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Continuing bugs in the new Beta

Doober

Doober

Buccaneer
Storm Modder
I have been testing out the latest release and found some continuing bugs.

1. Smuggling mission to Cayman Kai - this still doesn't work, you can go to Cayman Kai if you don't have a smuggling mission, and when you talk to a smuggler, he no longer says deliver it to 'error', but when you attempt to go there, the game freezes on the load screen.
2. Buildings bouncing - I noticed it on Cayman as well as St Martin, the buildings will occationally bounce around like a fun house, if you exit the location and come back, there is a chance it fixes itself, but not always.

Those are two I've found so far, I will let you know if I find additional ones.
 
I am happy to report that after one boarding of a surrendered ship, everything seems to be working. I will continue to test just to make sure. Kudos to whoever fixed this troublesome bug! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/par-ty.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheers" border="0" alt="par-ty.gif" />

I have been testing the beta3 and it does seem alot more bug-free than beta2. I still ran into the bugs above, but most other problems seem to have gone away. I am still testing though, and will post any more bugs I may find.
 
<!--quoteo(post=166142:date=Oct 7 2006, 06:57 PM:name=Doober)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Doober @ Oct 7 2006, 06:57 PM) [snapback]166142[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
1. Smuggling mission to Cayman Kai - this still doesn't work, you can go to Cayman Kai if you don't have a smuggling mission, and when you talk to a smuggler, he no longer says deliver it to 'error', but when you attempt to go there, the game freezes on the load screen.
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Can you go to the location if you have NO smuggling mission? If the problem is still there after the latest updates by pirate_kk please post your errorlog on the bugtracker, and I'll look into that.

Sorry about the wobbling buildings, but i can't recreate that. If there are widespread problems with the Buildingset I'd rather remove them than annoy people <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/yes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":yes" border="0" alt="yes.gif" />
 
<!--quoteo(post=166266:date=Oct 8 2006, 07:22 AM:name=CouchcaptainCharles)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(CouchcaptainCharles @ Oct 8 2006, 07:22 AM) [snapback]166266[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
<!--quoteo(post=166142:date=Oct 7 2006, 06:57 PM:name=Doober)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Doober @ Oct 7 2006, 06:57 PM) [snapback]166142[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
1. Smuggling mission to Cayman Kai - this still doesn't work, you can go to Cayman Kai if you don't have a smuggling mission, and when you talk to a smuggler, he no longer says deliver it to 'error', but when you attempt to go there, the game freezes on the load screen.
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Can you go to the location if you have NO smuggling mission? If the problem is still there after the latest updates by pirate_kk please post your errorlog on the bugtracker, and I'll look into that.

Sorry about the wobbling buildings, but i can't recreate that. If there are widespread problems with the Buildingset I'd rather remove them than annoy people <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/yes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":yes" border="0" alt="yes.gif" />
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I can go to the location if there is no smuggling mission. I don't know if I'll be able to run it again today, but I will get the error log up ASAP.

Thats odd about the wobbling buildings. On St. Martin, alot of the buildings got rearranged for some reason, and I couldn't find the entrance to the fort. It would have me walking through walls and weird graphics glitches. On Cayman, it looked like another lizard was generated and it generated another building down by the water, that building was stable even though it wasn't supposed to be there, and the first building was jumping. If I am the only one expriencing it though, don't worry about it.
 
I added pirate_kk's fix and now the smuggling thing seems to have been resolved. I was able to visit the smugglers without any difficulty.
 
Hah, great !

About the wobbling buildings: could it be that somehow two identical buildings have been created at the same spot, and their "struggling" for the same plot looks like one rocking building? That shouldn't be the case, usually the Build command runs only when you initialize a new game. But maybe with all the updates and betas it happened twice in your game?
Just a vague suspicion. If you can spare the time please (side)step into some building and check if there are two carriercharacters or names.
 
Was able to reproduce that bug today. Buildings in Pburg were rocking. The carrierecharacters were actually moving like normal bystanders: moving their hips, scratching their heads etc. And the buildings moved with them.

That was not supposed to happen, cause I had put an idle animation called "building" into the file resource/animations/man.ani which made buildingcharacters absolutely motionless. And during months of making and testing hundreds of buildings none of them moved.

Well, it may be that a "new" file caused the rocking. There is an animationfile new_man.ani dated 13jul05 in my latest PotC installation. That file was not in my spring 06 installation, which was the base for the buildingset. It did not include the "building" animation.

Is it possible that building NPCs sometimes use new_man.ani and starts rocking cause in there is no "building" animation? To check I put "building" into new_man.ani , and the buildings quit rocking after I reloaded Pburg. Reloded about a dozen times, and no rocking buildings anymore. So MAYBE that is already the fix. A version of that file is on the bugtracker.

However, I don't know much about animations, so I'd like the advice of someone with more knowledge: what characters use new_man.ani, who made the file, is it o.k. if I insert my buildinganimation.

Unfortunately the comments in there are all in Russian.
 
<!--quoteo(post=166824:date=Oct 10 2006, 03:24 PM:name=CouchcaptainCharles)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(CouchcaptainCharles @ Oct 10 2006, 03:24 PM) [snapback]166824[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
...However, I don't know much about animations, so I'd like the advice of someone with more knowledge: what characters use new_man.ani, who made the file, is it o.k. if I insert my buildinganimation.

Unfortunately the comments in there are all in Russian.
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Hmmm I don't know much about that either but my first guess is that it may be used by the "Sharp" character introduced from AoP. That one and Beatrice use different animations.

Edit: yep I found it in Characters.c
// changed by MAXIMUS [for AOP models] -->
aref ourModel; makearef(ourModel,rCharacter.model);
if(rCharacter.sex == "man")
{
if(CheckAttribute(ourModel,"status")) rCharacter.model.animation = "new_man";
else rCharacter.model.animation = "man";
rCharacter.model.height = 1.8;
}
else
{
if(CheckAttribute(ourModel,"status")) rCharacter.model.animation = "new_towngirl";
else rCharacter.model.animation = "towngirl";
rCharacter.model.height = 1.75;
}
// changed by MAXIMUS [for AOP models] <--
 
<!--quoteo(post=166714:date=Oct 10 2006, 02:46 AM:name=CouchcaptainCharles)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(CouchcaptainCharles @ Oct 10 2006, 02:46 AM) [snapback]166714[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
Hah, great !

About the wobbling buildings: could it be that somehow two identical buildings have been created at the same spot, and their "struggling" for the same plot looks like one rocking building? That shouldn't be the case, usually the Build command runs only when you initialize a new game. But maybe with all the updates and betas it happened twice in your game?
Just a vague suspicion. If you can spare the time please (side)step into some building and check if there are two carriercharacters or names.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I hate to say this, but I don't know what carriercharacters are. If you mean when I go in and stand next to the stationary object that the building is fixed to, does it have two names or object there, then the answer is no, it is only one stationary object. Hope that helps. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
 
Yes, it helps, thank you. And yes, the stationary object is a carrier character who carries the building instead of a weapon. So if that carrier isn't absolutely motionless we get the wobbling effect that you first reported.

Has anyone observed moving buildings BEFORE late September? If not I need to search the cause in one of the latest updates.

Petros, thanks a lot for that hint, saves me a lot of time. Though it looks as if new_man is NOT being used by buildings and is therefore not the cause.
 
The only time i noticed it happen was when i first used one of the betas(i think beta2) ontop of pre-build13. I had been playing using just the pre-build13+an update file and hadn't seen it happen before that. This was only a couple of weeks back at most, so i cant verify the september issue.

I got it right after game start, when you first go ashore into Oxbay - i saw the new shed on the beach, then noticed there was another shed, exactly the same(same char standing outside) up on the walkway between the piles of timber.

It was the character down on the beach(the origonal) that then started to move like a normal idle char, and the shed moved with him. After i walked into the actual town and came back it had gone and everything was back to normal. I havent come across this since.
 
Thanks a lot, BB, that confirms my latest observation, except for one point: did you save and reload before you met the twin shack? And were there other twins as well?



While checking the doubled, misplaced and rocking Buildingset buildings I realized that the problem is not the Buildingcode but that the random characters (which Akella calls "Fantoms") were ALL doubled. In Pburg I met TWO governormodels with the name "van der Heiden", TWO mongols called "Gerhard Baans"... etc. All identical twins.

And to proof that this is not connected with the Buildingset I checked a stock location: in Muelle port I met the Seabra and the Valenzuela twins. Or rather CLONES.

This happens: whenever I save a location with Fantomcharacters (pretty much all locs) those random chs are being stored, and if you reload that savegame they are being recreated TWICE.

So what happened here? Can someone pls check if the older Buildbetas have the same bug? Who changed something connected with gamesaving or Fantom characters lately?
 
<!--quoteo(post=166930:date=Oct 11 2006, 01:08 PM:name=CouchcaptainCharles)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(CouchcaptainCharles @ Oct 11 2006, 01:08 PM) [snapback]166930[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
Thanks a lot, BB, that confirms my latest observation, except for one point: did you save and reload before you met the twin shack? And were there other twins as well?

edit....
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I probably did save, right after coming out of the malcolm tutorial - its my first save in the game i usualy do. Just the one twin 'cannon shack' building - i didnt look too closely at the npcs walking around so there might have been a few of them also?

When you kill a twin it can cause a CTD.
 
Further findings on the twin bug:

- The doubled characters even share the same character ID, e.g. both Seabra twins have "location fantom character < 3 >". Wonder how the game handles that, ID should be unique cause the code identifies characters by that. Could cause a lot of other bugs.

-The good news: I was able to kill the twin bug by outcommenting one line in characters\characters_login:

<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->void LoginCharactersInLocation(ref loc)
{
    ...
    if(actLoadFlag)
    {
        for(i = 0; i < 32; i++)
        {
        // ccc test delete    LoginCharacter(&Characters[LOC_FANTOM_CHARACTERS + i], locID);
        }
    }<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->
After deleting that line, which is supposed to login the stored Fantom chrs after reloading a gamesave, all worked fine so far: no doubled chrs, no misplaced or wobbling buildings anymore.

The bad news: that line is stock code, and we shouldn't fix a bug obviously caused by some recent mod by deleting stock code <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/no.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":no" border="0" alt="no.gif" />


- deleting the mentioned line also fixed some messed up, twinbuggy game that I had saved: the doubled chrs which had been there before saving were single again after reloading. My conclusion: Twin fantoms are saved only once(cause they have only one ID), but are doubled during the reloading process. So the Twinbug must occur during reloading gamesaves.


Again my appeal: what has been changed that could affect the reloading of random characters? Any hint would be most welcome.
 
Not sure if this relates to the reloading of random characters but the code for "Quick save function" was completely disabled.
 
The new_man.ani file is for use with the AoP characters, so unless you would use Devlin as carriercharacter, it will not cause the buildings to wobble. Devlin is the only character to use that file at the moment. Beatrise and BeatriceA are also AoP characters, but they use the new_woman.ani file.

I will check some older game versions to see if I can figure out when this bug was introduced. This one really needs fixing. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />
 
I have been doing some research on this bug and can confirm that this bug was introduced in Build 13 Beta 2. Now I am going to try to find the code that causes it.
 
I have found the cause of this bug. It's in globals.c:
<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->#define TOTAL_CHARACTERS            1850 // KK 1500 // NK 05-03-30 up number of chars 500. 1000
#define MAX_CHARACTERS                1500 // KK 1150 //850<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->

I think I understand why it happens: TOTAL_CHARACTERS is actually HIGHER than MAX_CHARACTERS! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />

Bug fixed by setting MAX_CHARACTERS to 2000. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

I do wonder what values we should be using here. It works with TOTAL_CHARACTERS = 1850 and MAX_CHARACTERS = 2000, but are these good values?
 
What actualy does this section do? Is it defining how many characters there can ever be in one location(as in a whole island?)?

Probably keeping the numbers lower rather than higher would be better - atlest take up less resources? I'll make that change anyway and report back on how it goes <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

oh have you a line number for that?

[i just dont know how all you guys find these things! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" /> ]
 
You need to change line 111 in PROGRAM\globals.c to a value higher than TOTAL_CHARACTERS.

I think that these values have something to do with the total number of characters in the game. So ALL characters added up. So these values do need to be high enough so all characters can exist. I just don't know how high these values need to be.

If you want to know how I found this: I installed PotC, then installed all subsequent updates and I checked out in what update this bug was introduced. I then found out that this bug was not in Beta 1, but was in Beta 2. I then ran WinMerge on these two updates to see what was changed. Then I started returning code back to the Beta 1 versions. And as soon as I set that code in globals.c back to the Beta 1 version, the bug was immediately solved.
 
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