12 replies to this topic

[Celeglin]

Alright, so here's my background going into this: I have never touched any coding for Mordor/Goblin Archers before this problem arose.

So over a month ago, just before I took my break, I noticed that Goblin Archers were firing both fire arrows and normal arrows at the same time. The fire arrows were lobbed while the normal arrows fired normally. The damage sum utterly demolished my scouts. Later in the game, I realised that the Mordor Orc Archers were doing the same thing (needless to say, I lost the battle). Further investigation showed that no other unit (except the Haradrim when mounted on a Mumak, which I just found out about now) did this.

Unfortunately, I chose this time to take a break so I don't remember what the last thing I editted was (though it definately wasn't anything that should have caused this).

My immediate thought was to ask somebody here, so I asked ched on MSN. We figured out that all three of the afflicted units use the same weapon: MordorArcherBow. However, there was absolutely no difference between the coding in the original weapon.ini and my own weapon.ini. Furthermore, I tried using the original weapon.ini in my mod and there was no difference.

We then moved on to upgrade.ini, but it was identical to the original. I also tried removing evilfactionunits.ini from my mod, no change. Evilfactionsubobjects.ini isn't even in my mod at all. We were stumped.

In desperation, I tried switching "MordorArcherBow" in the weaponsets of the afflicted units to "GondorArcherBow". Surprisingly, they no longer did the damn double arrow thing. Mid-way through my capering dance around the computer chair, a battalion of Uruk-Hai Crossbows came and whiped out my farm... With the god forsaken double arrows.

At this time, I came to the conclusion that this wasn't really a coding error, but some very odd untouchable bug that I brought out. Trying to side-step this, I made new weapons identical to MordorArcherBow and IsengardArcherBow, but with different names (OrcArcherBow and UrukCrossBow). This gave double arrows to the Uruks/Goblins/Orcs. I went back and remade the weapons as GondorArcherBow but with the Isengard/Mordor values. No difference. Being pissed off and just wanting to play the game, I went back to just sticking GondorArcherBow in the weaponsets of the Orcs/Goblins/Mounted Haradrim. Now, Orcs/Goblins/Mounted Haradrim don't attack at all and the Uruks still fire double arrows. I've given up.

Please, please, please tell me that someone here has experienced this same type of problem and has been able to get away from it. I'm absolutely stumped, completely frustrated, and utterly confused.

Edited by Celeglin, 03 January 2006 - 01:39 AM.

[Kelso]

All I can say is....what the fuck....

That is by far the strangest thing I have ever heard of. I didn't even think firing 2 weapons simultaneously was possible.

[Lord Of Gifts]

The way those arrows are fired reminds me of Legolas' Hawk Strike power. I looked at the hawkstrike weapon and it has two projectile nuggets, one which uses a projectile with higher bezier height values, and the other with low values. The MordorArcherBow projectiles have close to the same properties, which would give close to the same effect as Hawkstrike. MordorArcherBow also has two ProjectileNuggets, but with one extra parameter for the regular and fire arrows: ForbiddenUpgradeNames and RequiredUpgradeNames, respectively. For some reason the game is ignoring these lines, thereby causing the game to fire both projectiles at once.

As for why the game is ignoring these lines, I don't know.

[ambershee]

Hmm, I don't seem to be able to duplicate the issue myself 0_o

[Lord Of Gifts]

Hmm, I don't seem to be able to duplicate the issue myself 0_o

To replicate it all you have to do is remove the ForbiddenUpgradeNames and RequiredUpgradeNames lines from the MordorArcherBow weapon.

The result:

Edited by Lord Of Gifts, 03 January 2006 - 07:42 PM.

[Celeglin]

A bit of an update:

- Luckily, this crap doesn't happen when I revert back to my public beta. Installing that eliminates the problem.

- Simply copying and pasting back in relevent code into the beta brought back the double arrows.

- The only things I remember doing between releasing the beta and when the problem arose were adding Ugluk, making Frodo and Sam available for Gondor in Skirmish, and moving the Elven playertemplate to the bottom of the list. None of these are the cause as I have not added Ugluk, Frodo, or Sam again, and switching the Elven playertemplate back to the top of the list did nothing.

- So it looks like I'm just going to have to recode the last few weeks of work...

Edited by Celeglin, 03 January 2006 - 08:51 PM.

[Hostile]

While I do not have a solution, I am impressed with the meeting of the minds here. Great work on the team effort thing. I wish I could be more useful but as i am on my wifes laptop, I don't even have access tot the ini files.

[ambershee]

Hmm, I don't seem to be able to duplicate the issue myself 0_o

To replicate it all you have to do is remove the ForbiddenUpgradeNames and RequiredUpgradeNames lines from the MordorArcherBow weapon.

The result:

Yeah, no discernable difference 0_o

[TKelly]

Sorry for my n00bness, but does this make the archers fire fire arrows and regular arrows at the same time, or some of them fire fire arrows, and the others fire regular?

[Kwen]

both at the same time thus owning units

[Celeglin]

YAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I FOUND THE SOURCE!!!!!! WEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Ched and LoG were on the right track: it was upgrade.ini. I had too many upgrades. Mordor Fire Arrow upgrades, being at the bottom of upgrade.ini weren't being read. Ched's now counting how many upgrades my ini had, so we'll have a number for anyone to watch out for.

To fix the problem, I've made 5 generic upgrades to be used for all my Elven heroes (Upgrade_ElvenAbility1, etc).

The reason why I hadn't picked this up before was because I had added Ugluk's upgrades months ago, and they were (as I see now) the source of the problem. When I tried getting rid of the problem by deleting all the added Ugluk stuff, I had also added in the new Elven forged blades, fire arrows, etc upgrades, thus setting me over the limit again.

W00t! Thanks for the help guys. Go team!


chEDIT : 221 upgrades, app code by Gil

EDIT by Celeglin: That's at least 9 upgrades over the limit (when played, this blocked the Isengard fire arrow upgrade, which is 9 from the bottom).

Edited by Celeglin, 04 January 2006 - 02:13 AM.

[{IP}Gil-Galad]

Jeez Ea, Why restrict the Upgrade Array to so little, they coulda made it 1000 it would been no different, only laggy perhaps at a certain amount

They had something like this

Upgrades(212) As Upgrade

They Could of had

Upgrades(1000) As Upgrade

but nooo they must be difficult.

chEDIT :

Dim Upgrades(1000) As Upgrade

Edited by ched, 04 January 2006 - 10:59 AM.

[ambershee]

It always bugs me when games do things like that. For example, Quake 3 restricted it's weaponslist array to 10 - it took people years to get around it, lol.