[MOD 0.13] AutoPvP - automated PvP map and forces

[LaPoisse]

Thank you for the mod, keep doing your hard work

[binbinhfr]

thanks for your returns. It is always appreciated to have some feedback.

[Fisch]

Much awesome update!
Water ponds are very useful, and everything else is logical.
Now there is only not enough "spawn cleaning radius" config(50 blocks is not enough imho), to make the players to explore the map and to go in for logistics.

Now the network game start will be easy and convenient.

[binbinhfr]

I change the spawn radius from 75 to 50 in order to limit the number of tress and ores I have to memorize at each zone visit (because now when you decline a zone, I put everything back in place). You can test with 75 and tell me if it's working in MP when multiple players are visiting zones at the same time.

[DraLUSAD]

Sorry about posting a topic on the Portal Page, wasn't sure if it helped, BUT, like the new update, keep up the excellent work

[binbinhfr]

Sorry about posting a topic on the Portal Page, wasn't sure if it helped, BUT, like the new update, keep up the excellent work

I do not check the thread on the portal, because no notifications... But I red your posting, and I did not see any solution until Fisch pointed out this Force effect that I studied a little further to understand how to exploit it fully. So now the map revealed problem is gone !

now I am working on another surprise on this mod, to spice the PvP a little bit. You'll see in a few days. It will be available as an optional addition to an existing game, so you can continue your actual started game if you have one.

[binbinhfr]

v1.0.11 :

To bring some spice into the PvP encounters, let me introduce the new "Rebirth mode"

The principle is simple : if you construct one Rebirth Center, everytime you die, you can respawn automatically close to this nice building, if it contains enough souls to enable your reincarnation.
Souls are the basic ingredient of this new-age holistic technology : they are also used to construct these Rebirth Centers, and to slowly "autorepair" them.

Therefore, from now on, if your oponent wants to kill you definitely, he will have to destroy your Rebirth Center before. Or cut into your souls production.
You are not so weak as before... You can now take a little more risks, knowing that you have several lifes, as my cat pretends to. So go on, organize deadly incursion into your enemy factory, and who cares if you die...

These rebirth centers are a bit organic, connected to a parallel spiritual plane (or something like that, it's not very clear in the user's manual). Thus they cannot be repaired by robots, because it would be too easy . However, they have the capability to slowly auto-heal themselves, consuming the souls they contain.
There are 4 levels of Rebirth Centers, with associated Souls : light, medium, advanced and ultimate. A Rebirth Center can only consume the souls of its own level.
Higher level Centers have more health and are more difficult to destroy. They are also more expensive.

These centers do not need energy, but they need to be fed by Souls. So place them accordingly, and protect them from your opponents. They behave like logistic requester chests, in case you want to feed them automatically with souls.
Constructing a Rebirth Center of higher level requires one Rebirth Center of the previous level. You can use the existing one or build a new one if you are afraid of the transition.
But remember that you can only have one Rebirth Center at a time on the map. When your Rebirth Center is destroyed (you will receive a warning), you'd better run and place quickly another Center back on the map, with corresponding souls in it !...

Note : this playing mode is a new one. You still have the choice when entering a new map between "simple death mode" or "rebirth mode".
In "simple death mode", the access to the Rebirth technology is disabled from every player.
If you have a map using a previous version of AutoPvP, you can switch between modes using
/c interface.call("autopvp","rebirth") or /c interface.call("autopvp","single")
But by default, you will be switched to the new Rebirth mode.
(I made some testings in MP, but you should make a backup of your map before trying the new mode, just in case... )

Have fun !
And tell me if you like it.

[Fisch]

I have to say that we have not reached the stage of open conflict so resurrections idea has not been tested.
IMHO the death of a player in full uniform throws him back in the progress dramatically and makes a revenge impossible
But now I want to pay attention to other balance problems:
1) The starting area 50 * 50 is very small, 75 * 75 works fine in MP
2) Any modification that adds a lot of resources types make resources zones with big overlapping. Even in the region of 100 * 100.
3) If script removes the biters for 10 minutes, huge area around player become clean.
Interval of 4-5 minutes (240-300 cycles) was selected empirically - only the starting area is clean.
I think the more players, the more should be an interval (for two players is enough 5 minutes).

[binbinhfr]

I have to say that we have not reached the stage of open conflict so resurrections idea has not been tested.

You should ! that's why I created Rebirth Centers : you can make a surprise attack on your opponent, and if it fails, you do not lose the game, you just ressurect at home, wasting a few souls.
Afterall, it's called PvP, not Brothers in Arms !

For the rest, I'll see later, but the problem is always the same : the bigger zone you ask to reveal, the more factorio eats CPU at the beginning of the game. And I cannot clean zones that never have been revealed yet. Factorio does not create the whole map at once : it just creates it progressively when you enter new zones.

[binbinhfr]

IMHO the death of a player in full uniform throws him back in the progress dramatically and makes a revenge impossible

I don't really understand what you mean.
But, to be clear, even if it sounds strange, to encourage PvP, rebirth center ressurects you with the stuff you wore when you died. So you can take some risks. It's like this in every PvP game I know. If you have to lose your stuff every time you die, you won't ever go to fight.

1) The starting area 50 * 50 is very small, 75 * 75 works fine in MP

OK I increased to 75 in next release

2) Any modification that adds a lot of resources types make resources zones with big overlapping. Even in the region of 100 * 100.

I added some tests to reduce/avoid ore patches overlap. I tested with ore mods, and in case of numerous ore mods, it will be less efficient, but still better than before. Remember taht you have the "regenerate" button to test other ores repartition in the same zone, until you find something correct. Anyway, even in a 75x75 zone, with a lot of mods, it can be crowdy. I then suggest to start you mine at the border of the spawning zone...

3) If script removes the biters for 10 minutes, huge area around player become clean.
Interval of 4-5 minutes (240-300 cycles) was selected empirically - only the starting area is clean.
I think the more players, the more should be an interval (for two players is enough 5 minutes).

I do not really understand what you meant here either. I'm not native english speaker... To release pressure, I now clean the zone every minute during 5 mins for every player. Remember that all players are not necessarely appearing at the same time at the beginning of the game. Some player can join later, so I have to take this into account.

Update to next release, try it, and tell me what you think.

Have fun

[Fisch]

> rebirth center ressurects you with the stuff you wore when you died.
Oh, then there is no problem.

> I added some tests to reduce/avoid ore patches overlap.
And this algorithm works fine except for the cases when there are a lot of water around. Is it possible to regenerate ores relatively the position of player? The player can move away from the water and choose the best place to start.

> I do not really understand what you meant here either.
I mean that in a radius of 600~1000 meters there are no any biters.

There is one small problem in logic:
The player can select the area to begin construction but did not confirm the choice. That is, the player will remain neutral for enemies until he presses the button.
Whether it is possible to display a list of neutral players in the chat every few minutes?

[binbinhfr]

> I added some tests to reduce/avoid ore patches overlap.
And this algorithm works fine except for the cases when there are a lot of water around. Is it possible to regenerate ores relatively the position of player? The player can move away from the water and choose the best place to start.

I cannot allow the player moving the center point of the zone : he will be able to move to another zone, close to another player and interacting with the zone preparation of another connecting player. Too many tests to implement. Just try regenerate ores of try another zone.

> I do not really understand what you meant here either.
I mean that in a radius of 600~1000 meters there are no any biters.

But I did not understand if you think it's a problem or not ? Still too many bitters, or not enough this time ? Remember that as soon poluution goes on, biters will crawl too you, even from far away.

The player can select the area to begin construction but did not confirm the choice. That is, the player will remain neutral for enemies until he presses the button.
Whether it is possible to display a list of neutral players in the chat every few minutes?

If I remember well, the player is only neutral to bitters until he presses the button. But I can do this reminder if you want. Anyway, remember that this is only a mod, I am not a factorio dev : it does not have and won't have the pretention to be a bullet-proof tool. It also supposes that players using it won't try to cheat or exploit some existing breach...

[Fisch]

> I cannot allow the player moving the center point of the zone : he will be able to move to another zone, close to another player and interacting with the zone preparation of another connecting player.
50 meters is enough to move away from the water.

> But I did not understand if you think it's a problem or not ? Still too many bitters, or not enough this time ? Remember that as soon poluution goes on, biters will crawl too you, even from far away.
Unfortunately this is not the case, there are no biters in a very large radius, and they are in no hurry to come.

[binbinhfr]

50 meters is enough to move away from the water.

I will see what I can do tonight

Unfortunately this is not the case, there are no biters in a very large radius, and they are in no hurry to come.

Ok, so not enough bitters. What about reducing the bitter free radius ? Did you make testings ? The fact is that I do not use this mod myself, so I'm waiting for your recommandations in terms of balancing.

The problem I see is :
- because we are not doing "classical things", and are choosing starting zones far away from the center of the map, in these zones, factorio algo generates more biters and already evolved ones. That's the way factorio works : the further from the center, the more biters, biger ones, and the more ores... But your character is just beginning the gameplay, so it is weak and not adapted to these far away zones. So if we let some bitters around, they will soon come to you and they will probably be too high-level for the early stage of the game... Try to reduce bitter free radius, to let some of them around and tell me what happens, but I am afraid that you will be soon submerged by monsters.

[DXWarlock]

Love the Mod! makes playing with others much much easier for starting areas.

But I've ran into a intermittent issue.
Im also using Spacebook so I can set friendly to all easy, and move players to team forces after they are in a starter area. We dont do the PvP part. But I never touch a player or forces until they have confimed an area and in a [player]-team#[number]

When people join, they are put in the correct force, IE: [playername]-visit#16 or such. But they get no menu for accept yes/no and regen.
They are running around as visitors with no way to accept an area.

VERY rarely do they join as 'guest' force (only happened twice).
In either case, I have to manually create a force for them, move them to it, go clear out the aliens around an area and get them setup..etc.

Is there a way to force the players to seen as 'new'? Ive tried deleting them, the force they was in as visitor etc. To no luck.

[binbinhfr]

Hi,

I wrote both mods. But they were not supposed to work together...

the problem is that they are both creating forces and trying to put players in them (spacebook create the guest force to host new players, and autopvp creates "visit" and "team" forces to host players). So it is a conflict. And the factorio API cannot garanty a loading order, that's why sometimes your players are in guest force, sometimes not...

I made a change to Spacebook, to try to detect autopvp and avoid guest force automatic assignement. So please try to update spacebook and tell me if it is better.

But if all you need from SpaceBook is the "all friends" mode, I can add an option at the beginnig of AutoPvp, asking for a "war mode" or a "firendly mode". Then you would not have to use spacebook at all. So please try this new version of AutoPvp alone, and choose "peace mode", and go thru all process, clicking accept when you find your zone. Then everybody will be friendly, except aliens.

[DXWarlock]

Ah my mistake. Sorry for the hassle then
Since Spacebook lists autoPvP (And some time plugin) as dependencies on the mod screen I though they worked/went together.

They do compliment other well ingame though so using Spacebook for more than just the friendly to all.
One lets you auto create individual starting areas, auto create teams (AutoPvP), the other easily lets you move people into those teams to group up, set war/peace between them, and see who all is online and in those teams(Spacebook).
Basically we are using them together to make a 'mutual agreed pvp optional' team based map where everyone can get a personal 'start area'.

I'll update it and let you know how it goes.

[binbinhfr]

I'll update it and let you know how it goes.

OK, let me know if they work better together, as it is hard for me to make real MP tests.

[DXWarlock]

That change seemed to make it more wonky :\
First new player to join since the update, got stuck in 'player' force. And just spawn/die loop somehow.I couldn't teleport to him to see what was going on, he'd die instantly upon spawning.

Trying to delete his player after he logged out caused the server to crash with:
343.128 Error LuaCustomPlayerTable.cpp:36: Empty player in players vector set.

Maybe it would help to explain what I'm using autoPvP for:
Only thing I use it for is the feature of auto place person on new team, and generate personal start area. But was the only mod I found that did that.
Would it be easier to add/request that feature to Spacebook, than trying to make the 2 play nice? Since Spacebook does everything we'd need other than generate team & spawn area new people.

OK, let me know if they work better together, as it is hard for me to make real MP tests.

If you need/want one I can spin up another windows VM on my rack detibox you can have to to play around with to your hearts content for MP testing.

[binbinhfr]

strange.
I just tested it again right now on my local headless server with 2 players/clients and it works fine.
Under Autopvp, I choose "peace mode" then all players go thru the autopvp process for selecting zones and it works. Nobody died or crashed.
Then I look at spacebook and all is ok. I even change player forces to team1, team2 or whatever and it works...
So there must be another problem... A conflict with anotehr mod ?

- Did you update both mods to their last version under last factorio 0.14 ?
- Do all players have same version of factorio and mods ?
- Try to run with only both mods (to avoid conflicts with other third party mods)
- Do you run on a totally new map ?
- don't you change anything with spacebook forces and options until the Autopvp process is done for all players ?

I don't want to integrate autopvp in spacebook, it will be too much work. They should work together now, I do not see any problem, because now SpaceBook detects autopvp presence and then does not change any force at startup, so it should not interact with AutoPvp forces assignements.

Could you also test AutoPvp alone, without spacebook, to see if it goes correctly thru the whole init process (until players accept their zones) ?

It will be hard for me to use your server for testings as I have to change code in realtime. But I can do some testings in local here. It's just a bit harder, because on the same machine I have to run 1 server and 2/3 clients.

Note that if under Autopvp, you choose a fighting mode , other than "peace mode", there wil be problems if you change forces, because AutoPvp fighting mode assumes that there is 1 player per team to check win/lose game and so on. But under "peace mode", those checks are suppressed, I verified this.