Hey guys;

Is there a bug in .55 that causes an inablility to dock at some ports?
Are there any major problems with the .55 version?

I would like to upgrade to .55, but will wait until the next version if this bug (or any major ones) exist.

Thanks

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[url="telnet://franknputer.com"]telnet://franknputer.com[/url]
http://franknputer.com

quote:
Hey guys;

Is there a bug in .55 that causes an inablility to dock at some ports?
Are there any major problems with the .55 version?

I would like to upgrade to .55, but will wait until the next version if this bug (or any major ones) exist.

Thanks


You may want to wait for .56 as it will correct the inability for players to port at some ports among other things.

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave
uhndagrowhn bbs

uhndagrowhn bbs
telnet://uhndagrowhn.merseine.nu

So far so good, I haven't had any complaints from my users yet, and no bugs have snuck up. Any ide when vs .56 will be out?

The only bug I've found in testing is being unable to dock at a few ports.

Rand Al Thor, The Dragon Reborn
Let the Dragon ride the winds of time...

quote:
So far so good, I haven't had any complaints from my users yet, and no bugs have snuck up. Any ide when vs .56 will be out?


I am told anywhere from a week to a week and a half. However, that will likely depend on just how many bugs have been found, how many fixes are made, and whether those fixes break anything else.

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave
uhndagrowhn bbs

uhndagrowhn bbs
telnet://uhndagrowhn.merseine.nu

One little bug in the code
One Little bug
Trivial fix, compile again
Three little bugs in the code.

quote:
One little bug in the code
One Little bug
Trivial fix, compile again
Three little bugs in the code.


That is sometimes the case with TW. Much of the code is older than I am. It's 16 bit code single node code that was converted to multiplayer, then to 32 bit multiplayer, and now to 32 bit multiplayer running within the Windows environment. (Versus under DOS, as a the v3.09 door.)

JP is -REALLY- good about trying to make sure one fix doesn't affect another part of the game, but sometimes the weirdest things happen. Like the gold bubble expansion introduced in .55 that I prodded... err... asked him to put in may be the culprit behind players being unable to dock at specific ports.

The weird thing is is that changes to how the universe is created should have nothing to do with how ports that were placed during bigbang operate in the game. Go figure... ;o)

Maybe its not a result of the bubble expander, but that was the biggest change even remotely related to ports in .55, so that was JP's first guess (and mine as well).

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave
uhndagrowhn bbs

uhndagrowhn bbs
telnet://uhndagrowhn.merseine.nu

I don't know how the code works but universe creation may have a lot to do with the ports, since there's probably a struct for each sector and one element of the struct points to a port struct for the port in that sector. All that would be made during universe creation and if the right pointers aren't hooked up (or no pointer at all!) then there's bound to be a little mishap.

Probably was a painful bug to identify.

There are a raft of problems that can occur in TW if you mess with the databases. I was testing a program I wrote to re-write the universe, and made one tiny mistake.... Voila - I couldn't use the course autopilot. I could move to a sector I could see, but autopilot was trashed.

What I'd done was messed up the secondary file that hold only a list of sector links, so that it didn't match the main sector file (holds the links and everything else). Simple error, real nasty consequences.

So I wouldn't be surprised it the new Bubble routines are the problem.

Still those bubble routines are the neatest thing that's been added to TW2002 in a long time. They will really make for some interesting universes.

The Mad Hatter

quote:
Still those bubble routines are the neatest thing that's been added to TW2002 in a long time. They will really make for some interesting universes.


I originally approached JP with the new bubble system probably two weeks before my first Risk! TW game got underway. I needed a system that could create four distinct "miniverses" each linked to a single sector (StarDock) via a four-deep tunnel. I ended up building the 1025 sector universe entirely by hand because I wasn't sure whether JP could get the new bigbang done in time, and even though he did get it finished in time, I couldn't figure out exactly where the various bubbles were... ...a blonde moment, okay?

Regardless, the new bubble expansion is one of the most interesting additions to the game. One of the original thoughts was to simply revert back to the .54 bigbang in .56, thereby removing the source of the porting problem entirely. I'm not sure if this is still planned, but I hope not. I've built some -very- interesting universes using the new bubble system, and would hate to see it disappear so soon...

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave

It is a really neat option. I've done some odd universes using my own routines, but they have limits:

1) I'm not the world's best programmer.
2) I'm not the world's best mathematician.
3) I do REAL Lousey user interfaces.
4) I have no time.

I keep on wanting to do things like wagon wheel universes, jacks universes, molecule model universes, etc. Someday I may actually have some time and do something

The Mad Hatter