DescentBB

w00p! My analysis of the shift bug is slightly incorrect...

I was wrong when I said the issue was with DMFC... because if it also affects the player's ability to use it for controls, it has to be in D3's actual engine. I proved that this is an issue with D3's main engine by using my three-camera code in DLLGameCall (as I stated I would in my initial post about this bug), and the bug persists.

My suggested fix would be to add a flag in the keyboard read code (if D3's source has any resemblance to the D1X source anyway ) that says if the player is currently using the UI or playing the game. Then in the procedure itself, see if this flag is set, and if it's set to the player in the game, then treat the shift key as a key, instead of returning a capital letter. This bug may actually be in the code that interprets the returned key though... no one in this dev community would know.

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-pATCheS

My house is protected by secret service agents four days a week. Guess which four.

Flak-

Having only heard of it being done, and never seeing it myself, I just jumped into an empty Koors server on PXO (I think it was CU#6). Anyhow, here's the test I made. See if you can replicate it in an empty server (or a full one if you're fast enough ).

Point your ship at the nearest wall, and fly right up to it. Shoot off a few concussion missiles (area effect, you should drop your shields pretty fast). I personally got down to 56 strength shields. Then, attempt to enter Observer Mode. I had no problem doing so. When I returned to the game, I had full shields, with no other penalties other than I lost anything I had picked up in route to the wall.

After testing it, I have no reason to believe that it can't be reproduced. And having heard of it second hand numorous times, I think it's warranted a second look by Outrage. Anyone else have anything further to add about it? Did I miss anything?


{EDIT} I have one further suggestion for consideration as a solution. Any ship that enters Observer Mode without full shields should be penalized with a Suicide. That may be easier to code than attributing a kill to the last pilot that shot at them, and would essentially an equivalent solution.
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"Share the knowledge, compete in execution!"
Wildcards Empire
Tao of Descent

My own little bugs/obsevations.

1. If you have over 100 shields and go into observer, it resets your shields back to 100! Effectively 'punishing' you for going into observer with a large amount of healthy shields. This has to fixed. Related to this, the energy resets to 100 hundred no matter the previous value.

2. It seems that if you create a single player level, it can only be run online without a patch and only people without the patch can play it online in COOP mode. That's disappointing. I may be wrong about this, but I've screamed about this in chat and heard many echos. I'd love to try out the Merc levels in COOP without having a separate exe on my machine.

3. This is one that I suspect is very related to the crashing dedicated server bugs. I'm on Windows 98.

First an image of 'ctrl-alt-del' right after I boot up:


Now I while running my Dedicated:


On my machine, after I close the dedicated server down (using 'ctrl-alt-del', apparently the only way), it's still running. I hit 'ctrl-alt-del' and of course don't see it there. But I know it's there because when I try to run Descent in any mode I get:

Error:unable to set temporary directory to:"C;\Games\Descent3\custom\cache"The directory is in use, please use -tempdir to set a different temp directory

I have even opened up Kali and Gamespy and not only seen the game there, but seen players joining and just having a grand ole time. ON MY MACHINE! This one tested my observation skills a bit before I finally caught it.

I hit 'ctrl-alt-del' after closing the dedi and took a peak:


Well Descent 3 is definitely not there anymore. I closed D3, no doubt about it. Everything looks good here right? But my eighth sense starts bugging me (Last time I counted, I had nine senses, one especially dedicated to Descent). Well why would my eighth sense be ringing now? I mean, so what if some non-descript program has suddenly shown up in my 'ctrl-alt-del' box, everything looks good here right?

*blink*

Wait a second! What non-descript program?


(Gentle pause. Leaves quietly rustle outside.)


I said everything... looks... good... here... RIGHT!?


*The world holds its breath*


What the heck is 'Main'!? What's it doing in my 'ctrl-alt-del'
box and why wasn't it there before?

Turns out 'Main' is really Main.exe in the Descent 3 directory. Any guess as to what happens when you try and close Main? Let's just say one of Bill Gates best buds, Mr. BlueScreen drops by for a visit.

This is %100 consistent on my machine. It happens every single time. This may be a Windows 98 thing. But I suspect there is a serious problem with the closing/crashing routines across the platform board, hence the various bugs.



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1.55, 1.55, 1.55, 1.55, 1.55, 1.55, 1.55, 1.55, 1.55 ... Sorry! I was fixating.

Ahem, I don't see the fact that Retribution Level 4 (da city) doesn't have trash cans, Hoppers or Bats and the Thief is invisible all the time except for right when he is stealing your stuff. Didn't anyone beat up to level 4?

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Pink Panther.

Flak, to shut your dedicated server off, type quit in the console . BTW, the D3 server process DOES show up in your list there (it's Main, which is the actual name of the D3 EXE).

Also Suncho, be aware that many of your singleplayer bugs are issues with the game data files (which would be a HUGE download to patch up). I've found Level 5 to work fine in CO-OP, but that may have been 1 or 2 patches ago .

The Shift Bug (#15) is caused by the way Windows treats the Shift keys. It does not distinguish between them, therefore if you press both of them, then release them at the same time, Windows thinks you're still holding one down and will send that to D3.

#37 is an issue with the data files and may not necessarily be a bug. If I remember right the actual objective is to reduce the Stormtrooper threat . Reduce and eliminate carry different meanings .

#47 is a data file issue.

#49: I haven't had issues with this in either SP or Coop. After the 12 minutes is up you have a bit to get out of there. The second timer shows up a little later with 30 seconds left (one player should have left by then though if any of them know where the exit is at). Once the first countdown completes you need to RUN for the exit .

#52 is a data file issue.

#57 is a data file issue (this one is on Outrage's site as well).

#58: Never had this happen.

One can tell that you've never played SP .

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Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?

pATChes, the only problem with your idea for the shift key bug (#15) is that you have to be able to press shift+f2 etc..

Thunderbird, your take on the shift key problem doesn't seem to be accurate. Personally I use the Shift key for firing primaries and I can get stuck with the Shift Bug and my primaries aren't firing. It seems to affect the F keys so if I press F9 or F8 while the shift bug is in effect, I get the shift-f9 menus. Also it happens even when you're not pressing both of the shift keys. I'm not sure exactly what causes it to happen, but it happens when you're using the shift key a lot... so I dunno.

And I did play singleplayer for a bit but it sucks so I stopped.

Thunderbird, what if there was a separate multi and singleplayer patch? I've seen that in some games.

Pink Panther I don't understand your bug. Are you saying those things are supposed to be in there?

Flak, it should bring you down to 100 shields because it's as if you just spawned. If it doesn't you could be flying around with 200 shields and warp to different parts of the level by simply going in and out of observer (especially if you need to escape because you don't want to lose your precious shields).

Stormcrow and Flak, I tested the observer problem (#62). It's 50 shields. You can do it with 50 but not 49.

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-Suncho

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Arial" size="3">Originally posted by SSC-Thunderbird:
...be aware that many of your singleplayer bugs are issues with the game data files (which would be a HUGE download to patch up)...</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

How huge is huge? Half-Life's latest full patch weighs in at almost 70MB. Would a patch for D3 be a lot bigger? Could it be put on computer magazine CDs like other patches?

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**************************************************
"The object of war is not to die for you country, but to make the other bastard die for his." -Gen. George S. Patton

"If money is the root of all evil, I'd like to be a bad bad man." -Huey Lewis & The News

Whoa cool idea. =)

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-Suncho

hmmm..2 patch a level in sp, you would most likely need to download the d3.hog ... which weighs in at over 200MB...

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If you put your supper dish to your ear you can hear the sounds of a restaurant.
<FONT SIZE="3" FACE="Arial" color="#FFFFFF">[MS]Testiculese
<FONT SIZE="3" FACE="Arial" color="#FFFF00">Major, Midnight Squadron Descent III Division<FONT SIZE="3" FACE="Arial" color="#33CCFF"> (Link)

Thanks for adding it to the list. It's a minor annoyance, but it'd be nice to fix it.

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"Share the knowledge, compete in execution!"
Wildcards Empire
Tao of Descent

Great job Suncho compiling that list.

I hope a lot of those problems listed are taken care of in the patch


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Darktalyn : Halfman, Halfamazing

"I don't wanna sound like a queer or nothin', but I think unicorns are KICKASS!!!"

I wrote something just now, and then deleted it. And now I'm writing this instead .

Wolf, we just don't know what kind of patch it will be. We don't know how much ground it will cover, and how well it will do so. No one can predict, at this time (probably not even Outrage can do this yet) as to what will need to be included in the patch to make it as stable as possible with the greatest number of fixes. If 5 single player levels need to be fixed, then I imagine (I'm only guessing here) that basically all five levels would have to be included somewhere in the patch in their entirety. And for every line of code they fix, it may very well affect 20 lines or more. Sure, OOP is supposed to make things like this a breeze, but unfortunately it is never as cut and dry as that. I've seen some big as hell patches that made things worse, not better. And we've all gotten patches that we barely noticed downloading that fixed every issue and then some.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, anyone who is writing here, "Gee, I hope it won't be too big," is basically vocalizing a wish about the patch, after having seen some HUGE ones in the past. Not necessarily with D3 specifically, but more with games/software in general. Ease up a bit Wolf, grin a little and think to yourself---it really doesn't matter what size it ends up being, so long as:

It's stable.
It addresses as many issues as possible.
It doesn't take any longer than it has to.

I hope it's done quickly, efficiently, and error free. (Don't we all ). But the bottom line is, if it takes 4 months, addresses only 25% of the issues we're raising, and ends up being 50megs, I'm still going to get it. And so will most of us here, one way or another. Let's all just hope that it's small, fast, and most importantly, RIGHT .

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"Share the knowledge, compete in execution!"
Wildcards Empire
Tao of Descent

I actually have a bug!

It's probably only mine (but I've tried exhaustive isolation and can reproduce it but not correct it). At high FPS (1.33 GHz AMD, V5), AB'ing with a mouse button input overloads the sound in both software and direct sound settings. The effect is one of hearing too many copies of the AB all at once. It's more than a sound, however, as it renders the AB sluggish and intermittent. Frame capping remedies it but then your stuck at that 50 fps. Card is SB Live! Value. The higher the fps (+300) the more pronounced the shaking and sound overmix becomes. My guess is this might be part of the legacy patch for the AB bug or perhaps just some strange link between mouse, fps and sound API.

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www.descentants.com/D3TL.html

I wonder if they even have some beta testers for the patch. I could beta test if they want for that NAT bug.

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Bigman

They do have some tester's they go to time and time again. No reason to believe they'd not go back to them this time, but it's always nice to offer .

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"Share the knowledge, compete in execution!"
Wildcards Empire
Tao of Descent

Ok I was gone for a while (IndyLAN and then computer problems) but now I'm back. Gonna look over some stuff and do an update. =)

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-Suncho

I've tried to cover most of the bugs Mr. Perfect has on his singleplayer list. If I missed some lemme know. =)

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-Suncho

heres one i see missing from your list,
Powerful machine+ vysync= laggy playcontrol.
I have a v5 on my p3 733 and it plays just fine but when i put the v5 in my faster machine(1.1 gig anthlon) and have vsync on, you cant aim with massdriver because the control gets very sloppy. You can see the diffrence by just loading a level and turning vsynv on and off and try hitting a target. I only seem to have this problem when the v5 drivers(latest) caps the framerate to 75 when vsync is turned on. i dont have this problem with my 1.1 anthlon and radeon as the fps are worse than my v5 and p3 733.

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Thanks Teddy.

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-Suncho

Merlin, please add this.

*Ability to use custom .str files for different ships, namely, the weapons HUD name display. Say the ships name was BlackStar in the table file entry, the file blackstar.str would be read instead of Descent 3 .str, this way, when a ship has custom weapons, the HUD name will display the correct weapon name. I'm sure this wouldn't take too much to do.

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Ok I added the pilot command line bug (thanks mobius) and modified my mirror bug notes. =)

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-Suncho

If anyone has any bugs that aren't on the list, let me know.

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-Suncho

I received the following e-mail from Jason Feyers today:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Arial" size="3">We haven't been able to reproduce this bug. Does it happen on a dedicated
or client game? If dedicated, could you send me the .cfg file? When we do
try it, the black pyro always releases a blue guidebot.


-Jason

28. Name: Red Guidebot Bug


Problem: Server Crash in Co-op game.


Trigger: BP releases red guidebot on a server without Merc.


Notes: To fix, include the Guidebot model or just make the table entry point
to the blue Guidebot model.
</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I have not personally tested this bug... but I'll try to get it in tonight. If anyone has anymore info on this bug that'd be great if you could share. =)

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-Suncho

To reproduce the Red Guidebot bug, load secret2.dem with D3 CD1 in the drive. At least that works for me...

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DCrazy
Lead Programmer,
Xtremebuilder - Olympia Gold 3 Team

"*Ability to use custom .str files for different ships" Uhh... why in D3's name would you need to??? If the weapon names are loaded out of a string file, then have a string entry for each ship. If not (unlikely due to language support), then you're just plain dumb. Shouldn't be too hard... although I think it would be more of a hassle having seperate files like that. It should be in one well-formatted file

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-pATCheS

Would.you.like.to.play.a.game?

Why do you want the rear-view to be a mirror? Descent 2 didn't do that.

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-Sirius
Ellusion Design Level Designer & HXM Editor
POVTerminal Webmaster

Options are good...

..as long as they don't break anything.

<font face="Arial" size="3">To reproduce the Red Guidebot bug, load secret2.dem with D3 CD1 in the drive. At least that works for me... </font>

I don't get it. I thought it had to do with multiplayer co-op games...

<font face="Arial" size="3">Why do you want the rear-view to be a mirror? Descent 2 didn't do that.</font>

Because people are used to mirrors in real life. =P
This isn't a bug so I'm not adding it to the list anyway.

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-Suncho

<font face="Arial" size="3">In the launcher, if you enter nothing for the command line options, leave the launcher, and then come back, the command line will show up as "United States".</font>

I tried this and it didn't work.

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-Suncho

<font face="Arial" size="3">Missions that contain extra files, such as Earthshaker 2001, will crash a D3 server upon changing levels.</font>

Could you be more specific on this one, Ron? Does it have to be a multi-level mission or a certain type of file? I know Pyroglyphic has extra textures packaged in there and it doesn't crash...

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-Suncho

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Arial" size="3">Originally posted by Suncho:
<b> I don't get it. I thought it had to do with multiplayer co-op games...

</b></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nope, actually, you can do it offline too... happened to me quite a bit, actually!

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DCrazy
Lead Programmer,
Xtremebuilder - Olympia Gold 3 Team

<font face="Arial" size="3">Nope, actually, you can do it offline too... happened to me quite a bit, actually!</font>

Do WHAT offline? Can someone explain this bug to me?

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-Suncho

"pATChes claims to have fixed it by extracting the tablefiles outside of the HOG." Did I say that?? I said that I had no apparent appearance of the bug. If I said that, go ahead and slap me

Bug 70 is not really a bug at all. It was intended to be that way. If you look at the omf file for Merc level 1, it does not loop the Reactor region. Considering that it fades out and the end level music fades in, this is appropriate. The music in D3 is pretty much flawless. I have yet to notice any flaw in D3's music system except in the multiplayer GUI (if you try to connect and fail, no music plays, or if you, for any reason, get out of a multi game, it plays the main menu music instead of the multiplayer menu music, which really annoys me because I am not fond of D3's menu music...).

"pATChes, the only problem..." HEY!!! My name is pATCheS, as noted in the sig. I used to have this for my name, but that was before I discovered the profile settings...

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-pATCheS

Would.you.like.to.play.a.game?

Can anything be done about alt-tab? Most times when I try to alt-tab out of D3 to the desktop to say start a SOD, chat in Gate, etc D3 crashes. It never did it to me when I was using a V2, but when I upgraded to a V4 90% of the time alt-tab will cause D3 to crash requiring a re boot of the system or switching to a temp directory that seems to kill my FPS.

BTW, I dont care how big the DL is to fix the stuff, I will let the modem run for 2 days if need be. (actually I'd get some LPB to burn it on CD and send it to me, but thats beside the point.)



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TD

Once seen on the back of a biker's T-shirt: "If you can read this, my B**** fell off."
Visit the BoTSBB

T-Devil...
If it says you need to use a different temp dir, just press CTRL-ALT-DEL and kill "main".
Then restart D3 as normal

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Level designer on the D4.net team.
www.descent4.net
<FONT color="#FFFF00">[Note to self: Do not shoot MD up F(r)agCli's tailpipe, it seems to boost his shields... -- KickAssVert]</FONT>