Fixing SMACX Bugs

[Petek]

Welcome to Apolyton!

Perhaps you built the Space Elevator SP. With it, a base's mineral output is doubled when building orbital improvements.

Petek

[vyeh]

You have the Space Elevator.

"Space Elevator.... doubles mineral production rate at all of your bases when producing orbital facilities." (p. 173 of manual)

[Paso Leati]

LOL you're right, it's just the Space Elevator doing what it's supposed to do .

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

I've never seen it display graphically like that, though.

***
scient- I just want to make sure you've seen this suggestion. You're already a major prophet around here...

...If you found time to pull off more than seven factions at a time, you’d be worshipped as a GOD.

-Not that I have any idea whether it’s feasible at all, mind you.-

[scient]

Sorry all for not getting back right away. I've had some other stuff I had to finish up as well as problems connecting to site.

@vyeh: Great follow up. I'll go through it all and put together a draft/proposal of how to sort it in a new thread.

I haven't been following this thread closely (WAAY too technical for me), but are there any plans in the works for some kind of a release? This is some fantastic work you're doing Scient (and some nearly as fantastic bugfinding work from the rest of you!), and it'd be a shame if it was all for nothing, or only for a small, exclusive circle.

Like vyeh and Buster's Uncle said, there are some issues with posting it on here which are being looked into. I've sent out an email to someone who hopefully will be able to put me in contact with someone at EA.

I was planning on holding off sending out copies to new folks until I resolved combat/morale stuff. However since morale will require a lot more work to resolve, I'll send out a copy of current release to whomever wants it. I had Russia4Life down and I'll send a copy to Ironwood. Was there anyone else I promised to send a copy to?

Got hit by the free captured faction leader bug apparently. Saves are attached.

Excellent! I'll look into it. I think this was one of the last outstanding probe related bugs.

Darsnan posted this on scient's old thread in CFC.

"Bug: when popping a pod which produces multiple spore launchers, the SL sometimes attack each other. I don't think this should happen.

Bug of artificially inflating your clean minerals limit: by building Tree Farms, Hybrid Forests, Centauri Preserves, etc., you can then disband these facilities and still retain the increased clean minerals limit.

Minor Bug: in the #UNITS section of the alpha(x).txt if you try to change the CP chassis to something other than Infantry, the game won't recognize these new units and cosiders all but the first faction to be eliminated.

D"

I've seen the first bug.

The second bug is part of the eco-damage exploit that I have brought to your attention before. I regard the fact that you can affect the clean mineral limit of all bases by building a facility in one base to be an exploit.

Cheers, I haven't looked at that thread in awhile. I'll add em to list.

...If you found time to pull off more than seven factions at a time, you’d be worshipped as a GOD.

-Not that I have any idea whether it’s feasible at all, mind you.-

Ya, I got the 7+ factions on my list for down the road. That would be pretty sweet on a huge map to have all the factions at once.

[Russia4Life]

I hope you aren't feeling rushed or anything, what you are doing is amazing and the best thing to happen to SMAC since alien crossfire came out. I'd rather you take your time fixing stuff up to what you feel is satisfactory instead of putting out a release just to appease peoples desire to play your new patch.

[scient]

Oki. I've already sent it out for 5-6 people to test for bugs awhile ago. So far everything is solid. I'll hold off then until I've nailed this morale thing which I think will be a pretty nice resolution to a severely broken mechanic.

[vyeh]

I think there are 2 additional problems with CC and morale on attack (some of the same problems from defense carry over).

(1) There is no upper bound, so unit can attack at elite +12%.

(2) CC has same problem on attack that BP had on defense (attacking units are penalized for SE > 0).

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Ya, I got the 7+ factions on my list for down the road. That would be pretty sweet on a huge map to have all the factions at once.

[Bows head a little]

[vyeh]

scient,

Don't worry about not getting back. You indicated in a post that you wouldn't be around, so there was no problem. Besides I needed the time to think about morale.

I'd be careful about starting a new thread (the same concerns also apply to the CFC thread). At 500 posts, the moderators in Off-Topic closes a thread. I would suggest that we continue using this thread since we started the morale problem here. When that is over, perhaps you could ask Illuminatus to lock this thread and put a pointer at the end of this thread to a new thread.

I think having only one active thread at a time will be less confusing.

I copied Darsnan's post from the CFC thread so you wouldn't have to look at it. Except for Darsnan, anyone that wants you to look at a bug should report it here. It will be confusing to have this discussion in two separate threads, let alone two separate forums.

Concerning morale for defensive units in a base, could you look at post #379 first?

I'd like to clear up the discrepancies between what you found in the code and what I found through the scenario generator first.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

But what about us cheaters?

I had to run and shout the good news about possible future 7+ factions at CFC. I concluded:

...For the first time I'm interested in getting his patch eventually. (I've never had a lot of trouble with the bugs, and he's been spiking WAY too many exploits I'd like to retain the option of using in SP.) But lordy, 7+, as he says, would be SO sweet.

So I'm really embarrassed to ask, scient, but what do you think about the possibility of someday doing a version of the patch that's SP exploit-friendly for us pathetic little cheaters? Maybe a little coding to prevent multi-player or PBEM entirely with that version? I've no idea how many people are experiencing my ambivalence, and I wouldn't want you to even consider it unless you think you could manage it pretty effortlessly. If it's a big job, I could always just make yet another duplicate of my entire SMACX folder instead...

Just throwin' it out there.

[vyeh]

Another entry from the CFC thread by Darsnan:

Bug: if a Former is building a Forest and a forest spreads to the square, the Former continues to try and build the Forest even though it now exists there. Same happens for a Sea Former and a Kelp Farm.

D

[Russia4Life]

I had to run and shout the good news about possible future 7+ factions at CFC. I concluded:



So I'm really embarrassed to ask, scient, but what do you think about the possibility of someday doing a version of the patch that's SP exploit-friendly for us pathetic little cheaters? Maybe a little coding to prevent multi-player or PBEM entirely with that version? I've no idea how many people are experiencing my ambivalence, and I wouldn't want you to even consider it unless you think you could manage it pretty effortlessly. If it's a big job, I could always just make yet another duplicate of my entire SMACX folder instead...

Just throwin' it out there.

Heh I already got 3 copies of my SMAC folder; The original, one for Darsnan's scenario I am playing, and another for SMAniaC, I will probably make a fourth for this patch.

As for the cheating why feel embarrassed, if done in single player your goal should be to have fun. if cheating every possible way in the scenario editor and exploiting every bug in the game is what you find fun go for it, and do it with pride.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

I'm embarrased to admit I'm a cheater to this crowd, is all. I'm sure you've dug through a lot of old threads like I have: a dim view tends to be taken of that stuff here.

But it is as you say; I'm not cheating anyone, and I still enjoy the SP. [Sticks out tongue] I paid for it, and I'll play it my way, thank you.

[scient]

scient,

Don't worry about not getting back. You indicated in a post that you wouldn't be around, so there was no problem. Besides I needed the time to think about morale.

I'd be careful about starting a new thread (the same concerns also apply to the CFC thread). At 500 posts, the moderators in Off-Topic closes a thread. I would suggest that we continue using this thread since we started the morale problem here. When that is over, perhaps you could ask Illuminatus to lock this thread and put a pointer at the end of this thread to a new thread.

I think having only one active thread at a time will be less confusing.

I copied Darsnan's post from the CFC thread so you wouldn't have to look at it. Except for Darsnan, anyone that wants you to look at a bug should report it here. It will be confusing to have this discussion in two separate threads, let alone two separate forums.

Concerning morale for defensive units in a base, could you look at post #379 first?

I'd like to clear up the discrepancies between what you found in the code and what I found through the scenario generator first.

Ok. I'll go through it tomorrow (can't today).

@Buster's Uncle: I could do that by packaging the exe with only bug fixes and then include a patcher with different options to patch exploits or any changes I make that I consider outside the realm of a bug fix. As for preventing the non-exploit patched exe from being used in MP, I've already thought of some methods to handle this. I'm curious what exploits I've patched that you normally use in sp?

Even if I do make exploits optional, issues like the elite morale / patrol bug which dual as both exploit/bug would not be optional. It's not possible to fix one and keep the other.