Patch Bug Appeal

[Prof. Garfield]

@Catfish has just reported the following information about this bug, particularly that TOTPP does accept the continuous modifier, but it has to be in a specific location.

Just dropping by the forum and this thread caught my eye. So I tested it using ToTPP v0.15.1 and v0.13.2 (pre-Lua), Windows 7 64-bit for a couple of simple Flag/CheckFlag->Text events in a couple of scenarios, as well as for a few more sophisticated events in my WotR scenario. The Continuous modifier worked correctly in every test, although, unlike unpatched ToT, it appears (on trying to break it) that the ToTPP strictly applies the 'modifier must never be the last parameter of a trigger or action' syntax rule from Macro.txt. Ignore the rule and the game ignores the modifier. Apart from that I don't know what may be causing it to fail on other people's systems. Perhaps it's a Windows 10 thing.

I should be able to write code to check events files for this particular error, and probably even produce a new, corrected, file automatically.

 

[techumseh]

After retesting, I found that putting 'continuous' first or last causes it to fail. Placing it after 'Flag' works for awhile - in my test, 7 turns before stopping. So I'm still getting poor results that are different from your or Catfish's for some unknown reason.

I've finished parsing my events for Sea Lion using your program. It certainly speeds up the process, so thank you for helping get me up to speed. I have a couple of suggestions. First, it won't parse some events that actually work and are not excluded in the manual. One example is the delay and randomize modifiers. If you put 'randomize' before 'delay', it won't parse. I put it between 'delay' and 'delay=' and it did. Either syntax will actually work in the game.

Second, having to reload for each error is a bit of a pain. Is it possible to use a hot-key to move on to the next error without having to fix it and reload each time? Or is was possible to just print a list of each error and its line number, so you can go back and fix them all at once? Otherwise, a very handy tool. Thanks.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

I've finished parsing my events for Sea Lion using your program. It certainly speeds up the process, so thank you for helping get me up to speed. I have a couple of suggestions. First, it won't parse some events that actually work and are not excluded in the manual. One example is the delay and randomize modifiers. If you put 'randomize' before 'delay', it won't parse. I put it between 'delay' and 'delay=' and it did. Either syntax will actually work in the game.

Second, having to reload for each error is a bit of a pain. Is it possible to use a hot-key to move on to the next error without having to fix it and reload each time? Or is was possible to just print a list of each error and its line number, so you can go back and fix them all at once? Otherwise, a very handy tool. Thanks.

Thanks for the randomize and delay info, I'll have to update the parser at some point. I was working mostly off a documentation file. If you have other examples, those would be useful as well.

Unfortunately, I designed the converter on the assumption that I could expect the event file to be correct (or, at least, mostly correct), so I didn't really think about how to make the error checking process 'efficient.' You might be able to speed up the process by saving a game (and opening cheat mode before you save), and just re-loading the saved game every time you make an update. You don't have to go through the trouble of starting a new scenario each time.

I did start work on a module designed as an 'event checker' a couple weeks ago (then RL intervened), and I'll make sure to have that report multiple errors at once.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

@techumseh

Try changing this line in Cosmic 2 from

EventHeapSize, 212960, 1

To

EventHeapSize, 212960, 0

(and maybe increase the heap size)

and see if that fixes the problem. I haven't tried it, I just came across it in the launcher, and 1 activates dynamic memory allocation, which seems new, and might be causing our problem, if some part of the game isn't expecting it.

 

[techumseh]

Thanks for that. I did experiment with the dynamic memory feature and found it didn't solve the issue. However, I can report that having installed v0.15 and by re-writing the events so that 'continuous' is neither at the beginning or the end of an event, the problem seems to be fixed. Thanks for your help on this, btw. Much appreciated.