DFD: 1013 vs. 659, 841 vs. 410

[Renegade]

DFD: Daily Feature Deathmatch

---

The Cruel Fight For Implementation

This is a Daily Feature Deathmatch post. If you are unfamiliar with the background of this event, please read the announcement, the adjustment and the schedule.

Fight 1

---

[0001013] .ini Save Files vs. [0000659] "Amphibious" structures

Fight 2

---

[0000841] Enable better GUI customization through backgrounds. vs. [0000410] Ability to set a delay before Psychic Dominator, to give time for an eva alert

After the fight is over, two of these issues will be suspended, while the other two move on to the next round.
Remember that the coders will not take part in the discussion, so make your arguments complete, concise and convincing - when it's over, it's over.

Part of that is clearly marking what outcome you support for which issue.
There should be no ambiguity in the issue you're talking about, and it should be clear what outcome you support. Feel free to put your stance in bold, and use simple terminology like "kill #69" or "I want #42 to survive".
This use of simple terminology should be part of a larger argumentation - if this is all your post consists of, it will be ignored. We are interested in argumentations and details to consider, not votes.

A decision will be made either way, a lack of discussion will not cause all issues to live.

Be friendly, be civil, be logical.
You are allowed to try to deconstruct the arguments of those arguing against your candidate, but remember that they don't make the call - there is really no point in getting personal.

The discussion should be contained in this thread, argumentations elsewhere will be ignored, but you are allowed to transfer and adapt points made elsewhere in the past.

We want a good, clean fight.
Let's get it on!

These fights are largely automatically generated - if an issue turns out to be unfit for combat, it will be disqualified and the opponent will go into the queue.

[Beowulf]

Don't care about Fight 1 so I'm not making a vote.

Kill #841. I support #410 for balance reasons, which are well defined in the request.

[MRMIdAS]

[0000659] Amphibious structures would be a cool feature, the only thing I can see causing problems is having a building half on water, half on land, how you'd work round this i'm not sure, possibly only allow complete land or water placement.

[0000410] gets my support, there's currently no time to react intelligently with a force shield, just click and pray.

[Lt Albrecht]

Fight 1 #659 is less stupid and might actually see use whereas #1013 would create horrendous compatibility issues between mod versions and lots of weirdness for no real gain.

#410 gives the psychic dominator an even footing with the other 2 supers whereas #841 changes the menus which is like putting an expensive layer of gold on the inside of your YR CD case, sure it'll look nice as you go to get the game, but then you close it again and actually play the game. I'm not arguing that menu mods are useless I'm just saying that the feature strikes me as a bit too much effort on a relatively minor aesthetic issue.

[Renegade]

Administrative Notice:

Given that there have been no new posts in the past three days, it is assumed this discussion is finished; we will proceed to consider the arguments.

[Renegade]

I'll follow the (few) arguments of the discussion here.

Fight 1

---

Kill: #1013
Support: #659

Fight 2

---

Kill: #841
Support: #410

[AlexB]

Fight 1
Saving the game status is quite a complex process as files are sequences of consecutive data whereas game objects in memory are spread all over the place. The process of flattening the relationships between unit and other game objects is called swizzling. To support swizzling to INI files instead of binary save games requires the current functions to be rewitten. Who would it benefit? INI files will be many mega bytes in size. Most likely they will be 20 times as large, or even larger. To be readable by humans, every internal field name would have to be named. For example, a timer has three fields to store data: the start time, an yet unnamed field that does something and a remaining time (12 bytes in total). To create an INI entry like this

Code:

IronCurtainTimer.Start=87654321
IronCurtainTimer.Timer.Unknown=0
IronCurtainTimer.Remaining=1234

you would need 98 bytes. Now comes a new version of Ares. The unknown field now got a name, as well as many others. The save game loading function can't find it any more (or we would still have to load the old tag). Let's say we add compatibility code for every newly named tag. What if there are new tags or old ones are obsolete? Default to some fixed value? Then the save game wouldn't represent the mod you are currently playing. Weird stuff could happen.

The amphibious structures might be hard to get right, as RA2 doesn't have the translucent water RA3 has. So the foundations on water would most likely require new building art. It would most likely change the way the game is played as it would be possible to put buildings into water and thus forcing the opponent to rely on naval and air forces.

Fight 2
I'd like to see both implemented. Yes, of course i agree that the dominator issue is more pressing and it should be solved. Currently you can set DominatorFireAtPercentage and a longer DominatorFirstAnim to create a similar effect, but that is ugly. I can understand modder wanting to have unique backgrounds and customized GUI as that is part of the mod's experience, though not integral.

For now, Dominator warning.

[Renegade]

Result:

Fight 1

---

Victim: #1013
Survivor: #659

Fight 2

---

Victim: #841
Survivor: #410