Fixing SMACX Bugs

[vyeh]

Wow! Looking at the code, you're saying that there is also a probe rollover below.

I've never seen this mentioned (perhaps Petek has).

It looks like after 10 years of SMAC, you've discovered something new!

So if University switches to knowledge, it is equivalent to having +2 probe for knowledge.

[scient]

Scient, any chance, that your patches might be put on official Firaxis website for SMACX downloads?
It is all great, but many people will not use unofficial patches. And best is when more than 99% of users fix games to the latest patch. Then community won't split into those tweaking their exe more and those staying on the last official patch.

Well, I dunno. I guess I could contact Firaxis? I wouldn't make anything public until I've fixed a number of the known major bugs. I would only fix bugs. I know some unofficial patches turn into what the modder "thinks" the game should have been. If I did anything like that, I would do the same thing Qwinn does for his Planescape: Torment mods by having separate options for non-bug related tweaks or restored content.

Wow! Looking at the code, you're saying that there is also a probe rollover below.

I've never seen this mentioned (perhaps Petek has).

It looks like after 10 years of SMAC, you've discovered something new!

So if University switches to knowledge, it is equivalent to having +2 probe for knowledge.

Sorry, let me clarify. If you have University with knowledge so -4 PROBE, it will act like +0 PROBE. So, in effect you actually get a better PROBE score by making it more negative. So ya, knowledge is almost like a +2 PROBE but only for Uni. If you used it with a faction that had base PROBE of 0, it would set it to -2.

[vyeh]

You were clear. I wasn't.

I meant that for University, knowledge acts as if it modifies probe by +2, canceling University's -2 probe rating, giving it 0 probe. According to the manual, - 2 probe takes 50% off the cost of enemy probe action (to subvert a base) and increases the rate of enemy probe action (e.g. stealing tech).

[Mart]

Well, I dunno. I guess I could contact Firaxis? I wouldn't make anything public until I've fixed a number of the known major bugs. I would only fix bugs. I know some unofficial patches turn into what the modder "thinks" the game should have been. If I did anything like that, I would do the same thing Qwinn does for his Planescape: Torment mods by having separate options for non-bug related tweaks or restored content.

I think it may be quite complex thing. It might be, that many people in Firaxis or publisher companies do not mind for a 10 year old game, but we are all still bound by legal and license stuff. Smac and Smax are like owned now by AE and Take2 Interactive respectively (if I'm not mistaken). Does Firaxis have right to freely issue more fixes? Maybe yes, it's part of game support. But then, if you are not connected to Firaxis, can this developer company acquire modified executables from us users, or maybe get even information only how to modify the executables (in like hex editor, or similar) and then use it for official support? Maybe they can, I don't know. Or maybe they cannot do it in order not to violate Firaxis agreement with publishers.

It would be good to know these kind of things.

Anyone here knowing gaming industry laws regarding this all?

[Mart]

Blake is recently in Firaxis, or connected with the company, if I recall. He is Apolyton member for long time. Scient, once you have something working well, maybe he could tell us more how this looks like from Firaxis side.

Having major bugs fixed in smacx after 10 years is like miracle...

[Petek]

Wow! Looking at the code, you're saying that there is also a probe rollover below.

I've never seen this mentioned (perhaps Petek has).

It looks like after 10 years of SMAC, you've discovered something new!

So if University switches to knowledge, it is equivalent to having +2 probe for knowledge.

I can't recall that this bug (with probe = -4) has ever been discussed.

Petek

[scient]

The PROBE -4 bug is there. You can test it by comparing University "mind control" values between -4, -2 and 0. You'll see -4 == 0.

Well, I've put together a temp patch and it's working perfectly. Very minor alterations to vanilla code. I still need to find a good location to house this patch data as well as future ones. I may do like I did with PST and find one function and recode it into a more efficient form freeing up bytes for my own injected code.

edit: Actually, I've found a nice location at bottom of main code segment to stick my patch data. So, I've finalized this patch for ACX. I'll port it over to AC at some point. So this bug is 100% fixed.

edit edit: Actually, no point in recoding a function when there are a few just begging to be killed. What comes to mind are the crap ones that check to see if your CPU is Pentium pro or Pentium 3 thus failing on newer CPU's and requiring that ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm setting. That check doesn't affect anything besides preventing the game from starting. It also checks if CPU supports MMX registers which basically any processor in the last 10 years?

Social Engineering window for Believers with +5 PROBE:


Here is Pirates probe attempting to mind control a Believers city:

[Mart]

Wow!!!

[scient]

Are there any other known bugs after patches? I've got a couple of huge threads/lists of stuff but most of it is really old so some of them are prob already fixed in official patches.

I did see this in FAQ:

15) Q: In SMACX, I see a bunch of drones in the base screen. When I change to the "Psych" view from the "Resources" view to see where the drones are coming from, they aren't there. The base doesn't riot, even though it displays extra drones. What is going on?

A: This is a known bug. The only workarounds are either to review the Psych screen or to go to the F4 screen and select "Citizens". Otherwise, you can just wait for drone riots and correct the situation after the fact.

Does this still exist after the official patches? And if so, does anyone have a saved game or repeatable steps I can follow to recreate it?

[Mart]

Yes, this bug exists and for many players is so frustrating they do not want to play smac.

We have it in ACDG6, however its Smaniac mod. if you do not mind, you can download the files. Create a copy of game folder with everything and rename it to like "Smaniac" Then overwrite files with those from mod download.
Smax really do not need registry, so copying everything to any folder makes it work too.
I'll give you links to files in a moment.

I was looking through my old saves, but nothing in singleplayer that I could easily find. I saw it often in multiplayer

[scient]

Is the bug caused by Smaniac mod? Or is it in vanilla game as well?

[Mart]

Mod is here:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showpost.php?p=3817035&postcount=1

and save files, maybe this, it's singleplayer

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showpost.php?p=5525029&postcount=106

See attached image for Adonia base.

[Mart]

Is the bug caused by Smaniac mod? Or is it in vanilla game as well?

It's vanila. The mod is only for text files/graphics files. It does not modify exe. You need original exe.

[Mart]

There is a list of bugs on SMAC Academy, but many/majority of it is actually some game feature, it's controversy.
The probe bug, drone mentioned above are 100% bugs.

Another major ones:
- repair bay special ability does not work.
- multiple air drops with right-click menu in a single turn, even from outside a base
- instant demon boil on patrol (not sure how it works though), but many people know it.
- energy stockpile bug (many people love it though) but overall it kills production queue feature - mostly people don't use it to get extra energy. after facility one even do not need to add a stockpile energy item to queue
- there is also a bug that scrambling a needlejet crashes the game. Not easy to replicate though, but there may be saves omewhere here attached, maybe in archives even.


Overall, these seem to be bugs for sure. In many other cases what people consider a bug may be very well a game feature.

[scient]

- multiple air drops with right-click menu in a single turn, even from outside a base

This was easy to locate. There are two different switches, one for right click and one for all hotkeys. The hotkeys for airdrop includes a number of checks while right click doesn't. I'll have to do more analysis but it may be as simple as redirecting right click menu to hotkey code.

- there is also a bug that scrambling a needlejet crashes the game. Not easy to replicate though, but there may be saves omewhere here attached, maybe in archives even.

Crashes are very simple to find and usually pretty easy to see what is causing the problem. If you can track down a saved game or if someone could post one that would be great.

Overall, these seem to be bugs for sure. In many other cases what people consider a bug may be very well a game feature.

Ya, I want to avoid any of the questionable ones for now. Plenty of real bugs to sort.