32 replies to this topic

[Finaldeath]

I don't test any situations where the AI encounters an unknown unit. I will attempt to test this at some point, since it is pretty easy to create a "new unit" by using the AE and setting up a map so the AI starts with it, or fights against it.

[ThetaOrion]

Well, technically I don't expect them to support non-standard units in the AI Skirmish Mod. They seem to be doing that over at DoWPro instead.

I also don't like the Artefact Map. The Artefact 1.0 Map has a gamebreaking flaw that Rayden refuses to fix -- whoever has position #2 on its team is automatically going to lose, because that team won't be able to hold the center or get the Demon Prince. I don't play the Artefact Map -- it was better without the Demon Prince, and even then, the map was imbalanced. I betatested the Artefact map heavily, but unlike Aralez, Rayden doesn't really listen to input from betatesters, well he listened and promised to change it, but then didn't. Rayden seemed to get a bit too attached to his maps and doesn't want to change them, even if they are flawed. But, maybe he just got tired of it all. I don't know the reasoning why Rayden didn't follow through on his promise to us to fix the map, but I guess that he simply lost interest.

Rayden is also a student, so he kind of gave up mapmaking. Kind of sad in a way, because Rayden was a genius for the tight winding trail, which had a way of making the games played on his maps expand to eternity in duration. Black Fortress is considered by most to be the classic map for betatesting with a human in the mix, because the map is very hard to win, and because the games usually go long enough for the betatester to see the final tier units of the game in action. I just simply wish that Rayden would have kept his promise to fix the Artefact Map, because it was destined to become one of my most favorite maps, and would have become one of my most favorite maps if he had kept his promise to balance it. But, he didn't have time when he made his promise, and then he lost interest. If Rayden would have had the time or made the time to balance it, the Artefact map, with and without the demon, would probably have been the 6 Player map I was searching for, the 6 Player map were the AI seems to routinely get to the final tiers of gameplay. Before the Demon Prince, during betatesting, I sometimes went for a couple of hours trying to get a win thanks to all the tight winding trails. Artefact 0.9 was quite a map.

Now, if you could get the folks like Aralez so that they could put Necrons into their maps and have it work, that would be fine. The Necrons were there in the original campaign, so I wouldn't complain if sometime in 1.80 of the AI Skirmish Mod, Thud and Arkhan were to support them.

And if you are going to support the Demon Prince, we really need somebody to make a balanced map, something like a 6P or 8P Kasyr Lutien, with the Demon Prince obtainable in the middle critical point of the map.

Edited by ThetaOrion, 16 March 2006 - 05:24 AM.

[Finaldeath]

The skirmish AI should, at least, not crash when opposed with different units. It breaks any compatibility with new races, with singleplayer maps or any case a special mod is used to add a new unit.

Basically, crashes due to singleplayer or extra units being present are probably all curable entirely, even having the use of them, since the default AI doesn't crash with them.

However, it is only a possibility. I can't remember when happened, maybe only a Fatal AI Error, when I used the skirmish AI on the original campaign. Will test sometime, but not now.

And ThetaOrion, I'd not go publicly bitching about people here; after all, these are public forums.

[ThetaOrion]

FinalDeath wrote: And ThetaOrion, I'd not go publicly bitching about people here; after all, these are public forums.

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Well yes, you are right. I keep thinking that only two people ever really read my messages here.

So, along with my bitching, I went back and included some well deserved praise. It was Rayden's Gates of Ultramar that probably inspired Aralez to go and make his wonderful siege maps, though I had some influence there with Aralez as well. But, Rayden led the way.

And, the Demon Prince would be really neat if somebody would put it onto a balanced map like 6 Player Kasyr Lutien. If more than two people actually read this message, maybe I'll get lucky and run into some mapmaker who will take up the challenge of putting the Demon Prince onto a balanced map.

I tried to get Aralez to include the Demon Prince in one of his maps, but he ran into undisclosed problems. I don't know if it just simply didn't work with 1.60 of the AI Skirmish Mod, because Aralez makes all of his recent maps with the AI Skirmish Mod. Or, maybe Rayden or Larkin or whoever holds the keys to the Demon Prince refused to share? I have no idea, but ever since Rayden stopped making maps for DoW, Aralez was my only hope for getting the Demon Prince onto a balanced map, but that didn't pan out. I don't know what went wrong, but last I talked with Aralez the Demon Prince kind of got lumped into the same pile as the Necrons -- can't do it or won't do it or some such.

Who holds the keys or the rights to the Demon Prince, anybody? As I understood it, it was a group effort, with LarkinVB doing most of the coding to make it work right, or at least make it work right with the Skirmish Mod, where we want the Demon Prince working right, and with Rayden coming up with the original idea and the impetus to finish it. It's just kind of sad, to me anyway, that the Demon Prince landed on an imbalanced map. The map was imbalanced to begin with, and the presence of the Demon Prince only made the map more so.

And, in the background for the past couple of months, I have been quietly promoting and trying to get somebody to put the Demon Prince onto a balance map, but it's not happening, so far. And, I don't know why!

EDIT:

Will test sometime, but not now.

Good usage and non-crashing of specialized units would be nice, but I'm not expecting it for the 1.70 Final Release. In fact, I'm not even expecting the Artefact 1.0 Map and the Demon Prince to be supported in the 1.70 Final Release. Like I said, I don't play the Artefact 1.0 Map so I don't really care right now or have high hopes right now. And now that Rayden has stopped making maps for DoW, we need somebody else to Champion the Demon Prince on another map of their own, if the Demon Prince is going to have any life or use going forward. I'm not even sure the Demon Prince in Artefact 1.0 works right with 1.60 of the AI Skirmish Mod. I haven't tried it. I stopped playing the Artefact Map back in October 2005 when Rayden told us 'dirty bumpers' to trust him that he would get around to fixing it or balancing it. And, I gave up on him fixing it back around December 2005 or January 2006 when Rayden told us that he was no longer making maps for DoW. There the Demon Prince died, and I have been waiting ever since for somebody else to resurrect the Demon Prince on a balanced map of their own. Anyway, you can tell I had a lot of involvement with the Artefact Map during its day, before the Demon Prince died. And, none of it is a priority now with the impending 1.70 release.

Edited by ThetaOrion, 16 March 2006 - 05:56 AM.

[ThetaOrion]

BTW, all of this regarding Artefact 1.0 and Rayden is already public knowledge on the Relic Forums. I don't think I was giving anything away, except for my own personal involvement with it and my own personal disappointments regarding it.

http://forums.relicn...hlight=Artefact

http://forums.relicn...act#post1286033

http://forums.relicn...701&postcount=8

http://forums.relicn...91&postcount=11

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It's all there already in public, including . . .

http://forums.relicn...30&postcount=21

Aralez did try to follow up, but then Rayden stopped responding, as far as I know. I think the first post where Rayden said that he stopped mapmaking explains it all.

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Anyway, somebody else besides Rayden needs to take up the cause of the Demon Prince and champion it on their own balanced map.

Edited by ThetaOrion, 16 March 2006 - 05:29 AM.

[ThetaOrion]

Well, when it comes right down to it, if Rayden isn't going to support and champion the Artefact Map, then why should we?

It's kind of silly or ironic, but I seem to be more attached to the Demon Prince and the Artefact Map than Rayden is.

But, I'm going to try to force myself to put it all out of my mind now.

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Now back to the original topic. I haven't had any CTD's with B13 since I took my CPU down a notch. Keeping my fingers crossed and knocking on wood and whatever else is supposed to work!!

[ThetaOrion]

Oh, BTW, I'm the guest just above talking about B15 and the CTD.

You probably knew that. I wiped out all of my password cookies while cleaning up the hard drive, and I never even noticed that I wasn't already logged in.

[LarkinVB]

I fear there is still an eldar bug left.

Dowpro crash report

Edit : It is possible that this bug is only related to dowpro. I can reproduce playing eldar vs eldar all AI on jungle morning. At least every second game I get a crash. If your games on this map with WA skirmish eldar AI are stable you should be safe.

Edited by LarkinVB, 25 March 2006 - 07:27 PM.

[ThetaOrion]

Well, today a good friend of mine told me to get off my butt, go over to Walmart and buy a $25 Sound Blaster Live and put that in and get rid of the onboard sound.

According to him, turning off the onboard sound will help keep that motherboard chip cooler and a SoundBlaster Card will also take a load off my CPU so that the CPU doesn't have to help generate and control the sound.

If my intermittent crash with the Eldar from Beta 2 here to Beta 15 is related to the onboard sound, a cheapo Sound Blaster Live card should take care of the problem, according to my guru friend.

But who knows, maybe it really is a combination of my onboard sound and a real software issue as well. I don't know. It only happens about once a week, and my CTD's all seem to be related to the Eldar, while playing as the Eldar.

[ArkhanTheBlack]

Okay, I think I got it stable now. While testing today, I got a crash on mountain trail very soon. This time it was HasThreatOnPath() which crashed the game. At least I give it a 99% chance. To be honest I was not really surprised about that. The function probably uses the same algos like the GetPathingDistance() function.
I got the first crash after the AI lost it's HQ and did reset its start point. HasThreatOnPath() was not really happy about the new position and said goodbye.
Then I got two other and much rarer ones at completly different locations. Only similar thing: HasThreatOnPath() was involved.

My general conclusion is that Relics pathing algos have problems with the new building placements of the AI if maps with different height levels are involved. A startpoint reset on such maps seems to kill the game very fast, since 'invalid' positions are poison for the terrain analyzer. But it also happens if valid positions are used. Therefore it's very likely that the pathing algos have problems with the buildings.

I've now written a replacement function, which checks the threat on the airline between two points. It's probably not as accurate as the original, but it has the great advantage of not crashing the game. If Relic corrects the pathing algos someday, a switchback is no problem.

I've tested about ten games now on mountain trail even with startpoint reset, and it was perfectly stable. I'll test more tomorrow. I consider it stable if 20 games in a row don't crash on mountain trail.

[ThetaOrion]

Ah, that sounds really good that you might have found the culprit!! It's also nice to find these things before release if at all possible.

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I went and got a SoundBlaster Live, and it was doing fine, except it puts out a really loud constant buzz in the background while actually playing the Winter Assault Game.

I maybe got a lemon, or the new style power supply without the -5 volt supply is the problem and the SB Live addon card requires a -5 supply, or maybe it's my Uninterruptible Power Supply providing noise into the line. I don't know what it is, but I think I will have fewer sound related crashes if I can get a Sound Blaster card to work right on my machine. Or, maybe I'm looking at yet another uninstall and reinstall of Winter Assault.

Anyway, will have to put in another day of experiments to try to see if it is really the Sound Blaster Card. It was the only one on the shelf, and the box was smashed, clearly the box had been dropped and maybe the card took a hit in the process which ruined some part of it. The card works fine in the opening screens and in the Desktop and only buzzes when I'm playin' the game. Very annoying, as bad as the chiming every second was when my Eldar sound went bad in the previous installation.

My turn for another round of the bad luck I guess.

But, it is good to hear that you have found and repeated and fixed a crasher!!!