89 replies to this topic

[Zenoth]

@Zenoth
Thanks for reporting, I wished I would have known that earlier. It seems that the ability ID's can get lost after a a game was reloaded. I've a quickfix which I'll test with dowxp first...

No problems, thank you Arkhan ! I'll keep the saved game, and once I get my hands on a fixed version I will try to reload it again and see what happens.

[Klementh]

The only critical time is directly at the start of a game. I get a 10 sec lag even with vanilla AI

I don't know your system specs but certainly you should try lowering the texture quality in the graphical settings of the game.

BTW congratulations on this new and further improved version.

Edited by Klementh, 20 February 2007 - 06:15 PM.

[Dragi]

Shortly: We love this mod!

Additional download mirror from us: http://www.dowxmp.de...f...&p=272#p272

[danuker]

Woot, I can't believe I missed the release of 2.2 by a day.

Time to go back home and fire it up with several buddies to see how it goes.

[jureidinim]

Great work guys!

Just a couple of observations/questions:
1) Does the AI donation show who is donating even if they are not on your team? I saw doantion messages from IG (who were on the opposing team) and it confused me cause i thought he may be donating to me...

2) Watched a huge 7 way free for all AI battle (1 of each race) and noticed that the Space marines chose to go for vehicles heavily. (2 vehicle buildings and tons of power). On one push with 3 heavy infantry units, 2 scout squads, land speeder, 1 dread and force commander, they got ganged on by IG and Eldar and were pushed back to their base and lost 2 resource locations to Eldar (just outside the SM base). The Eldar retreated when their own base came under attack by IG.
The SM were left with 1 grey knight unit (not a full squad - just 1 unit), 2 dreads and many servitors. They never built any more infantry to recapture the LPs. They had tons of power but would only reinforce the grey knights or build the force commander and librarian. They would charge with this small force and get wiped then just sit there until they bult those units again - no tac squads.. no scouts... no more hvy inf..
Very, very long after they built a terminator squad - but still did not recapture the two LP's sitting just outside their base (or any LP).

No.. i didn't save the replay - i intended to, but got lost in just watching the AI play... it took near 2 hours for that game to end! (IG won it). By then i shut down and went to bed, then remembered.. damn.. i forgot to save a replay.. sorry.

Great gameplay though - great job done by all on this mod team.

[Zenoth]

Arkhan, just wanted to let you know that the fatal error after reloading isn't just related to the Orks after all, but all the races, according to recent tests I just finished (the maps just don't matter at all).

Edited by Zenoth, 21 February 2007 - 02:19 PM.

[thudo]

1) Does the AI donation show who is donating even if they are not on your team? I saw doantion messages from IG (who were on the opposing team) and it confused me cause i thought he may be donating to me...

Donations should only be showing between you and your teammates and NOT from enemy teams. Don't think I've seen enemy AI's donating among each other as there should be no indication of this.

The SM were left with 1 grey knight unit (not a full squad - just 1 unit), 2 dreads and many servitors. They never built any more infantry to recapture the LPs. They had tons of power but would only reinforce the grey knights or build the force commander and librarian. They would charge with this small force and get wiped then just sit there until they bult those units again - no tac squads.. no scouts... no more hvy inf..
Very, very long after they built a terminator squad - but still did not recapture the two LP's sitting just outside their base (or any LP).

Yeaa I've seen the AI not re-build an LP on a re-captured strat and not build an LP on a newly captured strat.. its rare though and I believe its map-dependant. As for what the SM AI did re: infantry squads.. sounds like the buildprogram it choose which was Program4 (Dread strat). Also sounds like an anomoly to me as I've always seen the AI build infantry in Tier4 regardless. Play the game map again.. same result? Doubt it.

just wanted to let you know that the fatal error after reloading isn't just related to the Orks after all, but all the races, according to recent tests I just finished (the maps just don't matter at all).

Yes it also happened to me one game to the Eldar AI when I aborted the game in a multiplayer game I was testing. It seems to happen on the line: dbAssert( id ~= nil ) under the ability.ai sections of DoAbilityTarget and DoAbilityPos.

Edit: the above Ability.ai error did not occur during a save/reload circumstance. It happened when I aborted a multiplayer game where AIs were involved on each team.

[nse70]

Very nice! Thanks!
I just tried v2.2, and the AI is very smart.

But I noticed Eldar AI is still weak.
This observation is on high speed setting, standard difficulty. I don't know if it's the same without high speed.
I noticed a lot of FoF, running around, getting shot at, and running around some more while getting shot at.
I also noticed the FoF may not be turned off for quite a few seconds after the unit stops running around.
So essentially Eldars run around, get shot at, and die.

The Eldars seem much weaker than other races, as they are in the default AI.
Eldars may just be too difficult to play.

Edited by nse70, 22 February 2007 - 08:52 AM.

[jureidinim]

Very nice! Thanks!
I just tried v2.2, and the AI is very smart.

But I noticed Eldar AI is still weak.
This observation is on high speed setting, standard difficulty. I don't know if it's the same without high speed.
I noticed a lot of FoF, running around, getting shot at, and running around some more while getting shot at.
I also noticed the FoF may not be turned off for quite a few seconds after the unit stops running around.
So essentially Eldars run around, get shot at, and die.

The Eldars seem much weaker than other races, as they are in the default AI.
Eldars may just be too difficult to play.

Eldar are a tricky race to play even for humans.

Try it without the AI Highspeed setting. My understanding is that the highspeed setting is just to help with synch errors in multiplayer. I believe it was said that using this option will cause the AI to not be as "smart" as this mod can truly make them.

[thudo]

Nse.. Play on HARD setting. Gauging the AI on anything else isn't a fair assessment. I'm unsure of your Eldar behaviours though. We mostly corrected those. However, yep this is something we can examine.

[danuker]

Well I finally got around to running some Advanced AI LAN tests between 2 computers:

Played 9 games. 1vs1 on 2p_BloodRiver and 2p_FallenCity and 2vs2 on 4p_MountainTrail.

Hi Thudo, how do you get run the a 1 v 1 game on 2 computers with the AI mod running?

I recall I tried the regular console command for the AI to take over and it didn't seem to work back in 1.1 when I wanted to test it out. Is there a special console command to take over AI in a LAN game?

[Zenoth]

Thudo/Arkhan, you guys have an update on the fix for the reload A.I fatal error ? Will it come as a new Beta build before letting it go as 2.2b for example ?

[ArkhanTheBlack]

Thudo/Arkhan, you guys have an update on the fix for the reload A.I fatal error ? Will it come as a new Beta build before letting it go as 2.2b for example ?

I fear it isn't that easy. The quick fix alone will only avoid a fatal AI error if an ability is activated by the standard ability script. But this also means that the abilities don't work anymore if a save game is loaded. Further, there are several special cases which call the abilities directly and those can cause a CTD. Therefore all tactic files with abilities of all races have to be reworked to make sure that the ability ID's survive a save game reload. What makes things even more complicated is that I'm not sure how much data gets lost after a save game is reloaded. It'll need some serious testing to clear things up. I've reworked the dowxp AI and fixed all abilities, but it took me a whole day to do that. I think I'll wait for some feedback of the dowxp players as soon as Riker releases the next update. At the moment I'd like to delay it until Relic releases the patch.

[Excitus]

This version got rid of the sync problems, but we're experiencing heavy lag during big battles (2 human players + 4 AIs). Gonna switch hosting computers tonight and try again, but I fear we'll have to make do with AI Highspeed on :/

It really is a shame, because skirmish is close to perfect now...

[Zenoth]

Thudo/Arkhan, you guys have an update on the fix for the reload A.I fatal error ? Will it come as a new Beta build before letting it go as 2.2b for example ?

I fear it isn't that easy. The quick fix alone will only avoid a fatal AI error if an ability is activated by the standard ability script. But this also means that the abilities don't work anymore if a save game is loaded. Further, there are several special cases which call the abilities directly and those can cause a CTD. Therefore all tactic files with abilities of all races have to be reworked to make sure that the ability ID's survive a save game reload. What makes things even more complicated is that I'm not sure how much data gets lost after a save game is reloaded. It'll need some serious testing to clear things up. I've reworked the dowxp AI and fixed all abilities, but it took me a whole day to do that. I think I'll wait for some feedback of the dowxp players as soon as Riker releases the next update. At the moment I'd like to delay it until Relic releases the patch.

I see Arkhan, no problems mate, take the time you need and don't burn yourself on fixing the issue, do it at your own pace, there is no major reasons to hurry up. After all the Mod is centered on Skirmish games, not for the Campaign.

@Excitus
The lag might just be related to the host and/or client's connections though.

Edited by Zenoth, 22 February 2007 - 06:01 PM.

[thudo]

It really is a shame, because skirmish is close to perfect now...

Hmmm.. I tried a LAN game between one computer (circa June'03) and my current powerhouse (my message about this is near the beginning of this thread). What computers were u using on this? That makes A HUGE DIFFERENT.

DoW does not scale well, network-wise, based on the slowest comp unlike Blizzard's Warcraft3. But 4 AIs?!?! Damn man.. thats a massive game and I don't doubt it would lag BUT it depends on:

1) Speeds of all your workstations (all faster machines = better multiplayer experience)
2) Current latency of the connection

[Excitus]

We hosted a couple of games on the more powerful machine, and this helped quite a bit. Now it's even playable with 6 AI's

It's gonna be even better when my friend upgrades his computer, but it's all right for now.

[thudo]

Oh? So what happened if you ran the same multiplayer games but hosted on a slower machine? De-synching occurs? If so... shheshh.. Relic's DoW netcode blowz.. Thought they'd improve it in DC. Bahhhhhhhhh!!!!!

[Excitus]

It would de-synch with v2.00 and v2.10, even when hosted by the more powerful computer. With v2.20 it would just be very laggy, to the point of unplayable. Now it flows most of the time, with occasional hick-ups when big armies clash together.

[thudo]

What are the game modes you running? Just want to find out as v2.2 doesn't de-synch for me 90% of the time in my LAN environment. Hosted it on a computer built in June '03 (P4 3.1Ghz, 1gb PC3500 ram, ATI 800XT) @ 1600x1200. Went very well just too bad Relic never optimzied their network code as the game still has a 1/2sec delay between issuing commands. Grrrrrrrr..