Conflux III discussion thread - potential spoilers

[beowuuf]

The excessive DSA is just a warning of the engine using a lot of DSAs. It's not harmful and happens at times. The sound thing doens't happen under windows that I've noticed, so would have to agree about the emulator issue

[Adamo]

I was sleeping somewhere in the sewers, when got this:

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ERROR
System Error 56535
DSA stack underflow
DSA at 3(1,1)
Row = 0, Col = 9

The game crahed (C3.5_B6 with CSBwin11.095). That might be a bug. Do I have to send you the file?

EDIT:

Somewhere in the sewers:

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error
Missing section in CSBgraphics.dat
Section id= 978, Type=Wall Decoration

While fighting with Trolls/Goblins i get:

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System error 65402
Illegal Monster AI Timer

and the game crashed.

EDIT2:

While fighting with Vecna:

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Error
System Error 52407
Recursive timer search

and the game crashed.

[Zyx]

I'll investigate it in a few days.

[Adamo]

C3.5_B6 finished!!!
Without using ANY maps, including my plain ones! As an apprientice explorer I freed the prisioner (saved the city).
This game is just great, thank you Zyx!!!!!

I know from a competition scroll that I get 52 points. I don`t want to finish the game so early, so I turned back and want to gain more points (finish more quests), but first I need to know which quests left:
http://dmwiki.atomas.com/wiki/Conflux/Competition

I`ve got some questions (warning - spoilers!):
1.

Spoiler

How to enter the door in the Tower of Mampang? They`re ALWAYS closed.

I`ve got three guild leaders:
2.

Spoiler

On Halk levels it says I need to have set of some armor. Where can I find it?

3.

Spoiler

How to finish Gothomog levels? It says it need three lives - I know what to do - but then I can`t remove the gem from the altar.

[Paul Stevens]

C3.5_B6 finished!!!

I had assumed that was impossible.

How long did it take you? Did you save all your
recordings so that I could splice them together
and make a complete movie?

I guess it is time to start the 'Speed Runs'.
Perhaps we should relax the rules and allow
save/reload.

[Adamo]

I had assumed that was impossible.

Why? I thought it was impossible to finish it with a maleficient guild (Zyx told me somebody did it), but I was playing the regular ones.

How long did it take you? Did you save all your
recordings so that I could splice them together
and make a complete movie?

Very long, and it seems CSBwin allowes only 100 logs; when it reaches 100, it cancels them all and starts a new set of logs. Sorry.

[Adamo]

I had assumed that was impossible.

Did you mean the bugs?
As for the bugs, two posts above I mentioned them (which of some were critical). It forced me saving frequently, but, luckily, since I send that post (27 april - 3rd may), I met NONE of the bugs - and I was playing really a lot in dozens of locations. So I can say it`s nearly bug free.

[Christopher]

I loaded up my old save from nearly a year ago and gave it another try. I found a way through the Emerald Forest with the Cursed Guild but now I am stuck at a dead end with an alcove and another riddle(?) I haven't solved. There is also a teleporter in the forest I can't reach. Has anyone else ever gotten here before and if so, could they give some less obscure hint as to what item I need or what I need to do here?

[Antman]

The puzzle there is quite literal, there are two items which you could use, it's the items name which is important, not what it does... Hope that helps! And there's a recording of me playing through the game with the Cursed Guild floating around somewhere, on Paul's site I think.

[Paul Stevens]

http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Conflux ... tMovie.rar

I forgot about it. Am watching it now.

[Christopher]

Great video. I completely forgot about that item. I only use it in a small area in hell and nowhere else (for challenging purposes) so I usually disregard them. I still have about 28 points left to get before I want to finish my cursed guild game. Those four have been through a lot.

[Paul Stevens]

http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Conflux ... tMovie.rar

Wow. I just finished watching the entire game.
About 5 hours? Amazing work.

What impressed me very much was that a large
percentage of the dungeon was never visited.
You spent most of the time going over and over
the same territory in preparation for the final
few assaults. A very patient effort.

I would like to see another game with the
guild members and more than one hero.

[Christopher]

Funny thing, I was trying to start a recording of all four cursed guild members and I got stuck before I could descend into the guild area. First time that ever happened (Mon fireball accompaniment as well). My job will make it incredibly difficult to make a recording so don't expect anything any time soon, but I'll see what I can do.

[Zyx]

What do you mean 'stuck' ?

[Christopher]

Stuck in the area you pray to Libra. The wall had closed. I guess I moved forward very quickly by mistake and then moved back through the fake wall (with Mon fireballs that were visible and not just audible) and the wall that closes (moves forward as you move and launches rocks or boulders) blocked me in. Couldn't move forward in any direction. That early in the game it is certainly easy to restart with no problem. I just thought it was strange.

I was recording at the time but I'm not quite sure how the whole recording process works. I had to exit the game manually since there is no way to get to the save screen yet. I still have the log.

[Zyx]

You now officially hold the record of the shortest way to get stuck.

[Antman]

Hi again Paul, I had a go at making recording of the game in which I try to do as much as possible, a good old 'clean out the dungeon' game. Unfortunately, I managed to wipe all my progress at one stage, I was checking to see if my recordings had been keeping up with where I was up to, so I used what I thought was my latest record file to make a playback file, then ran this from the main folder of the game. But it wasn't the latest and was infact much, much ealier, so when I ran the playfile, it saved over my game, and finished far too early. And I couldn't seem to be able to find the latest recording to create a playfile to fix this. I was cataloging my records in seperate folder since 100 is the max allowed and I must have made a mistake somewhere and mucked something up. Anyway, I would be keen to have another go at making a full recording of Conflux, especially now the guild items are scattered through the dungeon. But would it be possible to make the recording/playfile process a bit easier? So whenever you save your game the save file contains the information required for playback, so the player doesn't even have to do anything? So anyone who plays CSBWin will be able to playback a savegame somehow with no extra effort on their part. I know ruining my game was my own fault (I think) and I should have been much more careful and backed up but I think it could be made a bit easier, adjusting the 100 log file limit to 10000 would help if nothing else. I probably wouldn't be able to embark upon a Conflux mission for a little while if you did change things, in the middle of uni at the moment, I would like to at some stage.

[Paul Stevens]

I will change the maximum to 10000. Expect a bit of
delay during startup....Windoze does not like
looking through 10000 files in a single directory.

I managed to wipe all my progress at one stage

Writing over a savefile is recoverable if you have
all the recordings. If you lost the latest recording
(as you say you did) then you can at least recreate
the savefile prior to that recording.

Your suggestion of putting everything into the savefile...
Each savefile you create would have to contain at least:

1) The original starting savefile or dungeon.dat
2) The entire recording up to the point of the save.

And a restart would require that the entire game
be played up to that point.

The record/playback business is very delicate.
There are too many exquisitely subtle ways
to break it. I am alway surprised when it works.
Imagine my chagrin when you finished your
game and the playback failed. I don't think
I am prepared to undertake anything like the
effort that would be required to change this
feature substantially.

[Paul Stevens]

CSBwin version 11.060 implements the 10000 recordings
feature.

I have not tested this. So....
When you play this game.....make sure the first couple of
recordings are capable of being made into a playfile that
works. Then, when you get near 99 recordings, back everything
up. Then after about 102 recordings, test again to be
sure it all works. In fact, it is probably best to test every now
and again.....just as you would back up your spreadsheet
periodically to avoid excessive loss.

In fact, if you were to ship your recordings to me as they are
completed, I would test them out for you, thereby taking that
messy ritual off your hands and backing things up as a
side effect.

[Paul Stevens]

I have retracted 11.060. I found some problems
I do not understand. (Nothing to do with recording)
If you already fetched it, please don't use it.

[Paul Stevens]

CSBwin 11.061 is better. The problem was in converting
old save files. It probably would not have affected you.

[Antman]

That sounds great, thanks for the effort

When I wiped my game, there were a lot of logs missing, I believe what I had done was save a group of 100 logs over the top of another group of 100 logs. I could only restore my game to a much earlier point, close to the start.

I still don't quite understand why a full playback would be required when putting the information into a file that automatically updates itself... If the game started from the prison, so no savefile is needed to start the game, when you save, couldn't the log information simply be added to a file somewhere,and next time you save, the next lot of log information could be added to that file and so on? So it's splicing the recording together as it's being played, I can splice a recording together without playing back the whole game, so couldn't the log file be made 'on the fly' this way? Or do log files record more than just user input or something else I don't quite understand?

If that's not possible, would it be possible to make an option to not create a log file when you die? Out of 10000 log files in Conflux, I'd guess around 7000 would be deaths, unecessary logs files. While I'm asking for all these features.... would it be possible to to able to set Directx sound to default? This is mainly an issue due to if I die while playing, I exit the game and reboot it, which is much faster than waiting for 'Restart this game' message to appear, but Directx sound needs to be selected each time.

Again, thanks for the time and patience.

[Paul Stevens]

Several points:
1)
When saving - Copy the current log file into the save.
That seems like it would work. But it has its
drawbacks, too. If you should save over an
existing save then you will erase an earlier part of
your logfile. That is why I said you would need the
entire logfile from start in each save.
2)
Erase logfile when dying. Eeeek! What if you reloaded,
played an hour, saved, played a minute, died and
did not have a logfile? An hour gone!
3)
Default DirectX. I'll make a CSBwin and CSBuild that
implement this. You will have to edit the Conflux game
and put a check-mark in the global settings. So you
will need an un-encrypted Conflux. That exists now.

And I want to repeat my reservations about changing
anything to do with record/playback. This mechanism
is so delicate. It cannot work; yet it does. If I were
to change things for your Conflux conquest there is no
way to even test the changes except by spending
the hundreds of hours that you seem prepared to spend.
The current system did not work (and perhaps still
does not work under some circumstances) until it
had been tested for hundreds of hours and patched
and tweeked this way and that. A failure would be
heartbreaking. I am not prepared to attempt it.
Even as it is, I want your logfiles as you produce them
so that I can test the playback as you proceed.
Moreover, even this is not foolproof. Previous bugs
have demonstrated that playback errors earlier
in a game can remain hidden for extended periods
of time and might not make themselves known for
many hours of play. And, as if that were not enough,
the saves and restarts are the most bug-prone points
in the process. And that is where you are asking for
changes. Simply put - I don't trust it. I cannot see how
it can possibly work as well as it does.

[Paul Stevens]

CSBwin11_062 and CSBuild322 implement the
default DirectX feature.

[Paul Stevens]

Just to punctuate my fears about the reliability
of the record/playback........

In the 'Worst CSB Champion' competition I used
version 11.061 which implemented the 100000
file limit. I finished the game and attempted
to play it back. Failure after about 15 minutes
of play. Don't know why yet but
I hope to find out soon. Fingers crossed.

[Antman]

Ok fair enough, I hope the bug is an easy fix! I'm actually half way through my first year of Computer Science at university at the moment, but I doubt I could be any help as of yet Another reason I thought the automatic playfile creator would be useful is that I think the record/playback in CSBWin is underated at the moment, not many people seem to use it, but there's something satisfying about watching a game you've played being played back, definitely an underated feature! Probably useful for dungeon creators too, to watch people play through their dungeon. Will the latest bugfix verion of Conflux able to be edited in CSBuild to put the default Directx sound on? Or will I simply replace the CSBWin.exe file? Also my next request would be to remove the message telling me that the DSA activity is dangerously high every time I load.... In the mean time I need to find myself a new USB mouse for my laptop since a friend of mine lost my old one. Hard to play with a touch pad.

[Zyx]

I will release a new version with the directx by default.

[Paul Stevens]

telling me that the DSA activity is dangerously high

Sorry....That is Zyx's problem. I am willing to help him
but there is no way I can fix those DSAs myself.

If they show up in the playback, let me know.....
that is a different matter. Nothing should interrupt
a playback.

The CSBwin problem appears to be an operator error
of some sort. I don't know what I did but it appears
that I changed one of my savefiles accidentally.
Perhaps I loaded it with CSBuild and saved it. That
would be sufficient. At any rate, 11.062 is the
latest and best that is available and has no KNOWN
bugs.

[Antman]

It's not the DSAs that bug me, infact I don't remember have any slow down problems or anything in Conflux in my last game, it's the message the appears on loading the game. I understand when it appears the first time as a warning, but it gets a bit annoying when it appears everytime you load from there after. I'll wait for the next version of Conflux before I start recording anything though.

[Paul Stevens]

it's the message the appears on loading the game.

I understand. But the fact is that the DSAs use an excessive
amount of CPU. And only Zyx can change that. Although I
offer my help.......perhaps even a new function or two that
might encapsulate a lot of the DSA code. I assume Zyx was
aware of these messages when he released Conflux but chose
not to worry about them.