Bugs in the Multiplayer Test

[duke]

Hello.

The multiplayer test was a great success and well, there were just some tiny bugs at all. If you encountered a bug, please post it here.

I recently found some bugs:

1) A used scroll won't disappear after using. Had this problem several times. Should be a networking error and just appears with scrolls.
You find pictures to the bug here: http://npshare.de/files/e6acda4b/bug_chest.png
http://npshare.de/files/cfb4f482/bug_scroll.png

2) I played a Quest for Gems Game with K9 recently. He had 5 Gems and then died. He said he went back to the place where he died but the gems were gone. I didn't pick them up and running around the dungeon, searching for them didn't brought them up. So I think there is a bug that let's disappear gems.

3) A small mini map bug. Was also on the game with K9. It's not trivial, and I don't know how it came, but there was a small red dot on the map, it was not me, neither K9. I went to the red dot and there was nothing.

4) The UShort Bug, but I think you'll know about this one.

[K9]

Yes, thanks for mentioning disappearing 'stuff'.  I can guess that's a very rare & unusual bug since I've only seen it happen once (that I can recall) in original Amiga version and once in this version.  But, worth keeping a look out for if anyone else has that problem.  To specify symptoms, I was fighting a zombie, died, saw my stuff laying on map before I returned to base.  Dukey was apparently nowhere around, I quickly returned to zombie death room a few doors away where my stuff (bag of gems, dags, etc) was completely gone.  The wand and book were still laying there, which is why I became suspicious of a bug, thinking that Dukey would have certainly, taking the rest if he took the stuff..  ???  In the end, after both scouring dungeon, we just quit in a tie-game.  I would be surprised if this happens very often, and I don't think it's strictly related to multiplayer.

As for the viewable scrolls that aren't usable, I've seen that more than a few times.  It's kind of like finding a 'dead' pentagram (which was part of the original game-I just get used to it), not stopping the show, but disappointing when you really want it... :'(

[Stephen]

I have seen 1), 3) and 4) myself. Will try to get these fixed soon.

2) sounds strange, I'm not sure why that would happen. Tracking it down might be difficult though...

The thing about "dead" pentagrams is a feature not a bug by the way :) The original game had this too, in fact there was even one room where there is a switch that turns on and off a pentagram in an adjacent room. However I'm not sure anybody would have ever noticed that (I certainly didn't while playing the original game!).

[Stephen]

I tracked down bug 1). It only happens with teleport scrolls and was caused by the fact that the knight's location changes when the scroll is picked up - this confused the game into thinking that the square didn't need to be updated for that player.

Here are a couple more bugs:

5) Dungeon generator failure when "Away from other" starting points are selected. (The current method of doing "away from other" entry points only works up to about 4 players I think. Any more and the game will fail to place enough entry points.)

6) There was one quest that just ended straight away -- wil.7ang won instantly at the start of the game.

7) Random "this player has been eliminated" messages at the start of the game, even though no-one was actually eliminated.

8) Crossbow can shoot yourself. (This isn't restricted to multiplayer but is a high priority to fix I think..)

[K9]

Additional note on disappearing 'critical' item.  A few nights ago, had a three player game active and experienced another disappearing act by an important element of the game (the book - on destroy book with wand).  The only hint we have this time is that one knight was carrying the book when they ran into a hole.  Unfortunately the book stayed "in the hole" figuratively of course.  Nobody was able to find it after scouring the entire dungeon.  I think you should definitely check any subroutines associated with 'throwing' important items to nearby squares upon untimely deaths..  ???

Thank you.

[Stephen]

Hmm. I've done some testing of this and I can't find any way that a book would be destroyed when someone walks down a hole while carrying it. Every time I've tried that, the book has always reappeared somewhere in the dungeon -- maybe a long way away, but it always seems to reappear somewhere.

However I've found that if you put the book down on a 'closed' pit and then press the switch to open the pit, then the book disappears and doesn't come back. So we have at least one confirmed case where the book can be destroyed.

Maybe the way to deal with this is to add some sort of background process that continually scans the dungeon, looking for whether the quest-critical items still exist, and respawning them if they don't. Then, even if there are still some obscure bugs in the code where the book can get destroyed occasionally, it wouldn't matter because the book would just respawn itself automatically anyway.

[K9]

Very cool, that sounds like a reasonable solution.  Thank you for taking the time to look into this issue, and we appreciate the resolution, hopefully will see in the next release, it sounds like a worthwhile effort of your time to avoid the unfortunate frustration.  It's quite possible, when the person died carrying the book, it simply appeared on the pit location, then unknowingly another knight flipped a switch and lost the book forever, makes sense based on your analysys.  We look forward to always having a winner - and a bunch of losers.. tie games are unbefitting Knights.  haha....  ;D

[K9]

Multiplayer problem found.  Documenting it here for reference.   There is an issue while trying simple two player Escape from Dungeon quest.

Error message as shown on attached picture -  ERROR: Unknown message code from server

Kronic & I tried several settings on your server and also tried a different server that he activated, but strangely had this error more than a few times.  In the end, we couldn't get a game working so decided to post results here. 

I just tried a test between two of my own pc's and witnessed same results.

Thank you for looking into this when you get a chance.

[Stephen]

Very strange. I just tried a test game myself and couldn't get this to happen. However it sounds like you were getting it quite frequently which is odd.

Were you doing anything in particular at the time, that might have triggered the bug? Were you both in the same dungeon room at the time?

What were your ping times like? There was once a crash bug that only showed up under high lag conditions, I wonder if this is something similar.

Is anyone else having this problem?

Any more info you could give would be helpful, as I am a bit stumped at the moment...

[Kronic]

It was happening the moment the map initialised: we'd set it up, then hit start. The server would load, I'd get about a half second of ingame then be sent back to the server room (specifically the game one) and K9 would be kicked from the server itself and have to rejoin. Same issue when I ran a server on this PC.

[Stephen]

K9 can you please confirm which version of the client you were running? If you were running an older version (like the multiplayer beta version for example) then that might explain this behaviour.

[Moo]

Had a few games yesterday and saw a few bugs..

1. The shooting yourself with the crossbow one, that has already been mentioned.

2. Once, I won a 3-player game by going into my entrance, even though that wasn't the quest. I don't remember what the quest was though now. I wanted to retry that quest to see if the same happened again but the other players changed it.

3. Similar to the previous... It should probably prevent you from starting a game if the quest is set to "escape via your entry point" unless you set it to need some gems.

4. There was a small room with a crystal ball and a pressure pad, and the pressure pad changed the ball into a pillar? :o Maybe that's how its meant to be, but I don't remember seeing that before...

5. If you go into a room you haven't yet mapped, with an enemy (bat, zombie, or other knight) in it, not only is the room not mapped until you kill it/them, but your flashing dot disappears whilst you are in the room too..

6. Wand of undeath has no effect at all on bats.. Is this intended?

7. Entrance/exit squares are shown as "floor" and not "wall" in the map.. Is this intended? May have been like this in the amiga version, I don't remember..

[Stephen]

1) I thought that was fixed already. Will take another look at it.

2) Not really sure how that could happen. I don't think I can really do anything without any more details though.

3) Maybe, but not really a high priority.

4) Yes, I know the room :) There's only I think one room like that so it is quite rare to see it.

5) Yes, that's right. This means that if you get teleported to the enemy knight, you don't automatically know where he is on the map, unless you kill him or leave the room. This is good for the shock assault type quests.

6) Yes, intended.

7) It was like that in the Amiga version. I tried it with them marked as wall and it didn't look very good (there were ugly blocks of colour around the entrances). I guess there might be a better way of fixing this though.

[Moo]

5, could you make it do the hide-the-marker thing only when you teleport? Or maybe only when you enter a room with a knight, not a bat or zombie?

7, I see how that could look ugly.. But I think that's still better than it looking like a doorway on the map..

4 and 6 were odd, but if thats how they are meant to be, fine ;)

[K9]

K9 can you please confirm which version of the client you were running? If you were running an older version (like the multiplayer beta version for example) then that might explain this behaviour.

There is a possibility an older version was somehow being ran (based on outdated shortcut bar icon).  I thought that icon would reference the newer installed version only, but I don't have that pc in front of me anymore.   I confirmed I have the latest version on my laptop, current pc and ready for more gaming.  I am glad you mentioned the version is probably issue, hope you figured it out quickly and I didn't waste your time with it.  I'll let you know if I run into same problem again.  Thank you.