Post by: Chairman on December 14, 2009, 03:20:04 AM
Post by: ZimRathbone on December 14, 2009, 06:28:37 AM
Post by: Chairman on January 09, 2010, 02:36:44 AM
I have set my game to automatic turns, but someone is finding interresting stuffs almost every second, 5 - 15 seconds is the norm...
It´s like seeing one of those slow tree dwelling mammals moving over the screen....
Post by: ZimRathbone on January 09, 2010, 06:38:20 AM
Quote from: "Chairman"
Hmmm, thinks it is irritating. Ok if something happens to me I can buy it, but if a race out "there" finds something interresting, why should I want to know it???
I have set my game to automatic turns, but someone is finding interresting stuffs almost every second, 5 - 15 seconds is the norm...
It´s like seeing one of those slow tree dwelling mammals moving over the screen....
I suspect that you have a couple of NPRs engaged in a battle. Use the automated turns option. Click the check box at the top of the System Map (F3) , and run from there. The program will only stop if there is an event that affects the current default race. This WILL be a bit slower if there is serious action going on - I sometimes go off to create a good source of brownian motion at this sort of time as it can take a liitle while!
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 09, 2010, 08:23:11 AM
Quote from: "Chairman"
Hmmm, thinks it is irritating. Ok if something happens to me I can buy it, but if a race out "there" finds something interresting, why should I want to know it???The occasional slowdowns are the penalty for having realistic non-player races that behave according to the same rules as your own race. Even more so in v4.8 with the new civilian contracts. I could prevent the program from shortening the increments when NPRs detect something interesting but if that something interesting was your homeworld, they would likely appear in orbit at the end of the long increment
I have set my game to automatic turns, but someone is finding interresting stuffs almost every second, 5 - 15 seconds is the norm...
It´s like seeing one of those slow tree dwelling mammals moving over the screen....
. As a player you may even witness two NPRs fighting, which would look very odd if they didn't use the same time increment system as your own Empire.However, if you have had short increments of a few seconds for a long time then it is possible there is a bug. Are you getting constant 5 second increments or do you get them for a while before time goes back to longer increments?
Steve
Post by: Chairman on January 09, 2010, 12:31:04 PM
If its a battle it´s been going on for 50 hours...., must bee two living in the same system, if that is possible?
Post by: Erik L on January 09, 2010, 11:08:54 PM
Quote from: "Chairman"
No, it varies, mostly betwen 15-40 seconds, sometime up to 6 hours but mostly in the seconds...
If its a battle it´s been going on for 50 hours...., must bee two living in the same system, if that is possible?
I saw something similar when I had some ships being chased down by Precursors. I toyed with them a bit, keeping them outside of active range and tracking them on thermals. I then made the mistake of closing. Fecking 13,000 kps missiles that I couldn't see until the 5 seconds before they impacted.
Post by: Cernunnos on January 10, 2010, 05:27:50 PM
Also, I'd just like to take the opportunity to say this game is fantastic! I came across it this morning in a forum I frequent and I have been playing it ever since... much to my shame as there were a number of things I had to do today but didn't get around to :)
Post by: sloanjh on January 10, 2010, 09:40:44 PM
Quote from: "Cernunnos"
but would it not be possible to have the game count 'interesting' as being any interesting thing that your race can perceive.
I think the answer to your question is "that's what the game's trying to do, but the game has to (temporarily) stop if something interesting happens to an NPR so the NPR decision routines can be executed (they only work between updates)". For all the new folks out there, in case no one's told you, you should run with the "Events" (ctrl-F3) window open. Typically, you'll want to run with it set (the pull-down at the top) to your empire, but as a beginner you might instead want to look at the Space Master (SM) view (you'll need to go into SM mode before opening the window to have this view available - ctrl-S turns it on, ctrl-O turns it off).
There are two types of events:
1) "Interrupt" events - these are the ones that you might want to react to: things like detecting a new ship from an alien race; having one of your TG finish its orders, detecting a missile coming at you :-) ) that the situation needed to be fixed. At some point in there, Steve launched a heroic (I think it took him 4 months or so) rewrite of the entire movement update system within Aurora, which resulted in the current mechanics:
- MUCH more performant updates, so Aurora can do a lot more (hence smaller) timesteps within a single update.
"Automatic" timestep mode where Aurora chooses this granularity. At present, I think it's 15 minute timesteps for a 1 day update; shorter for 8-hour or 3-hour updates.
The "automatic turns" button, which is a HUGE improvement. In the past, I used to spend about 5-10 seconds deciding if Aurora had stopped for a good reason, and then pushing the "do another update" button. This meant I was stuck at the computer waiting to push a button that 99% of the time the computer could just as easily push. Now I simply hit the automatic turns, and if I see it getting bogged down due to NPRs I go do something else.
C) Automagic turns: This is where "interrupt" vs. "informational" events come in, and it requires solving a hard problem: "what does the player consider an interrupt-worthy event?" If the program is going to go ahead and push the button for me if nothing interesting has happened, then it needs to be able to define "interesting" (your initial question). The biggest such problem is probably answering the question: "the state of my sensor contacts just changed - does the player want to know?". Originally, the program was interrupting too frequently - any time a contact appeared or disappeared (even civilians from your own race) Aurora would interrupt, requiring you to notice and push the button. The last release or so is MUCH better - Steve seems to have filtered out most of the "noisy" interrupts while leaving the important ones. The one spot I'm worried about is when a hostile ship that you're observing changes its behavior (i.e. it was just sitting there and now it's coming towards your picket ship) - I suspect that that won't generate an interrupt - but that's a really hard thing to get right from an AI point of view. The other problem, which Steve has done a lot of work to get rid of the last few months, is "yoyo" behavior, where an NPR gets stuck in an infinite behavior loop that generates interrupts on a really short timescale.
The reason that I went into all this historical detail was to give some context for the system:
1) Cutting the update short is necessary in order for the NPR AI to work properly.
2) The "automatic turns" buttons makes such interrupts relatively harmless - the program just tells you that it had to stop and then restarts the update again.
3) A lot of play-testing has gone into reducing the interrupts as much as possible, without missing interesting events. That being said, there's still room for improvement if you happen to hit a concrete case of "I don't want it stopping for that" or "Hey! It should have stopped for that".
Hope it helps....
John
Post by: Cernunnos on January 10, 2010, 10:48:54 PM
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 11, 2010, 05:56:27 AM
Quote from: "Cernunnos"
That did help, a lot. Thank you for taking the time to type all that up to answer my question! :)). We should probably start stickying or linking very useful posts like this one in the Academy forum. I'll create a useful links thread I think. Anyone know if it is possible to link to a specific post within a thread?
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 11, 2010, 08:52:42 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Cernunnos"That did help, a lot. Thank you for taking the time to type all that up to answer my question! :)). We should probably start stickying or linking very useful posts like this one in the Academy forum. I'll create a useful links thread I think. Anyone know if it is possible to link to a specific post within a thread?
Steve
Well, seeing as I was one of the ones that pushed so hard for you to do all that work, I figured I should probably help out with the explaining
John
Post by: Hawkeye on January 11, 2010, 09:54:16 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Anyone know if it is possible to link to a specific post within a thread?
Steve
Yes, you can link to the headline/subject of a post.
Post by: spec10 on January 17, 2010, 04:47:19 PM
I really love this game, but unfortunately this is a dealbreaker for me
. There should be some kind of abstraction for NPR only fights to improve this situation.
Post by: sloanjh on January 17, 2010, 05:43:48 PM
Quote from: "spec10"
I get the reasons for the increment adjustment, but it kind of makes the game unplayable for me right now. I spent the whole day planning and now when my economy finally kicks in I get hammered with 5-45 second increments because 2 NPRs are fighting each other somewhere. It's not a bug, i can see that in the txt dump of the event window, there's some serious missile fighting going on between those guys, but it really takes forever ... so far it's about 6 days gametime with a small break after the 3rd day and it's still going on and on and on, reaching ~1.5 hours of realtime now, and that's the end for me.
I really love this game, but unfortunately this is a dealbreaker for me
Just to double-check - you've got the automated turns turned on, right? That vastly lowers the pain of working through the NPR stuff.
I know where you're coming from - I took a several month hiataus last year because an NPR task group decided to sail into my home system and Aurora was generating interrupts every time they gained or lost contact with my commercial shipping (or vice-versa). Only after it appeared that problem had been solved (by automated turns and yoyo fixes) did I start another game. OTOH, things that are painful do tend to get fixed, so you might want to check back every few months to see how things are progressing....
John
Post by: spec10 on January 18, 2010, 06:44:26 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Just to double-check - you've got the automated turns turned on, right? That vastly lowers the pain of working through the NPR stuff.
yep, i use automated turns. :)
Post by: Hawkeye on January 18, 2010, 10:26:39 AM
I have activated automated turns last evening and had it run all night. This morning, still at 5 sec updates. I stopped Aurora to do some e-mails then and before going to work (0700 local time) , I have again started Aurora running in auto-mode. Now I am back (1645 hours) and the NPRs are still not done. This is some 16 hours of constant 5-second-interrups (some 6.500 interrupts, according to the log)
Granted, my laptop isn´t the fastest, so it probably takes a bit longer for a single increment. I also let Aurora create two NPRs at game start and I am assuming, those two are going at each other, so this, too, might have some influence.
It is no fun at the moment, so I will likely start again with only one pregenerated NPR.
Oh, and I am using the real stars, so no combat inside nebulas either
Edit: Holy crap, I just made a backup of the database, before deleting the game, in case Steve needs it. It is 600+ MBs. Probably, all those messages take a looooot of space
Post by: sloanjh on January 18, 2010, 04:52:12 PM
Quote from: "Hawkeye"
I
It is no fun at the moment, so I will likely start again with only one pregenerated NPR.
The thing I worry about with this strategy is getting several person weeks into a game before the NPRs bog it down and it becomes unplayable due to interrupts. This is what happened to me last summer. I think the only solution in such a situation (in hindsight) would be to have a "promote to player race" button on a computer-controlled NPR - that would let me drive. On the other hand, I suspect I still wouldn't be able to avoid interrupts when Aurora wanted to generate them.
John
Post by: Della on January 19, 2010, 08:26:29 PM
Code: [Select]
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of Town 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of Town 002 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of River 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Precursors,Fellini,The shields of Bardiche #37042 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,Town 001 cannot launch missiles inside a nebula.
7th November 3013 17:57:06,SM Only,System 0,Increment length adjusted due to imminent action. This may involve two NPRs fighting each other.Is Aurora really stopping just because some jackass NPR is trying to raise shields in a nebula, or is there a good reason?
(a.k.a. "is this a bug or a feature?")
Post by: sloanjh on January 19, 2010, 11:16:49 PM
Quote from: "Della"
I'm getting this over and over and over again:Code: [Select]7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of Town 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of Town 002 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of River 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Precursors,Fellini,The shields of Bardiche #37042 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,Town 001 cannot launch missiles inside a nebula.
7th November 3013 17:57:06,SM Only,System 0,Increment length adjusted due to imminent action. This may involve two NPRs fighting each other.
Is Aurora really stopping just because some jackass NPR is trying to raise shields in a nebula, or is there a good reason? 8). I assume you're getting this from SM mode in the event log, btw. Please log both of these (shields and missiles) on the 4.8 bugs thread - Steve's about to put out 4.9 and it would be nice to get these fixed in it.
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 19, 2010, 11:22:51 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Probably. BTW, note that they're also trying to launch missiles within the nebula (which I thought Steve had fixed for 4.Fixed the missiles - forgot about the shields. Fixed for v4.9. I assume you're getting this from SM mode in the event log, btw. Please log both of these (shields and missiles) on the 4.8 bugs thread - Steve's about to put out 4.9 and it would be nice to get these fixed in it.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 19, 2010, 11:27:39 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "sloanjh"Probably. BTW, note that they're also trying to launch missiles within the nebula (which I thought Steve had fixed for 4.Fixed the missiles - forgot about the shields. Fixed for v4.9
Steve
Are you sure about the missile fix? The second message from the bottom in his log is complaining about missiles....
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 19, 2010, 11:32:52 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Well spotted! Obviously there is still a problem. I'll look into it further.Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"Quote from: "sloanjh"Probably. BTW, note that they're also trying to launch missiles within the nebula (which I thought Steve had fixed for 4.Fixed the missiles - forgot about the shields. Fixed for v4.9
Steve
Are you sure about the missile fix? The second message from the bottom in his log is complaining about missiles....
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 19, 2010, 11:39:41 PM
Quote from: "Della"
I'm getting this over and over and over again:Could you send me the DB please. As far as I can see I have prevented NPRs firing missiles in Nebulae, although I am starting to suspect it may be AMMs.Code: [Select]7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of Town 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of Town 002 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of River 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Precursors,Fellini,The shields of Bardiche #37042 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,Town 001 cannot launch missiles inside a nebula.
7th November 3013 17:57:06,SM Only,System 0,Increment length adjusted due to imminent action. This may involve two NPRs fighting each other.
Is Aurora really stopping just because some jackass NPR is trying to raise shields in a nebula, or is there a good reason?
(a.k.a. "is this a bug or a feature?")
Please zip up Stevefire.mdb and send it to stevewalmsley at btinternet.com
Steve
Post by: Della on January 20, 2010, 04:45:00 AM
What do i do now? Do i need to start over, or just to keep "automated turns" on and wait a couple weeks?
Post by: Della on January 21, 2010, 07:01:04 PM
started over, and now it's this:
2nd November 3007 23:33:41,Star Swarm,Tatebayashi,Soldier 069 - Fire Control S03 60-10000 targeting Tatebayashi-A IV at 0k km
2nd November 3007 23:33:41,Star Swarm,Tatebayashi,Soldier 069: R12/C3 Meson Cannon hit the target and inflicted 1 points of damage.
...a NPR fleet is bombarding a planet with meson cannons.
how long is it going to take them to blast it to pieces? I'm getting tired of having my games interrupted continuously like this.
Post by: Rathos on January 21, 2010, 07:11:42 PM
Meson cannons can't hurt the planet. So they will never stop.
Its a serious bug that is why the 4.9 suggestions and new things have been slated to 5.0
Post by: sloanjh on January 21, 2010, 07:29:08 PM
Quote from: "Rathos"
which was supposed to come sometime yesterday
I suspect (hope) Steve is asleep in bed fighting off his flu....
Either that or he's been coding up the gunge launcher
John
Post by: Rathos on January 21, 2010, 07:52:38 PM
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 22, 2010, 04:26:34 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "Della"I'm getting this over and over and over again:Code: [Select]7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of Town 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of Town 002 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,The shields of River 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Precursors,Fellini,The shields of Bardiche #37042 001 have been deactivated as they cannot function in a nebula
7th November 3013 17:57:06,Lutrell,Vancouver,Town 001 cannot launch missiles inside a nebula.
7th November 3013 17:57:06,SM Only,System 0,Increment length adjusted due to imminent action. This may involve two NPRs fighting each other.
Is Aurora really stopping just because some jackass NPR is trying to raise shields in a nebula, or is there a good reason? :)
Steve
Post by: Della on January 22, 2010, 07:41:14 AM
Post by: Yonder on January 26, 2010, 07:19:56 PM
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 27, 2010, 04:07:29 AM
Quote from: "Yonder"
The last 4 months of game time have passed like clockwork in 6 hour increments. I turned the "Event Updates" Window to show the "SM View" Empire and it still won't tell me what is happening every 6 hours. Should that be working? Is there another way I can tell what those wacky NPR's are up to?You can send me the DB and I can take a look to see if there is anything weird going on.
Steve
Post by: spec10 on January 27, 2010, 05:54:01 AM
Post by: Yonder on January 27, 2010, 07:27:57 AM
It turns out that for the last 10 months this message has been generated every 6 hours: "Bastak,Bastak,Crusher 016 failed to Load Colonists at Bastak Prime. Any additional orders will be on hold until the problem is resolved"
Is there a way that I can log into that race as the SM and delete that ship? This is version 4.7.7 btw.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 28, 2010, 03:06:02 AM
Quote from: "Yonder"
Well even after zipping the Database it is too large to post to the forums, but luckily Spec10's advice worked!I would still like to see the DB to try and figure out why the problem happened in the first place. Otherwise it could just happen again. You could send it by email to stevewalmsley at btinternet.com. I'll send it back with the problem fixed.
It turns out that for the last 10 months this message has been generated every 6 hours: "Bastak,Bastak,Crusher 016 failed to Load Colonists at Bastak Prime. Any additional orders will be on hold until the problem is resolved"
Is there a way that I can log into that race as the SM and delete that ship? This is version 4.7.7 btw.
Steve