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Messages - Trovaner
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101
« on: December 01, 2015, 12:32:41 AM »
A disappointing turnout this month but I guess the show must go on. We have a low participation rate around this time every year so it comes as no surprise that we only got one entry this month. Congratulations for winning this month's BOTM, Thrackerzod! 
102
« on: November 19, 2015, 11:36:14 AM »
Based on the poll, we have roughly 8 people interested in this. As such, I bumped the number of unique members needed to throw out or penalize something down to 3 from 5 (this does not include me and I'm still the judge on if it is a valid reason so I think this is still fair).
For those of you who voted no or didn't vote at all, is there something that I can do to make this more appealing to you?
For those of you who voted yes, does not having a prize other than fame change your vote? I'm still on the fence about this so I'm interested in hearing if the extra effort is worth it.
103
« on: November 17, 2015, 10:59:08 PM »
GIB files are responsible for defining the 2D look of the screens and overlays that you see in the game. The human-readable format was created by Gabriel Interactive and was used in a few of their games. If you know what you are doing, you can give RA2 a fresh look with minimal effort. A few example use cases would be if you wanted to move around a button on the main menu, add an image to the loading indicator, or remove the health bar from the status bars. The drawback is that you can't add functionality that the EXE isn't expecting. In other words, you can't add a button that goes straight to Exhibition mode from Team HQ, add a slider to resize bots during battles, or add a placeholder for a 3D preview to the status bars since the EXE doesn't have the handling for having these types of things on those specific screens. When the screen is loaded, the EXE looks for controls with specific names to add the functionality to them. If the control has a name that is not recognised by the EXE, you can interact with it but it will not do anything special.
104
« on: November 17, 2015, 02:52:35 PM »
To be honest, the component tutorial that the Beetlebros made is probably the best turorial for learning how to setup GMF files. If you are trying to figure out how to setup the PY, your best bet is to look at the Low Lag Arena's PY (also a good reference for the minor differences between component and arena GMFs) and try to load your arena without any of the extra stuff. Once you have that down, the Creating Arena Hazards thread has some information that you might find useful (at least I hope others find it useful...).
105
« on: November 16, 2015, 02:26:07 AM »
Since it has been a month, here are some interesting facts based on the results of the poll: - An average of 4.33 votes were cast by participating members. This is an improvement of 0.28 votes when compared to 2012.
- When normalized and compared to 2012's poll, we saw an increase in everything except for Arena.gmf File Editing and .EXE File Editing.
- We are seeing an increase of nearly 150% in both Component.gmf File Editing and .GIB File Editing (after normalization).
- Approximately 46% of the active community participated in this year's poll when the active community is defined as the number of members that voted in last month's BOTM. When using the same definition, 2012 had roughly 69% of the active community.
If I can find where I stored 2009's data, I'll make another post with more trend data.
106
« on: November 16, 2015, 12:31:30 AM »
To my knowledge, the community has never known how to open/modify these files. If we could figure out which format they based it on, we could probably reverse engineer it but I haven't had much luck.
107
« on: November 15, 2015, 11:16:22 PM »
The following is a list of fonts that RA2 recognizes: - fg_d18
- fg_d20
- fg_d24
- fg_d26
- fg_dcn14
- fg_dcn16
- fg_mcn12
- fg_mcn14
- fg_mcn16
- System
With the exception of the last one, all of these fonts can be found in RA2.cfz with the .GIFF extension. Unfortunately, the file format appears to be used exclusively by Gabriel Interactive. That said, it is probably based off of some other more common format since all of the custom formats that Gabriel Interactive created were human readable (like GIBs and BOTs) unless they modified/renamed some other format (like they did for CFZs and GMFs).
108
« on: November 15, 2015, 05:46:35 PM »
Oops, I see what happened... It should be fixed now.
109
« on: November 15, 2015, 02:02:32 PM »
To promote more activity on the wiki, I'm thinking of starting a new contest. Every Saturday for 6 weeks, a new trivia question will be posted in this thread. Each new trivia question will represent a different round in this contest. At the start of each round, the answer will be given to the previous round's question. In order to win a round, a member must be the first person to update/create the wiki page corresponding to the answer with at least +300 bytes in a single update (as shown on the Recent Changes screen) before the start of the next round. Winning a round will give you one point in the contest. There are no rules against updating/creating more than one page in a round (thereby boosting the chances of you guessing the correct answer). Additionally, after all 6 trivia rounds, the member (or members) with the most correct pages modified (with at least +100 bytes added before the end of each round) will gain an additional 2 points. At the end of the contest, the member or members that win the most points will be awarded the prize. To be fair, words will not be required to have proper spelling and grammar as long as the information is valid, on-topic, and to the best of your ability. To limit bias, edits and questions may be thrown out or penalized if at least three unique members request it (for reasons that I consider to be fair). If a question is thrown out, a new question will be posted at the end of the week for the given round (in other words, there will always be exactly 6 rounds with at least 1 valid question). Since this will be a race of sorts, each round's question will be automatically posted at different times of the day every Saturday with the exact time given a week in advance. Here is an example question and answer: Q. Which enclosed arena has a floor that is primarily water? I already have more than enough questions (>30) made up for this contest but I will accept proposals via PM (for either the current contest or future contests if this goes well). Since most of my questions are related to arenas, I'll probably keep to those types of questions this time around (so that I have backups just in case we have to throw out a question or two). Keep in mind that sending me a trivia question would give you a slight edge since you probably know the answer to your own question (that said, there is no guarantee that I will use your question and I will not inform you of which round your question will appear in). I haven't decided on the prize yet but I'll figure something out if there is enough interest. Thoughts?
110
« on: November 04, 2015, 10:39:28 PM »
With the holiday season right around the corner, its time to start thinking about your December entry for BOTM  . Here's how this works: Every participant creates a bot that follows the given bot restrictions for that month. They then create a simple splash for their bot and uploaded it to GTM's BOTM Uploader before the deadline expires. After the deadline expires, a poll will be created for the community to vote on their favorite entry. At the end of the month, the splash with the most votes will be put on GTM's homepage for a month. Bot RestrictionsSplash Rules- All splashes must be Christmas-themed (just be clear, I'm referring to the Christmas/holiday season and not just Christmas so it can be anything from snow to hanukkah to Santa Claus)
- Entries must be uploaded using the BOTM Uploader
- One bot per splash
- One splash per member
- Please do not put anything in that identifies you as the creator. Credit will be given after the poll to reduce bias and give people a chance to guess who made what.
- There must be at least one image of the insides in the splash.
- The weight must be given in the splash.
- Images must be either JPG, PNG, or GIF.
- Images must be no wider than 700px and no taller than 800px
- Entries must be in by November 27, 2015 at 11:59 PM Central Standard Time (GMT - 5:00) so that we can spend the rest of the month voting.
Please upload your entries using the BOTM Uploader. Questions/comments?
111
« on: November 04, 2015, 09:44:14 PM »
Congratulations for the landslide victory, RedAce!
112
« on: October 30, 2015, 08:23:50 AM »
#1 Silverfish  #2 RedAce  #3 Gazea2  #4 Thrackerzod  #5 Sircreepalot2 
113
« on: October 14, 2015, 06:28:48 PM »
As requested, this month will be an anything goes BOTM. Here's how this works. Every participant creates a bot that follows the given bot restrictions for that month. They then create a simple splash for their bot and uploaded it to GTM's BOTM Uploader before the deadline expires. After the deadline expires, a poll will be created for the community to vote on their favorite entry. At the end of the month, the splash with the most votes will be put on GTM's homepage for a month. Bot RestrictionsSplash Rules- Entries must be uploaded using the BOTM Uploader
- One bot per splash
- One splash per member
- Please do not put anything in that identifies you as the creator. Credit will be given after the poll to reduce bias and give people a chance to guess who made what.
- There must be at least one image of the insides in the splash.
- The weight must be given in the splash.
- Images must be either JPG, PNG, or GIF.
- Images must be no wider than 700px and no taller than 800px
- Entries must be in by October 27, 2015 at 11:59 PM Central Standard Time (GMT - 5:00) so that we can spend the rest of the month voting.
Please upload your entries using the BOTM Uploader. Questions/comments?
114
« on: October 08, 2015, 12:28:26 AM »
I completely forgot about this. I was trying to do it once a year but failed to fall into a routine... I've pretty much modded everything. I only wish that I had the time and motivation to finish some of the projects that I started. Thinking back, some of of my favorite projects were the action cam, random arena selector, height guide, arena switcher, auto AIing practice arena, and homing GMF housebots (the last three mods are unfinished and I'm still working on a V2 for the action cam). -How much experience do you have in each?
- Bot File Editing - Enough for most things. I've written parsers in both PHP and Python (for the Bot Exchange and for a custom practice arena).
- .gib File Editing - I have some unfinished documentation listing out all of the commands and how to read these files. I also wrote a syntax highlighter for Notepad++ but, due to the way that the file is structured, it is very basic.
- Component.txt - I know my way around these files. The guide that Click wrote does a very good job of explaining how to mod these and I would highly recommend it to anyone trying to learn how to create their own components (or arenas). In my modding version of RA2, I have some nifty dividers that take advantage of how these are read by the EXE.
- Component.gmf - Before moving on to arenas, I spent some time working with components.
- Arena.py - Historically, arenas have had a larger audience than other mods so that's where I spent most of my time modding. I have an unfinished tutorial that discusses how to mod these and Arena.gmf files but the arena hazards tutorial that I wrote awhile back is good enough for most people to get started. I also have a big list of RA2 commands that I've gradually been adding documentation for (Click released an early version of this to the public but I've added quite a bit since then).
- Arena.gmf - I know my way around but I have more interest in other things so I try not to spend too much time working with these. At one point, I looked into creating an export script for Blender but I didn't get too far (I was too busy working on other things).
- AI.py - Whenever the topic of smarter AI comes up, I work on making better AI and tactics. My goal for quite some time has been to make an AI that is more universal than Omni that can also be used by my auto AIing practice arena.
- Bindings.py - I haven't needed to AI anything for quite some time but I know my way around.
- .exe - I've worked with it on a few projects but nothing truly noteworthy.
- .bmp editing - After Sage released his component skin pack, I started making a mod that would allow you to switch between multiple component skins without having to install custom components. I made high resolution versions of most of the stock components before moving on to more advanced mods. The mod itself worked similar to Click's Collision Viewer. I haven't really done anything more recent. Madiaba ran an Arena Skinning Contest once that I won but, technically, that was to determine the skin for the initial release of the arena.
-Learn any new modding knowledge recently?
Unfortunately, I have not. I was working on a unique AI over the weekend but, before I got around to testing it, I was called away. -Favorite type of modding?
I like working with python files because they give you quite a bit of control. The other formats are fun to play with on occasion but its harder to be unique in them. -Favorite mod? No TC mods like DSL, RWRA2 or ironforge. I'm talking about mods specific to one or two categories.
The RA2 Cheat Mode Pack because it made the FPS window useful for debugging issues. I also liked Madiaba's cannons that had cannonballs with APs.
115
« on: October 03, 2015, 06:34:13 PM »
What do you guys want for November's BOTM?
The first 9 months were spent going through all three major weight classes for the three major versions of RA2 (with a few variations on versions). This month, we did a Halloween theme and December is traditionally a Christmas theme. That just leaves November...
116
« on: October 03, 2015, 06:25:58 PM »
Congratulations, Domanating! You've won again!
117
« on: September 28, 2015, 11:54:11 PM »
We got some pretty awesome entries this month... #1 Wacky Bob  #2 Thrackerzod  #3 Mazakari  #4 Domanating 
118
« on: September 22, 2015, 11:56:17 PM »
Do we have capabilities to use rear weapons? Maybe charging in backwards rather than making a cumbersome 180-turn in certain situations?
IIRC, Click wrote a "ReverseRam" tactic for this purpose (used by BiDirRam.py). Otherwise, I believe there are a couple AI.py files that have built in handling for it but that usually results in the AI.py fighting for control of the bot since the tactic is trying to do something else.
119
« on: September 22, 2015, 05:58:09 PM »
I can't get the mega mirror to work either  I've let it load for over 2 hours & it did nothing.
I have the chrome extension, before you say that :P
Unless the mod team prefers to have it hosted elsewhere, I wouldn't mind adding a download link to GTM.
120
« on: September 22, 2015, 02:39:42 AM »
1. NEVER STOP MOVING
anyone noticed how when 2 omni bots get on top of each other they just sit there? its like it thinks it occupies the same space so it just chills until the timer kicks in. humans would never do that. It can even get robots killed if they are being gut ripped to death but too stupid to move off their opponent. Is it possible to "override" the bindings or make a new py or something that prohibits this stupidity? and if it can't move forwards, go friggin backwards? is it possible to make the robot attempt to change its X-Z position as often as possible or something to force this? I really have no idea.
This is less of a problem with Omni and more of a problem with the fact that something like 99% of the AI.py files that are currently available to the public use the Engage tactic. With the exception of the MeltyBrain tactic, all of the other major tactics take speed into account so that this sort of lock up situation doesn't take place. The Engage tactic is good for bots that try to pin their opponent or bots that don't benefit from moving away from the opponent. That said, pinning tends to be hit and miss because all of the currently available AI.py files force the bot to back away as soon as the countdown starts if it starts before their opponent's timer (rather than attempting a mad dash at the last second). If we want to create a Engage tactic that doesn't lock up, we would need to somehow figure out a way of determining if the AI bot is currently in control or if it is stuck in a stalemate. 2. Moving forward > aiming
aka the reason meltybrain is op. It happens on all pys, but is especially noticable vs meltybrain. Robots that are being flanked will 100% of the time try to face their opponent and THEN move forwards. Do both! not moving leaves you a sitting duck and will get you killed. Humans can move forwards and turn at the same time, can AI not?
This is probably doable but it would be difficult to code in a way that would work well since it would only be effective in very specific situations and there isn't any easy way of figuring out some of the variables (like the opponent's radius). Turning quickly to face the enemy is usually better than getting flanked. If the opponent would reach you before you got out of the way, it is better to turn quick to face them (since the front usually has more protection and wouldn't expose your wheels as much). You would also need to figure out how far out you want the bot to go and what to do when there are hazards in the way. 2b. variable turn speed?
I know the in bindings you can change the bots turn speed from snail to warpspeed but it seems like it is LOCKED in that speed for all turns no matter what. is there a way to make it turn fast when it has to quickly 180 and slow when it just has to angle a few degrees? It seems like this would solve a lot of oversteering problems fast robots like rammers have.
You have two values in the Bindings of most AI for turning. One is called 'turn' (defaults to 60) and the other is called 'turnspeed' (defaults to 2.5). 'Turn' is the max analog value that you would like the bot to use (humans are limited to 100 but there isn't really a limit for the AI (however, setting it too high could be considered cheating)). The value that you give is used as a multiplier and the longer it takes to get up to speed, the higher this value will become (until the next tick would cause us to over steer). 'Turnspeed' is another multiplier that is used in calculating how quickly we should boost the 'turn' multiplier (once again, there is no limit to this value but you wouldn't want to set it too high because it would cause over steering if set too high). My point is neither of these values are used in a way that would cause the input to be linear and, if your AI is over steering a lot, you should probably hatweak your bindings. 3. Only reverse as far as is necessary
aka why KOTH arena is dumb. I feel like this wouldn't be necessary if #1 was implemented but just in case here it is. Ai getting out of immobility timer is laughably poor. once the timer starts it tries to back up at max speed for several seconds. If it can't move, it goes forward at max speed. Then it repeats. First, is there a way to set it so the robot judges its "get out of immobility" by its coordinates and not on a timer? This will help prevent many low-power immobilities. second, is there a way to make it move only as far as is required? I can't stand playing on the koth arena with ais because they just suicide off the edge at max speed as soon as the timer starts. Surely there is a way to fix this.
I concede that this could definitely be improved. Right now, the default behavior is based on a 2 second timer that doesn't work well for fast bots. That said, I'm not sure what the exact conditions are for the immobility counter so I'm not sure how I would code it.
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