Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress Redux

[Crossroads]

Is there any need/legacy issue that you're still using the indented Windows 98-style form boxes? Could you just use flat labels instead? It would look a lot cleaner and modern, imo.

Thank you for the nudge, Plodder. I was close to doing just that but held back because "it's always been that way." And that's exactly the point, isn't it!

[Crossroads]

Yes, much better. I also realized the frame should have the lighter olive color to match the other in-game dialogs with frames. Adjusted the text positions a bit while I was at it.

While on it, I derived a custom Tabctrl class to make the rest of the tab title bar transparent. MFC programming can be maddening sometimes, especially when it comes to background and text color settings or getting opaque/transparent settings to behave consistently across different controls. Or even work at all in some cases.

I think I'll call this done for now. On to the next item.

sitrep_victory2.jpg (95.27 KiB) Viewed 911 times

[Crossroads]

... and thus ended the window I had allocated for the in-game dialogs for the next update. Actually, I had an original deadline set for myself for last weekend, but this was a tad more burdensome that I initially had assumed.

As the last changes, I wanted to introduce the new two-camo-color grid listview to Targeting dialogs as well: Fire / Target dialog, Artillery dialog, and Airsupport dialog. As it turned out, and unlike with Find Locations and Find Objectives dialogs, the Targeting dialogs not only had a listbox in place, but it was a set of derived listbox classes containg pretty much all the application logic as well. Instead of just writing to a listctrl instead of listbox, I would have needed basically to start completely a new.

Not worth the effort, imho, the Targeting dialogs work as listboxes as well. So instead, made them larger as my eyes are not getting younger, tweaked them a bit, and here we are.

Here are the current Artillery Support and Close Air Support dialogs. Sort of ok, but a lot of text with abbreviations. Also, units with short names. Why not have their full unit names available instead, as we now have the space for it.

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And here's the next iteration, for 1.40 UPDATE. More informative, and also with tracking ID and superior organizations tracking ID (trackid/strackid jargon) put towards the end of each row, as they are mostly relevant for scenario designers for unit placement and CSEE programming.

That CAS dialog is from the Ia Drang 2 scenario, by the way. BROKEN ARROW!

targeting_new2.jpg (168.1 KiB) Viewed 857 times

[Crossroads]

... and thus ended the window I had allocated for the in-game dialogs for the next update.

Next: CSEE Lua utilities for the next four, five weeks, then, at mid-October, bug fixing. Thanks for all the bug reports, I have taken notes of them all despite not having worked on them right now.

Please keep the input coming though, I really appreciate it. There is always the next Update after the next Update, right.

[Crossroads]

Next: CSEE Lua utilities for the next four, five weeks, then, at mid-October, bug fixing. Thanks for all the bug reports, I have taken notes of them all despite not having worked on them right now.

Please keep the input coming though, I really appreciate it. There is always the next Update after the next Update, right.

Well, make that CSEE utilities for full of October. But we're good, I believe.

I posted at Middle East forum about some latest additions I've done while learning the Campaign Series C/Lua api.

Here's the first post, have a look!

Some goodies on their way out for the next 1.40 update, including a smarter scenario Lua code generator tool (csmklua). and some new functionalities, including a new api to ask player for decisions from the scenario Lua file.

Autogenerated Scenario Briefings, just add the scenario specific Mission and Execution tidbits by hand (this here is before that, all generic, still).



Invoke, from Lua, a dialog to have the player make some scenario specific decisions:



React to those decisions in Lua, here by simply invoking a Note to display the selection:



Simple as can be, right: here's the Lua code from the scenario Lua file




Next, I will start working on the Battle plans side of Lua scenario code generation tool, to ease the work of the scenario designers in their scenario Lua programming tasks.

I will likely use one of the new Hue Campaign scenarios Jason's been test playing live on his stream. I will post those here, but since I haven't yet compiled the Vietnam engine with all the latest, those Middle East screenshots are what I have. Stay tuned!

Regarding the schedule, my plan CSEE for October, bug fixing for November (keep those bug reports coming, I really appreciate them!), and QA and testing for December.

By January, we hope, all will be in place to ship out the 1.40.

Fingers crossed!

[Schlonz]

Hi all,

will the x.40 updates include an expansion of the time line to 1990 (the Iraq-Iran War lasted until 1988, the Cold War until around 1990)?

[Jason Petho]

Not for the 1.40 and 2.40 UPDATES.

Although for the Iran and Iraq OOB's, I have built them out to 1988.

The 1986-1988 are just under the 1985-1985 OOB time frame.

[benpark]

That variable choice toggle looks pretty darn cool. Great idea, and it will make battles even more replayable. I can imagine it would be useful when campaigns make a reappearance (if they do).

[Jason Petho]

This will also be a HUGE addition to the A WEEK IN campaigns in the scenarios.

SOOOOO many options that can be had with this new system!

[Crossroads]

That variable choice toggle looks pretty darn cool. Great idea, and it will make battles even more replayable. I can imagine it would be useful when campaigns make a reappearance (if they do).

This will also be a HUGE addition to the A WEEK IN campaigns in the scenarios.

SOOOOO many options that can be had with this new system!

Come to think, this could also be something to add to the Status menu options going forward? We already have two options there (this is from 1.40 BETA) that actually call Lua: Scenario Briefing, and Message Log. Both of those are features only available from there, so C++ engine calls Lua and makes a request for it to pop up these dialogs for the player to see. I could add Check Order Status... there as well.

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The Lua template going forward could provide for this, automatically. I tweaked the Supply and Arty Supply feature with the latest csmklua version in that it now automatically (unless Scenario designer changes these, of course) makes a die roll that the first time a Side has fired the supply levels begin diminishing. Previously it was automatically 2 points per turn for both Ammo and Arty ammo, now I made it a die roll of 0-2 for Ammo, and 0-3 for Arty ammo.

Sooner or later, longer the scenario, the player has a situation where more and more of his troops and Arty batteries are conserving ammo. What if the Lua tempate would provide a feature where for every 10 scenario turns there's an Order option available to add 10% to Ammo levels, and say for every 15% to add 10% to Arty ammo levels. Player could then choose at which stage to start ordering those supplies to arrive. At intervals during the scenario, or maybe saving it all for that one big push at the end of scenario, and while waiting for that, accepting the fact his troopers are gonna go low on ammo levels.

Just a thought. Should not be too difficult to implement.

[Jason Petho]

Oooo.

You could do manual reinforcements of supplies, where you have to manage the supply columns (like in A WEEK IN BING LONG and A WEEK IN THE MEKONG).

OR

You can use lua to do the requested ammo boosts, but then you take a negative Event Point cost. +10 Ammo for -50 Event Points.

So much potential!

[benpark]

Is the AI able to randomly "choose" the same type of pre-set options on their side of things? That would be mind-bending amounts of re-playbility.

[Jason Petho]

Now THAT is a good question!

[Jason Petho]

Mind you, in a lot of ways it does already, based on the die rolls that are generated.

[Crossroads]

Certainly! When considering the AI in our game engine having the ability to randomly make decisions from a pool of possibilities, there are numerous Event Engine (CSEE) APIs that allow it to gain relevant situational awareness based on the decision it is about to make.

In some cases, it might simply be a random die roll, while in others, it could be a weighted roll to give preference to certain outcomes.

Ideally, the AI could deduce the optimal course of action based on the situation, using a variety of conditional logic to adapt dynamically. Ideally the AI’s decisions would vary each time from a pool of logical choices, whether planning ahead, or when reacting to events such as losing an objective or what not.

[Crossroads]

It's been a while, so time to scribble a few updates again!

I thought it’d be neat to dive under the hood of our scripted AI feature. Here’s the first part of what I hope will be a three-part blog series:

• Scripted AI in Campaign Series

The link opens the post on our CSLegion site.

Lots of text, not so many pictures. Still, here are some highlights of the latest and greatest updates to our CSEE API library.

Next up, we’ll dive into the fun part—dissecting the latest evolution of the anatomy of our Lua scenario file!

[Crossroads]

... and, while playing with Scenario Briefings, I thought to enlargen the Report dialog. I added a title bar to it too.

Per popular demand, there is now a copy button available to copy the report content to clipboard as well. Should be helpful with those long briefings, in particular with Bootcamps and A Week In... scenarios.

Available in the next update to both games.

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[Crossroads]

I have just put out a completely new Vietnam RELEASE CANDIDATE build for Dev Team and the Beta Brigade. Exciting times!

As a late addition, we revamped the Scenarios folder, all scenarios are now grouped under Campaigns, which is a new sortable column in the Scenario Browser front end as well.

Tons of content with Vietnam already, makes it so much easier to find the exact scenarios you wish to play, right?

New content will include eight new TET/Hue scenarios on top of four previous ones, and four new Laos 1971 scenarios.

vn_frontend_rc01.jpg (313.21 KiB) Viewed 277 times

[Crossroads]

New content will include eight new TET/Hue scenarios on top of four previous ones, and four new Laos 1971 scenarios.

Here's Scenario Browser with Date in Descending order. All things subject to change until released, of course. But: good times ahead!

vn_frontend2_rc01.jpg (363.36 KiB) Viewed 275 times

[Crossroads]

It's been a while, so time to scribble a few updates again!

I thought it’d be neat to dive under the hood of our scripted AI feature. Here’s the first part of what I hope will be a three-part blog series:

• Scripted AI in Campaign Series

The link opens the post on our CSLegion site.

Lots of text, not so many pictures. Still, here are some highlights of the latest and greatest updates to our CSEE API library.

Next up, we’ll dive into the fun part—dissecting the latest evolution of the anatomy of our Lua scenario file!

I originally planned to take time this weekend to write the second part of the Scripted AI series to depict the new features CSEE offers for the coming update.

But since we also decided to take the opportunity to make the next update a full reimage for Vietnam 2.00, I've been working on game documentation, too.

For the past several days I have edited Berto's CSEE How-To documents into game manual format, first for Middle East How-to guideline originally written for Middle East 2.0, or Volume I, as I named it. That was some 50 pages to edit, so nothing there, really, except a neat walk in the memory lane. The guideline still serves as a nice briefing on the Event Engine.

What took much longer was to edit his Vietnam 1.0 Rung Sat scenario CSEE scripting efforts he documentend here in the Vietnam Scenario design and modding forum. At around page 180 I thought that covers it well enough, so that is now another CSEE How-To guideline, marked as Volume II.

Both of them are available for download in my CS Legion post: https://cslegion.com/coder-diary/cs-eve ... -i-and-ii/ (link opens to our CS Legion website post).

Also: both guidelines will be available in both games in their Manuals folder for ease of access.

Another teaser from that post is a quick overall summary of latest and greatest with the next Vietnam 2.00 update. Our first full reimage of this game.

What do you think? I am happy to answer any questions you guys might have.