Release candidate 2.8.2.0 - testers needed

[raystuttgart]

If I would be screaming I would at the very least be using bold letters...

I am not screaming, and sorry if you felt that way.

I am typing in bold letters just because I am used to it to make post easier and faster to read.
(I am just trying to "highlight" the most important aspects.)

 

[ConjurerDragon]

I am not screaming, and sorry if you felt that way.

I am typing in bold letters just because I am used to it to make post easier and faster to read.
(I am just trying to "highlight" the most important aspects.)

You misunderstand me as misunderstanding you...

I did not think that you would have been screaming for your use of bold letters.

You wrote that:

Yes, it is still "Vanilla" behaviour.

And this really is no bug - it is simply "bad luck" - and it is even extremely rare to happen.
Seriously guys, every time some minor annoyance comes up, players scream.

And because of your insinuation that "players scream every time a minor annoyance comes up" I answered that, if I would be screaming I would at the very least be using bold letters, to make clear that I had not been screaming at all... That was meant to refer to the internets general use of bold letters as "screaming" and not you personally.

Wow, that took some explaining. We should stop taking each other too literal while using english

 

[raystuttgart]

In this savegame the pionier is unable to build a road on the mountain. Is this intended?

Apparently it is intended by whoever wrote the code.

@Hecur, @Nightinggale
Actually I am not sure who wrote this code - since it was not commented.

I remember very vageuely that there was a discussion in TAC about something similar - having completely "Impassable Mountains".
But the logic could have really been Vanilla logic as well. I really do not know ...

However I now removed that logic:
"Roads on a Peak are not allowed if the Peaks is itself fully surrounded by Peaks."

Reasons:

• It is just confusing Players because it is nowhere explained.
• It is pretty pointless logic that never really had a meaningful purpose for gameplay.
• It is extremely rare case anyways and almost never occured on most maps.
• It just ate up a tiny bit of performance every time AI called "canBuild" checks for Routes.
• It could also result in cases with 2-Plot-City-Radius that players would complain about. (But again, very rare.)

Summary:
The "problem" is now solved.
(It is commited to "Large Rivers".)

 

[Nightinggale]

And then I can in the very same turn, have that guy who turned his back on his tribal life, sent back into the tribe to live with them and learn from those people whose ways he shunned by converting. IMHO a converted native should be barred from "Learning from Natives", at the very least from the same villiage from which he just converted away in the same turn, better permanently.

Good point. However that is purely a problem with historical/logical accuracy. Gameplay value would be hurt because there is a strategy to be first with missions in settlements with expert farmers or something else, which is useful to have plenty of. I don't want to change this even if I would say you do have a point in your argument.

However I now removed that logic:
"Roads on a Peak are not allowed if the Peaks is itself fully surrounded by Peaks."

It turned out that this limitation came as a complete surprise to everybody on the development team. The real question: does it add to the gameplay value? Not really, but it hurts as it can in rare cases interrupt gameplay where it's annoying. Bye bye unknown feature nobody (currently active) requested.

 

[rap33042]

I have uploaded 2.8.2.0 as a pre-release. It can be downloaded here.

The changlog is also in the link. It should be noted that not everything planned for the next release is included. Most noteworthy large rivers are absent.

On the other hand there is only one DLL now. When you start the game, it will ask you which colony radius you want to use. No more issues because you forgot to copy a DLL file.

The main goal of this release is to get testers to use the new savegame format. Bug reports where I can load the savegame are way more useful. Please report all the bugs you encounter, preferably with savegames. Do note that savegames can be big because I added debug information to them. If somebody uploads a savegame, which can't be loaded, then the debug info gives an idea of what it is trying to do, hence a chance of fixing the problem.

Please playtest multiplayer. Whenever a desync is encountered, please upload a savegame where it happens when you click end turn or something else. It doesn't matter if the desync has been reported before. I want it with the new savegame format and I want savegames where I can reproduce the desyncs or I won't be able to figure out what is causing them.

I recently started looking into network desyncs, but I got nowhere because of issues reading savegames. I really want to fix all desyncs prior to next full release if possible.

Hi, Nightingale,
I have installed 2.8.2 twice now and both times I am unable to create a second colony. I did not change the setting for city distances.
I have a screenshot for you if you need it and I also have my last save file if you need that.You will have to tell me how to get those files to you.

This was only an experiment with no other civs in the game-- only Indian tribes.

Thanks for any help you can offer,
Richard

 

[Hecur]

Hi, Nightingale,
I have installed 2.8.2 twice now and both times I am unable to create a second colony. I did not change the setting for city distances.
I have a screenshot for you if you need it and I also have my last save file if you need that.You will have to tell me how to get those files to you.

This was only an experiment with no other civs in the game-- only Indian tribes.

Thanks for any help you can offer,
Richard

You need a colonist withe the settler profession, to found a new city.

 

[raystuttgart]

You need a colonist withe the settler profession, to found a new city.

Exactly.
@Hecur: Thanks for answering.

This is actually one of the most significant gameplay changes we introduce after 2.8.
To found new Settlements you now need to equip a Colonist. (Simply read Colopedia for Profession "Settler".)

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Good point. However that is purely a problem with historical/logical accuracy. Gameplay value would be hurt because there is a strategy to be first with missions in settlements with expert farmers or something else, which is useful to have plenty of. I don't want to change this even if I would say you do have a point in your argument.

Actually that would be two completely different strategies. The "portuguese" way would be to establish a mission and draw lots of manpower from villages to gain "Converted Natives" for use in the cities to supplement the native and black african slaves.

Establishing a mission however does as far as I remember not prevent other nations to send their own colonists there to learn from the natives.

The "english" (lots of religious freedom and so lots of own, but uneducated, manpower) way would be to send all those indentured servants and some of the free colonists to the natives to gain useful professions while in the colonies the schooling system is still under construction.

Only that I would question the validity of the "portuguese" way if those converted natives could simply be "reconverted" to learn their former tribes specialty and become a specialist - or, even if the specialty is no more needed and dropped turn into "free colonists".

But that argument could be moved to a different thread as it is no bug.

 

[rap33042]

You need a colonist withe the settler profession, to found a new city.

Thank you!
I guess I missed that little trick,
Richard

 

[rap33042]

@Nightingale and the WTP Team,

Of course, I started with the vanilla version of this game. Then, I found TAC and played the heck out of that. Wonderful!
Then there was R&R which I basically skipped over because I found We The People shortly afterward. Amazing piece of work. It changes the whole game. It turns it into something quite remarkable.

I want to thank each and every one of you who has contributed to this fine piece of work. And I'd also like to curse you for stealing hours of my life

I'm having a ball!
Richard

 

[Nightinggale]

I uploaded 2.8.2.1 to GitHub.

Fixes:
- Pioneers will now calculate correct work rate on load (not stacking cache on each load)
- Units stuck in colonies with NO_PROFESSION will now be kicked out to make then reachable for the player again
- Changing from a military profession will now always remove the free promotions from that profession*

* the fix prevents new units from getting corrupted promotion cache, but units already affected in 2.8.2.0 savegames will not be fixed.

Yeah there is a bug, which will be carried over from 2.8.2.0 unless you start a new game. However worst case some units can end up with a few extra promotions, but only if you change them from something, which has free promotions to something else without those free promotions, but still a military profession. It's up to you if this is important enough to start a new savegame.

You can download the new DLL here (no other files needed). Link in first post also updated. I will likely release updates as DLL only if it's the only changed file. It's a lot easier for me, which in turn means more pre-release releases and you get bugfixes faster.

Yeah I know the title says 2.8.2.0. Doesn't look like I can change that without getting a forum mod to do it for me. It's not that important. We all know what this is about anyway.

 

[Nightinggale]

I managed to get the game to desync twice now. Looks like the two games disagree on how the AI moves units and even number of units (one has 2 krakens, the other 3). This correctly triggers desync. The question is why. It seems that somehow the random seed goes out of sync and after that happens, anything using any degree of randomness (like AI decisions) will differ, hence causing desyncs.

No fix yet or even any guess at an ETA, but I am working on it.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Colopedia entry links broken?

In he "Pasture" entry

Spoiler :

the links to "(with Resource Horses)" and "(with Resource Cattle)" do not lead to the description of the resource horses or cattle, but to a strange description of a horse or a cow as a unit. Has someon hidden plans to drive the spanish into the sea with a stampede? Or horses and cattle running wild over the prairie?

That would be the normal link for the resource "Horses"

Spoiler :

but the Pasture entry links to

Spoiler :

The same is true for the link to the cattle resource from the Pasture entry.
Same is true for the horse and cattle resource links from the "Large Pasture" page.

 

[Nightinggale]

Colopedia entry links broken?

Good find. It's a vanilla bug, but luckily it's fixable.

The text in question
[LINK=literal]Horses[\LINK]
This will link to whatever is called Horses, including a bogus unit. Since it checks units first, then the bonus will never be found.
[LINK=BONUS_HORSES]Horses[\LINK]
This will trigger on BONUS_HORSES and ignore the word Horses entirely for linking purposes. This makes the link works as intended.

Interestingly LINK is only set to literal in vanilla and modders have kept it this way. I wonder if we have the same problem elsewhere

 

[Nightinggale]

I borrowed a computer, got it to run WTP and hopefully this will allow me to log all sorts of stuff and eventually figure out the cause of the desyncs. So far I managed to get it to desync, but without learning anything new. Now I "just" need both to write to a log file in sync to get two identical files, hence first line where they differ will be the point of failure. In other words work has been done and there is some progress, but still no ETA on a fix.

One good thing came out of it already. I managed to get the "new" computer to compile without having MSVS installed. This has been my goal for a while and it looks like I finally pulled it off, though it did require a few tweaks to the makefile. Eventually all those tweaks will have to combine into allowing non-programmers to compile.

Colopedia entry links broken?

Fixed in development and next release. Do tell if pages other than the improvements have broken links. I will rather spend my time fixing bugs than to look for broken links, which may or may not be there.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Is the description wrong?

Spoiler :

"The production of all goods other than Livestock, Food or Barley there is increased." - while Food and Barley are listed both as +1 under the "Improvements" list.

So - is the text right and should a plantation not increase food and barley at all (because that is a farms job to do) or should the text be changed to something like "The production of all goods other than Livestock, Food or Barley there is increased by +3, the latter two only by +1"?

GUI question: The list of improvements is longer than the vertical window for improvements, but the window is quite large horizontally. Would it be possible to have the list stop below Tobacco and continue from top down again (so that Barley is shown at first glance and without scrolling down) to the right of it?

 

[Nightinggale]

The list under Improvements is autogenerated at runtime using the data the game uses meaning it's always correct. History however is a fixed text written by a person at some point and if those two differs then history is incorrect. Some of the text in the game has been written using the assumption that no game data will ever be changed by future modders and then stuff like this happens.

GUI question: The list of improvements is longer than the vertical window for improvements, but the window is quite large horizontally. Would it be possible to have the list stop below Tobacco and continue from top down again (so that Barley is shown at first glance and without scrolling down) to the right of it?

Vanilla screens (Colopedia included) are all written for 1024x768 monitors. Higher resolutions will upscale some numbers, but not make better usage of screen space. Widescreen has not been considered at all meaning all screens are stretched 4:3. A lot of screens reads height or width and then makes assumptions of the other one based on that and while it's generally not game breaking, it does result in the high amount of unused space here. At some point somebody (me?) have to go through all screens and update them to match 4:3, 16:9 and 21:9. However for the time being I'm looking into issues, which I consider to be more urgent.

 

[Villovik]

Hello folks, I captured enemy English free colonist pioneer who hided from me in Indian village, and I capture in some reason 100 horses. Next turn I cant find horses, but this not supposed to be like this at all
But I forgot save game in this situation, but I have one 1 turn before it happened

In this game I had old .dll

Thanks ALL

 

[Mr. ZorG]

new resource is not highlighted

 

[ConjurerDragon]

...
It turned out that this limitation came as a complete surprise to everybody on the development team. The real question: does it add to the gameplay value? Not really, but it hurts as it can in rare cases interrupt gameplay where it's annoying. Bye bye unknown feature nobody (currently active) requested.

It does make sense in a way: Without it a player can build roads anywhere, even directly across a large area of mountains - something like the Alps, the Rocky Mountains or the Appalachians without taking care where to build. Just a direct line across the mountains, who cares that it is going over the hightest tops...

Historically that would be nonsense. Noone in his sane mind in that time would have even considered to build a road or paved roads across the tops of the highest mountains, not only for the immense cost of building in that kind of terrain, and for the slopes needed (wagons with horses or oxens could drive up and down only a limited % of elevation without being quickly exhausted or their brakes wasting away) but for the huge amount of workforce needed (that was before Nobel invented Dynamite in 1860 as a safe and cheap way - compared to have 1000´s of workers with picks and shovels labour away - to create tunnels or roads through solid stone). If was even before Nitroglycerin was first synthezized (1847) which made large-scale explosions possible but at an immensely huge risk as Nitro was still a very volatile explosive before Dynamite tamed it.

Before 1847 all there is is manual labour and black powder to make ways over or through mountains.

And that are the reasons that not at any point roads were built straight across the Appalachians in the middle part of the Colonization of the US, but that those roads followed mountain passes of lower elevation, namely the Cumberland Gap through which Wilderness Road

Spoiler :

went
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumberland_Gap

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_Mountains#/media/File:Greatvalley-map.png


That should ingame be similar - rather have a road snake around an extensive mountainous area, following unforested grassland or if need be through forested areas, or if no other option is there to go over the foothills around the mountains than going right over the mountains.

So IMHO a rule that a road can not be built over the peak of a mountain area, if all other surrounding areas are mountains, too, makes sense to me for any game that takes place before the 19th century. And WtP is considered to play from 1492 - 1792 as far as I remember.

Just as an example: A peak surrounded by mountains on all sides - that is like building a road over Mount Everest or the K2 instead of going around the mountain complex and through the lower pass 100 kilometres further west.

And two historical examples of the difficulties of building roads in the british colonies even with several hundred men and the military, when not following the easiest route but through forested hills:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braddock_Road_(Braddock_expedition)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_Road