0.73c - development version

#33 - The Capitol of the conquered town is not destroyed if we already have one.

This is also related to 0.72#2 - Multiple Capitols allowed if set up from MapEditor. As H3 had the “1 Capitol per player” rule, I’ve posted some suggestions on how to handle possible fixes for both 0.72#2 & 0.73c#32 HERE.

On the other hand, I strongly support keeping the possibility of having more Capitols (through conquering or Map Editor) as a mod because, well, I could always use more money… :smiley:

The Imps not attacking Gnolls may or may not be related to a bug reported some time ago, regarding AI not attacking the creature placed just in front of it (though I can’t find that report right now). To be investigated - and we can keep this 0.73c#32 referring mainly to that.

The other two are however general, and it would be nice if they can be solved soon (one because it’s pending for quite some time, and the other because it’s kind of annoying and was introduced only now with 0.73c):

  • Quantity of units wrong placed / unreadable. This was reported long ago as 0.7#71 and is now the oldest logged item in SourceForge. I’ve posted a detailed description of how these stack boxes should be displayed at the bottom of my post HERE.

  • Endless wait. This must be strongly related to 0.73c#16. I guess you just discovered a loop between 2 creatures of the same speed, while I had it only for 1 creature. That means it impacts all of the same highest speed creatures from our army.

oh what i’ve seeeeeeen now !!

started 1600*1200 but it was real pain slowdown, strange but i wrote (like i feeled this !!) before this game to “Miss_func” topic about probability switching off the animation on map and in town - creature and building to have better speed, and maybe due to this slowdown i got “bugs”

in the battle i’ve seen second animation starts before first - so read attentive - 2 stacks of enemy harpies and pikeman stack and archers - order - harpy, harpy,pikmen,archer,harpy,harpy
animation: …archer shoots - pikemen and harpies show pain animation at same time, then harpy beats pikemen, then pikemen beats(counter-) harpy and right after shows pain animation(2nd harpy attacked him) and then 2nd harpy shows attacking animation - that’s a SLOWDOWN - please try 1600*1200 arrogance3 attack with orrin lorelei - U will see heroes like RTS :smiley:

and bug - #34 completely can’t see morale animation and no delay either - and those ai creatures who had morale just moving twice further - it quite fears ))

looking at the code I think you get bg a NULL, as new releases (before 0.73c?) was doing things with battlequeye giving posssibility to fields to be NULL and not all checks were done

Gaaa! My first bugfix. Actually a brand new feature of building demolition 8)

Also, only first town of player will keep its Capitol after game start - you can see it easily on Arrogance3.

#35 Bug with heroes in tavern - see attached save. In tavern on the right there is Sir.Mullich and if you buy only heroes from the left side there are all the time elementalist and planeswalkers. Isn’t it correctly implemented? I didn’t noticed that before
games.zip (222 KB)

Regarding #35, I also noticed we get Conflux heroes more often than usual. For example, when loading the VCMI_Tests map attached to some of my reports in this thread, I am always getting at least 1 Tavern hero from Conflux, and quite often both of them.

I wanted to run some more tests to make sure it’s not just a coincidence, but then I ended up running into bigger bugs that needed reporting and forgot about this (so I’m happy Boulie brought it up). :wink:

fixed

bug with lightning bolt animation was not related to resolution

Most probably fixed as bug #9 also caused quite severe damage to the rest of battle. After casting lightning bolt a very important variable was broken.

That’s strange. For me the melee defenders always go towards the gate (which by the way seems to not be implemented yet, as seen in the screenshot below; but I guess you knew that so no need to report it as bug just yet:).

I did however spot some other issues:

VCMI: http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/Zamolxis/VCMI/VCMI%2007/2009-09-23_HeroBehindWallNoGate.jpg vs H3: http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/Zamolxis/VCMI/VCMI%2007/2009-09-24_H3Siege.jpg

#36 - The upper wall goes over the hero and whatever creatures the defending army may have in the hexes from the upper row.

#37 - The visiting hero does not collect the best troops from garrison to fill in his empty army slots when the town is under siege.

#38 - The castle/central tower in VCMI is placed higher than in H3 (though if you look at the base, somehow the VCMI one seems more centered - Unfortunately I forgot to capture that in the shots, but you can see for yourself by loading the attached map in both VCMI & H3). So from my part this does not need to change, as the central tower looks now somehow better placed… I’m just not sure of it so I thought it’s best to report it. :wink:

#39 - The hero is placed lower on the battlefield as compared to H3 (look at the hooves of hero’s horse in the 2 screenshots). This has actually nothing to do with sieges in particular. It seems to be general for any battlefield, for both the friendly and the enemy hero (I just didn’t notice it before).

See the attached map to reproduce all of the above (for Inferno, not sure if valid for all towns, but probably yes).

#40 - Creature hit by Arrow Towers turns with the back towards the attack. It’s best noticeable if the first creature that moves after Arrow Towers is an enemy one. In this case, as seen below, our Sprite remained blocked turned in the opposite direction, from the moment they were hit by the Arrow Towers, until the Griffins finished their flight and it was our turn. You can use the attached map to reproduce it, if you first remove the purple visiting hero from the MapEditor so that you can fight the Garrison creatures (or else fix #37 so that the defending hero accepts the Garrison creatures in his army:).

And just for fun, check out also the upper tower gog peeking outside of the battlefield if I disable stack queue (result of bug #5): :slight_smile:

i4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/Zamolxis/VCMI/VCMI%2007/th_2009-09-24_ShySprite.jpg
4th VCMI Tests.7z (9.95 KB)

Yeap , you’re right other time they were moving, so this wasn’t reproducible, but that time enemy skeletons were staying for about 3 rounds “in the wall” not going to gate

and about #34 - it was for ai creatures and on 16001200 so probably related to “slowdowns” because later I had morale on my troops on 800600

Fixed.

As for catapult it’s not a bug - it has it’s move but it’s invisible. (as I wrote it’s animation is not yet supported) The only noticable effect may be wall damaging (if it is lucky enough to hit)

Any log messages before? Do you have graphics for the queue (included in the apckage)?

Catapult’s animation is implemented.

fixed

A lot of errors would seem to spring from different resolutions. IIRC there is bits and pieces of code that assumes 800x600 instead of calculating positions from the current resolution.

Fixed, but perhaps not pixel-perfect. Spell effect positions in general should be more accurate (at least in 800x600).

Also, a bug:
#41 - Underground cartographer should only reveal the underground ground, even when placed at the surface. Same thing for surface cartographer (they’re treated as the same object, I reckon). I had first thought it was supposed to be this way myself, but apparently not. Maybe it was in RoE?
Sea cartographers also reveal sea at both levels. Not sure if this is already so, my test map is a bit strange and I haven’t had the time to fix it.

Well, I did it so that Cartographer reveals the land of type where it’s placed. The problem is these objects have no subtypes, but only different graphics, so indeed are handled as one.

Not having different subtypes does make it awkward I’m sure, but there must have been something in the standard H3 code to handle them. Perhaps a subtype or something could be added to VCMI so you can differentiate as well?

To keep full compatibility with all existing H3 maps, Cartographers would need to work the same way: i.e., surface Cartographers reveal all terrains that aren’t subterranean or water, subterranean Cartographers reveal only subterranean, and water Cartographers reveal only water.

Personally, I think they should have made the land Cartographers reveal the shroud based strictly on layer (surface or underground) except for water which would be revealed by the water Cartographer.

Even better would be if each Cartographer could be edited in the map editor with a checkbox for Surface, Underground, and each Terrain type, so you could have them reveal whatever you wanted. :slight_smile: (BTW, are there any plans to make a VCMI map editor at some point in the future?)

Guys, I just tested it in WoG and underground cartographer doesn’t reveal any terrain AT ALL, no matter where it is, while the others reveal land or sea on both levels. Makes little sense to me.

It does. the underground Cartographer reveals all subterranean type terrain (whether on surface or underground) and ignores all other terrain.

After reading your message I created a quick WoG 3.58 test map just now and verified it.

But you’re right that it doesn’t make a lot of sense the way they did it (basing it on terrain types only). Which is why I said to keep full compatibility with existing maps you’d need to do it the same way, but I wished they had done it a more sensible way.

We’d like to have one, but we focus on the engine.

My fault, 0.73c graphics were missing.

Great. It’s good to hear that you would like to have one (I’ll take that to mean you may work on one at a much later date. :slight_smile: ) And of course, the engine is of prime importance, because without the engine, nothing else will go very far.

I think the advantage of a new map editor (at some point after the engine’s completed) is that it can provide a degree of easy modding to the game (on a map level) that almost anyone can do. For example, a simple addition might be setting the value of treasure chests, sea chests and similar objects in the map editor. A more complex addition might allow certain bonuses or abilities to be given to artifacts without the need for scripting.

I’m probably writing this in the wrong thread, and I suspect serious consideration of a map editor is a year or more away, but I just wanted to share my thoughts as they occurred. :slight_smile: