Needed Fixes, and Suggestions, for v1.05: LIST Form

[xolotl]

Edit: Has anyone tried testing maps when both "regular" and "winter" weather is set to "On"?! (It's be a cool to have a map where whether you get rain or snow would be random!... ;) )

Ah, that would be nice, yeah. Unfortunately, I just tried it out and camped for a good two weeks in my character's backyard, and it seems that the winter weather simply overrides the regular weather, so all you get is snow. Alas!

[IJBall]

Update: Created a new 'bugs' section devoted specifically to "Map issues" - with 4 such bugs (two of which were moved from other sections) listed. Also two new suggestions, re: making maps' weather options randomizable, and more purchasable Arrows at endgame being needed, were also added. (08/25/10)

[xolotl]

and more purchasable Arrows at endgame being needed, were also added. (08/25/10)

FWIW, I personally wouldn't care enough about this point to officially suggest it; was just making an observation before. Under more ordinary circumstances, you'd still be able to travel back to Mistfell to buy more if you really needed them; it was just my wholesale slaughter of anything that moved in Mistfell which burned that particular bridge for me, in that game. :)

[IJBall]

and more purchasable Arrows at endgame being needed, were also added. (08/25/10)

FWIW, I personally wouldn't care enough about this point to officially suggest it; was just making an observation before. Under more ordinary circumstances, you'd still be able to travel back to Mistfell to buy more if you really needed them; it was just my wholesale slaughter of anything that moved in Mistfell which burned that particular bridge for me, in that game.

I actually added that one because I had the same concern with my Ranger playthrough - I had enough arrows going into Talushorn, but just barely (and no "regular" Arrows were for sale in Picaroon at all!). Also, I think at least one other person has mentioned this issue as well.

(As for "going back to Mistfell", just for Arrows... well, that would break the natural "game flow" for me... )

Anyway, that's why I added it. And it's just one of the Suggestions, all of which BW can feel free to work on, or ignore, at his whim...

[xolotl]

I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere, though perhaps it has... As mentioned over here, when you're playing a game without the "degrade armor/weapons" option, there's no GUI indication of item state, but it's still possible to acquire items which need repair to operate at their full effectiveness.

Either the GUI mouseovers need to be changed while playing with that option, so the user has an indication that something needs repair, or any item you find with that option should always be at full "health." Personally I feel that the latter makes the most sense given the game option, but either one would work.

Edit: Just verified on 1.04 in a fresh game that the sword I found in a chest in my house wasn't at full "health" (410 out of 425), though the Hemp Skullcap I found seemed to have a zero max-health as I'd expect (and items bought from Keebo were also zero-max-health).

Edit: Hm, After doing some more testing, though, it's only been that one Sword which exhibits that behavior - possibly something to do with that it's a "special" item put there by the engine at the game start, because of the choices I made with character creation. Perhaps this isn't an issue on 1.04 after all...

[xolotl]

Something I noticed last night (which I had noticed previously but never got around to reporting):

eb2_portal.png (49.47 KiB) Viewed 7439 times

As I mouseover the various levels available to cast Portal at, the text helpfully tells me which map they're currently anchored at, but it's doing so on the "Supernova" line, not on the Portal line. It's worth noting that until I acquire Supernova, there's no mouseover indication of where the spell is anchored.

[IJBall]

Thanks, xolotl!

Update: Now that you've explained the issue, I've added the "degraded weapons still showing up in 'degrade armor/weapons=OFF' games" bug to the list, along with your Portal spell bug. Also added: Issue with Elemental Resistance still going over 100% after Element Armor spell is cast or if Potion of Greater Protection is drunk. (08/27/10)

Update 2: Two new issues added after I reviewed the original 'bugs/suggestions' thread - one involves a map issue on Level 3 of Hammerlorne that I forgot to include before, and the other is a graphical 'glitch' that sometimes puts "square black holes" in dungeon corners. (08/28/10)

[xolotl]

I just noticed that when using Summon Beast, the summoned beasts won't actually attack a Sentinel Stalk unless they were spawned immediately next to the stalk. Even if the Stalk starts attacking the creatures you've summoned, they won't move towards the stalk to attack. I suppose that perhaps this could be by design (ie: the creatures simply wouldn't consider a plant a threat) but if so, the behavior when they're spawned immediately adjacent to the stalk should probably be updated to match.

Edit: Hm, maybe I'm just missing something wrt Summon Beast in general. I was just spawning some wolves to take care of Vaxia and Mortikus and noticed that they didn't seem to move at all, either. The ones around Vaxia just stood there as they kept getting pounded with magic.

Another Edit: Yeah, it seems that anything I spawn just sits there. Was using some wolves to take out Boreheads and I had to put the wolf down and then lead the borehead next to the wolf before it would attack. Not ideal when it takes so many wolves to take down a single Borehead.

[xolotl]

One other semi-related thing that I've noticed is that creatures you summon, and also charmed creatures, will notice you committing crimes. In the case of Charmed creatures, this means that taking loot from a chest in the middle of a field can cause it to start beating itself up; in the case of summoned creatures it's more of a weirdness. ("Red Wolf has witnessed you commit a crime!" as I pick the lock of a door in Broken Blade, for instance.) It'd be nice if there was a flag for entities which would say whether they'll respond to crime or not.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Well, hopefully we'll have version 1.05 out by next week. I have destroyed most of the more annoying bugs, but I will have to say there are a few minor bugs that just aren't going to get crushed, at least not with Book II's engine.

Some bugs I just can't replicate (like the Cat's Eyes issue) so they may have been fixed via other fixes; other bugs (like the dual-screen crash on Linux) are simply out of my jurisdiction. Yet a handful of other bugs (such as the TAB ghosts) are just annoyances but would require sizable rewrites of code to fix, and that just increases development time and the chance that new bugs may be introduced.

So, hopefully everyone will be happy with the fixes that have been made and understand that some of the trivial issues will need to just be ignored.

The main thing now is for us to finalize 1.05 so we can move on to the next two projects, which includes Book III. I have some big plans for B3, and it will begin with some recoding of Book II's engine to streamline and improve many of the features. But I can't start on these improvements until I officially break-away from Book II and start a new code branch. This can finally happen after 1.05 is finished.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Something I noticed last night (which I had noticed previously but never got around to reporting):

eb2_portal.png

As I mouseover the various levels available to cast Portal at, the text helpfully tells me which map they're currently anchored at, but it's doing so on the "Supernova" line, not on the Portal line. It's worth noting that until I acquire Supernova, there's no mouseover indication of where the spell is anchored.

Can't replicate this. Does anyone have a saved game showing this error?

[xolotl]

Can't replicate this. Does anyone have a saved game showing this error?

Aha, I sent you an email with a save slot attached. While attempting to reproduce it myself (for the record here), it turns out that it's more of a corner case than I thought.

Briefly: it looks like the game will always draw the portal mouseover text on the 21st line of the Elemental tab (so long as there are 21 lines). There are only 21 active Elemental spells in Book 2, so you'll only see this behavior if you have every single Elemental spell in your spellbook.

If you use my character editor to give your char the one inactive (nonworking) Elemental spell which is still technically in the game engine, the mouseovers will show up on the correct line. (Assuming, of course, that you also have every single other Elemental spell.)

[BasiliskWrangler]

Aha, I sent you an email with a save slot attached. While attempting to reproduce it myself (for the record here), it turns out that it's more of a corner case than I thought.

Fixed it! It is always SO much easier to catch bugs when I have a working example. Thank you!