New High Guard Design Program (Sneak Peek)

[Thunderbolt]

Arguably, the world does not need another High Guard designer but I wanted to create something different so here a peek of work in progress...

The metaphor is obviously a spreadsheet where items will recalculate based on the changes in ship tonnage. There is also a powerful dependency model which means for example, that if you set the jump drive to 6, the powerplant and computer will change to 6 if they are less than 6.

This feature also works with Tech Level, if you reduce the tech level from 15 to 10, the program will tear down your armour, computers, jump drive and so forth to conform to the new tech level. Changing your ship to a dispersed structure will tear off the armour and fuel scoops.

What you see here is already working. The next step is to model the weapons and after that, crew accomodations. There will be a dependency model between those too.

Question is, how interesting is this program? I plan to make it 100% High Guard compliant at least to start with. How important is designing ships for the other races ? Is anyone interested enough to test it ?

Does anyone know what the deal is on copyright acknowledgement, would it need clearing with Far Future ?

For those of a technical nature, it's written in Visual C# and runs on the .NET Framework V2.

 

[Supplement Four]

Mucho cool.

When it's done, I'll get it.

 

[Border Reiver]

And of course running on .net framework is completely incompatible with a mac. (at least the power pc versions)

 

[Thunderbolt]

Apologies to a fellow Mac user.

I use a Mac Mini (Power PC) for most things except programming and digital artwork. I use .NET at work and time prevents me learning a whole new set of tools. Perhaps those good people at Mono will come up with something that will make it Mac friendly in the future !!

 

[Border Reiver]

It is inspiring. I might try something similar with supercard.

 

[Icosahedron]

What the world really does need (or at least my six billionth of it) is a High Guard shipbuilder that is _customisable_. I'm very much a rules tweaker, and house rules abound IMTU. I'd love to find a HG generator that will allow me to install Jump 7 drives, put Jumps in small craft, alter crew quotas (eg 1 engineer per 40dT instead of 35) and many more options like this. If your generator is in progress and could be made customisable whilst you are at it, I'd be _very_ interested.
Unfortunately, your 'built in dependency' sounds very canon-centred and custom-unfriendly.

Just my 2Cr.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Icosahedron:
What the world really does need (or at least my six billionth of it) is a High Guard shipbuilder that is _customisable_. I'm very much a rules tweaker, and house rules abound IMTU.

I second that - I am a rule-tweaker as well. I'd like to be able to tweak any part of the base data, as well as add new items (such as laser bays). The difficulty of customization is one of the few weaknesses I find in HGS.

 

[Thunderbolt]

Theoretically it would be extensible by subclassing the component items to change their behaviour. At present, all items receive notifications that the tech level and tonnage has changed but it is up to the item to decide what to do about it. The computer item listens to changes in the jump drive and reacts accordingly. I suspect I could never fully anticipate everyones house rules so I guess I could never produce the perfect HG designer you are looking for.

I am working hard on the internal design to make it a proper framework, partly as a technical design exercise, but this would almost certainly mean extensibility through programming, rather than customisation through a user interface.

Thanks for the feedback though, it has given me some things to ponder.

 

[Theo D Lite]

TB,

Looking good so far. As regards the issue of customising to adopt house rules; this is a step too far at this stage imho.

I say this becasue there is a need to get the initial dependencies sorted before adjusting anything, if it isn't right in the first place then it won't be right when you try to do additionally complex aspects of the program.

I would stick with the human only design sequence at the moment and get this nailed down good and tight before possibly considering a version 2 with alien factors built in depending of course on your own needs and the interest from others.

The house rules bit could possibly be achieved by releasing the code (assuming you're allowed to do this at all) under the GPL and allowing those who want to employ house rules to adapt the code for themselves. Writing code for all the possible house rules out there would result in a very very long wish list of features which are unlikely to be mutually compatible and will undoubtedly be more than a single coder working in his spare time can cope with.

Put me down to Beta test, I'll use Trudis' laptop as my old Win 98 desktop won't do .NET and my own laptop is now running UBUNTU. I shouldn't put this sort of software on the works machine!

All the best.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

When's it going to be ready?

 

[TheEngineer]

Never ask programmers such a thing ....

 

[Valarian]

Originally posted by Thunderbolt:
Does anyone know what the deal is on copyright acknowledgement, would it need clearing with Far Future ?

I seem to recall something regarding software in Far Future's Fair Use Policy. However, this page seems to be down at the moment.

I think it was that, as long as you don't charge, the deal is that you get Marc's OK and include the copyright information included in the Fair Use policy. However, don't quote me on this - I can't remember in enough detail and can't check as the page is unavailable at the moment. Best to check here when the page is available again.

 

[Thunderbolt]

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
When's it going to be ready?

The question from sales that every developer dreads !!

As of today, I am planning the weapons battery user interface and expect to be implementing the rules code over the next few days.

If I can dedicate the time to it that I have this past couple of weeks, then it may well be ready for rules compliance testing before the end of February.

Famous last words......

 

[sgbrown]

Originally posted by Theo D Lite:
TB,

Looking good so far. As regards the issue of customising to adopt house rules; this is a step too far at this stage imho.

I say this becasue there is a need to get the initial dependencies sorted before adjusting anything, if it isn't right in the first place then it won't be right when you try to do additionally complex aspects of the program.

I would stick with the human only design sequence at the moment and get this nailed down good and tight before possibly considering a version 2 with alien factors built in depending of course on your own needs and the interest from others.

The house rules bit could possibly be achieved by releasing the code (assuming you're allowed to do this at all) under the GPL and allowing those who want to employ house rules to adapt the code for themselves. Writing code for all the possible house rules out there would result in a very very long wish list of features which are unlikely to be mutually compatible and will undoubtedly be more than a single coder working in his spare time can cope with.
-clip-

I'm not a programmer and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night ... so feel free to chalk this up as a silly question from a computer user -

Since you have to have a table or some other way of looking up the HGS table values, why would it be that much more difficult to set it up so that you can input these values or use the default (HGS cannon) values? If the table values are accessed and changed on a separate "tab" or page, it would be transparent to standard users while allowing easy customization for house rules.

House rules that require non-standard variables wouldn't be addressed, but you could easily implement the 1/2 fuel rule this way, change crew requirements or tweak the dtons of a drive - that sort of thing.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

Just a sidenote.
Last year I started to put together another MT design program.
Well adaptability (for both house rules and bug fixing) and transparence reasons changed my mind and I moved from a stand alone solution to a spreadsheet...not pretty, just practical....

Regards,

TE

 

[Theo D Lite]

Originally posted by SGB - Steve B:
I'm not a programmer and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night

Have I missed something? Holiday Inn Express. . . . what the???

 

[Thunderbolt]

Originally posted by SGB - Steve B:
I'm not a programmer and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night ... so feel free to chalk this up as a silly question from a computer user -

Since you have to have a table or some other way of looking up the HGS table values, why would it be that much more difficult to set it up so that you can input these values or use the default (HGS cannon) values? If the table values are accessed and changed on a separate "tab" or page, it would be transparent to standard users while allowing easy customization for house rules.

House rules that require non-standard variables wouldn't be addressed, but you could easily implement the 1/2 fuel rule this way, change crew requirements or tweak the dtons of a drive - that sort of thing. [/QB]

Internally, much of the process is implemented as tables and many items such as pricing, tonnage and power usage are determined this way. While for stability and resilience reasons, I might keep those closed off to begin with, they could easily be loaded from an external source in the form of an override.

I would have a concern that 'out of range' conditions could occur if people went crazy with values.

I think I'd like to get it to a point where it can be said to be 'compliant' with High Guard, and so prove that it correctly implements the guts of the process.

Rest assured, a great deal of the code is driven by tables, so sourcing them externally will not be a big deal.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Theo D Lite:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by SGB - Steve B:
I'm not a programmer and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night

Have I missed something? Holiday Inn Express. . . . what the??? </font>[/QUOTE]It's a TV ad series... guy makes all the right calls in some serious situation, other guy is impressed and says "So you're a (fill in blank with profession, computer programming in this case)?" to which first guy replies "No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night." Point being that staying at Holiday Inns is a very smart thing to do so it follows that the guy is qualified for all kinds of brainiac things

 

[Theo D Lite]

Originally posted by far-trader:
It's a TV ad series... guy makes all the right calls in some serious situation, other guy is impressed and says "So you're a (fill in blank with profession, computer programming in this case)?" to which first guy replies "No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night." Point being that staying at Holiday Inns is a very smart thing to do so it follows that the guy is qualified for all kinds of brainiac things

Thank you for such a succinct explanation. Now I understand it is clearly a cultural thing, I haven't seen that particular ad campaign over here in the UK but then I don't get all of the SKY et al channels so maybe it just passed me by.

 

[Kharum1]

Your not missing much.