[Freeciv-Dev] Re: automated ferryboats

[Jeff Mallatt <jjm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2000/07/20 15:56 , Thue wrote:
>Here is an updated patch.
>It is still not quite ready, but good enough that people migth find it
>usefull in games (now that I know it can be done it feels incredibly
>tedious to do it by hand). If people try it I would be like to hear of any
>crashes, stalled ferryboats, or very stupid things it causes.
>
>In the unlikely case that anyone should take a look at the source, note
>the many, many FIXME's about things that could be done smarter. Things
>should work acceptably, however.
>If no fatal flaws are found, I would like it to go into CVS disspite of
>the FIXME's. Hopefully people other than me can then hack away on it (I
>must admit I am a little tired of coding on it). The structure of it is
>quite nice IMHO, it doesn't feel like spagetti code :)
>On the a bit longer term autosettlers and autoexplorers should use them
>too. And the AI, of course.
>
>To try it out:
>download
>ftp://ftp.freeciv.org/freeciv/incoming/pq.diff
>ftp://ftp.freeciv.org/freeciv/incoming/ferryboat3.diff.gz
>
>patch -p1 pq.diff
>patch -p1 ferryboat3.diff
>autoconf && automake && ./configure && make

The pq.diff patch seemed to work acceptably, after I made one small change
(adding a prototype for init_queue()).  I've uploaded a new patch:
    ftp://ftp.freeciv.org/freeciv/incoming/pq-2.diff.gz
I think this could go into the CVS (as could the improved air unit goto).

However, the ferryboat3.diff patch looks to have many bugs (I fixed barely
enough to do a simple test: fixing prototypes; fixing bugs in Xaw
action/menu handling.  I uploaded a new patch:
    ftp://ftp.freeciv.org/freeciv/incoming/ferryboat-5.diff.gz
.)  Then, when I did a simple test, my ferryboat did strange things.

I need to look further into this, both at the remaining bugs and at the
behavior, but I don't think it is ready for the CVS.

>Where was it I added a file (ferryboat.c) which had translated strings?

As explained in <http://www.freeciv.org/i18n.html>, you add a line to
'./po/POTFILES.in'.

>Is there a way to awoid a "+" capstring even if I add a new activity?

Sure.  You define a capstr without a "+", and use the has_capability()
function to determine what to do.

If the client finds it's hooked to a server that doesn't understand
ferryboats, simply never enable the auto-ferryboat menun item.

Since auto-ferryboat must be initiated by the client, I don't think the
server has to do anything.

jjm