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Off Board Artillery in WF
Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 4:14 pm
by Big Ivan
In playtesting a WF scenario, the offboard artillery would not plot or fire for the German side.
It tested okay in the "Hot Seat" and "AI" modes, but not PBEM. Has anyone else experienced this issue
with the new version 2.02 WF Campaign Series?
Thanks
Big Ivan
RE: Off Board Artillery in WF
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2015 4:00 pm
by berto
This can't be a widespread, general failure. Because otherwise PBEM players, all of them (the WF code is identical to the EF & RS code), would be howling about this for sure.
Likely it is a flaw in the .org file for that (one?) scenario. We know that OOB and ORG and SCN file glitches can interfere with normal operation.
We can't debug something like this without save files, log files etc. The bug report is too vague.
RE: Off Board Artillery in WF
Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 6:38 am
by Big Ivan
Kind of thought it was the individual scenario and confirmed that
when we tried a stock WF scenario and off-board artillery plotted!
Thanks berto
RE: Off Board Artillery in WF
Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:05 am
by Crossroads
OK, so it was a ghost arty unit in that particular scenario then perhaps? Good to hear you got it solved!
RE: Off Board Artillery in WF
Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2015 5:19 am
by Big Ivan
I'm not entirely convinced of that but I'm leaning that way Petri.
The scenario was a little spooky from the start. It was originally a 1.04 creation by Dave.
It was coded under 1.04 as a dawn scenario. Well under the 2.02 update, dawn never came, it stayed night the whole time.
OK, that was a hard coding visibility issue that was corrected under 2.02.
Now during this second test, after off-board artillery was added in the dawn update I ran into this problem.
I looked at the org file and through the editor a dozen times at this scenario,
but I don't see a potential ghost artillery problem. Oddly, playing against the A/I and in Hot Seat, the off board artillery target's fine!?
So is it really a ghost artillery problem or something to do with PBEM play as such?? I don't really know at this point.[&:]
If Dave is Ok with it, I'll send you the files if that would help Petri.
Thanks
John[;)]
RE: Off Board Artillery in WF
Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2015 5:41 am
by Crossroads
Please do John. Ghost units are a pain, especially off-board ones for you can't use the Highlight Org thing to spot them [:)]
RE: Off Board Artillery in WF
Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2015 9:00 am
by Warhorse
I'm also inclined to think it is a ghost arty unit, weird how many things need to be right to not cause a problem in a scenario!
RE: Off Board Artillery in WF
Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2015 9:03 am
by berto
Gotta keep hammering away at and perfecting those QA scripts and techniques...
RE: Off Board Artillery in WF
Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2015 5:44 pm
by berto
Reply posted at The Blitz
here.
In the .bte file, there is this:
6 64 9 1120
-1 1 1 4 100 6 0 256 3 3 3
6 64 9 1120
-1 1 1 4 100 6 0 256 3 3 3
6 64 9 1120
-1 1 1 4 100 6 0 256 3 3 3
The highlighted -1s are the tracking #s. If -1s are there, when those off-board artys were written to the .bte file, for some reason the code didn't know the organization number at that point.
In the subsequent read of the saved .bte file, seeing the -1s, the code is unable to determine those units' organization. They are then rendered effectively non-functional.
I have diff'ed the before and after .scn files, and there is no significant difference there suggesting why anything should ultimately lead to -1 tracking #s being written to the .bte file.
This is a really tough situation to debug, because it all depends on the context. Even if I were to have all the relevant files -- all of them! including backup saves -- I'm not certain I could recreate the context where those -1s were written to the save file. It could be some odd chance occurrence, maybe replicable, maybe not.
It doesn't help that, if I understand the narrative correctly, the scenario was being modded.
I can't give a full explanation how this all came about, nor do I have a firm basis here on which to identify a bug, much less fix it.
If I understand the narrative correctly, the affected players have since discovered a work-around, and are able to play on. That will have to suffice for now.
(In future, I ask that technical support questions be raised at the Matrix Forum. Better to have all of the technical lore be in once place. The support forum at Matrix
tt.asp?forumid=449
is the place for it.)
I won't pursue this any further, unless the problem persists, and unless we ourselves can recreate the bug under controlled, and replicable, conditions. It doesn't help that we are dealing with JTCS source code now over a year old, and increasingly forgotten.