Game ending bug - china conquest

[joshuamnave]

During the conquest phase China has been conquered. The game then inexplicably advances to the relocate unit digression phase with the Soviets as the active player. But since there are no Soviet units in China, there is nothing to relocate and the game refuses to progress.

Yet another game that will never be finished.

[Centuur]

Saved game please?

[joshuamnave]

Debug tool please?

You do understand that there is no way to advance the game past this point. It is broken. Again. You do understand that about half of the people still playing this game have access to a tool that allows them to fix their own broken games and the other half of us do not. You do understand that the people who keep posting that the game is in a playable state and that we should just have a little patience all have access to a tool that keeps their games playable, and that the rest of us do not?

Here's the damn save file.

[Centuur]

Even if you had the debug tool, you can't get around this bug.

The debug tool itself is limited in what you can and can't do. It gives the player the opportunity to change hex control and relocate units at will, and that's about it. The tool itself isn't exactly bug free too...

[joshuamnave]

I'm betting if you change the hex control of the hexes in the north that are improperly russian control at the moment, the problem fixes itself. Communist units can't change non city hex control to communist control, which is why when I first posted over a year ago that off city reinforcements weren't working in China I was told it was not a bug at all. Imagine my surprise when in the latest patch someone suddenly discovered this bug and it was "fixed"...

[michaelbaldur]

You do understand that about half of the people still playing this game have access to a tool that allows them to fix their own

what half. there is only about 20 active beta testers .. I hope that more then 40 have bought the game

[michaelbaldur]

but for the bug, really dont understand why there a USSR hexes in China.

can I get a save game for earlier in the turn. maybe Russian production (last full control phase) I will see if I can make a work around

[joshuamnave]

There are Russian controlled hexes where ChiCom units were sitting at the time of conquest. No, they shouldn't have changed to communist control, but they do that these days.

I don't want you to make me a work around. I don't want to have to come to the board to post a save game every time there's a critical bug so that someone with access to a tool that should be publicly available can fix my game and send it back to me. I want the game to work, and barring that I want the tool myself. The stubborn refusal to release a tool that can fix bugs because the tool is bugged is Kafka-esque.

[michaelbaldur]

ORIGINAL: Zartacla

There are Russian controlled hexes where ChiCom units were sitting at the time of conquest. No, they shouldn't have changed to communist control, but they do that these days.

I don't want you to make me a work around. I don't want to have to come to the board to post a save game every time there's a critical bug so that someone with access to a tool that should be publicly available can fix my game and send it back to me. I want the game to work, and barring that I want the tool myself. The stubborn refusal to release a tool that can fix bugs because the tool is bugged is Kafka-esque.

contact me if you change your mind

[joshuamnave]

Just installed the new public release, 1.4.5 and loaded up this game. Still broken. Still not playable. Steve says in his monthly report that it will be at least another month for the next version.

I don't understand. How is this acceptable to Matrix? How is this acceptable to Steve? How is this acceptable to any of the beta testers or to anyone that bought this?

[gautebirkeli]

Not happy. Game comes to a dead end after conquest of China.

[TeaLeaf]

Perhaps the conquest of China wasn't tested as extensively (or at all)?

Anyway, I can imagine this is very annoying and has to be fixed.

The only thing I can think about to progress beyond this point without a debugger,
is to reload a point where China was not conquered and then don't conquer it. Just play as if you did, with some manual adjustments.
Kill all leftover Chinese with backspace and withdraw any Japanese units out of China that you wish to.

I'm sure Japan can do without all those useless Chinese hexes that will be added upon conquest, and the USA won't be as upset as well. In this regard, not taking that last hex that would conquer China would even be a worthy tactic in a perfectly working game.
But of course in that case, the kill would still be made once the USA has entered the war. Just to add that last Victory/Factory/Resource Hex that is not so useless...

[joshuamnave]

Conquest of China worked just fine until the latest set of patches. Any insistence that this bug has been around since long before release aside, I've had plenty of games in which Japan conquered China with zero problems. The beta patch that broke invasions also broke this - since then I've had two different games hit the scrap pile because of this bug.

Yah, I suck at defending China. In my games Japan almost always steamrolls it.

[paulderynck]

ORIGINAL: gautebirkeli

Not happy. Game comes to a dead end after conquest of China.

I tried it with the latest version of the public beta that is available now (1.4.5)

tm.asp?m=3895478

and it seems to be working. I proceeded as far as the next turn and the placement of all the axis reinforcements.

[TeaLeaf]

[X(] Then what is going wrong at our end?

I dowloaded gautebirkeli's game as well and it is indeed stuck during the unit digression phase. The end phase button is greyed out so there is no way to progress.
The 'trick' that often works when things go wrong for me also doesn't work this time, which is save the game and then reload, as the program now stubbornly returns: 'cannot save the game at this point'.

[paulderynck]

Sorry, my apologies. I have the beta 1.4.5.1 which normally is the same as the 1.X.X.0 version but made for the beta testers. I saw that the save game was made with the last public release, version 1.4.0 and assumed 1.4.5.0 would work for y'all. However this time the beta test version 1.4.5.1 had included with it a very few bug fixes as well, one of which is described thusly: "Added a check for the relocate units digression to make sure the units to be relocated are still on the map. In some Conquest and Surrender cases, the units are moved into the Conquered Pool after being placed into the Relocate Stack. This check makes sure they are later deleted from the Relocate Stack."

...which must be the bug that is stopping the game for you guys.

So the good news is that fix has been tested at least once now, and should be out in the next public beta so hopefully not too long before your game can be continued.

[paulderynck]

Come to think of it, with the autosave of the game progressed into the next turn on my PC and modifying the version number in the save file back to 1.4.0 - I'll take odds gautebirkeli should be able to continue his game using the attached save.

Can't promise for sure, but feel free to give it a try.

[paulderynck]

And here should be a continuing, working file for Zartacla's game. First see if it works and if so, I chose Gabon as the new French home country and France as the controller of naval units. If that's wrong, let me know and I'll follow your wishes and upload another.

Edit: BTW, there's no way in the world debug tools would have fixed this. It needed Steve's programmatic bug fix that I had access to.

[TeaLeaf]

Thanks Paul!
For what it's worth: the save you provided for gautebirkeli's game does work for me (using 1.4.5).
Not that I will play his game, but I should mention it works for me since I also tried his save and mentioned it was indeed not progressing past unit digression.

As for Zartacla's remark about defending China:
I have some Ideas about that. Not sure if it will help you (maybe I got it all wrong and it's just me sucking at playing Japan [;)]), but I think that's for another thread. Maybe you should start a topic about defending China if you are interested in seeing if there are things that China can do or not. I know I am curious about how the other guys are thinking about it.

[gautebirkeli]

Thanks. The savegame appears to be working.