MetaLibrary is the collection of code I've written for WmDOT, my AI for OpenTTD, that I felt should properly be in a library. Separating my AI from this library has made it easier to write my AI, but I also hope will this code will help some aspiring AI writer get off the ground a little bit faster. ;)

GameScript

A GameScript version of this library is also available. All functions are available, although some may require an active company context.

Sub-Libraries Available

MinchinWeb.Atlas ← _MinchinWeb_Atlas_
- given a list of 'sources' and 'attractions', will weight the combinations and generate a list of pairs to connect.
MinchinWeb.Array ← _MinchinWeb_Array_
- Array functions
MinchinWeb.Constants ← _MinchinWeb_C_
MinchinWeb.DLS ← _MinchinWeb_DLS_
- Dominion Land System – a wrapper on the road pathfinder to encourage roads to be built on a grid.
MinchinWeb.Extras ← _MinchinWeb_Extras_
- Extra functions, for things like math, map geometry, ship support, etc.
MinchinWeb.Lakes ← _MinchinWeb_Lakes_
- Lakes serves as a check to determine if two points are in the same waterbody. It was written as a replacement for Waterbody Check. Lakes remembers the work it has previously done, which makes subsequent requests much faster.
MinchinWeb.LineWalker ← _MinchinWeb_LW_
- Line Walker – walk the map between two points, or start at a given point and walk out at a given slope.
MinchinWeb.Log ← _MinchinWeb_Log_
- help (dynamically) control the amount of debugging output displayed.
MinchinWeb.Industry ← _MinchinWeb_Industry_
MinchinWeb.Marine ← _MinchinWeb_Marine_
- Marine and ship related functions.
MinchinWeb.ShipPathfinder ← _MinchinWeb_ShipPathfinder_
- A geometry based Ship Pathfinder.
MinchinWeb.SpiralWalker ← _MinchinWeb_SW_
- Spiral Walker – allows you to define a starting point, and then 'walk' all the tiles in a spiral outward. It was originally used to find a buildable spot for my HQ in WmDOT, but is useful for many other things as well.
MinchinWeb.Station ← _MinchinWeb_Station_
- some station related functions
MinchinWeb.RoadPathfinder ← _MinchinWeb_RoadPathfinder_
- Based on NoAI Team's pathfinder. The pathfinder uses the A* search pattern and includes functions to find the path, determine its cost, and build it. Can bridge over rivers, canals, and railroad tracks.
MinchinWeb.WaterbodyCheck ← _MinchinWeb_WBC_
- Note: Waterbody Check has been deprecated in favour of Lakes
- Waterbody Check - in effect a specialized pathfinder. It serves to check whether two points are in the same waterbody (i.e. a ship could travel between them). It is optimized to run extremely fast (I hope!). It can be called separately, but was originally designed as a pre-run check for my Ship Pathfinder.

Changelog

Version 9

Released 2015-01-10

bug fix to Python build script (specifically, fix NoGo library version)
update build script to work with Python 3000

Read the complete Changelog.

Installation

The easiest way install MetaLibrary is the use the in-game downloader in OpenTTD.

If you want to manually install it, download the folder and place it in your ../OpenTTD/ai/library/ folder.

For you to use the library in your AI's you'll need to import it. Somewhere outside of any other class or function, add an import statement like:

Import("util.MinchinWeb", "MinchinWeb", 9);

Requirements

If installed from the in-game downloader, the dependencies will automatically be downloaded and installed. Otherwise, you'll need the following libraries:

Binary Heap, v.1 (Queue.BinaryHeap-1.tar)
Fibonacci Heap, v.3 (Queue.FibonacciHeap-3.tar)
Graph.AyStar, v.6 (Graph.AyStar-6.tar)

OpenTTD is able to read uncompressed tar files without any problem.

FAQ

Q: How do I use the sub-libraries directly?

A: Import the main library, and then create global points to the sub-libaries you want to use. Eg:

1 Import("util.MinchinWeb", "MinchinWeb", 9);

2 Arrays <- MinchinWeb.Arrays;

Info: See the sub-library files for the functions available and their implementation.

Q: What is the _MinchinWeb_ ... all over the place?

A: I can't answer it better than Zuu when he put together his SuperLib, so I'll quote him.

" Unfortunately due to constraints in OpenTTD and Squirrel, only the main class of a library will be renamed at import. For [MetaLib] that is the [MetaLib] class in this file. Every other class in this file or other .nut files that the library is built up by will end up at the global scope at the AI that imports the library. The global scope of the library will get merged with the global scope of your AI.

" To reduce the risk of causing you conflict problems this library prefixes everything that ends up at the global scope of AIs with [ _MinchinWeb_ ]. That is also why the library is not named Utils or something with higher risk of you already having at your global scope.

" You should however never need to use any of the [ _MinchinWeb_ ... ] names as a user of this library. It is not even recommended to do so as it is part of the implementation and could change without notice. "

– Zuu, SuperLib v.7 documentation

A grand 'Thank You' to Zuu for his SuperLib that provided a very useful model, to all the NoAI team to their work on making the AI system work, and to everyone that has brought us the amazing game of OpenTTD.

License

Minchinweb's MetaLibrary v.9 [2015-01-10]

Permission is granted to you to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell this software, and provide these rights to others, provided:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the software.
Attribution is provided in the normal place for recognition of 3rd party contributions.
You accept that this software is provided to you "as is", without warranty.

Note: _MinchinWeb_RoadPathfinder_ is separately licensed under LGPL v.2.1.

Links

Discussion thread for MetaLibarary on TT-Forums – http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=57903
MetaLibrary code, hosted on GitHub – https://github.com/MinchinWeb/openttd-metalibrary/
MetaLibrary documentation – http://minchin.ca/opettd-metalibrary/

Notes To Me

Todo:

Notes about static classes, what they are, and which classes are 'static'

Consider Fibonacci Heap version in NoCAB

Add picture of in game downloader

Look into theming dOxygen output

Add 'News' tab pointing back to my Blog updates on MetaLibrary