Warscale 28 - Lots of improvements

Hi Everybody!
This post is extremely large due to not being able to post for 2 weeks. This will be a real test even for those who have encouraged me.

My boss is back so I think I can resume with my normal development. These last days have been crazy in many levels. My son has been extremely healthy this weeks and is extremely active and in such a good mood and has started saying some words in english and spanish and goes everywhere babbling. At my job they have assigned me to a new project using Java and lots of unit testing. I guess I will need to dust off my java skills.

I really thought I wouldnt have time for Warscale but my wife has been extremely supportive and allowed me to have the full Saturday for two weeks to develop Warscale and that is a luxury I was not going to waste.

What was planned
Improved chat
One of the things required in Warscale was to be able for the chat to respond to commands, be able to show bitmaps (for emoticons) and recognize mouseover events on certain tags and of course, complete font color control.
So, after reading the code for a while I decided the guiMessageVectorCtrl is really superfluous and may be replaced by a TorqueML Text control. The change is now trivial but is not complex at all. In fact, this has been selected to be the snippet for this week. The result looks great and allows for a great flexibility. It still uses a messageVector object as the line storage but instead of storing a simple text line stores a TorqueML line which is still a text line so no big deal there. The main work was to create a function which allowed to link the MLText control and the messageVector object and the scroll of course. If you are observant, you may see the chat control in use in the screenshots.
Aside of the improved visual quality, one of the benefits of having a MLText control is to be able to use dynamic links. The Warscale chat not only holds the chat messages but also a list of the game events so that if you move a unit or attack other unit those actions will show at the chat. In this case I create dynamic links to the game units so that when the mouse rolls over the tag (a small modification to the ML control) the current unit information is displayed.

I also included the usual chat system meaning that the chat text input will be displayed when you press ENTER and will dissapear after you enter your message. I had some problems handling the ENTER key duw to some controls trying to be first responders but at the end everything worked fine.

Graveyard
I killed the graveyard. The undeads tried to eat my brain but I managed to escape. As I explained before, my idea was to have an area showing graves and dead units showing as ghosts. It was a good idea but completely impractical in many levels so I applied the KISS rule and discarded all the idea. Instead I created a Window control with a grid control inside. The stock window provided me with the 99% of thigs I needed so I just had to make some adjustments. I had to fix the usual border stretching problem and replace it for a border tiling. Also, I wanted this window to work as a toolbox or rollover window (like photoshop toolboxes) so that they can be closed and minimized only but not maximized. Also, when minimized, the title area shouldnt relocate to the lower left position but just stay at the same position.

With the toolbox window, I added a Warscale grid control, handled some resizing events and added a button so that any graveyard may be opened at an time from the player bars at the top of the screen and that was all. The good part is that I can use the same trick to show groups of cards like for example, a Future Sight spell which allows me to see the next three units on the opponent army. You can see the graveyard screen in the shots.

What wasnt planned
Options dialog button
This is a case of something simple which turns into something terrible... maybe it was bitten by a graveyars zombie. I added a button to the top right position allowing me to open the Options dialog instead of pressing a combinations of keys (keys will still work). I really had some problems with this. I dont know why after the first game, the Options Dialog crashed the game. I was forced to debug the whole thing and found some lists were beig destroyed (I really dont know why). Anyway this was fixed but... as a worthy zombie... I had to chop it down to pieces.

Fixed shard disconnection bugs
As Im still debugging, there were times when the server just disconnected me (sometimes due to a server crash). In those cases, the clients received a disconnect message and returned to the master server. The problem was that if the players were already connected to a running game, they werent disconnected from that game and it was never deleted which translate into horrible things the next time you try to start a game. The moral: ALWAYS disconnect and cleanup after a game.

Fixed game restart procedure
I also noticed that when the battle finished and the players returned to the Game Lobby, the server wasnt regenerating the AI players. I solved this problem so the game cycle is complete. I think I have covered all the game start/end problems so I dont expect anything new... except for special game conditions but everything should work fine now.

Added spell casting and effects
ArcaneFX is a woderful add on. It provides with a lot of new tools which makes your life easier. If you dont have it... get it... or wait for AFX 1.2 which I can say... looks awesome.
Warscale is about spell casting and AFX provides it. Of course I needed a special choreographer but that was easilly created using TorqueScript so you can see some initial effects in the screenshots. Effects are just being created but at least the basic structure is working.

Monster AI
I managed to implement some basic monster AI system. This is working fine for monsters without any special ability. The monsters attack and try to close or flee from the opponent avatar depending on the relative power level. Not bad for now. I still need to implement the special ability AI control at least for the current units. That requires to create the visual spells first so Im pushing this for later.

Strikes
Up now, I was able to use a dummy strike system meaning all the server functions can detect a hack and strike the offending player but the strike was never sent to the client or managed in the client side. I didnt want this in the middle just to avoid development problems but I have reached a version stable enough to allow me to activate the strike system. I did so and everything is working fine but I have disabled it for now anyway.

Team selectrons
One of the problems with the game is that, as more units enter the game, you really dont know which unit belongs to whom. So, I decided to go for a quick fix and add some selectrons. Im still unsure if I will end using this solution or a second texture layer with team colors (like an RTS). I guess the second texture layer will work fine if I go for TGEA, otherwise I will need to add a lot of textures and I really dont want that. A single texture and a shader should be enough. We will see once version 1.8 get out with all the wrinkles mostly ironed up. Looks promising. I think I will keep working with TGE until TGEA 1.8 is more stable and AFX has been ported over to 1.8. At that time I will move all the game in a single effort.

Mouse scroll option
I have included a couple of controls in the options dialog to handle the map scroll. One is a slider which allows you to set the scroll speed. The other is a dropdown for the scroll preferences. Automatic will scroll the map whenever you move the mouse to the border. Manual will scroll only if you move to the border and press the button.

Unit Tooltip
Sometimes you will need some additional information about a unit and it wont fit on the screen. A tooltip has been included to show some info about the unit current status. Is working but will be improved in the future to include some additional status information like the effects currently affecting the unit.

Screenshots!
Here you can see the chat system using some links and coloured fonts. You may also see a closed graveyard toolbox and the team selectrons.

Here you can see the summon effect. Just a ripoff of the Reaper Madness effect.

And in this last shot you can see the tooltip text and an open graveyard with some dead units.


The plan for this week
Sound and background music
I have never done this. This might take some time for me to understand how to play sounds and search a suitable sound library for creatures and spells. The 404 library loogs great and Im exploring some music websites... great music but relatively expensive. Geeez... now I know what Im getting for christmas...

Game GUI fixes
I have identified many small bugs which I want to get rid of in my PlayGUI. I want to get the GUI working fine for the Alpha version so that I can start the public testing.

Start Green Ear integration
Not sure if I will ge into the contest yet... but in case I do I want to be prepared.

Snippet
Ok, this week I will show you how to substitute the guiMessageVector with a MLText control.

a. Change your GUI to use a guiMLTextControl instead of a guiMessageVectorControl. the guiMLTextcontrol should be inside a scroll control, same as the guiMessageVectorControl so you will have a hierarchy like:

new GuiScrollCtrl(scrBattleChat) {  
         canSaveDynamicFields = "0";
         Profile = "ScrollProfile";
         HorizSizing = "width";
         VertSizing = "height";
         Position = "5 5";
         Extent = "524 100";
         MinExtent = "8 2";
         canSave = "1";
         Visible = "1";
         hovertime = "1000";
         willFirstRespond = "0";
         hScrollBar = "alwaysOff";
         vScrollBar = "dynamic";
         constantThumbHeight = "1";
         childMargin = "4 4";
         new GuiMLTextCtrl(BattleChat) {
            canSaveDynamicFields = "0";
            Profile = "GuiWSMLTextProfile";
            HorizSizing = "width";
            VertSizing = "height";
            Position = "4 4";
            Extent = "514 100";
            MinExtent = "8 2";
            canSave = "1";
            Visible = "1";
            hovertime = "1000";
            lineSpacing = "2";
            allowColorChars = "0";
            maxChars = "-1";
            text = "";
         };
      };

In this example the ML control is called BattleChat and the scroll is called scrBattleChat.

b. Create your MessageVector object as usual. This is usually done during the initialization of your GUI screens.
e.g. $BattleChatVector = new MessageVector(mvBattleChat);


c. Add this function to the C++ code of your guiScrollCtrl.cc (like in the end of the file) and recompile. This will expose a function which tells if the scroll is in the last line. The function is already implemented, you just need to expose it.

ConsoleMethod(GuiWSScrollCtrl, isScrolledToBottom, bool, 2, 2, "() - Returns if the scroll is in the last possible position.")
{
   return object->isScrolledToBottom();
}

d. Put this script function somewhere... i.e. in /yourproject/client/init.cs

function RefreshChat(%messageVector, %mlControl, %scroll) {
   //Is the scroll in the last line?
   %inBottom = %scroll.isScrolledToBottom();

   //Rebuild the text from the messagevector. The text in the messagevector already have the appropiate ML tags
   %text = "";
   %textlength = 0;
   %numLines = %messageVector.getNumLines();
   for(%i = 0; %i<%numLines; %i++) {
      %line = %messageVector.getLineText(%i);
      if(%textlength > 0)
         %text = %text @ "\n";
      else
         %textlength = strlen(%line);
      %text = %text @ %line;
   }

   //Set the text in the ML control
   %mlControl.setText(%text);
   if(%mlControl.isAwake())
      %mlControl.forceReflow();		//Reflow the text. THis will adjust the MLControl height
   
   //If the scroll was in the last position, reposition it in the last position
   if(%inBottom)
      %scroll.scrollToBottom();
}

This function will refresh the MLControl from the lines in the MessageVector and reposition the scroll to an appropiate position. Its a good idea too invoke it in the onWake method of your GUI in order to synchronize the controls.

e. Create a function to add messages to the MessageVector:

$BattleChatLogSize = 50;
function BattleChat::addLine(%this, %text)
{
   //add the message...
   while( mvBattleChat.getNumLines() && (mvBattleChat.getNumLines() >= $BattleChatLogSize))
   {
      %tag = mvBattleChat.getLineTag(0);
      if(%tag != 0)
         %tag.delete();
      mvBattleChat.popFrontLine();
   }
   mvBattleChat.pushBackLine(%text, 0);

   //Refresh after adding a line   
   RefreshChat(mvBattleChat, BattleChat, scrBattleChat);
   
}

Thats all... you should be set and ready to go. You may add a new line to the chat by doing:
BattleChat.addLine("[Player1] Hi");
BattleChat.addLine("[Player2] How are you");
BattleChat.addLine("[Player1] Fine");

You can support any tag available in the ML definition including images and links.

Luck to all with your projects!
Guimo