Hello!
I'm writing a small game. The fileOut code for the game is pasted at http://paste.lisp.org/display/120545 . I got a rather strange bug going on, which I will describe here, in the hope that somebody has the time to help me.
The bug is like this: If you open the game (with FiveInARowGame new openInWorld) and if you also have a Transcript window open, then the game works correctly. (Try clicking somewhere in the game board, and the AI will respond after 0.5 seconds, and the tag 'Crosses'' turn.' will change to 'Nought''s turn.' and back again.)
But if you close the Transcript window, or if you remove a certain "Transcript show: '' . " statement in the FiveInARowGame>>performAI method, then mouse response will become less responsive in the game, and the 'Crosses'' turn.' tag will not update as it should any longer.
Now, my question is: what magic does this call to Transcript do which causes my game to update correctly, and what message should I send instead to get the same effect, even without a Transcript window open ?
Best Regards Martin Nilsson
Martin,
You wrote:
But if you close the Transcript window, or if you remove a certain "Transcript show: '' . " statement in the FiveInARowGame>>performAI method, then mouse response will become less responsive in the game, and the 'Crosses'' turn.' tag will not update as it should any longer.
I tried your game in Squeak 4.1 (I know I am a little out of date. I don't know which Squeak you used.)
I did not notice any change in responsiveness whenever I tried any of your transcript related changes.
the tag 'Crosses'' turn.' will change to 'Nought''s turn.' and back again
I never noticed this happen. ( Perhaps me machine is too fast, or eyes too slow :D) but the turn notifier switching works fine when I step through it with the debugger, with the transcript window closed.
Hope this helps,
David
On 16.03.2011, at 11:33, Martin Nilsson wrote:
Now, my question is: what magic does this call to Transcript do which causes my game to update correctly
It performs a "world cycle", which causes a redraw.
, and what message should I send instead to get the same effect, even without a Transcript window open ?
You could write "self world doOneCycleNow". However, this normally hints at a design flaw.
Morphic is an event-driven system. It has a main loop that processes events, then redraws the changed parts of the world.
Since your code does not "return" to the main loop while doing the AI, the UI will not update. The "proper" way would be doing the UI in a background process, which would notify the UI process when done. Then other things could happen in parallel to the AI "thinking".
If you don't care about the world being frozen while the AI is doing its thing, then you don't need a background process, and forcing a world cycle to update the display is fine. Certainly simpler.
- Bert -
On 16.03.2011, at 16:40, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
On 16.03.2011, at 11:33, Martin Nilsson wrote:
Now, my question is: what magic does this call to Transcript do which causes my game to update correctly
It performs a "world cycle", which causes a redraw.
, and what message should I send instead to get the same effect, even without a Transcript window open ?
You could write "self world doOneCycleNow". However, this normally hints at a design flaw.
Morphic is an event-driven system. It has a main loop that processes events, then redraws the changed parts of the world.
Since your code does not "return" to the main loop while doing the AI, the UI will not update. The "proper" way would be doing the UI in a background process, which would notify the UI process when done. Then other things could happen in parallel to the AI "thinking".
I meant to write "doing the AI in a background process" of course.
If you don't care about the world being frozen while the AI is doing its thing, then you don't need a background process, and forcing a world cycle to update the display is fine. Certainly simpler.
- Bert -
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Bert Freudenberg -
David Corking -
Martin Nilsson