PROJECT: Playtest

[Maquiladora]

I believe this is inherent to the Activision code as both my brother and I experience it quite often playing the 'Vanilla w/ Sprinkles' version. It only happens to the non-host and your 'fix' seems to work. However, to do that kind of fix you have to wait until all TIs and Terra is done so you don't end up with the 'other' problem--CTD. If you play long enough it WILL give you all of your PW though. Somehow it tracks how much you have and will EVENTUALLY give it back. Even if you are accumulating it for like 10 turns!

Ive never experienced it with the vanilla + 1.11 patch, only with the playtests. IIRC it never happened with the vanilla game without the patch too, so its something in the playtest.

I never played long enough to wait for the PW to eventually come (< 50 turns) when it misses a turn and its pretty unplayable this way

[Colwyn]

Re: Re: But is it possible

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
Of course it is possible, we have the source code actual it is just a constant defined in ..\ctp2_code\gs\utility\gstypes.h:

#define k_MAX_ARMY_SIZE 12

That leads me to the question why don't you like the increased army size limit.

-Martin

Excellent I hoped as much.

Why I don't like increased stack sizes is purely b/c its too easy to defeat the AI via a few size 12 fast moving stacks. Even if the ai has one the player need only withdraw and attack with the fresh one. Then its roll over time vs the 2-4 units they have in their cities. Reduce the stack size and you get more armies on the map and a more front line situation. Anyway I'm going to watch the project and possibly contribute too when I get some holidays.

[Maquiladora]

It would be easier for the AI if the stacks were infinate, not an even smaller limit. You still have the problems youre describing with any finite stack amount.

The problem you mention can be helped one way by making defence generally stronger than offense, as it should be IMO, but right now attackers (or the flanking+speed+range attribute) are the best.

[EPW]

Ive never experienced it with the vanilla + 1.11 patch, only with the playtests. IIRC it never happened with the vanilla game without the patch too, so its something in the playtest.

Actually this does happen in the vanilla v1.11, just not as often as it was occuring in our game. In the games I have played recently with Toni the glitch occured in the mid-late game and rejoining/resyn solved the problem. In the playtest it seems to occur much earlier and much more frequently, so maybe there was a partailly fix in the patch.

[Solver]

The problem you mention can be helped one way by making defence generally stronger than offense, as it should be IMO, but right now attackers (or the flanking+speed+range attribute) are the best.

There was the idea to make the defensive units always use their defense value in combat, even when counterattacking on their round - that should make it possible for stacks of Hoplites to reasonably defend against attacking stacks.

[BureauBert]

DebugSlic

I am trying to play some Mod's with the latest playtest build (2004[1].04.12.CTP2Playtest.zip). Apart from the diplomacy bug described above (which kind of "freezes" the game after a while) I am also getting the screen centered on some event in some unexplored region during the turn of a particular AI player repeatedly (possibly that player pirating the same trade route for some turns or something similar), which doesn't do any harm but is a little bit annoying.
I have also been trying to replay my own Mod, which I had stopped developping because it became too slow on ultra gigantic maps but is only fun on ultra gig. I am still hoping it will be more fun with less memory leaks and an overall improved performance of the game engine .
In this Mod I am using a version of Visible Wonders, unfortunately this gives me loads of SLIC-errors (concerning good old argument type mismatch) at startup, although I definitely set DebugSlic=No in userprofile.txt. I think this must be a kind of bug implemented with the re-implementation of SLIC-functions.
Well in the meantime I will continue testing Activision-SLIC-compliant Mods only .
Apart from these problems it is great to see most of the (important) SLIC-functions being reimplemented so quickly. The entire effort of the people involved in the source code project is amazing and reading the forums is a lot of fun, too.

[Solver]

Interesting, I never seem to get the centering thing you mention, and with DebugSlic=No, I also get no SLIC errors.

[Maquiladora]

I am also getting the screen centered on some event in some unexplored region during the turn of a particular AI player repeatedly (possibly that player pirating the same trade route for some turns or something similar), which doesn't do any harm but is a little bit annoying.

I get this too alot, i think it is pirating.

There is another centering bug on explored visible terrain when an enemy moves a stealth unit.

[BureauBert]

Well, so far I tried:

- Apolyton Pack 2.0: No SLIC-errors
- GoodMod for Apolyton Pack on ultra-gig map: No SLIC-errors
- Call To Conquest: No SLIC-errors
- Modern Times (my own mod including Visible Wonders, PopBoom and some other "best of"-features ): loads of SLIC-errors (argument type mismatch)

I assume the first three Mods in the list are just "DebugSlic-clean" SLIC avoiding the functions that always caused "type mismatch" errors (which AFAIK cannot be avoided through better SLICing but only through not using those functions - maybe this could be fixed in a later re-re-implementation of these SLIC-functions).
Maybe you didn't experience the errors because all the Mods you tested have been clean .
I think e.g. the "PopBoom"-feature is included in "MyMod v0.99", which can be downloaded and applied relatively simply, "Visible Wonders" need a certain amount of editing IIRC, but possibly run without much editing as stand-alone Mod with the vanilla version of the game. Just in case you would like to try some known Activision-SLIC-erroneous Mods . As for GoodMod I remember that Martin often mentioned his efforts to make it DebugSlic-compliant - so we shouldn't be surprised by getting no errors .

[bartdanr]

Downloading playtest files

Hi All,

I'd love to playtest this build, but I can't seem to download the file. When I click on the link to download, all I get is a blank screen. Do I have to be a paid subscriber to download this file?

Daniel

[Solver]

Hmmm no, everyone should be able to download....

[J Bytheway]

Re: Downloading playtest files

Originally posted by bartdanr
I'd love to playtest this build, but I can't seem to download the file. When I click on the link to download, all I get is a blank screen. Do I have to be a paid subscriber to download this file?

Nope. I guess that your problem is that somethingto do with the forwarding isn't working properly. What browser are you using? Do you get the advert screen before the blank screen?

[Locutus]

I sometimes get a blank screen as well, but when I try a second or third time it usually works.

[J Bytheway]

Update 2004-04-18

New version available:

Edit: Removed link. The latest version of the Apolyton Edition can be found here.

Edit: This version is now obsolete, the next version is available here.

(It has to be a .rar, rather than a .zip, because the .zip exceeds the 5MB limit on uploaded file sizes (Maybe I should subscribe to Apolyton to fix that ). Perhaps Locutus could repackage it as a zip and post it in the directory if anyone has a problem with rars.)

Changes:
Added: Rush buy button status updated when gold gained from goody huts
Fixed: Empty(ing) build queue crashes
Fixed: Invalid memory access when loading from a file with a different table size
Fixed: SLIC bugs
Changed: Menu structure and graphics

Now it's time for bed .

[Tamerlin]

Re: Update 2004-04-18

Thanks J Bytheway...

Oï


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