3rd party Apps wishlist

Gandalf Parker · #1 April 8th, 2004, 08:14 PM

OK in the new patch is a switch to do a scoredump. FANTASTIC work. It creates an html file with tables. Its the numbers instead of a chart, and that one turn only. (I now have that feature turned on in my solo games and a browser open to it on my harddrive)

But the progression is nice to see also. Maybe some webby person could write something that saves the score.html into numbered Versions, and shows them with a next/Last button. Or shows the Last few days all on one page. I dont know tables well enough to know if thats hard. Maybe frames?

I know there are free graphic programs out there. Preferably Linux. A program could extract the numbers from each score.html and maybe even recreate the line-graph scoreboard into a jpg.

Gandalf Parker · #2 April 12th, 2004, 11:26 PM

I know there is a really nice 3rd party app for multiple game saves and multiple god saves.

But I was thinking that the --preexec could copy the turn files to a subdirectory before each processing. But then I realized that it wouldnt offer anything since going to that previous save would be the same as just hitting "redo from start" on a turn file.

However, if someone put a counter in it... something easy to change. Have it count the turns or pull the number from the score.html and divide it by the requested save-count. Such as if I had a game called MyGame then this program culd make a directory beneath that called saves. Every 10th processing it could copy the turn files from MyGame to MyGame/saves before doing the hosting.

Gandalf Parker · #3 April 18th, 2004, 05:12 PM

Good news. The language of my choice (yet another basic) is going to add a "binder" to create standalone programs (windows and linux) so I might go ahead and tackle a few of these.

PhilD · #4 April 19th, 2004, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
I know there is a really nice 3rd party app for multiple game saves and multiple god saves.

But I was thinking that the --preexec could copy the turn files to a subdirectory before each processing. But then I realized that it wouldnt offer anything since going to that previous save would be the same as just hitting "redo from start" on a turn file.

However, if someone put a counter in it... something easy to change. Have it count the turns or pull the number from the score.html and divide it by the requested save-count. Such as if I had a game called MyGame then this program culd make a directory beneath that called saves. Every 10th processing it could copy the turn files from MyGame to MyGame/saves before doing the hosting.

Does --preexec work? I tried it, and it apparently wasn't recognized...

If anyone's interested, I have a bash script that can be used as a --postexec to to backup the .trn and .2h files for a whole game. It's very kludgy, as it creates an additional file to "remember" the turn number, and it still has path problems, and...

Oh, and since it uses bash, and standard unix commands, it's much easier to use on a Linux machine. To use it on Windows, you'll have to have a set of standard Unix commands installed.

Gandalf Parker · #5 April 24th, 2004, 06:17 PM

Maybe some VB or VC programmer would like to do a menu driven Version of some of my stuff. I can provide the basic code for things like random opponents or randomized surprises in independent provinces. My Version of basic is cross-platform (linux and windows) so it isnt very good at making a user menu thing.

Gandalf Parker · #6 May 4th, 2004, 05:50 PM

The --preexec fix is in the next patch so I guess we can start programming around it for things like a game-save utility.

Im also looking at the --scoredump which generates a very nice tabled scoreboard. No running lines but nice numbers. Im thinking someone could easily write a program to add all the numbers together for an overall score. ManScore=armies+research+provinces
It might need some sort of formula to give a weighted amount to things like forts (forts*100?).

Im also still hoping someone will write a routine to save the numbers in scoredump and use them to recreate charts. There are plenty of chart routines out there so the actual graph/chart stuff wouldnt need written, just the collector. --scoredump --postexec collector.exe

Gandalf Parker · #7 April 20th, 2005, 01:12 PM

Looking at my web page for random maps www.dom2minions.com/~dominion/Dominions2/RandomMaps/RandomMaps.html

Im thinking that it might be interesting to do a CGI which will allow making a map. One that allows putting in all of the tons of parameters and then generating a map would be great, then allowing other choices. DomMap, or my various map extending programs, have all of the switches necessary.

Anyway, I thinking....
set the size, amount of water, amount of impassable borders, stuff like that. And then generate a page full of thumbnails of just blank land and sea maps.

Then select from the various color schemes and let it re-do the map adding in the terrains.

then select from various map extensions:
logical province names, special sites, scattered independent owned castles, random monster placements, special AIs, logical independents, middle earth, age of chivalry, etc etc.

It could be carried further into web-based creation of a MOD to go with it. Anyway, then its all zipped up and linked for download. Could be fun. The exe side of it I can handle (dommap, map generation, map extensions) if someone wants to tackle the web-side (form and cgi). It COULD even be tied into Mohansens as a "make a map" option