1. People with programming experience to help review/improve the design concepts.

2. Civ players with feedback on what should be included.

3. Experienced loggers that can help with testing.

Please read the appropriate post below and reply with comments, suggestions, etc. For testers, please read the testing post and post a reply. I will list you under the test post and forward more information to you as development nears the testing stage.

If you see any design flaws are methods to improve the process please let me know. I am pretty close to getting an initial draft done but I am more interested in developing a quality product than getting it done quickly.

Game Settings:
Difficulty
Barb level
Map Size
Bloodlust?
Simplified combat?
Flat/round world?
Don't restart if eliminated?
Cheat penalty/warning?

Wonders:
1. When a wonder is built, where it is built and by which civ.
2. When a wonder is destroyed.

Cities:
(**NOTE: Information is reported for human controlled cities only unless otherwise noted.)
1. When a city is founded. (possible option for all cities)
2. When a city builds an improvement (ex: temple, bank; maybe optional)
3. When a city grows (optional, choose between all changes in size, only every 5, etc).
4. When WLTXD begins and ends
5. When a caravan is delivered (what kind, to where; optional?).
6. When a city changes ownership (option: all cities vs. human gained/lost).
7. When disorder begins and ends
8. When improvements are sold (optional)
9. When new unit is supported (not likely to be in initial development)

Civs:
(**NOTE: Again, information is only reported for human controlled civ unless noted.)
1. When new tech is discovered
a. Will be marked/reported if researched with beakers.
b. I am pretty sure it can not be differentiated between stolen, exchanged and hut found.
2. When change in dip state occurs and with whom (maybe option for all civs).
3. When civ is destroyed (all civs).

Units: (maybe but most likely not implemented until later and on human controlled units and implemented as an option, most likely for OCC games only.)
1. New unit created.
2. Unit changes ownership (bribed by or from the human player).
3. Unit destroyed.
4. Unit gains veteran status.

Things not likely to be reported (appear not possible as of now):
1. Hut tippings and outcomes.
2. Tech trading. (techs reported just no details on how acquired)
3. I am looking for information on spaceships (it has to be out there, I just haven’t found anything about it yet).

I am initially developing the utility to run under MGE, because this is the version I have. I am looking for people that currently make manual game logs that would be willing to create a manual log as well as my automated log for comparison. Ideally, I would like feedback from the tester for improvements, etc but at a minimum I just need you to create both and forward them on to me. The ideal initial testers would be OCC players using MGE. However, I eventually will want to test under multiple versions and using OCC, ICS, perfectionist, etc. Thanks in advance for all your help. If you are interested in helping with testing, please leave a message and I will get you more information.

I tend to play my games over many short sessions, so I would also suggest you include some mechanism for saving the data in the log file and reloading it. For example, if I'm loading up al_b575.sav, the logger would need to load in the data it had saved up to that point (maybe in al_log.txt?). Every 100 milliseconds or so, the logger checks al_auto.sav for a new year. When I finish my 575 BC turn and advance to 550 BC, the logger scans through the autosave file and notes any new information (and saves a new al_log.txt?).

quote: Originally posted by DaveV on 02-09-2001 08:58 AM Albert - How about this: can you make the program run in background, and examine the autosave file on a periodic basis? If the game year is in the save file (and I think it is), the log generator could do its job completely transparently to the user. Or do I misunderstand what you're suggesting? I tend to play my games over many short sessions, so I would also suggest you include some mechanism for saving the data in the log file and reloading it. For example, if I'm loading up al_b575.sav, the logger would need to load in the data it had saved up to that point (maybe in al_log.txt?). Every 100 milliseconds or so, the logger checks al_auto.sav for a new year. When I finish my 575 BC turn and advance to 550 BC, the logger scans through the autosave file and notes any new information (and saves a new al_log.txt?). Great idea, I hope you can do it!

I think you may have just revealed a design flaw. I have never used the autosave function and I think I assumed it works differently than it really does... I had assumed that it just saves a new game file every turn but I guess that doesn't really make sense because of how much room that would take up on your hard drive. The game year is more or less stored in the save file (the number of turns is stored, the year must be calculated). I will have to look into this a little but running in the background and monitoring the save file shouldn't be a big deal. My initial main concern is being able to record all changes before a new file is copied over the old (especially on turns when you just hit enter at the beginning and when tons of changes are made per turn near the end).

I had a thought to give something like this a go - but have nrver got round to it!

You can count me in under all three headings - I've been a programmer for over thirty years, play a fair game of Civ and normally keep a manual log (except when I'm ICSing).

A thought at the design stage - it would be nice if the city information included specialists and the food/tax/luxuries/science/production profile.

It's clear from your comments that you have already considered this - but it is not explicit - game version 2.42 / CiC / FW / MGE is vital.

Very well done - keep at it!

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Scouse Git[1]

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If Al Gore invented the Internet, then I invented the spell check- Dan Quayle

If someone doesn't agree with you, you haven't explained yourself well enough-Luther Ely Smith

My current plan is that at first I am creating a program that will give a 'current game status' report. Basically, it will read in a .sav file and give a general overview of the game, printing all the information you would like to see in a game log and more. I have the basics of this down but still need to do a little work on converting some of the hex data to something readable. Then I plan to test several methods of implementing the game logging features to see which way works best.

Markus, I received your email and would love some help with this. I will send you email soon and see what we can setup. Not only would it be nice to have some help, but the pressure of someone else waiting for work I am doing is always a good motivator. As of now, I find myself setting down at home to play civ instead of working on this project in my limited free time.

The good news is that the autologging of games is very possible, it just will take a little effort to get it up and going. Stay tuned...

One program does the copying of the files, and another program does the data mining, or you can just make 2 different threads.