psyche

In light of this talk and obviously in reaction to WordPress’s recent adoption of tags, I really want to use them as more-specific categories. However, it’s simply unfeasible for me to go through every post. There must be some kind of software solution! While a computer may not know I’m talking about JavaScript when I mention my Tiberian Sun Tactical Calculator, it could at least scan my blog for commonly-occurring words or phrases that aren’t too common (not “and” or “not” or “the” or “I am feeling” etc.) and auto-tag?

To make that more effective, it could take into account the tags and categories I’ve specified - as well as those that others have specified across the blogosphere. It sounds useful and shouldn’t be that hard - should it? I suppose it’s again a question of practicality on a large scale… maybe Google or someone should do this.

How about a neat statistical thing of which words I use the most, and when I click on a word it shows the most common words that accompany it? That would be cool.

Pax

I’ve put in more data (specifically, armour types, rate of fire, damage per burst, bursts per shot and warheads [which basically specify what percentage of the damage they ideally do is removed when encountering different types of armour]) and have written a few new functions. Three in particular will save me a lot of time:

[SNIP!] - looks like the “less than” symbol is interpreted by browsers as a tag opening which totally destroys the formatting of the page and causes most of the code not to display… screenshots of the first and second (the database-looking-up-…in-functions. The third is long and… you get the idea.

The first two basically look up data in my mass of arrays (they basically constitute a fat database). This is harder than it sounds because I was reluctant to make an array with more than two dimensions (it gets fiddly) so I made separate ones for unitInfo, weaponInfo and warheadInfo so to look up, say, the warhead used by Light Infantry, I have to first look up which weapon it used (simple) and then look in a different array for a weapon which has the same name as the one that my Light Infantry says he has (…fairly simple) and then look up which Warhead that weapon says it has and then check all Warheads to see if they have the same name and then retrieve their number and return it ARGH so it gets a bit odd but these two functions will save me a lot of time.

The last function is a neat damage calculator which essentially means fewer lines of code. I’m not sure why I didn’t program a standalone damage calculating function before, but it might’ve been because of the bias toward being unhittable and being able to kill enemies in one shot instead of how much damage would actually be done - I had no concrete data in version 1.

This version is still far from perfect and I’ll need to incorporate aircraft being unhittable by most weapons while in flight and change the way in which suggestions are printed (the recommendation values are no longer integers, and you can’t have a two-point-seven-sixth row. A two-hundred-and-seventy-sixth row maybe, but that’d make the page looong… rounding would defeat the purpose of exact stats. I think I’ll just print them in order in a single paragraph… lol.

I think Elliot is working on putting in more accurate data into the version 1 database - but I think I forgot to tell him that the recommendation rating - which is affected by stats - has to be an integer or the unit simply won’t appear in the suggestions box…

Anyway, I have made progress and will keep making it. And then upload it.

Pax

Over the past few days I’ve been working obsessively on a JavaScript-powered tactical advisor for Tiberian Sun players. It’s been quite hard to get it working, but now it is and although the units’ stats are somewhat dodgy, overall the system just about works. However, it’ll require a LOT of tweaking. Perhaps I’ll ask the people at TiberiumWeb.com to give me details unit stats from the .ini files of Tiberian Sun and then I can produce some accurate way to compare them (one which takes into account armour, exact number of hitpoints, exact damage dealt per shot, rate of fire… maybe even buildtime if this becomes a lot more complex than I think I can handle…).

It’s been a good exercise - before this, I’d never touched switch statements or Arrays.

For now, here it is.

Pax

Before I begin, I’ll just clarify the situation: at some point in my youth my grandfather gave me some pirate copy of Tiberian Sun which I played with interest. It felt like quite an odd game and I didn’t really think of it as part of the mainstream gaming media. I saw Firestorm in some shop one day and made my uncle buy it. It had a manual! I began to suspect that this elusive “Westwood Studios” company was in fact well-funded and professional. Then I bought Red Alert and to top it all off, Red Alert 2 came out. I didn’t buy it but my friends did and then they bought Generals etc. and then after massive disc loss, I bought The First Decade and preordered Tiberium Wars. So here I am.

Right. Now, I think the reason I prefer Tiberian Sun to, say, Red Alert 2 (which is dementedly fun) is that it’s a bitch. No superweapon disabling! Retarded Harvester AI! Veins! It makes it hard to play. The Hunter-Seeker - so annoying BUT it kicks everyone out of apathy and says “Look, play well or die.” The EMP and Firestorm walls give enemy tank/plane rushes and missiles the finger. The tactical possibilities were just great. Conversely, Red Alert 2? Race to build superweapon. If superweapons are disabled, race to build 5 Prism Tanks or 5 Apocalypses. Assuming you’re not a dumbo, you can just go and win.

I wonder what Tiberium Wars is like. In a strange way, I don’t really want to find out.

Pax

I saw 300 yesterday; it was quite good although prone to excessive violence and random partial nudity but hey, that’s what Frank Miller comics are for, right? Elliot displayed some horror at notions of pine trees and the random tactical breakdown at the end of the film. However it was okay.

More importantly, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars arrived today, albeit gift-wrapped and with a small label saying “Happy Birthday Farhan! From Mum”. Well. My birthday is the fifteenth of June. This is going to be retarded. I am at once frightened of change and willing to embrace it! This is the game I have waited for for so many years. Probably more than eight I think - I’ve been vaguely aware of the ill-fated pseudosequel “Tiberian Twilight” since my grandfather decided to buy me a pirate copy of Tiberian Sun from a market in Pakistan. *reminisces*

Our connection to the internet briefly failed and my family is missing. Well. Good.

Pax