A BIG favour to ask of the designers

[Damien Thorn]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

For this game, one question is, are the rails, roads and trails separate elements painted on top the underlying map like the bases are or are they an integral part of the map (hexes) itself? I'm guessing they are part of the map....

Hand painted map.

People have performance problems with just the simple display of a BMP and now you want to talk about having the map rendered via active code ... beam me up Scotty ... I need a real computer. [:D]

Even FPS games can't handle that on P4's with $700 graphic cards with a limited screen. [8|]

I kinda figured the game map was one (or two) massive bitmaps or JPEGS with the hex grid just laying on top (displayed or not). I could not imagine doing it any other way, actually.

The hexes are drawn right on to the map in WitP. In UV it was an overlay you could turn on or off. WitP has two maps, each in 16 parts, one has hexes and one doesn't. It is a stupid way of doing it, I feel, because it means you can't turn hexes on or off in the middle of a game. I liked the UV way better and I wonder why they switched to this new method.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

You make a habit of picking cheaters to play PBEM games with? Why would a player want to cheat? We get mad if we think the AI even "cheats".

<chuckle>

If cheating was not a problem, there would be absolutely no reason to even have the scenarios say they have been signed.

Since that was required, I think it speaks for itself. Exploiting weaknesses in the AI is also a form of cheating. [;)]

Well all I can say about a person who would stoop to cheating in a computer war game is.....sad.... They revoke accounts on Everquest of players who persist in using known exploits...

[Mr.Frag]

The hexes are drawn right on to the map in WitP. In UV it was an overlay you could turn on or off. WitP has two maps, each in 16 parts, one has hexes and one doesn't. It is a stupid way of doing it, I feel, because it means you can't turn hexes on or off in the middle of a game. I liked the UV way better and I wonder why they switched to this new method.

Not to point out that you are wrong, but you are wrong [;)]

If you look in your UV art directory, you will find a cspmap (hexes) and a cspmap2 (no hexes)

The only difference between UV & WitP maps is the size requiring the map to be broken up into 20 sections instead of just 1 simple file.

[steveh11Matrix]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980
[...]Well all I can say about a person who would stoop to cheating in a computer war game is.....sad.... They revoke accounts on Everquest of players who persist in using known exploits...

True, but I'm afraid it does happen. You either trust the opponent or not, and if he consistently 'pulls a rabbit from a hat' he's either very, very lucky, or you decide not to game with him again.
Surely it's simple enough to include a checksum of the map in the (encrypted) save game file if 2BY3 are that paranoid.

Me, I simply prefer solo games anyway, although I have been persuaded to play multiplayer before now on occasion. Mainly I suppose that's because I like playing WITH games as much as simply PLAYING them.
Steve.

[Damien Thorn]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Not to point out that you are wrong, but you are wrong [;)]

If you look in your UV art directory, you will find a cspmap (hexes) and a cspmap2 (no hexes)

The only difference between UV & WitP maps is the size requiring the map to be broken up into 20 sections instead of just 1 simple file.

OK, I didn't know that. Still, in UV you could turn hexes on or off in-game. Someone posted that in WitP the changes only take place the next time you start the game. I have never tried it though because the idea of playing without hexes is not appealing to me.

[Captain Cruft]

There's two things. The permanent "map with hexes" and then the F6 "show hexsides". Case one requires a restart, case two not.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Damien Thorn

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag



Hand painted map.

People have performance problems with just the simple display of a BMP and now you want to talk about having the map rendered via active code ... beam me up Scotty ... I need a real computer. [:D]

Even FPS games can't handle that on P4's with $700 graphic cards with a limited screen. [8|]

I kinda figured the game map was one (or two) massive bitmaps or JPEGS with the hex grid just laying on top (displayed or not). I could not imagine doing it any other way, actually.

The hexes are drawn right on to the map in WitP. In UV it was an overlay you could turn on or off. WitP has two maps, each in 16 parts, one has hexes and one doesn't. It is a stupid way of doing it, I feel, because it means you can't turn hexes on or off in the middle of a game. I liked the UV way better and I wonder why they switched to this new method.

Well I know that a really major problem in basic computer graphics is how images combine on a display. When you have your background bitmap (in Windows, at least, at the OS level, most all graphical stuff is a DIB, Device Independent Bitmap....don't know how it is in DirectDraw, though, but imagine it's similar), in this case the map, when you then want to draw something "on top" of that map like a base you perform a "Blit" which "combines" the image pixels you are putting on top with the underlying pixels of the map. The way it combines is controlable. You can completely overpaint, make you top image opaque/transparent, XOR, and so on. Each has a different effect. Then when the top image is removed you have to be able to "restore" the background to it's previous state. Things aren't so hard for rectangular images since bitmaps are stored "rectangularly". It gets tougher when the images aren't rectangles (ships, WitP LCU's, etc...). The whole thing can really a complicated MESS in a hurry! Even drawing lines on top of an existing bitmap is a very non-trivial operation.

I can see why, if they maintain two separate files, one with the hexes drawn and the other without, they might want to do it that way. This graphics stuff can ENORMOUSLY complex in a real hurry...and it all eats CPU cycles and memory.

[akbrown]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

If you're not sure of what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it...or you should be prepared to restore from your original installation file.

Let me give you a good example of the problem ...

Lets say I am PBEM'ing you ...

I am Japan.

During my turn, I decide that I could really be doing much better if I had a road between x and y so i pop into edit mode and add the road ... wow, i'm doing great now ... You of course having the other pwhex with the correct values know nothing about it. [X(]

Now you come to attack me ... I jump into the editor and change the hex terrain value to Urban to get the maximum defensive bonus even though the real terrain happens to be open ... your attack goes down in flames! [:D]

See the problem? [;)]

Yes I see the problem. Because the file is global it will mean that it is more difficult to manage if someone is playing more than one scenario with different map versions. I don't think it is sufficient reason to not help those of us who would like to make a modified map, however. I think that those of us who are interested in map improvements would willingly deal with this problem. Also, I think in a relatively small gaming community like the WitP one, it would not be long before a cheater similar to the one you describe would become well known, and be avoided by others.

Another thing that could be done to prevent such problems would be to include the pwhex file in any code that does file verification.