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Showing content with the highest reputation on 2023-06-19 in all areas
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4 points
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Agree on many arguments. In the attempt to find a compromise, I formulate a concrete proposal which, to make it clear, I am neither supporting nor opposing: Proposal [codename: "automatic batch size"] The batch size value can drop below 1 when scrolling with the mouse wheel. When it's 0, the batch count displays "A" instead. "A" stands for "Automatic". See picture below: When the batch size is set to "A", that building produces the meaningful maximum amount of units that available resources allow. I'm not doing the math here to define what meaningful means. This is an attempt to formulate the concept, and details can be adjusted later. The propose is, needless to say, to include the automatic batch size feature in vanilla. Benefit #1: The feature is not exactly what the criticized queuing feature provided by proGUI does, but somehow similar, when combined with auto-queue. The main point of criticism would be addressed by making a similar feature available to all players. With the advantage that the player itself (and not an artificial intelligent trainer) chooses the type of units to train by clicking on icons (or associated hotkeys), which is consistent with the rest of the game design. Benefit #2: (and I very much support this) Currently, to train the maximum amount of units, we set the batch size to 1 and repeatedly click on the icon (or the associated hotkey) of the unit to train. This is against Fastest click wins. With automatic batch size, one single click is enough. Feel free to say it's a horrible idea.3 points
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(my) TLDR: you can choose to use or not use the mod. Anybody is also free to forbid using the mod from their game (very lame, but whatever). In this topic, a few players and myself have expressed that this queuing system can improve their game experience, and objections seems to always come from players that observed but didn't gave any try to the mod. It's very reasonable to have playing habits, I myself can't get used to some mods. I always appreciated the availability of all mods, including yours @Mentula and it felt good to be able to pick the ones working for me, dropping the ones that wasn't... Never felt any urge to forbid the ones I don't use even if they could provide an edge if used correctly. They are all reasonable because they are clearly not intended cheats, but expression of a players creativity to have a better game. I can only conclude that the availability of the mod to players, is positive.2 points
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It's now a few months proGUI has been around and we have had the time to form an opinion and evaluate the consequences on the gameplay and the game experience. Although I have never used the mod myself, I played in several games and watched replays with players using it and here is my evaluation on the matter. Most of what I am writing here is personal opinion, so please take it with a grain of salt. 1. Non-negligible advantage proGUI gives a non-negligible advantage to players. We can observe (in the sense of measure, more that just notice) that players using proGUI have a significantly better economy compared to other players of the same level, and even of higher levels. We regularly observe less experienced players having an economy aligned to that of experienced players. We also observe good players making the difference in games against players far beyond their reach. I don't want to dive into discussions on levels and skills, which can easily go out of track, I'm just appealing to the reader's experience, which might match mine. See this post for an actual experiment supporting this claim. 2. Unfair advantage This is 100% personal opinion, as the definition of what is fair and what is not depends on each individual's sensibility. From my point of view, the use of proGUI oversteps the threshold of what is fair. In a game like 0 A.D. the combination of economic growth and military strategy are skills that players value and seek. One of the two aspects is not fully, but greatly automatized by proGUI, making the whole game assuming a different flavor. Sure, there are configurations (f.e. deathmatch) and mods focusing exclusively on the military side, and I am not against all-proGUI-games. But I think it's unfair to mix proGUI players and non-proGUI players in the same game, due of the artificial advantage introduced by proGUI. It's a bit like mixing bikes and electric bikes in a race. 3. Against the game spirit Again, personal opinion. The concept of 0 A.D. (and games alike) revolves around dominating the opponent on two main levels, intrinsically combined: economy and military. proGUI artificially forges one of the two. proGUI is not an eco-bot that plays for you, but it's not even far from that. The game vision expresses clear positions on certain pitfalls that should be avoided, and I don't see proGUI giving a contribute in that direction; rather the opposite, I would say. So, what? Well, I don't know! Personally, I would kindly invite those who use proGUI (or similar) to refrain from using it in regular games, but of course it's up to their sensibility to keep the game "fair". Far from me pushing towards enforcement of rules or other robocop solutions that, in my opinion, don't help making this community more cohesive. It would be nice to behave in accordance to common sense, but I can see that common sense varies a lot depending on who you ask. That being said, I know the developer of proGUI is a good guy, with a genuine curiosity and the best intentions. As an open project as 0 A.D. is, it is desirable that satellite projects (such as mods) are likewise open. It's on us -as a community- to find the solution to this problem, if we evaluate it as such.1 point
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I'm against all macros, so the "solution" I am most in favor of is no solution at all.1 point
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or maybe we should drop batch training completely but I don't quite dare proposing that.1 point
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well progui is a bit like that (but not too intelligent) because it works on a logic that makes it choose which unit to train based on army composition specifications. I would actually like mentula's solution better because I would enjoy retaining control on which barracks trains which unit. at that point a gui mod that makes you keep track on production (exactly like boongui always did) would be a nice option for those who want to improve their game without any automation.1 point
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Here is my TLDR, sorry it is a mess. I pretty much agree with @Atrik here but add a couple thoughts. I tried it to get a cleared picture. I can already tell that the level of automation (autostart, choosing a unit composition for autoqueue) is consistent with macros, if not doing even more tasks for the player. I won't judge anyone for using it in casual games, and I have already played a few with @Atrik and others and it was fine. But in a competitive setting it should be considered cheating. I think the reason to consider it cheating is what @Feldfeld described, where a p2 attack to distract the enemy while you flawlessly boom is pretty much a guaranteed win. On top of that, it is bulky (4 options tabs, lots of screen space) and complicated on its own. It takes time to learn, just like the game underneath. So based on that I would say it is unwise to add to vanilla as some have suggested. overall, I think its a great tool, especially for new players who might just want to have fun with the AI as well as casual players that don't like the number of clicks needed to manage eco. However, it shouldn't be allowed in competitive games.1 point
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It'll take "a while". It may be more representative to make a community mod based on the latest RC. We can refrain from including balancing changes in SVN and merge (all/most of) the patches from the community mod just before releasing a new RC.1 point
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Do we have a timeline on when a27 comes out? Thoughts on doing another community mod update for a26?1 point
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Having used both, I slightly prefer ChatGPT Plus over Bing Chat despite it being the more limited system (and Bing having a better UI). I find Bing Chat is too easily swayed, or one could even say distracted, by whatever information it digs up with its web search. As you can imagine, that can easily go very wrong. With ChatGPT Plus you have more control over what information gets introduced into its logic stream. I've also found it to be more deliberative in its though process and more open to changing its mind than Bing Chat when prompted with contradictory evidence or the opportunity to critique its own work. It seems like Microsoft tuned some of the model parameters to make it more concise and decisive at the expense of "intelligence". Of course if you are dealing with a task where up to date information is critical I would probably still go for Bing Chat, rather than spend hours writing in briefings to bring ChatGPT up to date. I've also experimented with letting ChatGPT write queries to Bing Chat. In theory that would give you the best of both worlds, but so far my results have been mixed. ChatGPT can easily grasp the idea of being able to pass searches to Bing Chat, but has trouble sticking to a workable syntax while also interacting with the user. ChatGPT tends to just want to converse directly with Bing Chat in natural language, and I've had the most success just allowing them to do that. However, without human direction they tend to forget the parameters of their assignment. For example: https://chat.openai.com/share/c01f8d07-779e-4c93-9862-d7bade5b58ce Here's the problem, how can ShadowOfHassen know if you are telling the truth? GPT-4 when it is properly supervised and firing on all cylinders produces text that is (in my experience) completely indistinguishable from what a human would write.1 point
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There's now two AppImages available for 0.0.27-rc1-27645-alpha , one built on focal and another on jammy. If you tried a previously released AppImage for this version and the Vulkan backend was automatically disabled, try the "jammy" image (note the "jammy" image is less likely to run on older distros).1 point
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Thank you for the feedbacks, I'll try make the changes upload the same..1 point
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Have you ever found that you are floating a lot of resources in the game, or some of your production buildings are idle because you are lacking one type of resource? This is because your economy isn't optimized to support the production of units. It is not trivial to know how many production buildings you should build, and how to accurately distribute your workers on each resource to support non-stop production of these buildings, so that little resources are floating and no production building is idle. If you are interested in building the most efficient economy, my study may be able to help you. I have analyzed the economic structure of 0 AD Alpha 25 and searched for the most efficient economic models to continuously produce units in different scenarios (see the attached file). By considering the gathering rate of workers, the cost and production time of different units, I derive a simple formula to calculate how many workers are needed on each resource to sustain the production of units at different batch sizes, with and without the economy upgrades. From the calculation results, I make a number of exemplary economic models to illustrate how to distribute your workers accurately on each resource in different scenarios. The results may be adapted to design other economic models for different strategies, and shall be particularly useful when combining with the auto-queue function of the game. You are welcome to give comments to make improvements. Designing economy in 0 AD.pdf1 point