June Release: WitPTracker now at 1.6!

[floydg]

ORIGINAL: mikemike

Hi, Floyd and Damian,

I've just upgraded to Rel. 1.2; everything worked fine. Now I'm sure that you put a lot of time and effort into 1.2, but you know customers, never content, always demanding more. So I have some remarks and suggestions. especially concerning my particular obsession, ship production:

- the Pilots tab in the Air Groups and Pilots data set still doesn't seem to show all pilots or even recent data

- Ship production: the Accel Delay column still shows the wrong value for odd base delays (a base delay of 7 gives an accel delay of 4, not 3)

- Ship production: You might consider displaying an Estimated Date of Arrival column. This can be calculated in SQL if you've got the game date in the correct DATE format for the installation:
SELECT gamedate + :calculated_delay DAYS AS DATE_OF ARRIVAL

- An additional alert might be helpful that is raised the turn before a ship begins to build, that is DELAY= (DUR * 10) + 1 if normal or DELAY = (DUR * 10) + 2 if accelerated. The message might be: ALERT TYPE ="will start building tomorrow", VALUE = (for instance) "in Tokyo Navy Yard". It's easy to miss a ship starting to build, and, especially if the ship is accelerated, this may tear a fat hole in your shipbuilding budget.

BTW: do you know if it's possible to run queries against the Witptracker database using the database component of Open Office? I can't seem to manage that.

Keep on doing the good work!

Greetings, Mikemike

Thanks for the compliments.

Yes, the Pilots are still not managed. Ever since I fixed some file reading issues, the reading of the save files is kinda slow, so reading Pilots will make it extra slow. I was thinking of making the pilots stuff optional. Something to work on for the next release.

The alert suggestion seems good. I'll show Damian how to do that.

The Database is HSQLDB, and supposedly this is integrated into OpenOffice. I've not been able to get this to work, however. There must be some plugin or something I can't find...

Floyd

[n01487477]

ORIGINAL: floydg

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Floyd,
In my game against Damian, I've seen most of the "Repair Ships" not keep track of previous turns. Thus, it just gives me the most recent turn damage and no history of repairs. A lot of them come up with unknown location. Is there anything I can do and/or send you?? I cannot let the enemy have it. [;)]

Michael -

Maybe some special code routine Damian added just for you... Damian did report to me that the history seemed a bit 'short', but in my testing, I see the history since Turn 1...

Are you getting any error messages in the console window? Were there any problems loading the turns?

Floyd

Michael - it probably isn't a savefile problem as I have no problems with the history from the Japanese perspective.
Floyd - what I meant was could the display table be increased in size to show 10 turns or expand when the split pane size is increased, not that the history was having problems.
Mike - all good advice as always, and yes I neglected to do the odd delay... also I have tried like Floyd to get Open Office to work ... no luck either.

[n01487477]

ORIGINAL: scott1964
Upgraded to the new version. I get a hanging when  I try to look at the  victory points as background is bleeding when I try to access another pull down menu. Memory might be low. [&:]

Upgraded to the new version. I get a hanging when I try to look at the victory points as background is bleeding when I try to access another pull down menu. Memory might be low.

Scott,
From my quick read of some tech forums there seems to be some problems that occur with SP3 and Java VM (& some virus protection). I'm not saying that this is definitely it, but it might .

I'll do some tests if I have time later today with SP2 and SP3 and different versions of the Java VM, as some people are talking about either downgrading Java VM or downgrading the SP.

I'll get back to you with the results sometime ... or you might want to try a different (earlier) Java VM version.

Scott,
I did some tests on my old P3 500 160MB Ram machine with both XP SP2 & SP3 and I got no problems with about 15 Turns loaded. I cannot understand how your high powered machine can not be handling this application, when my spare boat-anchor can.

The last thing we can do is for you to zip up the four DB files + 1 savegame file + the properties file and send it to witptracker@gmail.com . Floyd can pass it onto me, or I can have a look at it, as I still have 2 days holiday left before I'm back to work.

Regards,
--Damian--

[n01487477]

MikeMike,Floyd & others interested,
I got OpenOffice to connect properly... Below is where I got the information.
http://hsqldb.org/doc/guide/apd.html

Steps:
1. Download the latest OpenOffice 2.4
2. Setup
3. Open OpenOffice Database, just open the default database. Then setup a new class path in tools-options-java-classpath. For users your can find the hsqldb.jar file in the lib folder of their tracker install



4. The program will need to be restarted. Then connect to an existing DB after selecting New Database. Select JDBC.



5. Setup the Datasource URL (the path is obviously to your install folder of tracker)& the JDBC Driver Class.


6. set the password to sa & Test the connection






From this you are able to obviously print and check data ... Having used it a little it is very slow to respond to tables, so I recommend you write queries and views to access the data. But this in no way means that I won't try to create print options for Tracker

Regards
Damian

[Thesix]

ORIGINAL: scott1964
When I click on the victory points pull down menu, the program hangs. The background bleeds again. I can click on another pull down menu, but I can't see an info, background bleeds.

When I first used the multi-turn read, I had a freezing reading at "Compare Task Force" with my fourth save file (12/16/41). I have this problem from the beginning. When I was using the turn read option, I was able to change views.
Using the Multi-turn read option, when the programs hanged at the same moment on the same Save file, I had similar effect Scott is describing with the background bleeding.
I first tried to read again the last turn but it did not work because it was trying to read the first save file. I understood I had to use multi-read turn option again beginning with the 12/16/41 save file. But before I do that, I had to restart the program because it seemed blocked.
BUT, I have not noticed the problems in the tables that Scott has.

By the way, this specific freezing problem with 12/16/41 save file is the last one I have. All the other freezing reading the following turns have gone. Good job! [;)]
I have not yet discovered all the new features... [:)]

[marcaurelio_74]

First of all really congratulation for your work, I really appreciate this program.

Unfortunately I encountered a problem, I’ll try to be as clear as possible :

My properties file is configured as follow :

Dir=[C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific]
GameType=[0]
Side=[0]
Password=[abc123]
SaveFile=[witp022.pws]

I started with the tutorial scenario vs AI with option : Allied Computer.
I saved first turn (witp022.pws) and started witpTracker.

The phase of database Initialization is done correctly and I can display all data aggregation of my turn, then i play another turn of game and save again (witp023.pws).
I replace the old save file with the new one in my directory of witpTracker, renamed witp022.pws.

Then I start again witpTracker (the properties file is the same) and via menu I choose “read turn”, at this point the program stop is elaboration at “comparing task forces” phase and never reach an end.
Someone could help me?


P.s.
Sorry for my bad english.

[floydg]

ORIGINAL: marcaurelio_74

First of all really congratulation for your work, I really appreciate this program.

Unfortunately I encountered a problem, I’ll try to be as clear as possible :

My properties file is configured as follow :

Dir=[C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific]
GameType=[0]
Side=[0]
Password=[abc123]
SaveFile=[witp022.pws]

I started with the tutorial scenario vs AI with option : Allied Computer.
I saved first turn (witp022.pws) and started witpTracker.

The phase of database Initialization is done correctly and I can display all data aggregation of my turn, then i play another turn of game and save again (witp023.pws).
I replace the old save file with the new one in my directory of witpTracker, renamed witp022.pws.

Then I start again witpTracker (the properties file is the same) and via menu I choose “read turn”, at this point the program stop is elaboration at “comparing task forces” phase and never reach an end.
Someone could help me?


P.s.
Sorry for my bad english.

Yes, you were clear. Could you possibly send the first turn and the second turn save files so that I can see why it is hanging up? Send to witptracker@gmail.com and I will take a look.

Floyd

[n01487477]

I've had similar problems with small scale scenarios, this problems cause is unknown at this time so please send on the files ... and I'll do some tests too ...

Having considered the problems Scott and Thesix are having, I can only assume that read errors are causing the DB problems, these are things that Floyd and I want to and will have to work out.

To facilitate this, when people get a read error(the program halts during the load - and doesn't say finished) can people please start sending the save before and the save file that has the problem to us.

We want to bring you a reliable and effective program, not something that has a few bugs ... please help us achieve this. Maybe it is impossible to catch them all, but we can give it a go. And I hope for a majority of users they are happy.

You must also realise that errors do occur in the save file and we are trying to bring you as much information as we can each turn, there are situations that we can only test with your assistance.

Thanks in advance.
Damian

[scott64]

email sent

[Roger Neilson II]

Forgive what might be a naive question, but me and databases have never quite co-existesd in the same brain.....

Would that open up a route to graphing some of the info?

Roger

[floydg]

ORIGINAL: Roger Neilson II

Forgive what might be a naive question, but me and databases have never quite co-existesd in the same brain.....

Would that open up a route to graphing some of the info?

Roger

I bet there is a way to get it to graph in OpenOffice.

I was planning to add some graphing to the program itself. But I'm trying to get breadth of coverage before depth of coverage, so that would be a later feature.

[JVSFugitive]

Would it be possible to make the code opensource and allow other programmers such as myself contribute to the program? [:)]

[floydg]

ORIGINAL: JVSFugitive

Would it be possible to make the code opensource and allow other programmers such as myself contribute to the program? [:)]

Ask Damian how hard he had to try to get me to share the code with him... [8|] I don't think this will be open source any time soon.

[floydg]

ORIGINAL: marcaurelio_74

First of all really congratulation for your work, I really appreciate this program.

Unfortunately I encountered a problem, I’ll try to be as clear as possible :

My properties file is configured as follow :

Dir=[C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific]
GameType=[0]
Side=[0]
Password=[abc123]
SaveFile=[witp022.pws]

I started with the tutorial scenario vs AI with option : Allied Computer.
I saved first turn (witp022.pws) and started witpTracker.

The phase of database Initialization is done correctly and I can display all data aggregation of my turn, then i play another turn of game and save again (witp023.pws).
I replace the old save file with the new one in my directory of witpTracker, renamed witp022.pws.

Then I start again witpTracker (the properties file is the same) and via menu I choose “read turn”, at this point the program stop is elaboration at “comparing task forces” phase and never reach an end.
Someone could help me?


P.s.
Sorry for my bad english.

Okay, I think I found and fixed the problem here. My programming teachers are probably turning over in their graves (those that are dead and those still alive) with my bad error case handling. [:(]

Now on to Scott's issues, which I think I may have found the cause of one of them -- A turn was not fully loaded and it caused the Victory Points panel to throw an exception. That could have caused the "transparent" behavior as the screen did not finish repainting...

[floydg]

ORIGINAL: scott1964

email sent

Looks like the incomplete turn caused the 0's in the history. I can see where things get out of whack and now I need to figure out how to fix it.

Floyd

[marcaurelio_74]

ORIGINAL: floydg
Okay, I think I found and fixed the problem here.

Confirmed, my problem is solved.
Thank you very much Floydg.

[floydg]

ORIGINAL: marcaurelio_74

ORIGINAL: floydg
Okay, I think I found and fixed the problem here.

Confirmed, my problem is solved.
Thank you very much Floydg.

You're welcome. Thanks for sending the files to help me resolve this issue.

Floyd

[floydg]

ORIGINAL: floydg

ORIGINAL: scott1964

email sent

Looks like the incomplete turn caused the 0's in the history. I can see where things get out of whack and now I need to figure out how to fix it.

Floyd

Incomplete turns were making a big mess of things in the history - sometimes showing as 0's, sometimes mis-counting information, sometimes not showing history at all. I think I resolved all of those issues now in the history generation.

Your database was a gold mine of mangled data... [;)]

[n01487477]

A pilot shooting down more than 5 planes in a day ...

Has anyone seen this happen in WITP ? As a Japanese player I've never seen this, but been close, maybe you Allied players might have ...

Yes, I'm working on Pilot Alerts and inclusion into Tracker...

I thought an alert for a new Ace, and then every increment of 5 kills, when an Ace dies & maybe one for Ace in a day ...

Don't want to have a whole huge list each time ...

Any other thoughts ?

[Roger Neilson II]

I may have missed this, if so I apologise but would like it told to me simply how to do it. And if I haven't this would be a nice feature:

I have a great number of fragments of units all over the place and it would be nice to reunite them so they can share the odd story, get back the regimental esprit de corps etc etc. Now I can do this in WITP but its very messy, and involves a lot of screen jumping. It would be nice (and again apologies if you can do this already in tracker)to be able to search for the locations of all the fragments of any unit.

Of course what would have been even nicer is an automatic 'sweep routine' in WITP but that's another story entirely.

Roger