A Tony status update

[TonyE]

Due to some IRC discussion I spent much of my birthday exploring expanding the limits on how many items can be in the database. Finally there are some (boring) results of me loading a saved game from before the changes demonstrating an expanded AnnexID. 2014.019 and prior have a 16-bit AnnexID which through some tragedy ends up meaning a maximum of 32768 platforms/weapons in the database.

 

The experiment is to increase that to a maximum just under 2 billion or put better, 67 million items per annex (67 million ship classes, 67 million installations, 67 million submarine types, 67 million plane types, 67 million loadout definitions, ...)

 

Here's the boring ge.log line that indicates the initial experiment is successful.

100161 initannx.c:1340 - disk_id=52631, disk_id32=1677723031, annex=12, mem_id=49152, mem_id32=1610612736

It shows the old AnnexID of 52,631 and its new counterpart 1,677,723,031.

 

It is just the very tip of a huge iceberg but still a happy result.

[broncepulido]

Great! Thanks Tony!

[TonyE]

Just a portion of what will be in 2015.008... Screenshots in the next post.

HCE - 2015.008 - 2015-06-##

==========================

- Chg:0000 GE Fixed a place that was still referring to count of planes in a

unit with a char (max 127) instead of the desired uchar, 255.

- Chg:0000 GE Code formatting that should have no functional impact but makes

debugging easier.

- Chg:0000 GE The Globals are now cleared when opening a saved game file.

Appears to have been a long-standing bug that would have

affected any play session where the user loaded a previously

saved game from the File\Open menu.

- Chg:0000 GE Saved game file version incremented to accomodate storing

per-side, per-group category (Ship, Sub, Land) flags

indicating whether the AI should leave the scenario's plotted

paths to pursue contacts. The default is to pursue contacts.

- Chg:0000 GE If the Scenario Author chose AI settings so that the AI won't

set a new course to intercept targets, the GE will now adhere

to those settings.

- Chg:0000 GE Added FuelToOffload field to the AirRec structure so that

we can keep track of a tanker's available fuel to offload

over multiple tanking operations.

- Chg:0000 GE Fixed a few spots in ProcessLaunchAirEvent that were still

treating # of aircraft in an AirRec as char (127) instead

of uchar (255).

- Chg:0000 GE A tanker can now conduct multiple refueling operations during

a single flight. It will be prompted to split from the

recipient group when there is less than 10% of the original

fuel left to offload.

- Chg:0000 GE Added "REFUELING" status to the Report window to go along

with the existing "W/REFUEL" and "NO REFUEL" statuses.

- Chg:0000 GE Removed one of the many spots where the amount of fuel to

offload to recipients is artifically increased. This

particular one was actually making sure that a tanker

could never offload all of its fuel, defeating the

whole purpose of the hack in the first place.

- Chg:0000 SE Allow the Scenario Designer to use the AI Settings menu

to choose which categories of AI groups should be able

to change course in pursuit of detections.

- Chg:0000 SE Scenario file version incremented like the saved game format.

[TonyE]

[TonyE]

[eeustice]

Looks really good.

[donaldseadog]

I love these bits:

- Chg:0000 GE Saved game file version incremented to accomodate storing
per-side, per-group category (Ship, Sub, Land) flags
indicating whether the AI should leave the scenario's plotted
paths to pursue contacts. The default is to pursue contacts.
- Chg:0000 GE If the Scenario Author chose AI settings so that the AI won't
set a new course to intercept targets, the GE will now adhere
to those settings.

- Chg:0000 SE Allow the Scenario Designer to use the AI Settings menu
to choose which categories of AI groups should be able
to change course in pursuit of detections.

and of course the air refuelling stuff. I've been having a lot of fun doing little scenarios with very distant air operations.

In the back of my mind I have the AI being able to split off a fighter from a refuelled group, make an intercept and return to rejoin and refuel.

[TonyE]

Gave up on the built-in date and time pickers since they come with so much timezone, DST, and similar baggage. So here is the clunky date and time entry

 

Moving forward again...

[TonyE]

Scenario start date and time is implemented and tested, now neck deep in the flag for custom unit names. Saved game format changes are complete, Scenario format change is in progress, the underlying logic is about 50% there.

[CV32]

Looks excellent, Tony.

[TonyE]

Scenario start date and time is implemented and tested, now neck deep in the flag for custom unit names. Saved game format changes are complete, Scenario format change is in progress, the underlying logic is about 50% there.

Scenario format change complete as well as the scenario file format conversion process when opening an older scenario (needs cleaning up though). In any event, closer but not quite there, crazy week this week so I'm unlikely o make any progress.

[TonyE]

More progress, bit by bit.

The new menu item is operational but not yet correct in some of the desired cases.

 

 

 

[CV32]

Good stuff.

[TonyE]

Plugging along as I work toward 2017.011 but also catching a couple of "might as wells".

 

might as wells:

Laying the groundwork to remediate HCs 2038 problem. The 2038 problem affects the database version timestamp and a license check.

Refactoring conversion between scenario file formats into a modular approach.

Adding structures to the scenario file to partially track scenario lineage.

 

 

Accomplished so far...

HCE - 2017.011 - 2017-0#-##

===========================

- Chg:0000 GE ExportDLL ScenLoad added DatabaseVersionDB, DatabaseVersionScen

so that the ExportDLL has a concept of which DB is being used

with the current scenario. This is handy if the ExportDLL

is supplementing or modifying the data for use while playing

the scenario.

- Chg:0000 GE Optimized gradual turns a bit, if the course would be the same

next second (turn rates

event for that second, skip to the next second where the

course will change by at least a degree.

- Chg:0000 GE For gradual turns, in concert with the 2017.010 changes,

check aircraft turns every other second.

- Chg:0000 GE Clearing out of prior Turn events was not happening properly

so they could end up cancelling each other out and providing

all manner of interference, including game slowdowns.

- Chg:0000 GE Code Cleanup - init_and_read_annexesA was also doing all of the

scenario file version specific conversions, refactored that

out into init_scen_loader.

- Chg:0000 GE Code Cleanup - removed unused init_and_read_annexes. It hasn't

been used since the switch to 4096 items/annex.

- Chg:0000 SE Incremented Scenario version to 5 as a result of implementing a

converter for aircraft formation patrols. This means scenarios

of version 4 (2017.008 thru 2017.010) may be corrupt.

Deleting and recreating all formation air patrols in the SE

is the 'fix'. However, if the scenario was created and

last saved in a SE version

that scenario forward into 2017.011 or newer without corruption.

[TonyE]

A little infrastructure detour as I convert some virtual machines to container-based operations.  In this case the mosquitto MQTT server.  In the process of migrating from a virtual machine to a container, I enabled the websocket interface.  Screenshot of a sample client  consuming the messages as I ran a scenario is below.