[REL] Instant Sandbox 2.10.1

One click to start a game with neutered AI (economy rate 0) with cheats enabled.

I was always creating games against an AI x0 to test my mod, so borrowed a bunch of code from the PAStats matchmaker (after cross-referencing with the game code) to add an item to the main menu.

Some of the most common settings can be changed in the game settings:

- Option to spectate or play
- Option to go into configured lobby to change unsupported settings
- Land anywhere or in zones
- Player economy rate
- AI economy rate
- AI personality
- Number of armies (including player)
- Number AI commanders per army
- Load a system

(Titans/classic follows the global active product)

I've tried to concentrate the settings in once place, so if you're comfortable with text editors it is possible to fully customize things. Changing the `config` property of the `defaults` object to Code will cause it to use the defaults object instead of the user settings.

- https://github.com/pamods/instant_sandbox (issues)
- http://wondible.com/pa/instant_sandbox_v2.10.1.zip

Changelog

## 2.10.1

- Fix heading in settings screen
- Fix stuck on publish game when starting sandbox game first thing after launching program.

## 2.10.0

- Add settings button to reset to builtin default system

## 2.9.0

- Try to use information from "Favorite Colour" mod for player and first AI
- Reduce output to debug console
- Fix mounting server mods in certain circumstances

That sounds nifty.

I hope that Uber just gives us their sandbox.

I'd be really cool to test out units with a few clicks rather than having to build a bunch of stuff.

There's no reason not to give us their sandbox... right?

so this is how clean code in js can look like...

why does it not work together with PA Stats?

It requires a custom server to run and they don't want to host that so it needs to wait until they release the server.

by "one click" you mean it'd be a desktop shortcut kinda thing? I'd love that.

Don't bother me with the details. Just gimme!

Sounds epic! This will be quite useful although I'd love it if you made it compatible with PA Stats and had it turn off stats sending for these matches too.

That, is a cool word.

... don't bother my question about why it does not work with PA Stats.
Of course it does not. You are just not taking care to place the data PA Stats need in place when setting up the game.

EDIT:
Making this a one click thing would be damn awesome, tatsu.
However we can't handle the loginstuff from outside the game.

Not quite. It's a menu item just Like PAStats 1v1.

Desktop shortcut is an interesting idea. I'd have to look to see if the command line arguments are exposed to mods.

I can't wait... this will save so much time!

Because I'm not stepping gingerly around the handlers yet. Which leads to my next post...

Basically none. There are a few command line parameters available, but half of them require dev mode and the other half don't seem to work.

fair enough and good enough

If you're a bit daring you can run it now - just checkout the repo and copy modinfo.dev.json to modinfo.json.

Actually, I forgot to ask - should a tool mostly targeted at mod developers go (eventually) in PAMM?

you'll have to edit the Mod.json but then it should work. I think that will simplify your life.

Probably not. I don't think many people read the forum threads before installing a mod and the modders all live in this forum anyway.

I'd say yes, but make it clear that it is only useful for devs

Package it up as a pamm mod but only provide the zip file here. No need for pure dev mods on pamm I think.

I actually realized that it's worse than just being careful with handlers - if both of us are responding to server states, we'll both be trying to advance game creation on our respective agendas.

ah... yeah I we probably both end up adding custom handlers for specific events and we both will react to them, creating chaos.

I guess we both should take care to only react to events when we expect them, so only i.e. when a player clicked "search 1v1". I have not considered this at all while writing the automatch function, so it will probably misbehave.

An another note if you just launch a game from a mod like you probably do PA Stats will not work correctly as well and probably end up reporting wrong stuff to an old game of yourself. It captures stuff like the lobby id in the lobby or during matchmaking, if that is not done things will go bad as well.