Sure am 
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Master of Orion 1 unofficial patch
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Here are 3 testing cases, with different feedback needed.
1. WAIT issues ...for details see the first post of this thread, to do list. I've tried to fix it - do the bugs still appear or not? - is the combat stable? - are other wait features working correctly (wait and then move and bomb planet or shoot with special) - are repulsor beams working endlessly (e.g. "reloading") when waiting - ... other things you come accross 2. Nebulae ETA ...the transports and the ships should now move with the same speed through nebulae. The speed of transports has increased (was lower due to a bug), the speed of ships has decreased (was higher due to another bug). Both changes should be most visible on warp I movement. - The ETA through nebulae when departing planets should now be correct - test test test - the same ETA when checking a fleet in deep space is (I think) sometimes incorrectly displayed ?? - test test (when, if possible) - but hopefully the overall ETA remains correct at least ?? - special check is necessary for situation when the human player has BY FAR the quickliest engines from all players, due to the way the movement is executed - test test 3. free colony ships - scaled price ...This is a corrected version of the 4th colony ship bug, which should slightly scale the "price" of the free ships given to the AIs based on their total production (planets_BC), so that they do not control the universe in 50 years. The scaling happens based on AI planet number. The idea is: the quicklier the development, the more AI has to "build up colonies first" (totally virtual image) before getting automatic colony ship/turn. - main issue: GAME BALANCE - test for function (do they get the colony ships) - see if it's not too severe - try a comparison game with, say, Silicoids opponents and a huge universe [SIZE="1"](!! please note that when the AI is contacted, it may stop its expansion (if it's not expansionist), so ALT+GALAXY is a bad way.)[/SIZE] (unzip. move to Moo directory. rename to starmap.exe.)
#3 Free Colony Ships - Scaled Price;
This one has been thoroughly tested now but #1 & #2 still need testing! Kyrub's OLD_Fix (4'th_Colony_Ship.zip) ONLY repaired a v1.3 bug which caused AI's to become "stuck" at 4 Colony Ships and unable to expand until that 4 stack was removed/replaced. Free colony ships are given when both; a) there is less than four of them. b) the d500 roll is not bigger than [(Total_Planets_BC * 2)/5] This OLD_Fix noticably improves AI expansion over v1.3 but from my observations, is nowhere near a game-altering/breaking change one might fear. Kyrub's NEW_Fix (4'th_Colony_Ship_PRICED.zip) uses the following formula; Free colony ships are given when both; a) there is less than four of them. b) the d500 roll is not bigger than [(Total_Planets_BC * 2)/(4 + #_of_AI_Worlds)] This NEW_Fix effectively slows down OLD_Fix's expansion (slightly) but it's still well above v1.3 Anyways, Kyrub has decided to stick with OLD_Fix for now since that was the intention of the original game designers. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Also, on Impossible, AI's get a 100% production boost!! So this changes everything! And I was unable to properly test this on Impossible because... well my winning% on Impossible was already nonexistent! =P At this point, all we want to know is if Impossible is still winnable! If a few vets have some time, download this savegame (slot6) and the included STARMAP file (OLD_Fix), thanks! Difficulty: Impossible Size: Huge Player: Humans Opponents: 5 Notes: No Psilons present but Silicoids "should" prove to be the main threat. No need to keep records, just try to win but no exploits! Come on... SOMEONE sign up for this!! - Lydon
I'll have a look at this if no one beats me to it, but it could take some time. An Impossible game on a huge map could be quite an undertaking, especially while trying to take unexpected AI behavior into account, and I'm quite busy at the moment. Still, it's on The List, so I'll hopefully get to it before too long!
I am playing on #1. I was unable to replicate infinite exploit wait bug, but mind you, I was unaware of it before, so I may not be doing the right things to trigger it. But I build a ship with ionic stream projector, ionic pulsar and teleporter, and no matter how many ties I told it to wait, it was shooting them only once per round.
That said, at one point I got a strange feel report for AI fleet - three stacks were negative (for example in one -2 ships). Also, at one point I had a strange graphic bug. I cannot blame those on #1, as I haven't played MOO often enough in the past year or so to be sure something else isn't messing up my MOO stability (and in either case, both of those occurred only once and were not major).
Perfect testing, piotrus.
The negative battle stacks are never a small issue - and the garbled graphics are most probably a result of data corruption caused by the former ones. Here's a fix, my idea is your bug was probably due to using Projector + normal ship damage + previous fix, so if you could re-test an old save or the issue anywhere in the game, I'd be quite grateful. It needs more testing, I have no idea if the new fix works. Thanks! --------------------- Lydon has spotted an interesting bug (since he's too modest to write it, I'll do it instead). Single, non-allied AI ships, when encountering over a planet, are mysteriously annihilated. In the save you see an example, Silicoid scout annihilating with a Psilon colony ship over a planet "north" of Mentar (after pushing next turn). That's pretty nasty, isn't it? The issue is connected to a bad performance of AI-AI combat, seems correctable. (Kudos to Lydon!)
Coming back here after about two years, I could hardly believe my eyes: a PATCH for MOO1 - finally an end to those annoying bugs. That's freaking great! Thanks for kyrub and all the others to make it happen. Can't wait to give it a try!
One question: is wait_issues_fixed_4.zip the latest version (as replacement for starmap.exe I suppose) and do I need any other previous patches or other files to run it? If you have a more recent version for playtesting or if I should pay extra attention to certain bugs / situations, please let me know. ignatius
Nice to meet you, ignatius, I'm really glad you once posted this. Prime inspiration.
Sadly, there is no recent fully playable variant right now. The posts on latest pages are small alpha versions of complicated changes made lately, to see/test how they work. My patch has fallen prey to my desire (hubris) to make a "full version issue" instead of small sliced thing. As it seems, the game is way more buggy than I thought at the beginning. I also let the scope of the patch get out of my hands, so that I face an uneasy task to put together pieces of code I made hastily several months ago (and forgot what they're about since). The "larval" stage of the patch was scheduled on September. Ehm. I still hope I can post it before Christmass. Although time is short.
December 20th, 2009, 09:57
(This post was last modified: December 20th, 2009, 11:31 by ignatius.)
Great to hear that you are still working on it! As for the "full version issue" - maybe the way to go would be like many Open Source projects do: Have a "stable" version which only includes stuff that works 100% i.e. stuff which is either easy and obvious to fix (like maybe the missle / torpedo blunder or the racial traits table) or which has been thoroughly tested (maybe some interface enhancements or some variants of the negative fleet bug fixes). Even if it includes only a small fraction of the complete bug-list - any error corrected is a valuable improvement.
Anything else could be included in a "development" version which should also come with a checklist for the testplayers so that they know what to watch out for and instructions on how to provide feedback (e.g. save-games, notes, etc.). As for the rebalancing issues that have been discussed here - I would postpone that altogether. It is clear that if you manage to fix all AI bugs then MOO will become a much harder game simply because the original game has already been rebalanced with the bugs present. Since even small fixes can be extremely influential in this regard, it would make sense to wait till all fixes are stable and optionally rebalance then. It might turn out that it's not even necessary: Since hardly anyone around here seems to play below hard anyway, having to switch to easy or medium for the same challenge wouldn't be much of a problem. So the only remaining issues would be things where whole game concepts become dysfunctional (like e.g. when it should turn out that the fixed AIs will always unite with stable alliances and gang up against the player so that the whole diplomacy subsystem becomes moot). ignatius PS: just a remark to the "Sad Psilon" issue after rereading the thread. It happened in my games on a number of occasions that one AI got trapped in a OPE - most likely due to crippling ship upkeep cost. When it did, it usually happened under circumstances not unlike those RefSteel described, so I'm virtually certain that this has nothing at all to do with your patch. Also, I would consider this a minor issue - in fact it might add some interesting and unexpected twists to a game - while at the same time it's probably hard to fix as you probably would have to invent a completely new mechanism instead of just repairing an existing one. |
