Assassins bugs?

[GrahamIC]

Not sure if this is a bug or maybe something in commander file, but I'm on the mission to get the graviton missiles, I've reached the rebel outpost and completed the mini text adventure got the power back online etc. however when I go to the ship outfitting screen I am offered fuel, standard missiles, and pulse lasers but no graviton missiles.

Have I missed something here or is there a workaround?

Thanks

Using Oolite 1.73.4 with Assassins 1.3 and Supercobra 1.4.1

[LittleBear]

The OXP was written for 1.65 of Oolite. I thought it still works on V1.73.x but I don't know if it's still ok on the Trunk Build of Oolite. Sounds like a bug as you should be offered it. To work round, launch from the Base without the missile since you can't buy it (it should have been on the F3 Screen).

NB: Remember you won't be offered a missile if your pylons are full! If however you still can't buy one having sold your missiles then its a bug.

Go to the main station like you were told and you'll get a message. Save your Commander here. You'll now need to exit Oolite and manually give yourself a gravition missile by editing your save file. Open it up and you should see the missiles you have on your pylons like this:-

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<key>missile_roles</key>
    <array>
	<string>EQ_HRACK_1_MISSILE</string>
	<string>EQ_NRACK_2_MISSILE</string>
	<string>EQ_HRACK_2_MISSILE</string>
	<string>EQ_HRACK_2_MISSILE</string>
	<string>EQ_HRACK_3_MISSILE</string>
    </array>

The names in the string refer to the types of missile you have fitted. Change it to a gravition like this:

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<key>missile_roles</key>
    <array>
	<string>EQ_GRAV_MISSILE</string>
	<string>EQ_NRACK_2_MISSILE</string>
	<string>EQ_HRACK_2_MISSILE</string>
	<string>EQ_HRACK_2_MISSILE</string>
	<string>EQ_HRACK_3_MISSILE</string>
    </array>
 

Exit and save changes. When you reload Oolite you should find a Gravition (Shown by a Square) on your first missile pylon.

[GrahamIC]

Thanks, edited the file and got one now!

[Commander McLane]

I happened to play the text adventure last week during the downtime of the BB. It was a nice touch, and I had been looking forward to it for more than three years now.

However, I hit the same bug: the Graviton Missile wasn't offered on the F3-screen. I restarted from my last saving point and had the same result. No Graviton Missile.

So I had a look into the code, to be more precise in equipment.plist. And there it was:

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			<key>available_to_all</key>
			<false/>

Which simply means that it can't be fitted to my ship unless it's explicitly allowed in my shipyard.plist, which it of course isn't. Actually it means that it can't be fitted to any player ship.

Which means that nobody ever could have gotten the missile. Which makes me wonder why we haven't got a lot more complaints about this bug. Which makes me wonder how many players actually successfully played it to this stage, or even finished it. Including LittleBear in the first place... (he may have modified his shipyard.plist during playtesting; I don't know)

Anyway, in order to be able to buy a Graviton Missile the <false/> has to be changed to <true/>. If it isn't changed, the mission can from this point only be continued by hacking your save-file, or cheating through the JS-console or by using a Killit-missile.

A small search here on the board showed me that LittleBear set the availability to <false/> in order to prevent NPCs from having Graviton Missiles. However, he was mistaken. The available_to_all-key only applies to player ships, and means that all player ships can be fitted with the device. It doesn't apply to NPCs. Preventing NPCs from having the missile is done by setting its role probability to 0 in shipdata.plist. (I am not sure off the top of my head whether this applies only for its missile-role, or for the EQ_GRAVITON_MISSILE-role as well. Eric?)

I think that I have the latest version of Assassins installed. So this bug must affect everybody else as well who is playing Assassins.

[Eric Walch]

Which means that nobody ever could have gotten the missile. Which makes me wonder why we haven't got a lot more complaints about this bug. Which makes me wonder how many players actually successfully played it to this stage, or even finished it. Including LittleBear in the first place... (he may have modified his shipyard.plist during playtesting; I don't know)

I am absolutely sure I got that missile. It showed up as a square on the console. But I played it with Oolite 1.65. It could be that that version had a bug that it ignored that boolean?

I am also sure that the only mission I could not do was the one were I had to deploy the missile. I edited the save file to skip that one, but it was not because I didn't have the missile itself.

EDIT: I looked into the 1.65 source and now remember the bug. The code only looked if the "available_to_all" key was present. If present, the result was true, even when false was defined. So with 1.65 you could get it.

The problem was already reported here. And at this time you were aware of it according to your post:

No, why should it? For available_to_all = YES nothing would change. Only for available_to_all = NO, which is now treated as if it was available_to_all = YES.

So the only case in which some equipment that does work now would be affected, is where the intention was to let it not work. (Although I personally know of no case where available_to_all is set to NO.) Makes no sense for equipment that shall be available regardless of the player's ship.

So, please fix it. The worst thing that can happen is that the intentions of a scripter are actually fulfilled.

But I must admit it was long ago and I also had forgotten it.

[Commander McLane]

Wow! Seems you searched deeper than I.

Interesting read. I had completely forgotten everything about it (well, it was more than two years ago).

The real problem is that to my knowledge LittleBear never released a fixed version of Assassins, so the bug is still present, making it impossible to get the missile for everybody not still using Oolite 1.65. I think the famous less than-bug also was never fixed in any release.

So the question arises: can we get LittleBear to release a new version with this kind of small bug fixes?

And what about the role probabilities in shipdata? Does the engine still only use the missile-role to choose missiles for NPCs, or does it also use the individual EQ_foo_MISSILE-roles?

[Eric Walch]

Wow! Seems you searched deeper than I.

For Safari 5.0 there exist an interesting third party extension for special searches.

Go to the Safari preferences and select extensions. At the bottom right you see a button labeled "get new extensions". (Or similar as I use a Dutch version) When clicking you are brought to apples site were lots of extensions for Safari 5.0 can be downloaded. Look for the "CustomSearch" extention and install it.

Now you can define search criteria. Make one with the following content:

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http://www.google.nl/search?as_q=#TEXT#&hl=nl&client=safari&rls=en&num=10&btnG=Google+zoeken&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&cr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=http%3A%2F%2Faegidian.org%2Fbb%2F&as_rights=&safe=images

When done, you get a new icon in the top of your Safari window and you are ready with installation.

Whenever you now click that new icon, you can define a search string for Google and Google will do a search on this BB for any text. It works better than the search facilities of the board itself. It is just an easy way of doing it, instead of doing it directly in Google (Or any other search engine with similar options)

[Kaks]

And what about the role probabilities in shipdata? Does the engine still only use the missile-role to choose missiles for NPCs, or does it also use the individual EQ_foo_MISSILE-roles?

To stop the engine from assigning an 'EQ_WHATEVER' type of missile randomly to an NPC you need to make its missile probability equal to 0:

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roles="missile(0) EQ_WHATEVER";

[Commander McLane]

Thanks, so the populator only uses the missile-role.

LB already zeroed the role probability (well, he used a number close to zero, because that was back in the days when we didn't know that we could use zero as well), so there is no fix needed.

[Mauiby de Fug]

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The script assigns background images for the mission screens in the text adventure, but these are not contained in the oxp.

[Commander McLane]

I think they never came to pass.

[Mauiby de Fug]

I assumed as much. And they aren't really necessary anyway - the text adventure on its own is engaging and different enough! I've been waiting a long time to get to it!

[Commander McLane]

Found a long standing bug in the planetinfo of Assassins.

It tries to put three gas giants in the Eszausve system, however only two of them exist:

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    "6 13" =     {
        "ambient_level" = "3.0";
        "script_actions" =         (
            "addMoon: rebel_moon",
            "addMoon: gas_giant",
            "addMoon: gas_giantA",
            "addMoon: gas_giantB"
        );
    };

There is gas_giantA and gas_giantB, but no gas_giant exists.

There is a gas_giantC, but this one is used in Esrire:

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    "6 107" =     {
        "script_actions" =         (
            "addMoon: gas_giantC"
        );
    };

[maik]

Anyway, in order to be able to buy a Graviton Missile the <false/> has to be changed to <true/>. If it isn't changed, the mission can from this point only be continued by hacking your save-file, or cheating through the JS-console or by using a Killit-missile.

Thanks! This is where I just got stuck. I uploaded a modified OXP with your fix to my box.net account and linked to it as an additional download from Assassin's wiki page.

[Cody]

The return of a wiki wizard... nice to see you back, maik.