Re: Galaxy problem: "bug" or Cheat?

From: dagibbs@qnx.com (David Gibbs)

Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 00:00:00 +0000

In article <vo8ratpjbqz.fsf@crocus.csv.warwick.ac.uk>,
Mr R M Mantel <rmm@maths.warwick.ac.uk> wrote:

"bug" or Cheat?

Neither.

>In a Galaxy game I'm playing, one player has chosen to rename all his
>planets to planets at the other end of the galaxy, thus making it
>impossible to attack him.

>Would this problem be important enough to make a check for uniqueness
>with name changes?

To the best of my knowledge, Galaxy forces all planet names to
be unique, though you can exchange names between two planets.
If you don't have uniqueness enforced, you may be running a really
old version of galaxy.

Therefor this does NOT make it impossible to attack
him -- all the planets will have unique names every turn, all
this makes it is more difficult FROM A PLAYER's point of view
to attack him.  It means you have to generate new maps, or check
the name-coordinates mapping for every one of his planets every
turn.

BTW, while I consider this legal, I consider it to be very
poor style, since all it serves to do is make things more
time consuming for other players, rather than actually having
a mechanical/in-game effect.

What is very useful, as a check, is a utility that will take
2 planet names, and a turn listing, and give you the distance
between them -- check this with the expected distance, and the
speed of your fleets, and you can make sure they are reaching
the right planet.

The following is an awk script that does exactly that:

#!/usr/local/bin/awk -f
# make the above line be the fullpath of awk on your system
# and make this an executable in your path
BEGIN {
#
#  Syntax: planet_1 planet_2 turn_report_file
#
#  written by David Gibbs -- dagibbs@qnx.com
#
if ( ARGC != 4 ) exit
planet1 = ARGV[1]
gsub( " ", "_", planet1 )
planet2 = ARGV[2]
gsub( " ", "_", planet2 )
ARGV[1] = ""
ARGV[2] = ""
fnd1 = 0
fnd2 = 0
}

$1 == planet1 {
#  if ( ($2 ~ "\.")) {  until awk fixed
  if( (($2 + 0) > 0) && (($3 + 0) > 0) ) {
    x1 = $2
    y1 = $3
    fnd1 = 1
  }
}

$1 == planet2 {
#  if ( ($2 ~ "\.")) {  until awk fixed
  if( (($2 + 0) > 0) && (($3 + 0) > 0) ) {
      x2 = $2
      y2 = $3
      fnd2 = 2
  }
}

END {
  if (fnd1 && fnd2) {
    dist = sqrt( (x1-x2)*(x1-x2) + (y1-y2)*(y1-y2) )
    printf("Dist from %s to %s is %7.3f \n", planet1, planet2, dist )
  }
  else {
  	printf "Didn't find planet(s):"
    if (!fnd1) printf( " %s", planet1)
    if (!fnd2) printf( " %s", planet2)
    print " "
  }
}

-David Gibbs
dagibbs@qnx.com
member of the Galaxy Hall of (In)Fame[y]

References

Galaxy problem: "bug" or Cheat?
rmm@maths.warwick.ac.uk (Mr R M Mantel)
Tue, 16 Apr 1996 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Galaxy problem: "bug" or Cheat?
rmm@maths.warwick.ac.uk (Mr R M Mantel)
Tue, 16 Apr 1996 00:00:00 +0000