56 replies to this topic

[Salk]

Congratulations and thanks for your great job, Qwinn!

You must really love this game (and have reasons to), considering all the effort you're profusing on this.

Thanks again!

[Qwinn]

Thanks kindly, gothemasticator and Salk

And here's today's fixes that'll go in v4.0:

1. For some unknown reason, a trigger in Rubikon Wizard's dialogue refuses to detect if Nordom is nearby when you meet him. Used a different trigger, works fine now. (This sets a variable referred to in Nordom's dialogue after the fact when discussing information provided by the Wizard)

2. The thief tattoos (Tattoo of the Cutpurse, Tattoo of the Shadows, Tattoo of the Shattered Lock) can now be invoked from the inventory screen, instead of just from the quick item slots. This is the same issue as with the Tattoo of the Source that was fixed in v1.0.

3. Large gears on northeast wall of Foundry will no longer disappear leaving big black holes in the wall.

4. Keldor will now resume facing his audience after you talk to him.

5. Sight issues (where it was obnoxiously difficult to see the gear-doors) in the Rubikon maze have been significantly improved.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 11 January 2010 - 10:08 PM.

[Qwinn]

You will now have the option to ask Diligence for her help whenever it makes sense that you can do so, rather than just when one of a limited and totally arbitrary list of Clerk's Ward citizens are killed. Note that she will still only help you one time.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 11 January 2010 - 11:42 PM.

[Qwinn]

Woohoo! The faction overhaul is tested, looking good, it'll go in v4.0.

And dear Lord, did I find a ton of bugs along the way. Along the other faction craziness I mentioned in the main thread about it, here's another, just as an example: Take Emoric's quests to join the Dustmen. Talk to Norochj, talk to Awaiting Death, talk to Sere, go find Soego but don't tell Emoric you did it. Then go join the Anarchists. Now go back to Emoric and "Infiltrate the Dustmen for the Anarchists". He'll tell you to go to Norochj. Stay in conversation with Emoric and tell him you talked to Norochj, then Awaiting Death, then Sere, then "Infiltrate" again. Repeat forever for infinite XP. Not a -lot- of XP by that point, but still.

So, anyways, you can no longer infiltrate multiple factions as an Anarchist, you can infiltrate one at a time. This resolves some serious exploits like joining them all as an Anarchist and then leaving the Anarchists which leaves you belonging to the other 4 factions simultaneously. And it fixes a crapload of other bugs like I mentioned.

Anyways... so I'm finally done with Sigil. I'll head off to Ravel in the morning, and hopefully I can finish the game by tomorrow night. Scient's been under the weather and hasn't gotten the exceptional strength or ice knife fixes done yet, and I don't want to pressure him to do so. If I finish my testing and he hasn't gotten that stuff done, we'll just release with what we have, and the strength and spell fixes can be fodder for v5.0. I suspect v5.0 will mostly just be spell fixes (like Ice Knife, Fist of Iron, Aid and a handful of others) courtesy of scient anyway. At least, I can't think of any other non-engine bugs that still need fixing at this point, I've hit pretty much everything I ever wanted to do at this point. Course, I said that at the end of v3.0 too...

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 12 January 2010 - 01:20 AM.

[rtr86]

Great work as usual Qwinn!

I've hit pretty much everything I ever wanted to do at this point. Course, I said that at the end of v3.0 too...

Qwinn

You know you're not going to be happy until you make a mod that actually transports the player into Sigil!

[Qwinn]

Nah, scient will be the one who actually gets the portal working, I'll just be the first tout you run into when you get there

Okay, today's news:

I've asked scient to just drop the strength and ice knife fixes for v4.0. Strength will have to wait for v5.0, and the Ice Knife problem is just a bug from the vanilla game that will have to wait for scient to figure out how the engine's spell code works, also for version 5.0. I'm removing the Platter fix to the problem, as I think the cure is a bit worse than the disease. I'll add a "Known Issues" item to the Readme advising players on how to fix the permanent Ice Knife THACO debuff (kill the character and resurrect).

When scient -does- figure out the spell code in the engine, that will hopefully usher in some really nice fixes to some broken spells. For those curious, the spells I'd most like to see get some work are, in order of priority:

1. Ice Knife (Khhhhhaaaaaaannnnnnnnn!!!)
2. Fist of Iron (I don't think it's working at all, but we'll investigate)
3. Friends (make it not cumulative with itself, which the Baldur's Gate fixpacks also treat as a bug)
4. Aid (casting it on someone at max health raises max hp but not current hp)
5. Knock (find out if its efficacy is related to mage level, and maybe tweak it slightly to bring it in line with the "non-trivial locks" fix)

After v4 is released, I'll start a thread where we'll list known spell bugs and people can hopefully point us to problems we're not aware of yet.

ANYWAYS.

I've asked scient to focus from now till release on one engine bug: the horrifying "bug that just won't die" wherein talking to an item right before the game starts a dialogue automatically causes the item dialogue to replace the cutscene dialogue. This bug is potentially game breaking, and while the hundreds of lines of workaround code have softened its impact somewhat, it still keeps popping up here and there, and when it does it can be gamebreaking (well, you can reload and just not talk to an item before the cutscene, but if you don't -have- a save game just before that, you're screwed).

I am willing to delay release until that engine bug gets fixed. Once it is fixed, I will test it by running through the rest of my game.

One other thing that'll go into the Known Issues list. Rarely, if you use the Quick Load feature of the new tweak of that name several times in a row repeatedly, the game will crash. We're not sure why, it looks like it will take some time to diagnose. It is a very handy feature even so, though, and if you were going to load, you were okay with losing all current progress so nothing is really lost, you just need to fire the game up again. At this point, I'm considering Benefit > Cost on that tweak, and will include the tweak in v4.0 despite that issue. If it's a problem for you, don't use QuickLoad!

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 12 January 2010 - 11:35 AM.

[scient]

I couple bugs outside of spells I want to look into but not many. I'll clean up and post list in known issues thread for next set of releases once v4 gets out the door.

Like Qwinn said, it is possible to trigger crash using quick load repeatedly (say you do it 10 times in a row it may crash once). I've located code where it's trying to access invalid memory but it isn't anything I'm calling directly via quick load. So my guess is it's an existing bug with memory management that quick load has flushed out.

I've been fighting off some bug/flu past week so I haven't been up to doing much. Hopefully I'll be able to sort that bug with dialog triggers in engine which will do away with need for workarounds.

Edited by scient, 12 January 2010 - 01:08 PM.

[Qwinn]

Oh, by the way, the actual flat-out bugs in the Power of One spell, where it ignored class/race restrictions, -are- fixed and going in v4.0.

Qwinn

[scient]

Oh, by the way, the actual flat-out bugs in the Power of One spell, where it ignored class/race restrictions, -are- fixed and going in v4.0.

Qwinn

Just for clarification class only. PST or version of IE it uses I've never seen a "race" check.

Edited by scient, 12 January 2010 - 05:37 PM.

[Qwinn]

Getting very close! Just finished with Pillar of Skulls.

This final round of testing is proving worthwhile, I am still finding things to fix or improve. As an example, the specialization checks in the Pillar's dialogue was reversed for mage and thief, so if you were a specialized thief, you'd use the Art to free "someone" from the Pillar, and if you were a specialized mage you'd do the whole "feint and grab" thing.

Can't see any reason why I won't be done with testing over the next couple of hours. Then I'll spend another hour or two updating the readmes, and then version 4.0 will be released

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Ooh, interesting. I was wondering why, even despite my RunningAttack fixes, the Moridor's Box demon was still sauntering slowly toward me until it reached my party, and then if I ran away -after- that it would actually run to catch me. So I looked at the script. The very first time he sees you, it runs "MoveToObject[PC]", which simply has him walk toward the party... and then it sets the variable "Demon_Gate" so it doesn't happen again. Given the general use of the word "gate" in D&D terms, it looks very much to me like they thought the "MoveToObject" action was instantaneous, rather than a casual saunter. Makes sense, and there was really no other logical reason why they'd have put that "Demon_Gate" logic there, since in the vanilla game it has no effect whatsoever (since he just walks toward you when he sees you anyway).

I think the idea of him teleporting next to you the first time he sees you is awesome and I'd love to make it work like that, but unfortunately I don't think the engine supports it. There's "JumpToPoint", but there's no "JumpToObject" that I can see. Oh well. If anyone knows of a way to accomplish this in PS:T's version of IE, let me know.

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

He will run from the beginning now, that part's easy.

But no, I wouldn't assume they knew what the action specifically did. There are other places where they similarly use an action in ways that don't match their actual use. I'm sure -most- of the programmers knew what it did, but perfectly possible the specific programmer in charge of this implementation didn't know or got it confused. At any rate, what other plausible reason do you see for the demon to be instructed on a one-time basis to "MoveToObject" then "Attack", setting a variable called "Demon_Gate" in the process, when the behavior that results is identical to just saying "Attack", which it does from that point forward?

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 14 January 2010 - 12:25 PM.

[Qwinn]

Oh, and I wouldn't assume they had "ready access to the engine guys" either. They didn't build the engine, they leased it.

Qwinn

[scient]

Nor is version of IE PST uses a shinning example of being bug free code and working as "intended". Case in point, issue with StartDialogue() which I fixed few days ago for Qwinn. Basically, there is an internal variable used to determine what "type" of dialog is being initiated say if it's with another CRE (NPC/PC), with item, or with door/chest (tenements door, brothel armoire). The problem with StartDialogue() is that this variable is never set at start of code like it does with Dialogue() and few other places. Since this variable is global, StartDialogue() will use the id of whatever was the last dialog type opened. Easy way to cause game to crash to desktop if you have Annah in your party. First, talk to tenements door then go inside Fell's shop for first time with Annah. Game will crash when Annah tries to fire off her comment regarding Fell since dialogue id is set to door/chest when it should be CRE. Or if you talked to an item rather than tenements door, once you go into Fell's shop you'll get an infinite loop of item dialog rather than her comment. This bug was also issue that was causing incorrect dialogs being displayed with portal / Celestial Fire.

Edited by scient, 14 January 2010 - 02:46 PM.