Re: [VANILLA-LIST:2883] some mods to make netrek more accurate

[Mark Mielke <mark@mielke.cc>]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2000 at 02:08:54PM -0800, Tom Holub wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2000 at 03:16:02PM -0500, Mark Mielke wrote:
> > Other changes include that a tractor beam will vary it's strength and
> > cost if the ship is close enough that we would otherwise get a
> > wobbling effect (quite quite close). If the target of the tractor beam
> > should not wobble over 0, it should approach 0 and at 0 not have any
> > effect on the position of either ships. Before anybody argues that this
> > would affect INL games or something horribly, realize that the strength
> > will never become more than it currently is... just if the victim is
> > 2 away, and you tractor him towards you, there would be no point in him
> > moving 40 towards you putting him 38 behind you... rather any real ship
> > would just use less power, and therefore less fuel such that that 2
> > moves to 0. Once at zero, the tractor beam would not actually be moving
> > anything, so it would therefore take up significantly less fuel, and
> > approach some base "to have the tractor beam active" cost.
> This is not a small a change as you might think.  It is not uncommon to
> have two out of fuel ships sitting near each other, with one or both
> of them trying to orbit the planet (for example, a carrier and the last
> defender after a big fight).  If you could tractor with almost zero
> fuel cost it would change this situation considerably.

We're talking distance of a few pixels here or less. The fuel part is just
to be more realistic and would only take affect when for all intensive
purposes the guys are already on top of each other, meaning that if one
of them is orbitting a planet and it is hostile they will be noticing
it on their hull.

> What advantage to game play is this supposed to give us?
>  -Tom

What advantage? Smooth predictable graphics?

Having the little bugger wobble by a pixel or so while you are on top
of each other is dum. Having galaxy wrap around "warp" the guys by
a few pixels because they round to the nearest GWIDTH is also dum.

Many of these throughout the code. The galaxy is 100001 in some
places whereas it is 100000 in others. I told you the fixes would
mostly be about accuracy and smoother game play (something that you
won't necessarily perceive as being significant unless you actually
played it before). I listed a few examples... it's been years since
I did them, so I'm remembering as I go. Consider the torpedoes when
they blow up on the wall... they warp a few pixels immediately before
they actually explode. Why?

                \  |
                 \ |
                  \|
        GALAXY     \     Outside GALAXY
                  /|\
                 / | \
                /  |  \
               /   |   \
              ?_   *   _O
                `-<?>-'
The 'O' represents where the torpedo gets placed before the current
scheme realizes it is beyond the wall, and then immediately warps
the pixel to the wall in the straightest direction possible. The
'*' is the current scheme, the '?' is the one I like best.

I much prefer it to bounce like a ship when it blows up. The <?>
is another possibility, but I don't like it. The '?' is also the
easiest and most consistent to implement.

Maybe you think I'm crazy and that's ok too... I'd just like some
of the fixes to get into the mainstream branch so I don't have to
play patch pumpkin and make so many changes each time. At least
the continuous galaxy wrap stuff is desirable as it only activates
with wrap_galaxy!=0, and the only other option would be to remove
it completely because a half-ass implementation is stupid.

mark

-- 
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