Re: playable again with a few problems

[tlow at low-shang dot homelinux dot com (Tom Low-Shang)]

On Sat, May 15, 2004 at 10:30:18PM -0600, Eric McDonald wrote:
> Tom Low-Shang wrote:
> 

> >2. When a unit's task ends without player intervention, the
> >unit status still shows the task even though the unit itself
> >shows it is selected, which is a little confusing. Example: A
> >fighter is doing a move-direction-multiple task and runs low
> >on fuel.
> 
> I think that the task is still there in such cases. Probably
> the display needs to add "(Suspended)" somewhere in the task
> description.

I do not believe that the task is still running, because it is
possible to start a new task without canceling the previous one.
In other words the unit is actually in passive state but the
display does not reflect this.

> 
> >4. Move-direction-multiple is blocked by friendly units. This
> >is not new behaviour and I just accepted it before, but it
> >suddenly occured to me that this is not what I would expect.
> >Is this behaviour intentional?
> 
> No, it is most definitely not, and I certainly thought it was
> fixed. In my test cases, it did work correctly. You are using
> recent CVS sources, right?

Yes, I am.

> 
> Also, could the blocking friendly unit have been filled to
> capacity with other units?

No, the moving unit could be blocked by a single, unoccupied
friendly.


> 
> >5. This one is definitely strange and problably not even
> >reproducible. After canceling the build task in several
> >towns, they were unable to build anything again. 
> 
> Oh jeez, another create/build bug.... Apparently I fixed 2
> bugs and created a million new ones.
> 
> >They would accept the produce command but sometimes they
> >would revert to the selected state, and other times the town
> >would appear to start building, but the next turn it would be
> >passive again.  
> 
> A unit will stop building if it runs out of a material. But,
> if this was with the standard game, I would find it hard to
> believe that that would occur.
> 
> In the cases where the unit immediately reverts to the
> selected state, could it be that the unit is filled entirely
> to capacity with other units?

No. The town was empty and the there was no indication of any
shortages, but that should not be a factor in a standard game
any way.

> 
> >Eventually some of the towns would build again, except for
> >one which stubbornly refused to build anything. I saved the
> >game thinking it might tell you something, but the problem
> >disappeared in the reloaded game. 
> 
> Ugh. Did you get any init warnings about units not being able
> to be placed in a cell when you restored the game?

No, the saved game reloaded without in problems and continued as
if nothing had gone wrong.

> 
> >Would -D have helped in this case?
> 
> Possibly. Every time a task is run, there is diagnostic output (when 
> this flag is set). You could attempt a task and then see what messages 
> show up on the console window. If nothing shows up, then the problem is 
> likely at the UI level and not in the game kernel's task system.

What is the difference between -DM and -DG?  I may run xconq
with debugging enabled until these strange issues are sorted
out.

Tom