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Drop-dead July 14th.  We have properly addicting weeds, that's good enough.

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Socrates' Daimon should cross-link items within the documentation pages where reasonable.

0 (0%)

Socrates' Daimon should give us a withdrawal syndrome summary page.

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Socrates' Daimon should do both of the above.

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Total Members Voted: 0

Voting closed: March 29, 2020, 08:29:40 pm

[zaimoni]

Short-term, Socrates-Daimon.exe (Socrates' Daimon) is where the buildout of the automatic documentation generation is.  The game will be played through cataclysm.exe indefinitely.

I am not averse to moving *all* of the wish-mode options into an external program, but that program is not Socrates' Daimon (intent is more static analysis of the game).

EDIT re lack of ammo from military crash site...three a priori possibilities to check for.

• I can check for an archaic vsprintf crash if the save directory is PM'ed.  Won't actually fix anything, however.
• Having Socrates' Daimon verify that ammo exists in-game is "in scope" for this release cycle (won't fit in drop-dead but the other three options can have it).
• Having Socrates' Daimon sanity-check map chunk and map special generation is "out of scope" for this release.  (The restructuring required to do map generation outside of game object control, is extensive.)

[zaimoni]

Poll results are in.  Between the poll results and in-thread comments, I will interpret this as "ship 0.2.3 with item browser web pages on hard drive".

Moved out of the shelter without talking to the npc there , and went north east finding very close to the shelter a bunch of corpses, military from the equipment i looted on them.
was wielding a m203 launcher but no ammo for it, then found a m4a1 that i decided to wield thinking one of the ammo stack i looted would fit.

Looks like the inherited map extra generation doesn't actually guarantee this.

Agreed that there is a potential bug here at the map extra generation stage here (I'm fine with empty guns, not fine with issuing irrelevant ammo.)

[zaimoni]

Checkpoint: 6 of 13 required item category pages are handled by Socrates' Daimon, as of "tonight's" push to GitHub.  They do have a left navigation menu.

I'm unclear on how far to push map special adjustments (restructuring to allow postprocessing is in place, but haven't actually built out the postprocessing.)

[zaimoni]

Checkpoint: prototypes for all item spoiler pages are in (a couple of "logical" pages are absent, and some are not as useful as I'd like) as of the 2020-04-08 checkpoint ZIP.

The failure to distinguish between melee weapons and superglue, is the data design leaking through.  Known issues that may get fixed before release:

• https://github.com/zaimoni/Cataclysm/issues/33 (at least force ammo to be relevant; unclear whether suspected vsprintf crash will be addressed)
• https://github.com/zaimoni/Cataclysm/issues/34 (making this addictive will relocate this from the Food page to the Pharmaceuticals page)

[Flying Dice]

Wow, that's a lot of progress since the last time I checked the thread! Hopefully I'll be in a Cata mood soon to try it out.

[zaimoni]

Irrelevant ammo fix, and printf format screen crash harness are in latest checkpoint (latter is not fixed but any crashes to desktop will be coverage holes; if the bug hits intent is to fail-closed i.e. just can't do it).

I cannot guarantee revising in the new addiction by the end of April.  It's still plausible, but the number of technical fact-checks is up there.  General intent is to make THC an in-game cancel-willpower drug...keep the pain reliever and add some morale boost effects, but have it interfere with focus and identifying danger as danger.  I'm fine leaving its source in the Food page until the addiction goes in (that will trigger automatic reclassification to the Pharma page).

I think I want to calibrate the withdrawal timeline against the lunar phase cycle, rather than the seasons (C:Whales is using 14 days for both, and that is still in place.  Respecifying away the postapocalypse trashing of the Earth and Moon orbits, is blocked by cataloging current timings for construction, etc. and establishing how they are to be scaled -- a Socrates' Daimon subtask.)

[Salmeuk]

Nice progress! You seem to have a very clear head about what to focus on next, which is refreshing.

[pisskop]

hmmmm?  /ego

[zaimoni]

Right now I'm keeping trunk in "anytime release" (plan is to cut 0.2.2 release no later than end of April; first hint of the Uncommon Cold of Wuhan is an immediate release trigger.)  The map::place_items audit is finding too many map generation bugs at this time to permit non-emergency release.

Ideally I'd have a debug mode build option that allows force-spawning map specials in proximity (and thus allow checking for known vsprintf, etc. errors), but that will not "fit" right now (paid work flare: re-specification driven by the Uncommon Cold of Wuhan) and is not required for release.

[Lidku]

Will this division from Whales Cataclysm ever get NPCs/Factions properly implemented? I'm talking about NPCs that actually do stuff themselves with good AI. DDA has some of this in, but their still faltering in that sector and always delaying work on that portion I feel. The big bonus though they REALLY put good work into how the player faction works, but at the unfortunate cost of removing the other NPC factions IIRC.

The point I'm making is will this branch ever have a prime focus on making NPCs more stable/developed so the world can feel reactive? Because I don't know why I would switch from DDA to this considering how much development DDA has in it.

[zaimoni]

There is no intention of "catching up" with C:DDA.  (Just tally up the conscious experiences required to read the C:DDA changelogs.  Not happening; I'll spot-check things every so often, especially when I need technical guidance.)

Actually doing anything useful about NPC AI has multiple blockers.

• Everything has to be switched over to action objects from state machine.  This was about two-thirds landed in 0.2.1.  The remaining one-third was deferred as involving radical behavior changes (e.g., actually matching escape items to what is to be escaped from is not yet landed).
• Screen coordinates have to never exist in the savefile for players, monsters, vehicles, etc., ever.  This is about one-third landed as of this time; it's too high risk to attempt right before cutting the release.

At this point, the long-range Djikstra pathfinding can be migrated in from Rogue Survivor Revived, and extending the reality bubble to all z-levels makes sense (monsters actually would take stairs rather than level-porting, etc.)  Something would have to be done about roofs as part of the z-level buildout.  Unfortunately, how to use those long-range paths outside of the reality bubble, is not at all clear.

• A large number of game features (events, weather, timed conditions, item use) need to be made to work on/for NPCs.
• That Djikstra pathfinder is templated: it also theoretically can handle things like NPC construction and crafting, and inventory management.
• I do have some severe cognitive dissonance re factions -- it would take more than a few days for the Gamma World style reorganization presumed by the current prototype.

[zaimoni]

V0.2.2 is a deadline-forced release; I think it is Unstable.  (Depending on how easy it is to reach crash-to-desktop bugs, it may be Przybylski's Star.)  First post adjusted accordingly.

The following user-visible changes are intentionally in this release:

• map generation: military crash site didn't have ammo for weapons
• Incorrect bleeding of blood rather than acid or bile
• Proportional moon phases (the Cataclysm still has Earth and Moon orbits scrambled, unfortunately).
• Mansion bedroom had dresser contents on bed
• Many military base turrets did not reinforce their walls properly
• Adding a disease always targeted the first one when updating in place (this bug is mine, not C:Whales.)
• Handle the various cold-blooded mutations consistently
• Dark wyrms had been unable to figure out how to use walls to enter.

[zaimoni]

Revised pharmacology for Maui Zowie is in trunk as of the 2020-05-14 0.2.3 unstable preview.  I haven't wired in the actual addiction yet (frankly, the way addictions i.e. withdrawal syndromes are specified is inducing cognitive dissonance), but even without that adjustment, it should be a more interesting choice now that it comes with a morale bonus.

[It also slows down your reading and experience pool buildup....which doesn't matter if your morale had been simply too low to read!  The dosage-related cap on morale gain is ignored if you can't read because of morale.]

Preferred release time zone for 0.2.3 is beginning of July through end of September (2-4 months after 0.2.2).  I expect to be focusing more on code integrity or legibility, than major features through then.

[zaimoni]

Checkpoint: vsprintf escaping level issues purged (replaced some key C varargs functions with C++ template parameter packs).  Player/NPC inventory handling has been technically ugly (it's the other major source of crash-to-desktop that hasn't been completely eliminated by static analysis).

The intended release window for 0.2.3 is still July through August inclusive.

[zaimoni]

Just updated the release condition poll.  Drop-dead date set for July 14th to give time for a response re Linux compatibility patch (yes, dropped replying on GitHub for two weeks so I won't be surprised if that's "stale").

EDIT although it seems actually enabling voting on the revised poll is problematic.  (Apparently you're not really supposed to use that date cutoff in the poll setup, it's not editable at my permissions level.)