posture imaginable, try to survive and salvage, at least, the core mission of keeping the weather hacking facility out of Jason Reed's Mangodai grasp even if killing SAR wholesale was the only way. Doing it all knowing full well that, unlike Commander Christophe, I was no born leader; no master of grand strategy or the millennia history of martial tactics at my fingertips to exploit with poised decisiveness. More to the point, in this quiet eye of the storm, I am keeping at bay wishful thoughts of reinforcements and rescue. Those only seem natural and not shameful as strikes me my niggling notion that there was still a chance of a miracle command reprieve out of Cheyenne Mountain from Project Protectorate HQ, one led by Bearheart himself.  

But still, contrary courses of actions, so called discreationary command options, pooled into my mind unbidden, like blood quick filling a wound.  

Should I continue with the hunkering-down strategy in the hope that our SOS the night of the typhoon had gotten through before our running silent lock-down and that the Project Protectorate was marshalling a combination rescue team and strike force that was at this moment on its way to our position ? Was this our only viable option ?    

We still had the Troop Transport in good shape but we also were sure of ground air defenses in the vicinity, not to mention the enemy air offenses which had fighters accompanying their bomber sorties. Should we evacuate this position ? Make a run for it ? Some would stay behind and perish to make any successful air evacuation even possible at this juncture. Should I pursue that course this fourth day ? And if so, would it not be best done under cover of darkness, before the dawning when for certain the assault waves would begin again ?

Other courses of action would be to hold down our base of operations while building up some strike force capabilty to either push back, hit 'n run, on the Mangodai foothold or try to penetrate the SAR defensive perimeters to take-out the advanced weather hacking facility in Central Gondwana even if that meant the wholesale loss of innocent SAR lives and irreperable damage to any future diplomatic relations.

All decisions I never anticipated ever having to face when I volunteered. This was not at all what the New Pangaea Mission was supposed to be about. Not at all what I had signed up for when the Rocky Mountain HQ barracks scuttlebutt had it this would be a mission to die for and an exception to the unwritten rule that you never volunteer unless command volunteered you.    

The source of the scuttlebutt being Project Director Eijah Bearheart's announcement of the startling discoveries of Team Epsilon's covert mission to Colorado's second D.U.M.B. below the DIA Aerotropolis. From there rumors began to circulate about the formation of an Expeditionary Foray Team to Central Gondwana.

And this was where my covetous, self-serving, journey began.

The prospect of being on the team that would secure a possible working planet-wide climate hacking technology facility would be a great opportunity to garner the honor that was always a precursor to major advancement in rank and all the boons that went with it. If I had passed it up and left to pure chance that another, better, future opportunity would arise, I would have been a bloody fool. Carpe diem, hur-rah !

But the initial mission parameters got more complicated after my acceptance onto the team. The evolving SAR situation, the Mangodai invasion wildcard, had these been part of the mission profile upfront I likely would have had second thoughts and not been so gung-ho.
 
What I saw as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to die for only a few months back now looks to be the death of me and my brothers in arms whose fate, by a cruel twist of mother nature, were suddenly under my absolute command.

As the old, pre-collapse, credo had it - life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.

"Commander."

"Yes..."

"We've detected a Mangodai ground vector at our northern most western corridor. How shall we proceed  ?"

Crap. What now, yet another front to contend with.

Looks like my pivotal decisions begin in earnest. And ye gods man, buck-up ! If your fate is to go down fighting, try to not even think like such a whinny cry baby about the unfairness of it all...

Lastest draft but not likely the final as I tend to hack away till I get it as tight as I can and intuitively I feel I'm not quite there yet. But I'm posting it anyhow because at this late stage I wanna provide something of substance that gives a clear picture of where this is all headed.

In this end game stage I'm of 2 very different mindsets - the making mind and the testing mind. The making is well in hand, the testing presents a paradox. I bring to the making intimate know-how of what I've done and to what ends. In the testing of it all I have to foster "beginners mind" to best assess the value of the resulting GP experience. That's the paradox and the way I've come, in practical terms, to advancing the cause is by putting days of space between making and then testing the results with "beginners mind". Sometimes I wonder why I ever pursued this but it is the home stretch so it is just a matter of focusing to see it through and whatever it takes will just have to be its natural tempo.

That's it till the finish.
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[Rman Virgil]

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One loose end to tie-up...

I clarified it in an other thread, the great game that has influenced me over the last couple months, but have yet to do so here. That would be Deus Ex (2000), which escaped my attention until just recently. I also mentioned a connection to WZ. That connection was the most heated discussion we had with WZ Creators which took place in the summer of 1999. The discussion boiled down to this statement:

"For chrissakes, this is a game, what does ethics have to do with it ?"

Without being aware of it till a few months ago, the following year, in 2000, "Deus Ex" answered that question definitively, & ever after.

From that "Deus Ex" influence, I've journeyed to other areas and influences, the following being the most pivotal.

Imbedded in the "New Pangaea SP" stage-setting, opening scenario, in a manner natural and not heavy handed I hope, are a series of possible courses of GP actions that are influenced by a field called "Trolleyology", that was set in motion in 1967 by philosopher Phillipa Foot.

This "Trolleyology" field has grown tremendously over the years and has even entered West Point's officer training program called "Just War".

For "officer", in our context here, read "Commander".

Another area of influence in my making, linked to the trolleyology set-ups, has been exploring the diffs between Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence and thier being affected by Scarcity conditions, real or just percieved as such.

* In "New Pangaia SP" there are any number of ways to "win", as there are degrees of success. It is both your choice and determination, how your victory is fashioned and at what cost.
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[Rman Virgil]

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Three posts last week made me realize I had not done a good enough job of connecting all the dots - past, present and future - of the WZ Original Design Genome, its core unfullfilled GP Gestalt, and the divide between a ho-hum, marginalized, RTS uniqueness and undeniable RTS greatness by any metric. It is a tale of seeing both forest and trees and the web of dynamic relations that make for an ecology of climax sustainabilty and spectacular, generative, robustness.  

First up are those 3 posts:  

Warzone Unofficial Stats  

Warzone Official Stats  

Forum's Activity  

The major trendings indicated in these current stats are consistent with stats from from 1999 and the entire pre source lib era. That tells me a number of things that warrant a conversation and not this monologue. While intimately related to all within this thread, it deserves its own thread discussion but doing that is no longer within my purview.  

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Let me continue connecting the dots by recaping what I know (from the horses mouth, beginning in April of 1999 and into the source release package of 2004) of the Original WZ Design Genome and GP Gestalt.  

I divide WZ's unique RTS genome into 3 subsets.  

First - what made it into Retail release v. 1.0.  

Second - radical mutations added to, and subtracted from, the initial retail release genome in the months of April '99 thru July '99 ... then some changes and additions over the post lib era.  

Third - the genome subset that was scaled back or turned off before retail release in '99 (decided in '98) for reasons related to economics, deadlines and software / hardware tech not being sufficiently powerful enough at the time to fully pull off the designs. It is in this area were I have been mainly focused since lib.

It is my contention that WZ's greatness resides exactly here in unfullfilled promise. It requires core tech changes to fulfill, which are in part already underway, like the JS API. Others are yet to evolve. Like reconstituted UI widgets informed by CTA - Cognitive Task Analysis.  

"New Pangaea SP" is an attempt to see how far the GP envelope can be pushed with only the 1st and 2nd subset of the genome in play.

 
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The connection to this, my last WZ project, is specifically stated in the following and it is also part of honoring a promise I made 15 years ago to WZ Creators and the pre-lib community. There's an old expression related to reliable character traits: "Your word is as good as gold." The tradition I was raised under said that this wasn't enough. Your word had to be better than gold. Especially under adversity. With this posting, I've come to the terminus of a 15 year journey of doing and advocacy consistent with the totality of honoring that promise made in the autumn of 1999.  

* So, what it all amounts to in a nutshell.... *  

It should be obvious by now that the "New Pangaea SP" GP is almost the complete opposite of how the game is played now, and has been for 15 years. The closest I can compare it to is a something of a mash-up between CAM & Challenges, without a preponderance of strictures, much more free form. But there are some strictures, very, very carefully chosen and by design kept on a minimalist continuum.  

Much of what I have done would work way better with the WZ genome subset # 3 in play rather than only the # 1 & # 2 subsets. The # 3 unique RTS subset which I contend is where WZ's greatness resides, unfullfilled.

15 years have passed and subsets # 1 & # 2 have not resulted in greatness by any objective metric. In a sense this is a grand gambit, and work around, because if the # 3 unique RTS genome subset reaches fruition at some point, I may not be in a the position to make use of it, so I felt I needed to try and do something now, while I still can, with what was presently at hand, however less than ideal the implementation.

 

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So let's zone in on that # 3 unique RTS Design Genome and GP Gestalt subset:
 

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... When I say "much vital life left in her" I have something very specific in mind that relates to a component of Pumpkin's original GP design that wasn't fully realized for various reasons back in the retail days, but will be possible down the road. This component has a direct connection to the classic Sci Fi novel "Ender's Game" from the 1980's (and the sequence is beautifully realized in the 2013 movie which I can now point to as a spectacular illustration of the yet to be fully realized GPM in question that my piddly words over the years have failed to adequately convey). The full development of this GPM would also reverse the 15 year trend of pallid MP statistics compared to Campaign and Skirmish popularity. It is also were WZ's promise of greatness to be fullfilled still resides, I'm sure.

 

The fullest explication of this takes place in these threads:  

Alex Lee, Pumpkin A.I. Guru, speaks to Original Commander Design  

Commanders: Original Vision, Crippled Default, Future ?  

Commander Command Improvements -- What ? Details ?  

Idea: Mini-AI to automate player's commanders    

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The development path to realization of the #3 subset of the Original WZ Design Genome and GP Gestalt, as I comprehend it, are as follows in somewhat of a SCRUM order.  

~ 1.) "JS API": the necessary foundation to all else that follows. There are at least a thousand postings.  

~ 2.) "Re-tooling the Mini-Map", which to me is a most elegant way to proceed at this juncture:
 

The minimap in 3.1 should be exactly as in 2.3.9, and to the extent that it is not, that is a bug. Control over the minimap has been moved to scripts to allow for more customization, so for campaign, it will be buggy until we've managed to port the campaign to javascript, or we add minimap control to the wzscript and manage to fix up all the old scripts. It is a work in progress.

 
(I added italics for emphasis.)  

Oh boy  :hmm: .... I wonder - does that mean it may be more feasible to do this ?:    

   

........What would be helpful is if your Combat Groups where identifiable and could be maneuvered on the Mini-Map..  

- For example..  

- You have 3 Combat Groups: #1, #2 and #3.  

- You see those #s on the Mini-Map and can do the following: set-up way points, patrols, coordinated offensive maneuvers from multiple vectors and at varying velocities. Basically, this is how 21st Century RL Military OPs are executed. It's called "C3" for "Communications, Command, and Control".

IMHO it would be an elegant way to advance such an Original Design Genome game play mechanic in WZ. You would be re-assembling what's already there and you wouldn't even need a new UI. Neat. ('Course it could be further refined once the UI Widget schema is re-vamped making more feasible something slong the lines of Elio's New Command UI prototype / mock-ups...)  

- This would also have the side benefit of relieving some of the bogus switch-tasking strain of attending NON-combat tasks while trying to control a major offensive in theater.  

As I have said elsewhere -   "I think the switch-tasking excessive when it degrades the battlefield experience of the game which for me is the #1 experience that all other GPMs are building up to and that all features and UI's should serve to enhance."  

- Toodles, whip.  :ninja: (4/23/09)  

In sum, you would be integrating more precise Command & Control maneuver functionality of Combat Groups into the Mini-Map and thereby effectively expanding the player's capacity for fun switch-tasking between Non-Combat and Combat decision making (aka "Situational Awareness"), while also expanding the range of in-theater multi-vector tactics which in-turn would be part of the core matrix for making Commander usage in MP way more viable.   Hmm...  :geek:

 

~ 3.) "UI Widgets" original schema entirely replaced. There are numerous postings on this critical advance.  

~ 4.) "Reconstituted Game Camera" and related transition anim:  

Camera Moves  

MC Tween: Anim Types / Camera Transitions    

~ 5.) Fully deved "Drive Mode / Battle CAM" - beyond the PS 1 implementation.  

Drive Mode  

Deactivating the Battle View (from the psx version)  

======>  

I'll answer any questions or speak to any vetting contentions, but my intent is to make only one more post in the bbs and that would be the one with the attached "New Pangaia SP" file werein I explain my dev play parameters (which can be flexibly amended to adjust challenge difficulty) along with its deliberate sandbox design offering opportunities for varying degrees of modification by any who may take an interest in experimenting, beyond its release scope, within a base matrix of interlocking, non-rote, GP, atypical Map Design & making creative use of variant A.I.'s / Mod combos.

EDIT: The expanded WZ Timeline & backstory - just to have it on this final page. The "New Pangaia SP" story is derived from it, as is my WZ inspired novel which I'll go back to exclusively focus on once this last project is completed. The scope and aesthetic of the novel has trancended its roots in WZ in the process of making, which is why I now see it as "inspired by" and clearly no longer fan fiction directly derived from the canon. That transformation is no accident.
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[Rman Virgil]

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40 mins. into intensely and happily play-testing my latest build, and a new show stopping glitch manifests to figure out that causes a CTD - "pallete buffer overflow". Hopefully I haven't pushed the envelope to far and asked of the ol' girl more than she's able to provide at present. Worst case, I suspect I may have to sacrifice some progessive GFX for progessive GP. We'll see.
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[Rman Virgil]

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A buffer overflow occurs when data written to a buffer also corrupts data values in memory addresses adjacent to the destination buffer due to insufficient bounds checking. This can occur when copying data from one buffer to another without first checking that the data fits within the destination buffer.

Well, I definitely don't have the skills to fix this.

However, what I can try over the weekend is to reduce the data load and see if that will be a sufficient work around. Not supprising that I have to invoke yet another work-around in an effort brimming with 'em already.
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[Jorzi]

Are you talking about the textures getting screwed up (i.e. getting the wrong texpages) because that happened to me before and per fixed it by upping the texpage limit from 128 to 256.

[Rman Virgil]

Are you talking about the textures getting screwed up (i.e. getting the wrong texpages) because that happened to me before and per fixed it by upping the texpage limit from 128 to 256.

I get the CDT with the palette buffer overflow declaration and no visual symptoms leading up to it (that I can tell) so I'm but surmising a cause and effect relationship in this area that I won't be able to test for till tomorrow by reducing the data load substantively, which is the only way I can think of going about ferreting out the culprit.

That said, WZ was written in C and my understanding is that "C provides no built-in protection against accessing or overwriting data in any part of memory; more specifically, it does not check that data written to a buffer is within the boundaries of that buffer." Also, while "various techniques have been used to detect or prevent buffer overflows, with various tradeoffs, the most reliable way to avoid or prevent buffer overflows is to use automatic protection at the language level. But, this sort of protection, however, cannot be applied to legacy code."

So, with my novice understanding of the above, if the culprit is data load, my work around may be the only way for me to go forward.

Now I suspect that the 1000-2000 maps made that are compatible with the current binary will not invoke this issue because, relatively speaking, thier structure is no where near as complex and thus the degree and extent of buffer bounding demands is way less.

That is the all of my tyro understanding.

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[Rman Virgil]

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An other full hour beyond that 40 min glitch threshold and no CTD. So I guess my work-around worked ... sacrificing some beauty for GP, my main goal. Now I can leave in 24 hours for my 10 day archeological adventure in Agua Fria, AZ (450+ identified sites of which only 2 have published coordinates - an effort to discourage looters for lack of sufficient manpower to adequately protect, pristine, this vast preserve) and be somewhat assured that when I get back I can finish up the final stages of GP development, fulfilling all my core original goals on this long, but very rewarding, journey of making and fresh discoveries. (While there is yet a chance of other glitches arising in these final stages, I'm holding to an optimism that working solutions will also come to the fore.)

And as for that set of goals, they can be summarized thus -

GP that is a roller coaster ride, start to finish, evoking visceral adventure and fun out of a slew of challenging risks that are neither transparently formulaic, predictable or rote but still, utterly compelling.

Incidently, creating affable, genuinely funny, amusements has much in common with those stated goals of interactive GP fun and in thier absence you're likely to end up with a relentless affront to congenial good sense, as much as to any greatly appealing nonsense, tomfoolery or comical hijinks, resulting in a towering monument to the humorless, both off-putting & excruciatingly boreing.
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[Rman Virgil]

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On using "New Pangaea SP" as a Sandbox or remaking the gameplay:

Back from my South West, 4 Corners, forays and working on the last phase of dev. It's no longer the work of making that is time consuming... much more the testing that is demanding as it combines GP aesthetic pref goals (within total asymmetry *) implemented thru a basic scientific experiment protocol (altering but 1 variable at a time, out of a core set that form the design insights, then testing... repeating for every variable change), this being an absolute necessity if one is not to succumb to getting lost in utter design chaos with results that more resemble a steaming pile of dog poop than a fun, challenging, diverse, GP experience (take heed those of you who choose to go the "Sandbox" route). Then there is the challenge of approaching the testing as if I had not created it all or, at least, not use knowledge someone else couldnot know unless they cheated upfront or, best yet, aquired the knowhow by having played through it several times.

Upgraded to v. 3.1.1 and USM v.1.15. This necessitated some minor modifications but, in addition, there was a positively serendipitous emergent behavior (GP) that added another layer of tactical depth to the whole that I'm totally delighted with (something of a variant to Troman's "Move-Base-Event" of the pre-lib era). So I'm making changes to reinforce that development.

Won't be long before I wrap this up and post the .zip with all the relevant files to the play experience accompanied by a post that explains the set-up to playing it as deved as well the underlieing design insights necessary to approach it as a Sandbox inorder to successfully remake the GP experience to your own tastes and vision using "New Pangaia SP" as a base or doing it from scratch to create a very different dynamic GP mashup of "CAM & Challenge" without altering or writing scripts or moding data files... Just a basic working facility with FlaMe, an understanding of WZ, coupled with those design insights, will serve your creative GP vision.

However, with all that said, I'm very mindful of Groucho Marx's quip:

"Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes ?

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* A work that has vastly deepened my appreciation of "asymmetry" -

Lucifer's Legacy: The Meaning of Asymmetry by physicist Frank Close

(Revised edition, November 26, 2013, of the original 2000 publication by Oxford Uni Press, which includes the latest work out of CERN).
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[Merowingg]

Hello Rman!

All is good, I have written the e mail to you, please read it, and do please respond. I just postponed answering as I very often do to think about things.

I hope I did not do anything inappropriate. Please explain, you have confused me a little with the last action. And once again thank you for evrything. I have no idea where did you take the idea something is wrong from.

Regards,

Mero

[Rman Virgil]

Hello Rman!

All is good, I have written the e mail to you, please read it, and do please respond. I just postponed answering as I very often do to think about things.

I hope I did not do anything inappropriate. Please explain, you have confused me a little with the last action. And once again thank you for evrything. I have no idea where did you take the idea something is wrong from.

Regards,

Mero

Hey there....

I'll look for the email, Mero. It's not in my inbox. My forum settings have PMs activated, FYI.

My disposition is across the board, this board (or at least 90% of it), and I should speak to it straightforwardly, and specifically, so that there are no misunderstandings like this. Plus, it may shed some light on matters relevant to the ubiquitous dearth that transcend anything to do with me or my particular disposition.

The email, and a complete response in this post, will have to wait till late tonight or tomorrow as I'm getting ready to leave the crib for a full day of pickinicking, fishing, volleyballing and playing music as part of the Cinco de Mayo celebration here in Rock Mountain country. (By choice, I'll have my mobile net connectivity turned off all day. I'm atypical that way. )

I'll also take that occasion of expanding on this post to attatch an On Topic screenshot at the heart of the "New Pangaea SP" GP Mission which I can't believe I have not done heretofore.

- Regards, Rman.

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=====================> EDIT:

While this arena is not synonymous with RL, or society at large, there is overlap and it is by definition a form of civil society and, as such, I donot hold myself to a lower standard of conduct merely cause I can get away with it here a lot easier than in RL because RL mechanisms of accountability are firmly anchored in both social and professional spheres and there are real consequences to behavior unbecoming those standards. This statement being a precursor to what follows.

At its core WZ GP is driven to triumph or defeat by energy availibility and application, in the form of oil.

The heart of my being is shaped by the flow and balance of a type of energy known by many names in different cultural traditions over millenia. I will choose but one, Qi (Chi), because it is most familiar in the Western mainstream. Qi can be translated as "life force energy" - but that just scratches the surface.

- You enter a room and immediately percieve the air so thick with tension you could cut it with a knife.

- You go on a blind date and within 60 seconds you know there is no way this is gonna work to anyone's benefit.

- You attend your Aikido dojo for a Rondori practice session, in which you defend against multiple attackers in quick succession without knowing how they will attack or in what order. On this ocassion, you take all 6 of them out.

These 3 examples are of Qi manifest - one where it flows in balance and 2 were it does not.

My public WZ engagements over the last several months have been 2 fold: my "New Pangaea SP" project and substantive, relevant, contributions to discussions started by others. The former has been in 100% alignment with my Qi. The latter, predominantly (with a very few, but notable, exceptions), have not been in alignment with my Qi (have yielded unwholesome discontinuities). As a result I have forgone most all of my natural impulses to participate.

After completing "New Pangaea SP", any future engagement with WZ will be strictly predicated on core developments spelled out in my 2 "Design Doc" posts and my "Connecting the Dots" post, both on this page. In short, I will avoid all else that has proven a bane to my Qi, from a now long track record of experience. I can only speak for myself but suspect I'm not alone in this type experience or that dearth is but freaky happenstance. It is what it is and I have adapted as a trade-off to what I still value about the game.

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Bringing it back on topic......

An important aspect of "New Pangaea SP's" GP was inspired by the aforementioned Aikido Rondori practice sessions.

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[Rman Virgil]

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Just have enough energy to post a screen of the Advanced Weather Modification Uplink in the SAR heartland of SE Gondwana. This is also representive of the asymmetry and level of detail throughout the 250 x 250 expanse. After a goodnight sleep I'll get to the promised writing - both expanded post and clarifying email.

=========> EDIT:

My previous post has been ammended to explain my position with specificity...

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