Re: Play testing notes (CVS, 2002-03-10 version)

[bobthedancer at yahoo dot com (Bob Carragher)]

> Thanks a lot for the feedback! To bad things are not working perfectly yet,
> but that's what pre-release testing is all about.

Not at all.  It was quite enjoyable to play against a human
opponent after many years!  Although ... I should've taken a
clue from the fact that Jim was taking longer to complete his
moves than I a lot earlier!  Then I would've realized the
juggernaut that was headed my way, and might've resigned
earlier.  ^_^;;;

> >        Checksum changed 6835 -> 6832 when numdone == 0
> >        Error from #2, "checksum 2 6838 6835"
> 
> OK. Any idea what triggered the checksum errors this time? And did you get
> errors also if the ai was running either or both sides?  [...]

Jim already answered this part in his email response.

I'll also note that at one point I set a fighter unit to
move 8 spaces, and 8 sets of 3 checksum error messages
appeared.  (This was a few turns after the first checksum
error message had appeared.)  When I manually moved the
fighter one more hex, 3 more checksum error messages
appeared.  All messages appeared in the messages section
of the main window.  All moves were done by mouse-clicking
on the destination hexes.

> >        Warning:  packet A refers to missing unit #34 [...]
> >        Do you want to continue?
> 
> I now know what is causing this bug. See the latest ChangeLog. It happens
> when you iterate over all units (dead or alive) and tell them to do
> something such as force_replan.  Telling a dead unit to do something is in
> itself harmless, and does not have any consequences in single player mode.
> However, the sanity check in the network code sees that something is wrong.
> We could probably just disable the warning, but I will go through the
> kernel code and expurgate all instances of this bug just to make sure.

That would be good.  At a certain point, as presumably more
dead units appear, more of one's play time is spent closing
the pop-up windows with these warning messages than actually
playing the game!

Out of curiosity, if we click "No" in the dialog box that
asks if we wish to see any further warning messages, does
that prevent these SPECIFIC warning messages from appearing,
or all warning messages from appearing, for the balance of
the game?  If it's the former, then we could've continued
playing (at least, unless and until the checksum errors
overwhelmed the game).

> P.S. Those saved game files might be useful, if you could send them to me.

Those were sent in a separate email to Hans only.  If anyone
is interested, I can forward them to others!

				Bob