Features I would like to see

What do you want to see in Armagetron soon? Any new feature ideas? Let's ponder these ground breaking ideas...
Luke-Jr
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Post by Luke-Jr »

philippeqc wrote:
Another thing having different sets of axes for each team
This idea is really starting to pop up recently. I think it would be realitively easy to do. I'll have a good look at it.
It will break old clients, I'm pretty sure. Don't they just get sent "x turned left/right" messages and assume they can calculate the new direction?
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joda.bot
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Post by joda.bot »

I just remembered that Ed mentioned that maps with many axes are not playable due to the amount of bandwidth used to turn.

Perhaps it is possible to add a Mode where a Turn left and Turn right "state" is set, like the suggestion to toggle the brakes.

Probably more a feature for 0.3.0.
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Post by philippeqc »

Luke-Jr wrote:It will break old clients, I'm pretty sure. Don't they just get sent "x turned left/right" messages and assume they can calculate the new direction?
Dont they get a "new direction is (x, y)"? That would be quite fine if I didnt have the feeling I coded a part that remap the (x, y) to the closest matching axis.

The parsering of map behavior would need to be updated. There could be different ways to do this
a) map parser has some extra info that allows it to pick the right axes element from many. Not that great, breaks the DTD, and introduce one more "featurette" to the format
b) XSTL: the client receive a fully detailed map and xstl. After operating on it, the resulting map is DTD valid (ie: extra information has been removed) and offers a view of the data that can be different for each teams or players. Complex to do, complex to write maps, but very high level of flexibility available afterward.
c) server send different map to different players. Often requested by forum member, but basically a "one trick pony"-hack that fixes one specific scenario out of the wide range available from solution b.

In any case, such a change would be incompatible with older clients unless much rework is done on the server so that each player plays on a properly aligned axes space, and it convert all the message from one client space to another client space. Much much work for again a one trick pony.
joda.bot wrote:I just remembered that Ed mentioned that maps with many axes are not playable due to the amount of bandwidth used to turn.
But this wouldnt be the same. The problem raisen by Ed is that one a map that has a high number of axes, turning to a direction ~90 degrees to your side required many turn action, resulting in many turn network message.

Having 2 teams operating on their own 4 axes system will not cause (much) more network trafic. A player wanting to turn to ~90 degrees to his side still can do it in one turn action, resulting in a single turn network message. That each of the axes are tilted vs each other has no bearing on this.

Well actually it could have a little. In the same way that navigating a map that has lots of diagonal walls spread over it forces players to do many "short travel, turn to your left, short travel, turn to your right", simply because the enemy's trace would be diagonal for you, and yours for them. But I havent heard or havent felt any network issues while playing on a map with many diagonal walls that couldnt be reproduced by a single player zig-zagging his way in open space.
Perhaps it is possible to add a Mode where a Turn left and Turn right "state" is set, like the suggestion to toggle the brakes.
In this case, you would limit turning to a certain, fixed rate. No more hammering the keyboard in chico, hoping to make a crutial 180 on the surface of a dime (only to find out that you over done it, and closed yourself on the surface of a dime), but also no more slow, incremental, adjusted motion. I feel we would loose much more than we would win. Hasnt the problem been addressed by slighly reducing the number of axis?

-ph
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Post by Luke-Jr »

joda.bot wrote:I just remembered that Ed mentioned that maps with many axes are not playable due to the amount of bandwidth used to turn.
Now, that greatly depends on the bandwidth available and number of players. As for the particular situation, I found ed's server capable of handling its usual loads with 16-axis Chico and no problem on my end-- though the only thing I could manage was defense-- but I'm fairly sure that was a limitation on my part. ;)
joda.bot wrote:Perhaps it is possible to add a Mode where a Turn left and Turn right "state" is set, like the suggestion to toggle the brakes.
IIRC, we're planning to do some major changes for the input system-- which I think plans to have for every action a "single trigger", "trigger on", and "trigger off" command.
joda.bot wrote:Probably more a feature for 0.3.0.
You mean 0.3... I doubt this will make it into a .0
philippeqc wrote:
Luke-Jr wrote:It will break old clients, I'm pretty sure. Don't they just get sent "x turned left/right" messages and assume they can calculate the new direction?
Dont they get a "new direction is (x, y)"? That would be quite fine if I didnt have the feeling I coded a part that remap the (x, y) to the closest matching axis.
I don't think so, since old clients don't recognize multi-axis turns properly until a few seconds later.
philippeqc wrote:The parsering of map behavior would need to be updated. There could be different ways to do this
d) Reimplement maps scripts (could potentially generate legacy XML format from resulting data)
e) Reimplement configuration (note: use a very general definition for this 'configuration' such that it includes maps, cockpits, etc) resources to be a single format for pre-set values (again, could backport to XML)

I suspect the problem with turns taking longer to have effect in Chico is more of a CYCLE_DELAY matter than latency.
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ed
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Post by ed »

Look forward to the new changes.
Sounds like the flexibility us map makings will have will be immense.

About Chico maps. It used to be 32 axis, I had to limit the max_clients to 12, but even then, when the server was full the lag was immense until several people died - which didn't take long, you never really knew where you were on the screen for the first few seconds, you were more a spectator than a player. When there was about half a dozen players left, it settled down and was a great laugh.
The server runs on a 100Mbit backbone.

Chico has 16 axis now, which is way more controllable, and in my eyes less fun. The lag is still there when full (14 max now), but far less lag and it is almost manageable when you get used to it. It's all part of the challenge.

I would go back to 32 axis if lag didn't ruin it. The settings are pretty standard fortress settings. Only changes are to speed, and of course axis. Any idea's to reduce lag would be appreciated.
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kyle
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Post by kyle »

I more thing i forgot to add i would like to see the player police and kick menus in color in case some fake comes in.

also possible on spawns it would be better if instead of xdir and ydir to just have an angle of rotation in degrees starting at 0 and that would be facing in the positive x direction
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Post by wrtlprnft »

The spawn point thing already exists. Use the angle="" attribute instead of xdir and ydir.
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Post by Lucifer »

NOw if we can just get it in radians, maps will finally be cool. ;)
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Post by Luke-Jr »

Lucifer wrote:NOw if we can just get it in radians, maps will finally be cool. ;)
todo-luke-jr.txt wrote:take units for angle (degrees or radians)
Been planned since maps were originally implemented...
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Post by Lucifer »

But it's not there yet...
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philippeqc
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Post by philippeqc »

Lucifer wrote:But it's not there yet...
Yes and its my fault. I'm quite sure Luke argued for it, and I must have dismissed the idea as very few map designers would think working with 4 decimal counts as a good idea. ;)

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Z-Man
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Post by Z-Man »

Yeah, everything is optimized for accurately transmitting isolated turns. It isn't designed at all for quasi-continuous curves, several bits of code would need adaptions. First, the cycles would need the mentioned "turn as fast as possible" flag, but that won't stop all the little wall segments from being transmitted individually; massive compression, maybe even simplifying the shapes that are allowed, would be required. I'll try to keep this in mind, but really, I like the Chico maps much more the way they are now. If I wanted to frantically hit buttons, I'd play good old Decathlon :)
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Lucifer
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Post by Lucifer »

Actually, I want it to take stuff like "pi/2", "3pi/4" and the like. A parser for that would be very handy to have for lots of other things where we use angles, I'm tempted to try to write one. heh.
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Post by Luke-Jr »

Lucifer wrote:Actually, I want it to take stuff like "pi/2", "3pi/4" and the like. A parser for that would be very handy to have for lots of other things where we use angles, I'm tempted to try to write one. heh.
Just make sure I can use '⫪' or 'π' instead of 'pi' ;)
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philippeqc
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Post by philippeqc »

Lucifer:

wrt has plan to add a parser to tValue. You should coordinate your efforts.

I can point to a usage I'm planning: put the zones coordinates as tValues. It would allow for basic motion/animation, so you'd remove a big item from my todo list.

-ph
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