Castle Paradox

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2012 5:01 pm Post subject:

Spawned units are always supposed to spawn in the first empty slot. If the first empty slot is one that hasn't been positioned for the current formation, then the enemy spawns in the top left corner.

Abelhawk · Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2012 6:26 pm Post subject:

That's what I thought, but it even spawns them in the corner on Wandering Hamster and Vikings of Midgard, and I assume you guys already knew how to position the slots so that wouldn't happen. Perhaps it's worth looking into?
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Abelhawk · Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 4:22 pm Post subject:

TMC · Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 9:45 pm Post subject:

We very much care about random glitches.

James fixed a bug in formation sets on the 26th; I had assumed that he was responding to your bug report but now I see that that's impossible. Still, it might have fixed the bug you encountered. If it occurs randomly, then it's hard to tell. (Or are you using nightlies?)

That's a good request; shouldn't be much work.
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Abelhawk · Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2012 5:48 am Post subject:

I'm not using nightlies. Just the latest version.
The spawning thing worked for me when I tested it on my own game; I'm assuming that maybe the one battle formation on Vikings of Midgard I saw the spawn thing mess up on was because they accidentally forgot to position the other placeholders or something.

That tag-setting "bug" is probably the most troublesome... it's annoying to encounter an enemy that's a "Use Only Once" NPC, only to have it disappear the moment it gets touched and while it's still saying something in a text box.
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TMC · Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2012 6:30 pm Post subject:

OK. Can you remember which battle formation, or which enemy, in VoM or WH had the enemies spawning in the corner? Looking through battle formations for a problem is a lot less tedious than other methods of tackling a random bug!
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Abelhawk · Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2012 2:59 pm Post subject:

I'm almost positive on Wandering Hamster it was formation #63, with a Zombie and an Imprawn. I think I attacked everyone at once, killing both of them, and then realized that the Zombie had respawned up in the far left corner out of sight. I checked the .RPG file and there are placeholders all around the zombie. So it should have worked.
It also could have happened with the other formations with undead in them. I think I remember beating a "Horror" and seeing it respawn in random points across the battlefield. Its placeholders are also sound.
If this still doesn't help, I could do some further testing.
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TMC · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 12:18 am Post subject:

Whoops, I missed your post. Thanks, very helpful. I'll have a look when I'm not so busy.
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Raekuul · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 6:04 am Post subject:

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 6:35 am Post subject:

No, this is definitely a bug. We need to fix it and not work around it.

I have made a simple test-case RPG where I can reproduce the problem.

My hunch is that the tag is being changed at the same place that it always was, but the NPC visibility is being updated earlier than it used to be. I still need to do tests to see if this si really the problem.

Abelhawk · Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2012 9:56 am Post subject:

I have been working around it for the time being, but it definitely isn't the way the game used to function.
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TMC · Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2012 3:46 am Post subject:

I hope that no workarounds that people are employing break once this bug is fixed!

If James' hunch is right, this is a really nasty bug to fix that can't really be fixed for every possible use case: even the old behaviour would be technically wrong, because it would mean that a script command could cause the NPC to disappear early (this needs to be confirmed).
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Bob the Hamster · Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2012 10:52 am Post subject:

Yeah. this one is tricky. I was thinking I should do an alectormancy+1 release now for the important Mac fixes, and then do alectormancy+2 once we have sorted out this npc/textbox bug.

I agree that there is probably no perfect solution to this bug, and I will settle for "wrong in a way pretty close to the way it used to be wrong"

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 2:42 pm Post subject:

Abelhawk, would you mind testing the latest nightly? It has a fix for the one-time-use NPCs disappearing before the text box is advanced.

Abelhawk · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 5:55 pm Post subject:

I just finished doing some basic tests. Everything seems to be fixed as far as I'm concerned. My original setup with tags works the way it used to, and NPCs that you're meant to open a text box---and then fight---only disappear after the battle is over. Which is perfect!
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