trunk 3015 - strange re-start screen, NPC witchjump > 7LY

[snork]

hej,

I am a bit hesitant with feedback about trunk version, as I do not know what might be intended behaviour, known sideeffects of work in progress, or just me messing it up.

Anyway, trunk version 1.74.3015 , windows XP 32 bit, no shaders available,
OXPs : cargo_wrecks_teaser, Hawksound, pods, probe, shieldtail, snark (1 npc ship), yah

However, there are some things I find odd, I never found anything related in the log :

1) When I die, sometimes the "press space" does not start the autosaved game with the status screen, but with one of several odd screens :

- a blank black background, with the hud on top : speed may be shown as zero or half-fullspeed. the hud otherwise displays : no compass, nothing on scanner, no pitch or alike, full shields and full fuel (as in autosave savegame).


- the last scene before I died still going on : I can still see the ships / whatever surroundings, and they keep moving / doing things - just as before having pressed space.
The hud displaying as said above.



nevermind the shift+f


All the while I am docked and stuff just fine, it is only what is initially on display what is strange. Launching from the station everything is fine, too.

--------------------------------
2) long distance NPC witchjumps

I propose an experiment.
Some NPCs carry more than 7.0LY of fuel, so the experiment is to see how far those overfuelled ships can jump.

Jump limits are supposed to be hardcoded at 7LY, and for the player ship that's certainly true. But if NPCs break that limit, then the scanner could expose a potential bug.

I believe you will find that there is no bug there. The code specifically checks for nearby systems that are less than or equal to 7.0LY distant from the current ship position, independently of the fuel being carried. If no such systems are found, the AI receives a "WITCHSPACE_UNAVAILABLE" message and reacts according to that.

So when it does occur, it is a bug, not a feature ?

I had this 2 times so far, galaxy 2, but I do not often wait for wormhole creators to appear.
First time it was across the whole map, but I did not use it.
Second time (Maorin to Isusle) I had it, I did try it out and arrived at Isusle just fine.
Note the strange "collapsing in ..." time. The arrival time seems to fit (~64 hours)





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I also have random crashes in trunk 3041, but since I read the post that trunk is unstable at the moment of 3035 anyway, and logs do not mention anything unnormal, forget about that.

[another_commander]

I have no idea how the wormhole bug can be possible. The list of distances of reachable planets from any given point is specifically checked for being less than 7LY when a hyperspace destination is selected. Is there any way that this can be reliably reproduced? What ship is that travelling in the wormhole?

[snork]

I have no idea how the wormhole bug can be possible. The list of distances of reachable planets from any given point is specifically checked for being less than 7LY when a hyperspace destination is selected. Is there any way that this can be reliably reproduced? What ship is that travelling in the wormhole?

Not that I know of (reproduce). I loaded an old savegame from around when the screenshot was made, to see where others witchspace to, but have not yet had this happening again.

I did not pay attention to it originally since I thought it might be a feature of the game, wormhole scanner was all new to me at that moment.

I also no more know what ship may have created the wormhole in the screenshot.

*shrugs*

[JensAyton]

However, there are some things I find odd, I never found anything related in the log :

1) When I die, sometimes the "press space" does not start the autosaved game with the status screen, but with one of several odd screens :

Are you sure there’s nothing in the log? I’d expect to see something about an unhandled exception.

[snork]

Of course nothing happened for a while, but now I have it again, both.

Black screen with hud at loading a game, after fresh gamestart. And right the first ship jumps across half galaxy 2 - from Envebe to Ausis, a Boa Cruiser with escorts, in no 2 days.

The log did contain this, after loading, before launching :
[exception]: ***** Exception checking controls: NSInvalidArgumentException : ShipEntity(class) does not recognize weakRetain


I have the game paused and pressed d. Now what, should I follow that Boa Cruiser ?

[JensAyton]

Hmm. I don’t think we can get anything more useful out of it without a debugger, but it’s a start.

Edit: on further consideration, that shouldn’t actually be related to the black screen, but it needs fixing in any case. I’ll add some extra checks to narrow it down.

[snork]

HM, OK, so I flew through the wormhole, and the "in no 2 days" was a lie. 161 days.

here is a 3.5 MB sized log file. I have no idea what to look for.
And that logging is for sure the best frameratekiller I have had.

http://www.filefront.com/15709285/Latest.log

[JensAyton]

Hmm. Have you edited your logcontrol.plist file? It’s usually not that verbose. :-)

A minor detail at the top of the file reminded me that you’re using an outdated build. Bug reports for trunk are useful, but not so much for two-week-old versions. It would be nice to know if it happens in the latest build.

In any case, I’ve added the extra checks I mentioned above, and they should appear in tomorrow night’s nightly build.

[Eric Walch]

Black screen with hud at loading a game, after fresh gamestart. And right the first ship jumps across half galaxy 2 - from Envebe to Ausis, a Boa Cruiser with escorts, in no 2 days.

The black screen happens when there were active wormholes on the save file. When you look closely at the planet after launch, you'll see that it is the Lavian planet. (Its typical blue colour tells you and when you estimate its position with the console, you'll notice it is also the Lavian planet position). So while all other things tell you that you are somewhere else, the system was not correctly repopulated.


Saving there and reloading removes the wormholes, but does not remove the underlying bug. This bug is already some weeks present in trunk and is not solved by solving the recent crashing bug. I had it again yesterday with revision 3044. It is not only the black screen with me but also all kind of JS code starts to log errors about not-existing properties. However, no other errors than those JS errors are logged with me.

Somehow the bug causes to skip a whole part in the setup process leading to secondary errors.

Edit:
I just compiled todays trunk and saved again a game with wormholes in it. On loading that game I had in my log:

Code: Select all

[exception] PlayerEntityControls.m:312: ***** Exception checking controls [pollDemoControls]: NSInvalidArgumentException : *** +[ShipEntity weakRetain]: unrecognized selector sent to class 0x43e760

And just for fun I targeted a new wormhole. That one went to a spot at quite the opposite side of the galaxy. So both bugs (black screen and large jumps) are definitely related. However no Lave this time.

[JensAyton]

"weakRetain" exception fixed in r3049/r3050. Good show, another_commander.

[snork]

Hmm. Have you edited your logcontrol.plist file? It’s usually not that verbose.

I hope not - I did open it and saw I would not know what to do with it. So I left it alone and just hit "d" in paused mode.
I now replaced it with a fresh copy, just in case I accidentally did edit it while planning to read only.
(I like to use PSPad to read or edit)

A minor detail at the top of the file reminded me that you’re using an outdated build. Bug reports for trunk are useful, but not so much for two-week-old versions. It would be nice to know if it happens in the latest build.

In any case, I’ve added the extra checks I mentioned above, and they should appear in tomorrow night’s nightly build.

hehe, but that "old" one is so nicely stable. And set up with few OXPs, settings etc.
I did compile 3041, but that crashed every 20-30 minutes, when sitting in the background, me reading the wiki or something. So I decided to stay with the build 3015.

After all, I am a (still noob) player, not a bug tester - I wouldn't know how to do so usefully. Maybe some day in the future.
So I just play and when I run into something I look it up in the newest version svn log, as another_commander advised.

Now I do have d/l and compiled the 3050 build.

The black screen happens when there were active wormholes on the save file.

So I guess it would have been a good idea for me to post/link to a savegame in the first place, just in case.
I shall remember.

Thank you, everyone.