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

[Mark Mielke <mark@mielke.cc>]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2000 at 11:12:42PM -0800, Trent Piepho wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Feb 2000, Mark Mielke wrote:
> >              || pstatus->status != PALIVE
> >              || pstatus->status != PEXPLODE
> >              || pstatus->status != PDEAD)
> > /* WTF?  This if always tests true??? */
> > I'm having trouble trying to guess what the expression should be
> > in the first place though, so I'll leave that to somebody else.
> My guess would be:
>     || !(pstatus->status == PALIVE || 
>          pstatus->status == PEXPLODE ||
>          pstatus->status == PDEAD)
> In other words, send the status message if the player is not alive, dead, or
> exploding.  For short packets 2, alive/dead status of the first 32 players is
> sent with every packet.  Hence the send_short<2 and the pl->p_no>31 tests. 
> Since status is sent another way, there is no need to send it via a player
> status message.  Except that I'm not sure if status is sent with every packet,
> or just those with a VPlayer message in them, which would be almost all
> packets, but not necessarily.  It also doesn't differentiate between PEXPLODE
> or PDEAD.  I'm not sure if that matters either.  I suppose I can just fix the
> code and see what happens.

Sounds good, as it definately doesn't do whatever it was intended to now...
I mean, you could put "if (1)"... and it would work as it has always
worked... :-)

> > I'd like these changes to be incorporated into the vanilla source. They
> > have only bare minimum effect if wrap_galaxy == 0.
> It sounds like you are talking about client changes too?

Yes actually, but that's for the cow people... :-)

> > Another change is to have a .sysdef option for whether planets can be
> > orbitted in two directions. The thing here, would be that when a person
> > approaches a planet, the angle at which they approach it when they
> > engage the orbitting mechanism determines the smoothest path for
> > orbitting. This has to be optional as it does affect game play, especially
> > for LPS, as the cloaker can be a little smart about which way he/she
> > wishes to orbit the planet.
> I think this has been tried before, and people didn't like it.

Which is why it is optional. I remember hearing that it had been tried
before. I wonder why they didn't? Could it have been implementation? If
done correctly it is quite smooth, and predictable even.

thanks,
mark

-- 
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