[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [PATCH] Improved patch which makes tech handiap a parameter

[Raimar Falke <rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 05:51:27PM -0700, sam+civ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Hello there,
> 
> With the help of Vallimar, I now have a FreeCiv patch which makes the
> tech handicap a user-adjustable parameter.  In addition, the patch also
> allows the AI's city growth to be slowed down.
> 
> I understand there is sone controversey with this patch among the FreeCiv
> community.  It is my sincere hope that, by making this an adjustable 
> parameter, we can satisfy the desires of both those who want to make 
> the game easier for newbies, and the desires of those who enjoy a 
> challenge from the AI, even at the easy skill level.

With smallpox you can make a good figure against an AI. Even a hard
one. If you however doesn't play smallpox you have problems even
against easy AIs.

IMHO the meaing of these two parameters should be reverted to just a
factor which gets applied on the tech output. So if ai_tech_factor is
set to 50 the AI will only get half of the bulbs. Same for
ai_expansion_factor.

> I also appreciate the interest in the Tectonic plate patch; I personlly
> feel this will be ready for inclusion in to the main tree when there
> is some way of giving the client a progress bar showing the time it will
> take to generate the map.

A client progress bar is a lot of work. Easier is of the server sends
messages like:
Generting map: 10%
Generting map: 20%
Generting map: 30%
...

> I also like the idea of pluggable map generators; there are a number of
> ideas I would like to see become map generators, such as John Beale's
> gforge, but the present method of having them hard-wired in the source
> can quickly cause the source to become unwieldly if we add too many
> generators.

Pluggable map generators: what interface to choose? Possible
are:
 - compiled in (server/mapgen_tectonic.)
 - loaded at runtime (mapgen_tectonic.so)
 - seperate executable (mapget_tectonic)

The first one is easiest but not really pluggable since you have patch
the code. The second one is not much better in this respect. The last
one is nice but you now have interface problems. How it gets the
parameters (size, players, ...) and how is the data returned? It
should not be required that binary needs to like some freeciv code to
read the parameters and write the generated map. This way you can also
code the generator in perl, python or java. I think an easy format
based on common/registry would be nice. For both input and output.

> +  if (!game.is_new_game && pplayer->ai.control && game.slowai_tech != 100) {

Why !game.is_new_game here? Also the game.slowai_tech != 100 test is
superfluous.

        Raimar

-- 
 email: rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 "Only one human captain has ever survived battle with the Minbari
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    -- Ambassador Delenn, "Severed Dreams," Babylon 5