Conflux III discussion thread - potential spoilers

[Paul Stevens]

http://dianneandpaul.net/misc/monster.jpg

[Paul Stevens]

OK....I see. I am playing back my game in Quick Mode.

I did indeed (somehow) get to level 63 and fiddled with the
'evaporation' buttons. I must also have pressed the "Unleash
Hell" button while I was there. I think I will avoid that next
time around. Yuk.

Fortunately, I saved often and can interrupt the playfile at
a point just prior to that mistake. Then I can proceed from there.

[Phoenix]

Yeah, that's a Tormentor. You'll typically only see them in Hell or the Elemental Plane of Fire. Unleashing Hell makes Conflux channel DM2 and it's accursed minions. I'm glad you have a save to go back to.

[Paul Stevens]

I did not have a save to go back to. I had overwritten it several
times. And I point this out because some people may not know
this trick.

I recorded all of my playing. This is done automatically by Conflux.

When I ran into trouble, I played back the recording. The playback
process created the same save files that I had created on the
original run. When the playback got to the point just prior to
my mistake, I interrupted it so as not to overwrite the savefile that
I needed. Then I continued from that savefile.

This technique requires that the necessary recording(s) (Recordxxx.log)
be converted to a 'Playfile.log'. This is accomplished with SpliceCSB.exe.
If anyone is interested, please ask about it in a more appropriate forum
thread.

[Phoenix]

I've hit a road block with wip006 in that lightning is now way too powerful in this version. If a champion gets hit with a MON level lightning bolt there is almost a 100% chance of getting a broken bone. After killing Vecna, my party is annihilated within 5 seconds (no one in the party has less than 900 HP and all are ON masters or above). There's just no chance to get out of the way. This makes it essencially impossible to get the full 190 points of the Challenge.

Bugs:
The old bug that I have reported before about the energize dead blast spore is back, and like before, while the error occurs, the spell stick unlocks properly.

The hint oracle crashes on the "Court of the King" with System Error 19115 LZW Decode Error-Code too large. This crashes to the desktop.

I also found the Starving Fog from Leyla's Quest managed to transport itself to Mophus's level and harassed me in the Oven. I hope this is an error as that thing should be restricted to Leyla's level.

I didn't find any other problems with game play and was able to complete all four guild endings and get 189/190 points in the challenge.

[Zyx]

Thank you for the reports. It seems I'll have to dedicate part of a week end to fix these, please be patient! (or try yourself to fix them, the dungeon.dat is open source).

[Phoenix]

More observations with Wip006:

The Helm of Whispered Madness has a bug in that the "crazy talk" is always issued from the first champion and not the wearer of the Helm. The wearer does have their Wisdom drop normally.

In fighting Vecna, Vecna's attacks actually increased food and water levels. I don't know if this is by design or a bug...

[dolligan]

Hi , I just wanted to ask why this thread is so hard to find on this forum!
I played this mod a couple of years ago and was thinking of giving it another go - but its taken me about five visits to this place to find it (because I couldn't remember what it is called).
From what I can see this is the most active by far of the DM-inspired projects but a visitor here wouldn't even know it existed without digging through about four levels of sub-forums, shouldn't it be linked on the front page?

[Paul Stevens]

I cannot speak to the arrangement of the forum. Those of
us accustomed to it are probably a bit insensitive to new
arrivals.

But....I'm glad you found it. Keep us up-to-date on your
experience with Conflux. Most especially, let us know
of any problems you encounter. I am currently looking
into how we might correct some of the bugs that have
been identified. Zyx is pretty busy these days and it
may fall to me (or us) to create any updates. I have been
in contact with Zyx. Perhaps if we can submit well-defined
changes to him, he will be able to find the time to
incorporate them into the official copy of the game.

Actually, I am rather busy myself at the moment

[Jan]

I know this is off-topic but, honestly, since I've returned to the forums after a break I've been experiencing problems finding stuff here myself. An intermediate "layer" of "sub-topics" has been laid between many of the topics and the individual threads that I deem unnecessary and that confuses me a lot. I mean given the low traffic at the forums and the fact that only a very limited number of threads is "alive" there's IMHO no need for such a complex multi-level hierarchical structure. So I can very much understand the confusion of the infrequent users. But OK, this doesn't belong here, so sorry.

[Gambit37]

It's a good point. The structure reflected the myriad themes and topics we cover here, but maybe it's overkill these days. I'll discuss it with the other administrators.

[Phoenix]

Paul,

I can think of one thing that would make me and possibly other Conflux players happy that you are uniquely qualified to do. Csbwin needs a commandline or configuration modifier to eliminate that damned excessive DSA warning. The only time that it doesn't go off is in the initial enter the dungeon, after that it pops up every single time a game is loaded. I can see how it could be use to a dungeon developer, but it serves no purpose to an end user other to annoy and delay the start up of a game.

[Paul Stevens]

serves no purpose to an end user other to annoy

That was exactly its purpose!!!!

I intended it to annoy. To the extent that people would complain
to Zyx. Complain loudly enough that he might take some action
to eliminate it. But it appears that we are past that. Zyx has
pretty much gone into retirement.

Therefore, being of sound mind, I will address this issue. If you
do not hear from me within three days, reply to this thread to
annoy me.

[Paul Stevens]

Re: Excessive DSA warnings.

Try:
http://www.dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/CSBwin14_4.zip

It is much more lenient. If you continue to get warnings,
let me know. I'd like to see your game files.

Edit:
Please excuse the double post.

[Phoenix]

I wish I could test that version, but I gave up on new Microsoft OS's when they implemented WGA. My only windows box runs win98SE.

Anyway, I've gone Full Conflux Alchemist and completely re-wrote the Alchemy Guide on the Wiki. In doing so, however, I found a bug that pre-dates 3.5_B8. Sulfur mixed with Titanium should yeild Titanic Sulfate or Titanium Sulfate, but instead produces Titanic Phosphate. Now, I not sure how much this really effects things, but there's currently no way to test...

[Paul Stevens]

What version would you like?
I can create:

Windows x86-32 DIrectX
Ubuntu x86-32 SDL2.0
Ubuntu x86-32 SDL1.2
Raspbian ARM-32 SDL1.2

[Phoenix]

Wip006 shipped with 12.8 and that runs fine on my machine, but 14.4 is linked to a WinXP SP2-3 kernel32.dll.

[Paul Stevens]

I see. Don't give up hope. I would very much
like CSBwin to run on any old Windows system.

Give me a couple days.

[Paul Stevens]

Before I go off the deep end......Let us try something
simple.

Here is a version of CSBwin created with static MFC linkage.
It is the debug version so it is twice as large and half as fast.
But let us see if it works better:
http://www.dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/CSBwin_debug.exe

[Phoenix]

That executable is looking for Vista. I tweaked the program header to Win98, but it trips up on the EncodePointer function that was introduced in WinXP SP2's kernal32.dll. I'm not sure what you are compiling with, but I think Visual C++ 10.0 introduced multi-targeting to get arround this issue. I think it allows you to link against specific dlls.

[Paul Stevens]

I think it allows you to link against specific dlls.

Yep. But only as far back as XP from what I can see.

Anyway....By tomorrow I will have a version of CSBwin
compiled on Window$ 98. It should run anywhere!
If necessary, I'll boot Win95.

See you then.

[Paul Stevens]

Try this:
http://www.dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/CSB ... _Debug.exe

It works for me in both Windows98 and Windows7.
If it works for you, we can clean it up and get a
'release' version ready.

[Phoenix]

It runs, but on file load I get:
Assetion Failure at time = 1780127 line 779
Program c:\projects\CSB4Win98\data.cpp database overflow
Should we quit?

If I answer no, it loads the game and runs, if slowly.

[Paul Stevens]

I would be interested in seeing your game. Perhaps all
that I need is your "savegame.dat".

The database overflow always occurs. The 'debug' version
of the program tells you about it whereas the 'release' version
silently accepts the situation. No harm either way. But
I would like to see what is going on. It does not happen to me.

How slowly? When I play Conflux with this executable,
I see about 2 or 3 percent CPU utilization when I am moving
as fast as I can go through the dungeon. I see perhaps a very
slight slowness.....somewhat less than I see if a party member
is overweight. What kind of CPU do you have?

At any rate, the release version will be significantly faster
if it is CPU-limited.

[Phoenix]

The slowness is comparable to an encombered party move, but for all actions. My CPU is an AMD AthalonXP 2200+ 1.8Ghz. Idle utilization for this executable is averaging 56% -vs- 6% for 12.8. I'll e-mail you a copy of my save game.

[Paul Stevens]

Playing your game:

I see about 8 percent of the CPU when idle.
I have an AMD 4.2 GHz Quad-core. So that is
about 32 percent of one core.

32 * 4.2 / 1.8 = 75 percent. In agreement with
your observation. Totally unreasonable.

I am going to investigate two things:

1) Why the database overflow....undoubtedly a quirk in the
design of Conflux that we are not going to easily change.
2) Why the excessive CPU utilization....undoubtedly because
of the "Decoration AB" DSA that changes the dungeon dynamically.
Things like the flooding and seeds that sprout. Again, I don't
think we can change the game; simply too complex to debug
any significant modifications. This DSA executes literally
thousands of times per second. Yuk.

But I am glad you brought all this to my attention. I want this
game to run on much smaller hardware such as the Raspberry Pi.
That is an ARM processor running at 800MHz. It runs very well
in my tests but I never got as far into the dungeon as you have
gotten. You have triggered a lot of ongoing action. So I will
use your save game for my future tests. There may be things
I can do to make it faster in spite of the excessive DSA usage.

[Phoenix]

That savegame is my Alchemy group, but in a general sense, it represents 99% of the Competition. So a majority of the levels have been visited, and all the shooters and generators are active. All that is really left to do in it is kill Vecna and empty out the zoo. I believe that going to the zoo will also cause changes to the DSA you are referencing.

[Paul Stevens]

Try:

http://www.dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/CSB ... elease.exe

[Phoenix]

That executable works great. No errors and performance nearly identical to 12.8. Thank you! I certainly appreciate your efforts in this matter.

[Paul Stevens]

I made that using Visual C++ 6.0 running on Windows 98 in
Oracle VirtualBox on a Windows 7-64 system running on an
AMD X64 computer. Maximum display resolution was
640x480 with 16 colors. Can only see about a dozen
characters at a time. And slow as all getout. A bit of
a struggle.

But I just tried VirtualPC and it seems to be much better
on all counts. 1280x1024. 65536 colors. Much faster.
I like Windows 98 and Visual C++6.0. Much less
complicated. I don't see any reason not to make this
my official release. I will update the version numbers
and release it officially.

performance nearly identical to 12.8

Can you tell me the CPU utilization as you did for the debug version?