I am The Acrion... I brought in Namik Borg a long time ago and left the community for a while, showed up a again, made some updates and went poof once more. I think I'll make another come back. I'm hoping the WinBolo is ready for the implementation of full bots now. The only thing that stopped me from a brain (fully automated opposed to a borg, an assistant) was the inability to judge travel speed of enemy tanks and projectiles. As you know, you need the velocity to shoot a tank from a distance.
I'm going to bring some features up to date that were too buggy to implement at the time. I'm not sure what these are anymore, I may not even be able to read my old code. Been years ya know!
As always, the advantage tools are for toys only and not for use in actual tournaments!
Some people have noticed that my website has come back to life and downloads have occured. Well, three and one of which is me -shrugs-.
I'm aiming more towards useful features like message logs, player statistics, mIRC interfaces and such.
Would you care to provide a link to your site?
---Nova
what your going to quickly find acrion, is that nothing in the borg interface has changed.
why don't you just do some simple math to figure out the velocity? velocity of projectiles will always be constant (bullets)
Min
I would care for a borg... but I don't need any fancy features.... the only thing I need is the ability to do two specific driving commands on more than one set of keys.
Specifically:
(Default Driving Setup) And Also having;
9 - Accelerate
0 - Deccelerate/Brake
Shure! Bring back the brain!! While you are at it, make me a borg that can repair pills in opens. Nothing else, just REPAIR PILLS. Make it kill itself when it is out of wood, and then return to the proper place (i.e. the middle of my base) when it respawns. It should only repair pills damaged a certain amount, to avoid wasting trees. If someone is shooting at a pill, it should wait a certain number of seconds before attempting a repair. I'm sure there are more things to add, but that's all I can think of now.
-Madd Maxx-
I only want a third hand ! :wink:
Actual Namik is too heavy (map, auto-aim...) and it slows down my (old 1GHz) PC, and my 14" screen is overload ! Auto-aim is not very usable in game and message tool and map are not necessary.
... But it will be nice to have a simple light not buged borg for slow-(riht/left rotation = 1/2 or 1/3 of normal speed) and auto-(farm/road/boat) on the square the tank is. For auto-boat, it will be nice if when the tank is on the ground with water 1 or 2 squares around, then the boat would be build on the 1st water square on the shorter way (or forward the tank if moving).
Thank you Acrion. :)
Some wonderful ideas
I am reworking the borg currently, NamikX will be the name. It will allow for plugins or "Extras".
This will basically be for people who want only additional controls and additional functions (slow turning) with nothing else.
Also, there will be an
automap visual extra
auto-redundancy ai extra (repairs, building and maintaining)
maneuver-assist ai extra (dodging missiles, taking pills, building boats, foresting)
messenger visual extra.
I will supply a very basic file for building extras as well. This can be done in VB4+, Delphi and of course any C/C++. Linux ports will be in the distant future.
I plan to make a gamepad control extra after all this is done. A big request before was a self-navigating ai, I will look into this.
Alain, I honestly don't see how this slowed you down, I built it on my ancient 533mhz laptop (who's name was Namik btw) ;) But not to worry, you'll have you pick as to features. There are features to update less often or turn off the automap completely.
Min, have you found a way to calculate velocity of tanks? I've tried several methods from old but near perfect mac brains and it doesn't seem to give accurate or consistent results. I have yet to try lately though so we'll see. (Long time no see!)
My PC is not a real 1GHz ; it is a "FamilyNet" with Celeron 533 overclocked at 1 GHz. Namik takes 30 seconds ~ to start and after it is not regular, sometimes it bug ! The shadowed map don't work. My graphic card is an integrated SVGA 32Mo. I have never test it in real game but only in local traning game.
Thanks for all ! Nice job. :D
I tried taking the locations every tick, but for some ticks the tanks never moved (or moved little) even if at full speed. It never occured to me to take it at intervals.
The NamikX Extra interface is going to (already does so far actually)supply a significanly better interface than the standard Bolo brain interface. It is mostly similar so that existing brains can adapt. All the calculations and such should be taken care of before the Extras even run. Also, no more worry about implementing controls into every brain. I actually doubt anyone except me will make Extras but it's a fun concept. I do hope this influences someone to built a decent AI though.
Objects will be listed in order of distance, pill views are checked periodically and terrain and enemy presence is recorded. Missiles will have an estimated termination point. Tanks will have their next move guessed. All that is left is some tasks, goals and navigation.
If anyone shows interest in using VB or Delphi for Extras after NamikX Alpha is released. I'll make an example in that language.
I know vb and delphi :), I like vb alot better though, i don't know how many people around use delphi that much. It could damn near be left out.
Thanks for rejoining us Acrion, it's great to see some programmers putting some love into wb. I personally have always thought highly of Namik, it was my favorite borg, even if I only used it for mapping. Namik is slowed by vram, and I think that is what people are talking about. On my old machine with 4mb vram, namik would take a while to load up.
And to toss in my .02 suggestion: how about message quick-keys that can be customized. So I could hit F2 and send to all-tank "Uncheck allow new players from the Winbolo menu".
Welcome back, and thanks for the open source,
- Sheeps
Great idea. I can probably have the msg all and msg allies quick keys and attach a box to the bottom. Some people have mentioned a log of chat messages and others opposed. It will be an option regardless as I (and others) usually miss what people say during the game
I'll have the base and three modules released by the end of the week:
- Keyboard Control
- Messenger
- Extra Demo
how about when you go to type a message, a simple bot takes over, so it would, lets say, drive around in circles, but still dodge bullets and shoot at other players, so yr not just sitting there, vulnerable. Or just set up the code so when winbolo isn't the selected window, it does this. And a great improvement would be to get rid of that pause time when you first select the Namik Borg, like in the original. This hang time just... it was a little annoying. took 30 seconds on my old computer, takes 10 on my new (not fast) one. Anyways, glad to see this borg coming back, it was one of the best I've seen.
As far as messaging: Currently, only player chat messages are sent to the brain. I can easily make it ignore duplicate messages and filter in any way. Since game events are not sent, there is no delay in receiving a sent message even if there are 40 message waiting to scroll by.
Once we have an AI that takes full control of the tank, I will allow it to take over when the WinBolo application becomes inactive. This can be an option in the Extra itself. When the message bar comes up (for sending messages), the AI can take over while you are sending a message.
The control Extra will have multiple binds per control.
The automap on Namik was a huge waist of memory, I did forget how long it actually takes to allocate that memory. I will probably release an update to the old one that does not do this.
