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Post by ViciousLothario on May 31, 2023 9:14:16 GMT -5
Entry #14: Naming the game
Yes, I know we are a still long way off, but I have this options and created a poll. If you want to add your own input feel free to.
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Post by ViciousLothario on May 31, 2023 12:34:26 GMT -5
Entry #15: Wait?! What?! Companies Converted?! Already?
Yes indeed. Companies are already converted and the work starts to take shape.
It's going smoothly. Already have the two most important tables out of the way. Oh and about workers... Simplified a lot with moves and movesets. And here in Companies, indeed I have a style set in the database, but this style still doesn't mean anything, I think I will have to create another table just for styles, but will worry about that later.
LET'S GO!
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Post by Mongo the Destroyer on May 31, 2023 19:06:28 GMT -5
Honestly, the forced fed style stuff was a BIG turn off for me with TEW. I'd want to do one thing and they'd be like "No, that's not this fed's style." Screw you I do what I want. I'd MUCH rather have freedom to book how I want and not get punished/restricted. If I want to make AAA an ultimate fighting thing that's my prerogative, they gave me the job so let me do it. The EWR version of the owner having a preference didn't really change match outcome from what I could tell- however if you booked entirely against the grain and were losing money? You'd be more likely to get cut. Though I think it was mostly window dressing because.... I'm pretty sure it was bugged anyway and the style you picked for the owner in the file editor didn't translate to actually being that preferred style in the game being played, like Ryland messed up something in that code or something. Made an entry and didn't read your post, I was too excited with my recent accomplishments. I totally get your point. And I've that awareness, that is not only an issue for you, but for a large part of the player base for this game style. I think this games have to act as a sandbox, so you can do whatever you want to do, the way you want to do. That's why even If I implement the owner style\booker style\event style features is more for what the AI does and not regarding players. For an example, you want to book AAA as a pure wrestling company. You can change the federation style, in fact, what I am thinking is you can create your own style. No limits whatsoever to that. Maybe if you switch styles, it will hurt your popularity a bit as the fan base isn't used to it. In TEW 2016 you could create your own product. You can't exactly set what are the modifiers for match calculations and show calculations, but can experiment with it and see what fits your federation the most. And one could also create a specific style to be applied to a specific event\tvshow. Like we all know WWE style, but then you had the 201 or whatever it was called that was more of a high-flying style. Of course that If you book one show like a pure company and the other show as a lucha libre show, fans know what they're buying. When you buy a ticket to a CHIKARA event, you know what you're in for. And when you buy a ticket to a ROH event, you also know what you're in for. I just think that style have benefits and drawbacks. Also, when setting up the lobby you can check... Do you want to play with styles/products? Yes or No. Because there are users that want that feature and other users that don't want that feature. Because that feature can give you bonuses and can give you penalties, so it's up to you to set the game as you want to play. As for the last part, there are a lot of things in EWR and TEW that are purely cosmetic and don't actually represent anything in the game engine, despite being sold as a feature. Believe me, I've tested it. Sure, just make it something I can turn off before starting and any concerns I have are withdrawn, lol.
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Post by ViciousLothario on Jun 1, 2023 3:30:55 GMT -5
Entry #15: More Conversions Work
Conversion work is being done. Some parts of it feel like a chore at this point. Why isn't the data more uniform in TEW Tables? Have no clue... In some parts we have integers to represent numbers in other parts we have strings to represent numbers as well, which makes absolutely no sense from a programming point of view.
I can give you guys a simple example... In order for me to calculate popularity of a wrestler in the USA. I have to ask the database for each column which contains 'Great_Lakes' and all the other USA regions and that will return me a number, which then I use to calculate the average to insert in our game database. But for broadcasters, instead of returning a number, it returns Tiny, Small... and so on. Plus, I'm assuming the column has the same name. So I need to convert that value of Tiny, Small into a number, so then I can calculate the average for that region.
At least now I have this two helper functions, so every time that pops up I just need to call that function.
But I also feel once I have the database setup it will be so easy to show this data to the user. I plan on using kartik grid to start with, Which is a gridview for the current model and just need to repeat the same views over and over. So for an example, when you are searching for a wrestler you can easily apply filters, you can sort values ascending or descending depending on your need. You can easy look for wrestlers, with a small amount of clicks..
With time I will stylize everything and give the possibility for a grid view or for a beautify view. I love the grid view because it allows for easy filtering, easy sorting, easy everything. Plus If I set it to Dynagrid it is even better, because the user can then control is own grid and how he wants to see data.
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Post by ViciousLothario on Jun 2, 2023 8:57:22 GMT -5
Entry #16: Converter
Still working on the converter, today I had the chance to develop some more helper functions to work with date objects. For some reason the TEW database uses days left in broadcaster contracts, so I think it updates those records on the advance day, everyday it takes one day off from the contract.
I don't like that as it adds extra processing and extra processing work on the database, I sincerely prefer to get the current game date and perform a check contract expiry. So when we progress one day in the game, it looks in the database for that specific date. If a result is found do a certain process if not, it skips the process entirely. Instead of retrieving, let's say 3000 records and for each record do actualrecord - 1. LOL. It might not seem much but it really impacts on the performance in a positive manner.
These are the small things that one has always to take in consideration, we are on a very early stage building the foundations of the app. It's a very important stage, so every step has to be taken carefully.
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Post by ViciousLothario on Jun 2, 2023 13:01:16 GMT -5
Entry#17: Dates and Schedules...
Oh boy oh boy, I ran into the mythical problem of dates with TEW and the weeks and months. Gladly I have a solution for it. So I'm importing the Events using the converter and I see the day, week, and month of course. Plus the type of the event, if it's weekly, monthly, annual special or something like that.
What do I plan to do? I can run the algorithm now to convert this to proper dates or leave it as it is and as the user prepares the database it will run the algorithm for each event to create a proper date for it on a yearly basis. Dates are usually a problem for programmers. For me isn't really a problem with dates my problem lies on the approach I should take.
Let's say the game starts in January 1992. I can set up the entire schedule for 1992 and 1993 for every company. And as you turn to 1993, I set the events for 1994 based on what the user inputs, or based on what is on the database. What does that mean? Processing as the game goes by.
This will create more events in the database and make the database larger, but is something we can live with. Then let's say you want to delete an annual event. It will warn you.
'This is an annual event, delete this event only this year? Or do you want to delete this event all years?'
So if you decide to micromanage the schedule or not, is up to you. Also have some stuff in mind for the schedules.
But for the time being I will leave it as it is, and add a user setting. If the user wants to run with TEW style, of 7 days, 4 weeks per month. Or wants to play with real dates.
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Post by ViciousLothario on Jun 2, 2023 13:28:37 GMT -5
Entry #18: Weekend is coming, but work is being done...
Conversions and more conversions. But is going well.
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Post by Mongo the Destroyer on Jun 2, 2023 17:57:30 GMT -5
TEW has so much stuff to convert, lol
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Post by ViciousLothario on Jun 3, 2023 3:06:01 GMT -5
TEW has so much stuff to convert, lol Yes it does have, and I'm trimming it and adapting them to my own ideas for the game. I'm just trying to think in all possible features I might want to add down the line. Because to start with, I want the user to begin a game and start to play right way without having to look at so many stuff. Giving the user enough detail to book a wrestling company, get rated for it and develop his company.
For example schedules, I'm adding them and this stuff with dates, and probably you won't see AI shows in the early versions of the game. But most features will be released over time. It's a risky move, to release something and then patch and add new stuff over time, because it might throw people off. Some of this tables are so easy to configure in the game. Others will be added over time, but if you look at a TEW .mdb file from a programming point of view, you see so much inconsistency, so much stuff that isn't properly thought.
And my opinion on that is that the games are built to get those dollars. You don't see to many changes from 2016 to 2020, those are 4 years of programming. Imagine what I could do with 4 years of programming with a single app.
And then there is this stuff like database corruption in TEW. Why does that happen? Because it transformed some characters into some special characters the database can't handle. Most of the tables don't have indexes, don't have primary keys. You can't even set an event in the database with the same name, because it will say to you. There is a record in the database with that name. Dude for real? I can't have the same event name for two different events? Why? Because the database doesn't have a primary key and primary key is a name. So it says that the name for each record has to be unique... 35$ dollars, are you kidding me?
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Post by ViciousLothario on Jun 3, 2023 5:21:45 GMT -5
Entry #19: What a beautiful morning in Portugal
Today I woke up, very inspired and started working right away. I'm about to leave in a few minutes.
But wanted to say that there are only 2\3 tables left to convert and then I will start working on the game itself. This are great news, soon we will have a alpha version to test the game.
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Post by ViciousLothario on Jun 3, 2023 9:40:18 GMT -5
Entry #20: Converter is finished!
After more than 3000 lines of code where every single character counts, where every single byte is a manifestation of Intelligence, several arithmetic operations, loops within loops, variable manipulation, more than 100 errors on a blank webpage, simple corrections, little database fixes, little adjustments along the path...
I'm proud to announce that I have a fully working converter that can convert any TEW2020 scenario into a database we can use for Wrestling Booking Warfare. This is a great mark.
All the models support the useTable method, now we can copy the database stored in this database to each lobby and start our work in the game. I already have some ideas for the design. The user can navigate on the sidebar or use the game screen that will resemble the grid from EWR. But I think the sidebar will do wonders to reduce the amount of clicks to book a show or to see a particular detail.
I think that today I will take the rest of the day off or at least a couple of hours, to play TEW/EWR myself and freshen up my mind. It's very important to take a step back and refresh our thoughts so we give room to creativity. If we keep on doing the same stuff for several hours then we create habits which can be good or bad habits. Of course there will always be room for corrections, because once I release the game to a alpha or beta stage, users will find bugs, will find mistakes, will find room for improvement... Even I will always be looking for those. Still a long way to go, but I think I've accomplished a lot already. I don't want to look and crawl TEW database files at least for a while now and adapt to what I have in my disposal.
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Post by ViciousLothario on Jun 4, 2023 10:38:46 GMT -5
Entry #21: Create a Lobby and when you feel ready click... start game.
Yes I was testing this out. So when you click start game, it takes 1\2 seconds to setup the database for your lobby. I was like... WTF?! SO FAST?!?!
Let me start working on the game screen and setting up user session variables so it limits access to lobbies. Then we also need to confirm if the user has picked a federation or not, if that federation is even available, so on and so forth. Then we go to each individual screen where we list what we want to list. I will take a EWR approach to this... Real simple grid like buttons on the game screen, something of the sort. This is amazing.
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Post by ViciousLothario on Jun 4, 2023 11:44:31 GMT -5
Entry #22: Showcasing the starting examples
Here we can see our game lobbies, beneath this grid we will be able to see and filter all the game lobbies created by other users and join. We have some actions here, to view more details about this lobby, to join, and in this case since I created the lobby the ability to delete it.
I clicked on join lobby.
This is the screen I see. A list of participants and information about the scenario. I think the rules should be set when creating a lobby so players can decide if they want to join the lobby or not based upon those rules.
At the moment the button shows Create Database, but it will say Start Game. If the game hasn't been started yet, or join game. I plan to add notifications as well so that users that play on multiple lobbies at the same time, have relevant notifications if something happens within a lobby.
Once I'm comfortable with the participants and such. I click start game. It checks if the database for this lobby is created, if not then the database from the selected scenario is copied to a game-lobby specific database.. The work will continue from this point on. Also one thing I plan to add here is a button to get a random roll so it defines the order for users to select their federations. But on game start, the first thing a user needs to pick is a federation. I might add the opportunity to start as unemployed or such. But this is a sandbox game, I don't think the user needs reputation or anything of the sort and can pick a federation right from the start like WWF\WCW.
I also plan to host several competition lobbies for the most competitive users with unique scenarios for them. On the future also plan to give the ability to users to create their own scenarios and release them in sort of a database editor that makes modmakers lives simpler.
This is the start folks. I'm excited for the ride.
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Post by ViciousLothario on Jun 5, 2023 16:25:23 GMT -5
Entry #23: After a small slump...
Well, here I was struggling with the design ideas for the game screen, when I realized... Wait... Maybe I should work if the user has a company set or not, so he can pick a federation of his own choosing. First come, first serve basis without the roll feature yet implemented.
I was developing the view page for pick a federation screen.
I spent almost 2 hours because I was passing a variable wrongly, because usually the company refers to its location as an id. And this id is linked to another table in a relation, and this relation has to accept the database prefix so it uses the correct lobby database table.
So I started to assign the value and was passing the data provider model variable and in my mind the prefix variable and I was getting a constant error, an error of Array to string conversion... WHERE THE F--- IS THE ARRAY?!?! I started looking for a solution, reading documentation, nothing was helping me, after pages and pages of reading. When I came across the solution. I was thinking I was passing the prefix but I wasn't. In order to use the prefix variable I get from the controller I needed to declare that the value equals to a function which accepts the model variable as parameter, that's normal stuff and what I am used to. So I decided to pass the prefix variable as a second parameter... WRONG VL!... I need to declare the function with model param and afterwards add a use to pass my own prefix variable, because the second param is a default value set by Yii framework, which I was overwriting and I was just assigning the name prefix to it and had absolutely no clue about it, even using the var_dump or print_r method, I wasn't able to detect it because it would return me an error. And that was it... After 2 hours of pain, I've managed to learn something new... And yes, IT'S WORKING, and yes that's the life of a programmer.
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Post by ViciousLothario on Jun 6, 2023 7:43:30 GMT -5
Entry #24: Pick your poison
A sneak peek into picking a federation at the start of the game. When you click on the plus you'll have access to more information... WIP!
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