Stations are orbiting ME!

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 5:34 pm

This bug was found by safemode and I am now reproducing it frequently.
When I jump to certain systems, the stations start freaking out and jittering around like crazy. I tried to fly towards this klkk outpost:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/galle ... temId=6984

But the harder I thrusted, the further away from me it got:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/galle ... temId=6986

Yet it came back to me when I cut my velocity:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/galle ... temId=6988

Apparently, it is in some sort of strange orbit around me and is correcting it's position as I move towards it.

It happened again in another system with some stupid mining base. I turned on time compression to see if I could get past it to dock with a planet (because being close to the base was disabling my SPEC drive), and it shot out and away and began following my cursor!
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/galle ... temId=6990

As you can see, it did a 180 around me as I swung around to face the planet:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/galle ... temId=6992

This is really odd, hopefully some more people can reproduce and we can figure out what the heck is going wrong.

Post by **loki1950** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 6:26 pm

Had that or something similar in the Sol system with the Earth Starfortress had to use SPEC just to get close turn off SPEC and thrown back it was frustrating

Enjoy the Choice

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 6:27 pm

Thanks! Keep the reproduction reports coming people, and be as specific as possible.. any new information on the behavior or circumstances of this bug can help us track it down.

rigelan · Post by **rigelan** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 1:03 am

I had that happen a few weeks ago, but then i recompiled as of 6/28 and it stopped happening.

Post by **safemode** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:40 am

This is a very annoying and very "random" bug. I've been trying to track it down with more and more checks and I can't seem to narrow down the code-path that allows these things to attach themselves to the player's ship. I'm going to continue to attempt to narrow this down once my current little project is ready. It's just damn hard because you can change something, check, it doesn't happen...then jump around and all of a sudden it's happening....but who has the time to play for an hour between code changes?

On a side note: It's really awesome when you have two big bases or lots of ships attached to you, and you have really strong shields ...and you shoot one. Hah. That even grinds my system down as they all tear eachother to pieces.

Vector_Matt · Post by **Vector_Matt** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 3:38 pm

Same thing happened to me in Odzeily, or however it's spelled. I jumped in and WHAM! mining base right there. I also noticed, either in Odzeily or 17-ar there was a commerce center that was moving, not orbiting me, but flying along at about 1000. My guess is that these two are related somehow.

rigelan · Post by **rigelan** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 6:29 pm

It happened again. Mine happened directly when I jumped into 17-ar. Do all of your attached bases appear as soon as you jump into the system? Do they appear only on new systems that you enter, or will a base attach itself to you even if you have already been in that system before.

Mine happened when I jumped into 17-ar for the first time.

And some secondary note: I installed overdrive #6 and it seems i can only change my speed by overdriving. I cannot speed up or slow down with the + or - or backspace or \. It sets my target speed fine, but my ship won't adjust to the target speed.

So on the first bug, I'm going to try jumping out and jumping in again, trying a different system.

rigelan · Post by **rigelan** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 6:37 pm

Well, i figured out the speed bug. I have an overdrive, i drive myself to over the combat speed in a goddard, and then i press ~ to keep that particular speed up. Then when i let go of ~, my speed does not respond to the target speed, it will only respond to my overdrive button: tab. This problem resets and dissappears after i dock with something.

And i closed vegastrike and opened it back up, the station that was orbiting me is gone.

Post by **jackS** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 7:35 pm

rigelan wrote:Well, i figured out the speed bug. I have an overdrive, i drive myself to over the combat speed in a goddard, and then i press ~ to keep that particular speed up. Then when i let go of ~, my speed does not respond to the target speed, it will only respond to my overdrive button: tab. This problem resets and dissappears after i dock with something.

And i closed vegastrike and opened it back up, the station that was orbiting me is gone.

Not a bug -- changed feature. '~' is bound to a toggle now. You don't have to keep it pressed. Perhaps someone should update the manual...

rigelan · Post by **rigelan** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 6:30 pm

JackS, okay, thanks for the note on the tilde key. I think there still might be an issue with it though. Maybe its intended this way. After the tilde key is pressed, I can tab (overdrive) to pretty much any speed I want to, and it doesn't max out at the normal combatspeed*1.8 or whatever the factor is that the overdrive will max out at.

Post by **safemode** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 8:19 pm

I'm seriously on the verge of flipping out. I've looked everywhere. I've double checked all my local changes and code (not yet committed to my branch). I've double checked the logic and compared it to how the old collection worked. The only thing i can now think of that could be causing this forsaken bug is python depending on some type of wrong behavior from the old unitcollection/unitIterator class. I tried really hard to not change how certain things functioned, and to mimic the function of the old class, but there are a few minor areas that I had to change due to implementation differences. The most major being that of removing units.

My guess is that in certain cases, when you enter a system the generated bases/significant units are given a pythonUnitIter in which to be a sub-unit/satellite etc of. I'm going to continue working on the issue... But i have little knowledge of the code-path taken when we generate a system and place units. If someone could point out to me where that's done maybe i can figure out what is going on here.

In most systems, this bug doesn't show up. I've only seen significant units "orbiting", not regular ships and not planets or jump points.

The C++ reads correct (my local copy anyway, i have to commit soon) so that only leaves the python.

I'm completely frustrated. The only thing letting me keep my sanity over this is that once it's squashed, I can begin to return my class back to a more simplistic form.

Post by **jackS** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 8:46 pm

rigelan wrote:JackS, okay, thanks for the note on the tilde key. I think there still might be an issue with it though. Maybe its intended this way. After the tilde key is pressed, I can tab (overdrive) to pretty much any speed I want to, and it doesn't max out at the normal combatspeed*1.8 or whatever the factor is that the overdrive will max out at.

No, that's entirely intentional. The '~' key is the flight computer override. When your flight computer is overridden, your relative velocity governors are disabled. Thus, the only limit to how fast you can go is C (or fuel -- although I've forgotten exactly what happens when you reach 0

).

Post by **safemode** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 9:39 pm

Also, In addition to slowly going crazy. I've tested under other mods and I can't reproduce the problem with privgold.

At some point in time soon, I'd like to get in touch with anyone who has knowledge of the python that generates the systems, specifically, the code that places significant units (bases and cap ships etc.) in those systems.

Everitt has a factory and other bases in it. The factory and one of the fighter barracks are stuck to me upon jumping into it, everytime. Jump out and then back in, and it's still the same. Dock on a planet and back and it's the same. That makes me believe that this is not some random memory issue or some sort of invalid reference. Something in pythonUnitIter is not functioning correctly or something the python is doing is utilizing a buggy behavior from the old unitcollection. I am leaning towards the latter because other mods dont have this issue (as far as i've seen) and PythonUnitIter is ungodly simple and i double checked everything about it ...it should be correct now.

I'm going to make a commit tonight and bring my branch up to date with my working copy. It looks like i'm going to need help trying to track this issue down.

AzureSky · Post by **AzureSky** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 10:34 pm

Gemini gold doesn't do any automatic system generation; all of the systems have a corresponding file in the sectors/Gemini directory. That could be why you're not seeing the issue there.

imacca · Post by **imacca** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:38 am

I am on SVN revision 11073. Its basically unplayable for me at the moment. Fine whilst in Cephid 17, but jump to any other system and an artificial object latches on. If you go back to Cephid 17 no probs, but go to any other system and the same thing happens. Will follow the other thread where someone is trying to work this out and hope for the best.

This one is even worse than the old bug where Clydsdales would randomly appear in the windscreen.

From reading the other posts in this thread i would agree its somehow tied to how the systems are generated, and i think the idea that the objects are somehow in orbit about the players ship is a good one. Anyhow, its still a current (and fatal to playability) bug in this revision.

imacca · Post by **imacca** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 10:34 am

Am now on SVN 11074. Bases following me after the first jump out is still an issue. Was interesting though last time. Flying a milspec Goddard, come out of a jump and there is a fighter base following me. Attack the base with torpedoes but cant manuver. Base fires wepons away from me but i am getting hit. When i blow up, the end of life view shows the base moving into th space where my ship was. Wierd huh??

Post by **safemode** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 10:58 am

I'm hoping sometime this week i can communicate with someone who knows the python side and see what exactly it's doing to generate the bases and place them in a system ...so i can then track down what C++ is being executed to accomplish that. EIther the C++ is wrong or the python is.

I'm also going to regression test back to my initial creation of my branch and see if the stuck on you bug exists then. Then work my way up until it occurs. This bug must die.

Post by **loki1950** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:41 pm

Just a random thought differences between python 2.2 and the current python 2.5 if i remember right there have been changes that break backward compatibility.

Enjoy the Choice

Post by **safemode** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 3:50 am

fixed in -r11100....under initial tests anyway.

Post by **ace123** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 6:16 am

I just noticed that you fixed it only for client side (universe_util.cpp), and not for server (universe_util_server.cpp)... but it turns out that it's the same code with the same function...
So I merged it into the common file, universe_util_generic.cpp. That way it avoids duplicate code.
But it makes sense... that call to advance existed in the old version of PythonUnitIterator in order to skip to the first significant, except if the current unit is also a significant

Anyway, it's working a bit better now with that fix. The python code is a bit confusing... In my local copy, I added a simple debug library that adds line number and filename to some of the messages, which makes it easier to see what is going on.

No, 2.2 and 2.5 are mostly compatible... there are a few forwards compatibility problems... some people in Privateer Gold used 2.4-only features that cause syntax errors on 2.2.

Post by **safemode** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:42 am

2.5 wont work with privateer gold either.

imacca · Post by **imacca** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 11:06 am

Good to hear that this one is fixed. Thanks Guys! Will Update and test tonight.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:14 pm

I've visited a couple systems in Crucible and everything behaves normally. This bug appears to have been squashed!

Thanks safemode and ace123.

cap601 · Post by **cap601** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 3:31 pm

Would it be possible for someone to upload a new compiled version with this bug fix?

Post by **loki1950** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 4:09 pm

Someone will probably commit a new windows exec today
Oh and welcome to the Forums

Enjoy the Choice