A new release for TWv3 is on the way, mostly to activate Jumpgate in TWGS. But while I'm at it, I'd like to take a look at any major bugs in the game today. I'll need some decent details about the bugs and how to recreate them.

Alien Farming Bug/Exploit - Place any planet inside alien space, and the aliens fill them INSTANTLY. The alien captures them, lands on the planet and fills product levels instantly to whatever the max capacity of the planet type is. Any alien group that is made in a game with any kind of strength will do this to planets in their space, which allows traders to syphon off millions of product for very little cost, namely the cost of killing the aliens to keep them out of the sector.

Getting rid of this bug/exploit would be very nice.

Thanks!

MD

There are some pod fleeing bugs that would be nice to get addressed. I will try to get the specifics on them to you.

And I totally agree about the alien farming bug.

Have Limpets perform a check to see if they are already attached (by a given owner's Limpets having a match to the already attached Limpet), if so skip the new attachment procedure.

Also isn’t there a bug regarding Photons in unlimited (maybe even time limit) games, something about logging off and then back on and it is as if you were never hit? (I am vaguely recalling something about this.)

Prevent players from being pinged into sectors containing developed planets, without taking damage from whatever is in the sectors; this occurs when the sector has no fighters but can have mines, planets, NavHaz, the fleeing player is allowed to go into the sector w/o taking any damage.

The Guardian Bonus bug, not properly checking for in-sector planets to apply the bonus or not.

The ship specs which do not display a few of the configured ship settings such as if the ship has a Guardian Bonus, fusion drive, combat scanners, escape pod/type, ship swapping, planet landing, IG, commission, CEO, Corporate use, Ether Probes, Mine Dets, etc.; or not and also cuts off the costs once they start getting over seven digits.

Also what about the bug involving Rogue planets, during the Invasion the player has to attempt to land to prevent it from occurring otherwise it will load the planet’s Fuel Ore capacity to the maximum.

I recall reading something awhile back involving a trick in Timed Games where a player can somehow double their time ?


This is not a bug but was wondering if anybody thinks it would be cool to include a configurable option that can be set to say 0=Off – 5-Minutes; the function would serve to alert only Commissioned players via the Feds that in such and such minutes/seconds they will be performing Extern/daily cleanup or whatever. Basing this on the premise that Blues and the Feds are suppose to be on the same page and that would be nice to know when you are not really paying attention to the time. This way to give you time to clear FedSpace, overloaded Planets, etc.

Also what about the idea of allowing the Bank to retain a much higher number of credits and maybe include a variable rate interest that depends upon how actively the players are purchasing, building, upgrading/destroying Ports within the game, etc.

quote:Originally posted by Traitor

There are some pod fleeing bugs that would be nice to get addressed. I will try to get the specifics on them to you.

And I totally agree about the alien farming bug.


afaik the pod slide past blocking figs, given correct setup, has been around forever. Been using it for 11/12 years. Is this the pod bug? If it goes, send megarob with it

Agree on the alien planet farming bug - never seen it instantly, but given a day sometimes less they max a planet.

The photon issue in unlims is a problem. I've photoned players, scanned and then they are moving - even with 4-5 second photons.

Limpets aren't a concern for me - that is how we clear sectors of limps.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Also there is an issue of the twgs setting as a service on windows server 2003, it will set as a service, but will not let you access the GUI, this is from a sysops standpoint, cause if we can't set it as a service on an online server we have to keep the connection live, so that the twgs will not shut down from a logoff, and can't log off the server, only way we can disconnect and keep the game running is to click the close window to just disconnect, and if a server has more than one admin on it, the server keeps the connection used, and if there are say 3 admins on the server and one connection is live from one admin disconnecting and the other two need to get on to work on things, one can't cause of the active connection of the admin that disconnected.

I have talked to a couple of sysops that have online servers and have twgs on them, and we all have this problem, but on a side note, the twgs works as a service on XP home, and pro with no problems, and on older versions of windows. It just gives problems on windows server 2003 as a service. Thanks JP for letting us get out some of the bug reports so as to improve things, but if the service issue can't be fixed too easily then no problem on the issue, I have been doing the disconnect work around on it for a couple of years now, and have shown the others with this issue on how to do the same.

Also for any other sysops that has the service issue on the twgs with server 2003 get with me and I will show you this work around too.

quote:Originally posted by John Pritchett (EIS)

A new release for TWv3 is on the way, mostly to activate Jumpgate in TWGS. But while I'm at it, I'd like to take a look at any major bugs in the game today. I'll need some decent details about the bugs and how to recreate them.


JP, we talked a while back about the mail problem. I believe it is either Alien or players hitting the toll figs that start the twmail.dat file into the roll down the hill to bloat to an enormous size. Is this geting addressed as well? If not that's ok, because i end up deleting the files if the trigger I created hits over 10 Mb size during a maintenance.

quote:Originally posted by RexxCrow
Also what about the bug involving Rogue planets, during the Invasion the player has to attempt to land to prevent it from occurring otherwise it will load the planet’s Fuel Ore capacity to the maximum.


I believe this is related to planets not properly regenning until someone attempts to land on it. When someone goes to land, it calculates time since the last land attempt, then calculates ore regen. In a game where a planet has been updated in a long time that way, you can moth 1 million ore off of a planet, then finally try to land, and whe you do, it will regen back to full ore.

quote:
I recall reading something awhile back involving a trick in Timed Games where a player can somehow double their time ?

afaik, that has been fixed.

almost forgot about the spywindow bug, also can be worked aroung if can't fix on it either. What happens is if you are checking on a game from a players point of view, and if he logs off, or suddenly gets disconnected, IE blown up. The spy window dies out, and when you connect to others to check on things, the window will be blank.

but like I said, it can be worked around if needed. When it goes down, I use my helper to use the spy window function in a pinch.

quote:Originally posted by John Pritchett (EIS)

A new release for TWv3 is on the way, mostly to activate Jumpgate in TWGS. But while I'm at it, I'd like to take a look at any major bugs in the game today. I'll need some decent details about the bugs and how to recreate them.


I'm not suggesting this is a bug, and I am not sure if it has been discussed. It would be nice to be able to bang a game without stopping the entire server. I run 15 games now with more on the way, and with players online I feel it is an inconvenience to shutdown the entire server to bang and setup a game. If we could bang a game, edit it to the specs we want, including Aliens, planets, ships, then be able to make active while other games are playing, that would be a huge help (at least in my case). If not, that's okay too.

quote:Originally posted by Thrawn702

quote:Originally posted by John Pritchett (EIS)

A new release for TWv3 is on the way, mostly to activate Jumpgate in TWGS. But while I'm at it, I'd like to take a look at any major bugs in the game today. I'll need some decent details about the bugs and how to recreate them.


I'm not suggesting this is a bug, and I am not sure if it has been discussed. It would be nice to be able to bang a game without stopping the entire server. I run 15 games now with more on the way, and with players online I feel it is an inconvenience to shutdown the entire server to bang and setup a game. If we could bang a game, edit it to the specs we want, including Aliens, planets, ships, then be able to make active while other games are playing, that would be a huge help (at least in my case). If not, that's okay too.



Agreed, I have the same thing on my server with that many games and players it is a pain to have to shut down the whole server to bang just a game to 3 games as needed. It would be nice to be able to bang the games without shutting down the whole server.

quote:Originally posted by Vulcan

quote:Originally posted by Thrawn702

quote:Originally posted by John Pritchett (EIS)

A new release for TWv3 is on the way, mostly to activate Jumpgate in TWGS. But while I'm at it, I'd like to take a look at any major bugs in the game today. I'll need some decent details about the bugs and how to recreate them.


I'm not suggesting this is a bug, and I am not sure if it has been discussed. It would be nice to be able to bang a game without stopping the entire server. I run 15 games now with more on the way, and with players online I feel it is an inconvenience to shutdown the entire server to bang and setup a game. If we could bang a game, edit it to the specs we want, including Aliens, planets, ships, then be able to make active while other games are playing, that would be a huge help (at least in my case). If not, that's okay too.



Agreed, I have the same thing on my server with that many games and players it is a pain to have to shut down the whole server to bang just a game to 3 games as needed. It would be nice to be able to bang the games without shutting down the whole server.


Vulcan, we may need to come up with an idea to run more games, yes? Seems you and I are running out of letters. Heh heh heh

Just my 2 cents again.... I have seen servers where the gameop had a backup computer and set up games on that one and then copied the game to the game server with the game closed and at the time for rebang just changed the switch from closed to open. That might prevent having to shut down the server.

quote:Originally posted by Father Cajone

Just my 2 cents again.... I have seen servers where the gameop had a backup computer and set up games on that one and then copied the game to the game server with the game closed and at the time for rebang just changed the switch from closed to open. That might prevent having to shut down the server.


A great idea, never thought of that. I know that we have to stop and restart to get any edits to become Active. Same if a game is set to inactive, add a game, work on the game description file, remove an IP from the ban list, etc. But it would still be handy to do this without having to do a work-around. And with 15 games active, I may need my second server for another set of TW games