It misuses snxtsct() and snxtitem() to find out whether the first
argument looks like sectors or like ships, which doesn't work with a
bad conditional argument.
Not worth fixing now; it's been disabled since 4.0.1, and broken at
least since commit 2fc1e74a (v4.3.0) broke its sector/ship
disambiguation via third argument.
It assumes snxtsct() fails only when the argument can't be parsed. It
can also fail when the condition argument has errors. `map # ?xxx'
first complains about xxx, then maps around ship#0. Broken since
Chainsaw 2 introduced smap, pmap and lmap.
Use sarg_type() to recognize sectors vs. unit argument. `map # ?xxx'
now fails as it should.
Subtle side effect: do_map() no longer prompts for argument "",
because snxtsct() is now guarded by sarg_type(). Impact on callers:
* display_region_map() is not affected, because it never passes "".
* map() passes on "" arguments. Change it to prompt in that case.
Consistent with how other commands behave. No functional change.
* do_unit_move() passes on "" arguments. Keep it that way. This
changes navigate and march sub-commands 'M' and 'B' not to prompt
for "" arguments, which is consistent with sub-command 'm' of move,
test and transport.
snxtsct() and snxtitem() fail when the condition argument is bad.
satmap() didn't check for failure. Due to the way snxtsct() and
snxtitem() work, bad condition arguments were reported and otherwise
ignored.
Redundant information, but incredibly useful when you want to figure
out what happened without a (still nonexistent) journal replay tool.
The redundancy could help making a journal replay tool more robust.
To enable, set econfig key keep_journal to at least 2. Output events
are *not* flushed to disk immediately.
A deity can easily break BRIDGETOWERS by reducing etu_per_update
without compensating customization of buil_tower_bh,
rollover_avail_max or bridge span maxpop.
Document the issue in output of pconfig (which is installed as
$prefix/etc/empire/econfig).
To increase the chance deities actually read the documentation,
disable BRIDGETOWERS.
Bridge spans have been unable to produce enough avail for a tower with
default game configuration since we reduced their maximum population
in commit 6bbd7ffd, v4.3.6. This commit reduces required avail from
160 to 120, fixing the stock game: 100 civilians and 100 uws can make
that much in a 60 ETU update.
Destination arguments can be a path or sector coordinates.
do_unit_move() passes the argument buffer to unit_path() to convert
coordinates to a path. If unit_path() fails, do_unit_move() still
interprets the argument as path.
This is correct when unit_path() fails because the argument is not
coordinates. But it can also fail when it is coordinates, namely when
the destination isn't reachable, when the path to it is too long, or
when the ships or land units aren't together. Then do_unit_move()
interprets coordinates as path, and rejects them with "Legal
directions are:".
Except when a land unit's destination read from a march prompt isn't
reachable, because then unit_path() empties the argument buffer that
do_unit_move() uses.
Change unit_path() to succeed when the argument is not coordinates.
Make do_unit_move() discard the argument when unit_path() fails,
i.e. when it is bad coordinates. unit_path() emptying the argument no
longer has an effect, drop it.
Support missions up to 1023 sectors away from the airfield, up from
99.
Don't bother to call mapdist() for distance to target, just use the
path length.
Destinations are no longer treated as unreachable when the best path
is longer than 99 characters. Instead, consider up to 1023 characters
of the best path.
Don't claim the destination sector is unreachable when the best path
is longer than 99 characters or the complete path is longer than 1023
characters. Instead, report that the path is too long when the total
path is longer than 1023 characters.
Don't claim the destination sector is unreachable when the best path
is longer than 1023 characters for land units or 99 characters for
ships. Instead, report that the path is too long. Up the limit for
ships to 1023 characters.
Don't compute the distance from the path, use the path cost. The
actual path is no longer needed, and we can use path_find() instead of
BestShipPath().
Destinations are no longer treated as unreachable when the best path
is longer than 1023 characters.
dist(), att_reacting_units() and s_commod() are only interested in
cost, not the actual path. BestLandPath() and BestDistPath() compute
both cost and path. Use path_find() directly instead.
Destinations are no longer treated as unreachable when the best path
is longer than 1023 characters.
bestownedpath() is a rather simple-minded breadth-first search. It's
slower than the new path finder, and maintaining it in addition to the
new path finder makes no sense.
This way, we compute all distribution paths from the same center in
one go, and thus fully exploit the fast multiple paths from same
source capability of Dijkstra's algorithm.
Sorting by dist center increases the average length of runs from 4.5
to 73 for my continental test case, and from 3 to 10 for my island
test case.
Compared to the commit before the previous one, distribution path
assembly runs more than 40 times faster for my continental test case,
and more than 5 times faster for my island test case.
The new path finder now runs my continental test case more than 30
times faster than the old A*, and the island test case more than 6
times, in a fraction of the memory. This makes the continental
updates run 3.5 times faster, and the island updates 6% faster.
Distribution path assembly no longer dominates the continental
update's run time: it takes less than 10% instead of more than 70%.
In a sense, this is the path cache done right.
Dijkstra's algorithm can find multiple paths from the same source.
This is much faster than starting from scratch for every path.
Make distribution path assembly work that way. This speeds up runs of
distributions to the same center. The next commit will reorder path
searches to maximize the length of these runs. It also has benchmark
results.
Allocates four bytes per sector, actually uses only the first 4*n
bytes, where n is the number of distributing sectors.
Because the cost to enter a sector is independent of the direction of
entry, we visit sectors at most once. Exploit that.
Beware: this is not the case for A*. Pitfall for any future
generalization to A*.
Speeds up distribution path assembly by 35-40% in my tests.
This gets rid of the memory leak mentioned in the previous commit.
To get rid of the buffer overruns for long paths mentioned in the
previous commit, make BestLandPath() fail when path length exceeds
1023 characters.
assemble_dist_paths() and move_ground() pass buffers with a different
size. Eliminate assemble_dist_paths()'s buffer. Update now works
regardless of distribution distance (the distribute command still
limits to 1023, to be fixed in a later commit). Enlarge
move_ground()'s buffers. Doubles the length of paths accepted by
explore, move, and transport.
I use two test cases to benchmark the path finders: "continental" (Hvy
Metal 2 updates) and "island" (Hvy Plastic 2 updates).
The new path finder runs my tests around 3-4 times faster than the old
A* without its caches. That's enough to meet its cached performance
for "island", but it's only half as fast for "continental". Not for
long; big speedups are coming.
