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General Category => Knights Discussion => Topic started by: duke on October 27, 2009, 01:55:34 PM

Title: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: duke on October 27, 2009, 01:55:34 PM
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.
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: K9 on October 28, 2009, 02:31:16 AM
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... :'(


Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Stephen on October 29, 2009, 07:53:21 PM
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!).
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Stephen on October 30, 2009, 02:28:16 PM
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..)
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: K9 on December 29, 2009, 01:31:46 AM
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.
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Stephen on December 30, 2009, 02:54:41 PM
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.
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: K9 on January 03, 2010, 08:55:13 AM
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
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: K9 on January 11, 2010, 12:27:07 AM
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.
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Stephen on January 11, 2010, 08:00:59 PM
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...
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Kronic on January 14, 2010, 01:14:19 AM
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.
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Stephen on January 14, 2010, 07:57:17 PM
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.
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Moo on February 04, 2010, 03:23:12 PM
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..
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Stephen on February 04, 2010, 09:11:52 PM
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.
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Moo on February 04, 2010, 10:18:41 PM
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 ;)
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: K9 on February 05, 2010, 04:41:31 AM
Quote from: Stephen on January 14, 2010, 07:57:17 PM
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.
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Stephen on February 05, 2010, 10:54:02 AM
K9: I was trying to make different versions compatible with each other but there is always the possibility of some incompatibility creeping in, and I don't have time to test all the different versions with one another before release. In future I plan to just force different versions to be incompatible (so that an error message appears telling you to upgrade). Hopefully it will not be too much of an inconvenience for people to have to upgrade every so often.

Moo:

5. This is not a bad suggestion actually. The idea is that your knight only makes a map of the current room when nobody else is around. But if he walks into another room, he still knows roughly where he is, even if he hasn't made a map yet (i.e. the dot should still appear on the map, but the room itself shouldn't be mapped). When you teleport, your knight gets disoriented so he doesn't know where he is at all (i.e. even the dot shouldn't appear). So yes, let's do it that way.

7. Agreed. It's especially bad if two entry-points are "back to back" as then it looks like there is a corridor you can walk through, when in fact it's blocked. I'll see what I can do about this (hopefully without making it look too ugly).

BTW, I've added your suggestions to Trac, so they won't get forgotten. I'm not promising to work on them right away but hopefully I will do at some point.

For the shooting-yourself-with-crossbow thing, I tried to reproduce that, but couldn't. I'm getting a lot of these "unconfirmed" reports, I'm starting to wonder if there should be an option to "record" games so that people can send me recordings as part of a bug report. (This shouldn't be too hard to add, we just need to record all network packets sent/received, and possibly the random number seed, and then it should be possible to reconstruct what happened in the game.) Any thoughts on that?
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Moo on February 11, 2010, 01:57:19 PM
Strange bug today.. Loads of spammy messages as if everyone was changing the quests very fast, but seemed to be happening even if no one was changing anything.. If I typed anything it took a long time to actually appear..
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Stephen on February 11, 2010, 07:58:18 PM
Hmm, that looks nasty. I'll have a look into it.
Title: More stuff
Post by: Moo on February 12, 2010, 08:16:36 PM
Few more things.. Some aren't really bugs, but I thought it was better to post them here instead of starting more threads..

1. Most troublesome one, but a bit odd... Might just be me? But it's happened a few times now... I can move, but the "action" button doesn't work. Then suddenly it starts working again. Today it happened and I discovered I couldn't type either, but could still move and suicide. Very odd..

2. I think when the exit is set to "total random", it should try to avoid having the exit in the same place as someone's entrance. When that happens, that player has a big advantage.

3. "Entry point" selection in single-player isn't useful.

4. The spurious map marker thing happened to me today. It was showing where I was when I died, I think, and when I went back to the room, the marker disappeared and the space (doorway between two rooms) remained black instead of the yellow mapped colour.
Another one happened when I died when I had the "show book position" spell active. The dot was solid red this time, not flashing, and stayed there even after I'd moved the book. This was in single-player.
Also related to this.. Is there a potion/scroll effect that lets you see a single other knight's position on the map? This has happened several times for me. I think there's a book that does this, but its also happened on games with no books.

5. It would be nice if the chat from the quest selection screen could be carried through into the game, as well as the other way round.

6. It seems the crystal ball is also shown as "floor" instead of "wall".. This can make it look like there are passages on the map which aren't really there, too.

7. A little suggestion. Could it show a message or make a different sound or something, when you open a locked door/chest? As it is now, its the same as opening a non-locked one.

8. Not a problem.. A good thing! Lots of new players in the last few days  :). Has it been mentioned somewhere? A few weeks ago, I could sit in the server all day and not see anyone else. Now it gets very busy at times, and I've had a few 6-player games.
But.. I think it would be nice if the tutorial could be extended to include all the quest types. Also, if the game could start when there was one player and one or more observers, that would be good for new players.


As for the recording thing, that would be good. If only one person is seeing the problems then logging at the client end would be a good idea, I guess.. But wouldn't it be simpler to log everything at the server? Then if someone sees something odd they could say something, and tell you what they said, and you could search for that..
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Stephen on February 14, 2010, 03:19:28 PM
Thanks for these bug reports. You are keeping me busy :)

1. I've never seen that. What specifically doesn't work: attacking? picking up / dropping? opening the action menu? (Created Trac #74 (http://www.knightsgame.org.uk:8000/ticket/74))

2. Good idea. Trac #75 (http://www.knightsgame.org.uk:8000/ticket/75)

3. Good point. Trac #76 (http://www.knightsgame.org.uk:8000/ticket/76)

4. This is a known issue: #3 (http://www.knightsgame.org.uk:8000/ticket/3).

As for seeing a single knight's position on the map, this is caused by the "reveal location" scroll effect which broadcasts your position to all enemy knights. (This is the opposite of the "see knight" effect which allows you to see the position of the other knights.)

5. OK. Trac #77 (http://www.knightsgame.org.uk:8000/ticket/77)

6. Thanks for pointing this out, I added it as a comment to #67 (http://www.knightsgame.org.uk:8000/ticket/67).

7. I added #78 (http://www.knightsgame.org.uk:8000/ticket/78) for this, but don't expect me to implement it for a while as I think the other stuff is more important.

8. That's great! Although I did mention the game here (http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=561469) and here (http://retroremakes.com/forum/index.php/topic,732.0.html), I haven't been seeing that many more downloads than usual. Instead I think we're seeing a higher percentage of downloaders actually going onto the server and playing online. I think this is the result of the tutorial -- before, I guess a lot of players were giving up without learning how to play, while now they are doing the tutorial and then trying the online game.

Regarding extending the tutorial, my initial intention was just to get something minimal working without too much effort. It seems to be having the desired effect! You are right that it would be nice to have an extended tutorial, I have created #80 (http://www.knightsgame.org.uk:8000/ticket/80) for this.

Allowing one player games (with observers) on the server: created #79 (http://www.knightsgame.org.uk:8000/ticket/79).

Recording: Yes I suppose it would be easier to just save all the games onto the server. On crawl.akrasiac.org (http://crawl.akrasiac.org/) (different game, but same idea) they record all games played and anyone can download the recordings and play them back at any time. This could also be useful for advertising purposes (YouTube video anyone?).
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Moo on February 14, 2010, 11:47:04 PM
Quote from: Stephen on February 14, 2010, 03:19:28 PM
1. I've never seen that. What specifically doesn't work: attacking? picking up / dropping? opening the action menu? (Created Trac #74 (http://www.knightsgame.org.uk:8000/ticket/74))
The action button had no effect.. so couldn't do any of those things. Or chat. But could move and suicide. Odd.

QuoteAs for seeing a single knight's position on the map, this is caused by the "reveal location" scroll effect which broadcasts your position to all enemy knights. (This is the opposite of the "see knight" effect which allows you to see the position of the other knights.)
Aha, thought so.. Much more obvious when there's more than two of you.

Re the other stuff, cool :)
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Moo on February 21, 2010, 01:44:20 AM
It happened again yesterday..

And another strange thing.. I was an observer in this game, and another observer had joined too.
Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Moo on February 21, 2010, 05:53:36 PM
Today..

Title: Re: Bugs in the Multiplayer Test
Post by: Stephen on February 21, 2010, 07:01:33 PM
Yes, I know about that one. It only affects observers so I didn't consider it too serious...