Reporting Bugs

[THobson]

Apologies if this is in the wrong place. ***I have looked and can find nowhere else to put it.

Where should bugs in OFP be reported so they are not replicated in whatever Flashpoint 2 is going to be called? ***There are many I know and I am sure most are know about, but I have recently come across three quite unusual ones – again apologies if these are well known to you all. ***They were not known to me or to the people I have been discussing them with.

1) Tanks that have no shells cannot get more from an ammo truck. ***I presume it is well known that a HEAT mag gives Sabots and a Shell mag gives HEATs, but is it known that a tank that has no artillery shells cannot rearm?
2) The locations of buildingPos is very different after a save and restore than it is before. ***There is also a related problem with the action to climb the ladder in a building where saveing and restoring seems to prevent the player from getting the action to climb the ladder.
3) If terrain detail is not set to normal then objects placed on the map will move vertically over time. ***I have seen whole trucks sink underground and have seen a building flying several feet in the air.

Again appologies if these are all known and reported

[Ti0n3r]

Do you really think that BIS arent able to find these bugs on their own?

I dont think there's any need for this thread.

[THobson]

Yes I do. If they could find them there wouldn't be any and how would they find them if people don't tell them about what they find?

But that aside - even if BIS are aware - what about all the other mission makers who will fall foul of them if they are not recorded somewhere?

[[IT|Q]]

hey THobson
dont worry - most ppl here are very familiar with ofp and its quirks, yet our intention was good !

i think in general, it would be best to post such suggestions in the ofp2 sub-forum.

[Garcia]

@ July 01 2005,17:35)]hey THobson ***
dont worry - most ppl here are very familiar with ofp and its quirks, yet our intention was good !

i think in general, it would be best to post such suggestions in the ofp2 sub-forum.

1) Didn't know that, but then again, I never drive tanks...

2) Didn't know that...

3) Didn't know that...

afaik these bugs ain't something that most people know...though, the reason I don't know them is because I've never had terrain detail below normal and I never play SP anymore...though it's still good to tell people about these bugs so people are aware of this when making missions

[General Barron]

Do you really think that BIS arent able to find these bugs on their own? ***

Well, obviously BIS wasn't able to find these bugs in the past if they still exist . I don't see how anything but good can come from reporting bugs to BIS, in case they haven't noticed them yet.

I'm not sure of the best place to post this to get BIS's attention, but perhaps Placebo would know. Or perhaps a direct email to BIS would be in order. In the meantime, I would suggest posting command bugs in OFPEC's online command reference, so that other editors might be aware of them.

Some bugs I've found:

1) Arrays aren't initialized until AFTER init fields are run. Meaning, if you put this into a unit's init field:
array = [this, 9]; [array, 1] exec "script.sqs"
Then "script.sqs" would be passed NOTHING in the (_this select 0) variable. An akward example I guess, but I've made a few scripts now that have run into this exact problem.

2) Group names don't synch up immediately in MP. If you write this into a unit's init field:
groupA = group this; deletevehicle this
Then "groupA" will only be defined on the server, but not on the other clients. Then commands like "move" will not work. Instead, a delay of a few seconds is required before deleting. I and others have run into this when trying to "set up" groups to spawn into.

3) "Leader" command doesn't seem to work properly in MP. It always points to the original leader of the group, even after he is killed.

4) [i]"Titlersc"/"Cutrsc" commands don't work properly. You are supposed to be able to input how long it will take for the resource to fade in, but doing this changes nothing.

5) "magazines" command returns empty magazines. If a unit has an empty magazine currently in his weapon, then it will be returned by this command. I guess I can understand the bug, but it makes it impossible to accurately know how many magazines a unit has for certain weapons (m203 for example).


Other known bugs (not found by me):

1) "time" variable resets to 0 after loading a save game (actually a pretty helpful "bug" IMO)

2) Actions added to objects don't remove properly when getting into vehicles. If you can see/use actions from objects around you, and then you enter a vehicle, the actions stay in your action menu, even after you move away from those objects. They are not removed until you get out of the vehicle away from the objects.

3) Actions added to players work funky after respawn in MP. They seem to add themselves again each time, resulting in duplicate actions.

4) When called on dedicated servers, "animationPhase" always returns 0, no matter what the actual phase is.

5) "camSetBank", "camSetDive" and "camSetDir" commands don't seem to work at all.

6) "preprocessfile" command doesn't work from addons (?).

7) "Fire" command, when used on units, makes them point into the air and fire. When used on vehicles, they just shoot where they are pointed.

I'm sure there are tons more that I just can't think of off hand.

[Balschoiw]

Quote[/b] ]1) Tanks that have no shells cannot get more from an ammo truck. I presume it is well known that a HEAT mag gives Sabots and a Shell mag gives HEATs, but is it known that a tank that has no artillery shells cannot rearm?
2) The locations of buildingPos is very different after a save and restore than it is before. There is also a related problem with the action to climb the ladder in a building where saveing and restoring seems to prevent the player from getting the action to climb the ladder.
3) If terrain detail is not set to normal then objects placed on the map will move vertically over time. I have seen whole trucks sink underground and have seen a building flying several feet in the air.

I have just tested and I can´t confirm any of those bugs.
What version are you running ?

[THobson]

v1.96. ***No addons except for the editor upgrade.

The first one is easy to test. ***Put an empty Abrams or other tank of your choice and an empty ammo truck on the map. ***Remove the mags from the tank either using removeMagazines - or get in the tank and fire off all 35 shells of a particular type. ***That is: empty the tank of HEATs and or Sabots. ***Then try and re arm at the ammo truck. ***If you clear Sabots first then that is it you get no more sabots. ***If you then clear HEATs then prvovided you do not go to machine gun then you may get some HEATs from the ammo truck. ***But if you have gone to the machine gun then you don't get any HEATs either.

The scond one caused me a serious sense of humour failure. ***I have a cutscene about an hour into my mission that would work fine in testing but just would not work in the mission. ***Eventually the test I did was to put a Game Logic at one of the building position and then craete a radio hint that reported on the location of the GL , ***the location of the buildingPos and the location of the building. ***After an 11 hour soak nothing had moved. ***But as soon as I left the mission and came back in the buildingPos had moved to the ground floor and was almost 10 meters away laterally. The GL and the building were still reporting the same location. ***This is a standard building on Malden. ***The user action to climb the ladder in these houses appears to suffer a similar fate.

The third one is hard to test. ***But I can give you some screen shots that my beta tester have given me.

How are you testing?

[Garcia]

3) "Leader" command doesn't seem to work properly in MP. It always points to the original leader of the group, even after he is killed.

Never had this problem

And, I just tested with the tank, and he's right, I didn't get any sabots...I placed a empty m1a1, empty ammo truck, a west soldier, set the ammo of the m1a1 to low...you know the thingy when you place him...shot first the 3 sabots that was left, then the 40 rounds of MG, and then 3 HEAT, drove to the ammo truck, rearmed, and only got 35 HEAT and 500 MG...no sabot...

[THobson]

Balschoiw:
I do remain interested in how it was your test failed to show these bugs. ***It maybe you have an addon, or somesuch that fixes these problems and I would appreciate knowing what that might be.

Another deeply frustating problem I had was cause by:
deleteVehcile Unitname
doing some very strange things if Unitname is inside a vehicle.

I also now have some Transport Unload/GetOut ***GetIn/Load etc waypoints that fail the 7th time they are actioned. ***As this is 3 1/2 hours into the mission it is a bit of a pain to test.

freda:
? ? ?