Matrix Games Forums

AI is working doesnt mean I won't be tweaking right upto the last second

Lose ends and those pesky few remaining details are the bane of any project.  There is a quote that says something like- "The first 90% takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% takes 90% of the time".  I am just glad to hear its almost done.  It is the only good news that I have had lately.

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

AI is working doesnt mean I won't be tweaking right upto the last second

Tweak Andy, Tweak. [8D]

Ummm, I don't need no stinkin' manual.  You can just tell me where to download the game and I will take the manual later when it is ready!  [:D]

Remember I am an anally retetive perfectionist I want the Ai to be shocking you even in 44/45 but its also true that by 44/45 the range of options open to a player are far greater which makes my job harder.
 
It is a scripted AI that means I need to think of as many nasty cunning plans that a player could possibly implement - decide if the resources required to counter it are worthwhile within all timeframes, define a counter with appropriate forces - decide if its likely if those forces still exist given previous missions - e.g. if I tell the Ai that a Div will fight to the death on Guadalcanal there is little point in using that same Div as the main LCU for a reaction force to cover a 44 invasion of Formosa as it will be destoyed.
 
Thinking on a unit by unit basis and trying to predict what reaction forces are available is the hardest part of the AI design
 
Now try doing that for 2,000 LCU's and lots of airgroups and you can see the problem
 
In stock they duplicated a lot of LCU's to give themselves that flexibility an option I don't have as we are operating with historic OOB's therefore I need to be more cunning and try to scrape up counter attack forces where I can.
 
 

p.s. standard caveat I only guarantee no worse than stock AI.

As an AI only player I applaud you on your efforts [&o]

Thank you to the whole team for putting in the effort to make AE an enjoyable game.

It's not awesome enough to just look at the tremendous talent on the list of AE staffers. The fact the AI is scriptable for modders means every single game can be different from the last, if playing mods, if the forum members themselves are any indication at all.

(AI all the way).[8D]

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

How often is that light an oncoming train? [:D]

[:D]

Well I go on vacation July 3rd so perhaps I will have a new game to take with me to the beach and play [:D] [:D] Would love to spend a week wrapping myself around the new Japanese Industry and see what I can do with it. To me tweaking the Industry and seeing how much better I can do as japan is the only reason to play... But then us Jap Players have always been a minority.

Xargun

I'm in the group of "I'll buy it when it's ready but I want it to be great" category, so get it right and if that takes another few weeks, that's fine with me.
 
With all the additional bases and assets available, I can understand that making sure the AI knows what to do with all of them is going to take a lot of work.  If it's 1944 and as the Allies I'm still getting surprised by midget sub attacks and minefields springing up in unexpected places, I'll be glad you took the time and effort to set it up that way.

I told my wife about the manual extract download. I believe she thinks I've gone over the edge.[:-]
[&:]What is that white van doing?


They are coming to take me away ...aha, they are coming to take me away   aha.

I didn't think this puppy would be out this month(no suprise here).  Probley late July(maybe).[:-]

i was thinking, since we have waited this long for witp ae, maybe we should ask the dev team to add in the mediterrean mod and russian mod to the ae engine. How much longer could it take? think of the awesomeness it would be .

ggm

ORIGINAL: ggm

i was thinking, since we have waited this long for witp ae, maybe we should ask the dev team to add in the mediterrean mod and russian mod to the ae engine. How much longer could it take? think of the awesomeness it would be .

ggm

yes but i want to be alive to play it....[8|]

ORIGINAL: ggm
we should ask the dev team to add in the mediterrean mod and russian mod to the ae engine. How much longer could it take?

Oh not much more than 8 years - based on current speed - I would think!
[:D]

If AE will give chance to modify the map for Mediterranean at least not more difficult than what happened for WITP there will be a Mod. For example Allied Ships are already almost 3000 and there is still some Merchants to research, and Axis are about 2500 just missing some German MFP's. Airgroups about 800 for Axis and 700 for Allies(Italian Sqn are very small so there is an imbalance in numbers), LCU's are about ships numbers.

Well there will be some plusses relative to WITP. No hardcoded weather zones comes to mind first. That was the show stopper way back when - for some of us. Editing the art will be no different - except now you have twice as many panes to make - so twice as much work. The map data - there is more - but it will be easier to edit because there is no "packed" data. And if you editing the transportation net - then you know what I mean - even if you are not an assembly language programmer! [:D] So editing the map data is easier though there are twice as many hexes and a bit more than that for data.
So it shouldn't take you more than twice as long to do. And if that is good news then oh boy oh boy!

I'll try to put in the Team who made the last Mediterranean map. Since i already researched Bases,Airbases,Refineries and Shipyards number of 600 right now( but not processed for hex size so they will be cut and certainly others added)and have a distance diagram between most important ones, so most data is there, i even found a place with maps and aerial photos of most North African airbases.http://www.wwii-photos-maps.com/targetnorthafrica/
And since the Med is a "bit" tinier than Pacific, that is one hope, the remaining can be dark dead hexes [:)]. I already abandoned the idea of including East Africa at first tough it would have been interesting linking Italian forces but is anyway probably an aimchair general dream due to logistics.

Andy, did you remember to include that subroutine to make popcorn and get my next cold beer?



Aloid