VCMI 0.7b - development version

Oh, I see. Sorry, didn’t understand that at first time :stuck_out_tongue:
Fixed as far as I can say.

It’s analogical issue to #24. VCMI generally picks all random resources/skills and so on at visit/gaining time.
It might wanted or useful (I generally more like current behaviour) and I rather won’t fix it soon (much work, complicated synchronizing between clients). It may become an optional feature later.

Works for me…
Can you give exact steps to reproduce the problem?

In Single Player games (when you can gain real advantage with reloading skills etc.) wouldn’t it be better to fix all level-ups (given a certain group of skills for that hero), resources and skills at the start of the game (or Week)? After all, it could really mess up a Single Player map if, for example, you could reload to get all the powerful skills (such as Expert Logistics, Expert Wisdom, Expert Intelligence etc.) for all your main heroes from the minimum amount of level-ups, when normally hero type and existing skills would have a more important role. Different level-ups when reloading would also give you a big advantage over AI players who couldn’t reload. In games where the challenge is the map rather than the other players, I think it would make sense to actually fix certain things at the start of the game or Week rather than decide on the fly. What do you think?

What do other people think? :bulb:

Best regards,
Steven.

I think that if player likes challenges, he won’t abuse save/load possibility to gain advantage. If someone likes having terribly powerful heroes and easily defeating all enemies… well, why should we ruin his games? Btw cheats are still present, so if someone is not playing “fair”, they can be still used to easily overcame challenges.

However, if there will be more votes for changing this behaviour, I’ll do it.

It’ll be eventually an option anyway :wink:

Probably fixed recently by Tow Dragon.

Ad #9, #12 - fixed
Ad #19 - I’ve added a bit more logging there so it should be easier to track
Ad #20 - I investigated this problem and it occured that only trying to cast not implemented spell makes that animation hang. Which spell did you cast?

I’ve also fixed some older problems regarding animations on battlefield.

It would probably be a good idea to split up all the wandering monster stacks as in H3 - in latest VCMI all you need to block practically all damage is to have a fast creature in the middle attacking stack. (And even almost wipe out the wandering monster stack on the first turn if the middle attacking stack is powerful enough. :slight_smile:)

Best regards,
Steven.

i’m pretty sure I used bloodlust, bless and magic arrow to test it. and that all of them had the bug. bloodlust and bless hangs until next spell and magic arrow during it’s fly time. can test it again soon so I’m sure if those were the spells that hanged for me.

And AFAIK all of these spells are implemented right?

EDIT: After checking this a little more i realized that the hero animation should be there during the entire casting of the spell. that is during magic arrows “fly time” for example. The animation still hangs tho when casting Curse, Bloodlust and Bless (probably other spells too cause i’ve only tested these).

Yes, these spells are implemented. Thanks for listing them, now I can fix it ;].

hello again!
got some battle improvements that i would like to see. :slight_smile:
Some of these “bugs” has probably already been noticed but I wanted to report them since i think they’ll improve the overall smoothness in battle.

#30 Creatures tend to stop for a short while at every hex when you move them in battle. Easier to see if you choose the fastest animation speed.

#31 Flying creatures should move diagonal, directly to the hex chosen. not follow the hexes as other creatures does.

#32 When attacking a creature they should both turn so they’re facing each other (if needed) before anyone have attacked.

It should behave like this: Both or one of them turns so they’re facing each other–>Creature attacks–> Creature2 retaliates --> both/one of them turn away as needed.

Atm VCMI behaves like this: Attacking creature turns --> Creature attacks --> Creature turns away —> Creature2 turns --> Creature2 retaliates --> Creature2 turns away.

#33 Enemy creatures can walk on obstacles. even tho the hexes are correctly occupied [for friendly units]. (maybe reported or noticed already).

Also a suggestion: I don’t know if this is possible but it would be nice if the mouse cursor could be forced to stay in the window at all times this would make scrolling the adv.map with the mouse much easier. ATM you have to be careful when scrolling the adv.map with the mouse so you don’t move the cursor outside the window (which is really annoying when it happens, sometimes it interrupts the scrolling and such). Holding the ctrl button could then in addition to stop the scrolling also make it possible to move the cursor outside the window. (maybe have it as an option :question:)

#34 There’s some differenses at the result screen at the end of a battle. i40.tinypic.com/59wltl.jpg

#34 a) Background: The Background should be grayed out and all the creatures should still be there. ATM in VCMI all creatures dissappears when the end screen comes up.

#34 b) Experience information isn’t there.

#34 c) Text is difference. Tho i do think i like the VCMI text size better, both at hero names and casualty information. Hero/Creature names at top should still be left/right aligned tho imo.

#34 d) There should also be a shadow on the lower and right side of the window. Can be seen at least on the lower side in the picture. rest is clipped away.

These are missing features and should not be reported as bugs. Anyway, it should be put into one of our bug tracker.

ah ok

So in the future, should i report all bugs / features to the tracker at the sourceforge page? (or is there another tracker somewhere?)

just want to be sure since i cant see any tickets there atm, so I report them at the right place. :slight_smile:

I just think that missing features should not be mixed with bugs - there are other threads for them.

We haven’t yet decided if we should use sourceforge tracker or the one from Trac tool. Please report bugs and missing features on this forum until we decide which one is better.

oh hi :wink: nice job :3

functional bug/feature-after launching vcmi and selcting single player game->begin
it will won’t run without internet connection :wink: (i just blocked it once with firewall without selecting “remember setting” and it keeps trying to connect but here a little weird thing my firewall doesn’t ask me for it every time but when i relaunch application it asks. i’m writing it just in case :P) and then when i close console (because i can’t do in main window anything from that point)
it gives error
i40.tinypic.com/211rw1u.png

also i noticed when moving hero sometimes animation is lagged it slows down somehow i don’t remember such behavior in earlier versions … it seems to be easiest way to catch it is 3-4 square moving and point with mouse at hero

also here a feature(or bug :P) you can’t stop a hero while he’s moving

If you mean hanging the animation on bigger maps when hero ends moving between two tiles, I’ve significantly decreased this effect in last commit.

Tow has recently implemented this feature :slight_smile: .

Fixed.

Implemented.

I’ve finished checking the status of all bugs reported in this thread. Many of them are fixed, a couple logged in SourceForge and one reported in the 0.72c thread (Spacebar @ Subterranean Gate - I think it was fixed but came back). There is another issue regarding the interaction with firewalls, which never received a log, and I’ll address it in a separate post below. But first I wanted to add a few comments on #24 & 29 (intentionally left unchanged, and I agree with the devs on this):

[quote=“Steven Aus”]

#24 - I don’t know why it was coded as such in H3, but it was an annoying “feature”. Imagine having to choose between Eagle Eye & Navigation on a map with no water in one of the first days on an XL map (with no way to escape it). It will be a very frustrating getting yourself stuck with a useless skill for the rest of the scenario (or even campaign). I know that if you think of the H3 AI, it would be unfair to give ourselves the chance to “duck” useless skills. But instead of making things uglier for us, why shouldn’t we make things nicer for the AI? I don’t know what the devs think about this, but maybe it could be coded as such that the chances for the Computer Player to get one of these “bad” skills to be reduced considerably. So on this I keep my vote of leaving things as they are in VCMI, and only if there are enough voices asking otherwise, to make it an option otherwise.

#29 - This one is less important. For #24 it was a big deal to have the skill following you around for hours and days, until you finish the map, so it was worth it to try a reload for a different skill, so that I can enjoy the game better. But I would never bother reloading for resources. And I wonder who would? But okay, just in case someone would be interesting, it can be implemented as an option as well - if it will (as I’m not sure the coding effort is worth it - definitely not at this stage of the game I think).

I’m not sure if this is really a bug, but as it was never answered, I though of bringing it up. And because it wasn’t given any log number, let’s give it 0.7b**#35**.

I’m not sure what firewall amvmichael is using, but I have the same issue with my ZoneAlarm. And it’s only because of blocking the internet activity from the firewall. Simply unplugging the UTP cable does not affect VCMI. However if I stop internet activity from ZoneAlarm, the game does not even load as far as the Main Menu, and the Console goes in a loop every 2 seconds with the following lines:

Sounds like ZoneAlarm is a bit overzealous when blocking all internet acivity. The VCMI server and client communicate with each other over the network (even though it’s all happening locally on your machine, it’s still a network connection). If ZoneAlarm interprets your command to block the internet as shutting down all network activity, then it will block this local network connection too, and VCMI client and server won’t be able to communicate with each other. That would also explain why physically disconnecting the remote network (by unplugging the cable) doesn’t affect VCMI, it only needs the local (machine-internal) network connection.

I vaguely remember similar problems with ZoneAlarm some years ago, but I can’t remember with which project they appeared. Personally I never used ZoneAlarm because at least at that time it didn’t allow users to fine-tune the connection rules. The program may have evolved by now, check whether you can declare “trusted applications” which can use the network protocol on the local machine even if ZoneAlarm shuts down all connections to and from other computers.

In any case, if the problem is caused by an overzelous firewall shutting down the localhost, then there’s little that the VCMI programmers can do, since the architecture of VCMI relies on network ommunication between server and client. It probably should be mentioned in an (eventual) FAQ though, since many people will run into the same problem, and it’s not evident for everyone that a game that they only play on their local machine still uses network technology.

(And sorry if I’m only telling you things you already know. :slight_smile: )

Yeah it’s zonealarm :stuck_out_tongue: Still its kind of weird of course i can give it a remember to allow it all the time but blocking it just once while it doesn’t respond to next … maybe it remembers it until closing down program huh:P

Whats interesting now it doesn’t even ask with 0.7c version. :stuck_out_tongue:

I didn’t know the more technical parts, so thanks! :slight_smile:

I was pretty sure it’s not a VCMI bug, but I didn’t know how the VCMI client and server communicate with each other, in order to identify the reason why stopping the internet activity from ZA would cause the problem in VCMI.

But even though it’s not a VCMI bug, there are still things that can be done maybe:

  1. Better handling of the situation:
    a) Now the console goes in an endless loop trying to establish the connection. Perhaps at some point (after 5 or 10 attempts) it should ask the user if it should continue or terminate the application
    b) or give the possibility to close the Client without an error (as it is now)
    c) and/or give the possibility to close the Console without an error (as it is now - though in case of closing the console i/o the client, perhaps that error is normal)

  2. Or if no enhancement is worth the coding effort, then at least - as suggested by Psyringe as well - we could include this in a future FAQ.