MOO (not another patch) patch

[SDragon]

I decided to create my own thread instead of hijacking kyrub's.  This is a personal patch I guess as everyone will have their own opinions, people are free to use it as they see fit.  I'll be using v1.40m as the base, but there may be changes back to v1.3 and those will be highlighted in the changelog.  I'll be working on it as long as I have free time.

changelog (as of april 25 2020)
======================
- battle scanner shows 3rd special weapon again, code in that area was changed back to v1.3
- battle scanner weapons text shifted up one pixel to align with the top of the special weapons text
- races screen arrow keys changed back to v1.3 which now cycles through a lot more fields but no longer will increase or decrease overall security field
- 0 population bug (hostile planets + atmos + soil + with eco slider) fixed
- negative pop tenth issue should also be resolved with the 0 pop bug since the pop tenth calculations used the negative value that came out of that bug
- fleet keyboard commands changed to 'space bar' for accept, nothing for cancel (esc works)
- creating spies now correctly uses number of existing spies to calculate initial spy cost
- autosave changed back to only saving every 5 years and only to file save7.gam


things to look at
=====================
- factory build cost as per OSG


issues looked at that won't be fixed
=========================
- ships still drop doom virus when next to a planet and 'targeted' by enemy ships/planets even if retreating (bombs will always drop even if retreating, other weapons will check if they should retaliate or not)
- precise nebula ETA after launch is not possible as the ETA is not stored as part of the ship but is calculated based on it's position in the map, once it slows down in the nebula, the position will inherently throw off any calculation for ETA
- kyrub enabled 'PageUp' and 'PageDown' hotkeys to cycling through page screens like the design weapons, planets, etc so not sure a mousewheel scroll is needed (or really possible)
- right click to reverse order of ship build, code doesn't have space to allow for insertion of any type of ui response
- retreat and resend to same planet bug won't be fixed as there's not enough space in that area to add the code required to restrict the scenario

[SDragon]

I've modified the files that should revert back some of kyrub's code base back to v1.3 which will show the 3rd special weapons slot again.  Based on where the code was, it shouldn't affect any of his other changes in v1.40m as I've looked at the changelog and don't see anything that is labeled as a fix that should be using that area of code.

While I was poking around the area of the battle scanner, I also adjusted the spacing of the weapons text as it was a pixel down for some reason so it should look more vertically centered. 

Lastly, I changed the [Typo in "Sub Space Interdictor" in "Tech" => "Propulsion": “...device is a placed…". Remove "a"] which was just hex changing it in the Research.lbx file

[SDragon]

I've changed the arrow key interface on the races page back to v1.3.  There are set positions where the user can cycle through basically all the options on the page and interact with that positioning by pressing the 'enter' key.  Unfortunately on v1.40m, the positions don't seem nearly as fixed and it felt kind of incomplete for me, even with gaining the function to increase or decrease the overall security setting with the arrow keys.

[SDragon]

I'm looking into the pop 0 bug issue and am trying to figure out how it calculates everything.  It uses the pop tenths calculations that I believe sargon0 noticed could go negative sometimes and rboplayer also mentioned "another one I thought of - the decimal factor population growth, which is clearly a bug".

Does anyone know why this would be a bug?  Shouldn't the pop tenths be used to give a more precision calculation for population growth or am I confusing two different issues here?

[SDragon]

0 Population Bug Analysis and Resolution
======================================
The algorithm uses the planet's production after maintenance and multiples that by the % of the eco slider to get the amount of production being used for ecology.  By mid to late game, most players will have Robotic Controls III and higher which means they will be massively producing bc production (3500-5000) which is overkill for the requirements of Atmospheric Terraforming, Soil Enrichment and Advanced Soil Enrichment which only requires 650 production to really complete.  This means that the left over bc which we hope or assume would be used for terraforming/boost in population growth is still very large.  Unfortunately the code that handles this left over amount then multiples that by 10 which results in the signs flipping to the negative once the value passes 32000.  

Luckily for us, right after that, the value is divided by the 'cost to increase population' but once the sign flip has occurred, it didn't make a difference.  The simple fix was just to reverse the order so that the left over production was first divided and then multiplied which should ensure that the value never passes 32000.  Not a hugely critical bug as only extenuating circumstances would usually leave you with a planet in that state with a large enough population and production to trigger the bug.  Still nice to fix though.

[SDragon]

I figured out what the tech percent was, it's actually tech level so as the game progresses, it uses that to increase the cost of spies.  I think I'll just leave it as it is.

[SDragon]

I figured out what the tech percent was, it's actually tech level so as the game progresses, it uses that to increase the cost of spies.  I think I'll just leave it as it is.

I don't think the simple fix was what the original game creators intended for the game and believe they accidentally left out the spy multiplication in the building code as opposed to accidentally adding the code to the display part.   So whereas the simple fix removed the spy multiplication because it was 'easier', I've reworked the code so that the part that had it missing now uses it correctly when calculating spy costs.   The attachments show how players have had a free pass on initial spy costs every turn and basically could rebuild their entire spy collection every turn at the same cost whereas the new change takes the number of spies existing and makes it more expensive to create new spies.

[RefSteel]

These seem like pretty good bugfixes from the descriptions. I wonder to what extent the bugs in question carry over to 1oom.... (Probably not the three-specials bug since that was introduced in kyrub's patch....)

[SDragon]

These seem like pretty good bugfixes from the descriptions.  I wonder to what extent the bugs in question carry over to 1oom....  (Probably not the three-specials bug since that was introduced in kyrub's patch....)

For spies, it looks like they removed the spy multiplication, using the formula

Code:

spycost = e->tech.percent[TECH_FIELD_COMPUTER] * 2 + 25;

for both race screen display and spy build (ui/uiraces.c & game/game_spy.c).  


The 0 population bug still uses the old formula so it could still be an issue

Code:

v = (eco * 10) / e->inc_pop_cost;

but it would depend on the compiler, whether it was still limited to 2 bytes or not. (game/game_misc.c)

The other things are mostly cosmetic or hotkey related so I'm not too worried about those.  

If anyone was still working on the 1oom project, those could be easy fixes.  Another fix they could implement would be the 'retreat and resend fleet to same planet' bug.  All they would need to add would be a check to make sure current planet owner != player, and disable the accept button if current planet == destination planet.

[mxb2001]

Well I may have found a bug in this non-patch <g>. Or not.

So I started a small ave 2 player game as sili vs darlok and was exterminating the darloks. I started this game using the other patch I call MOO140M2. M1 being the one that fixed the battle scanner display, M2 fixing the endless saves every turn filling HD's and M3 being the one in this thread that combines the 1&2. So after I found M3 I used it to start 2 new games but I also decided to try using it to finish the game started with M2 and well it crashed in a very weird way.

I attach a screenshot of the crash screen. Also the last SAVE7.GAM from before it crashed. I alas didn't have the presence of mind (being a Silly Coid I've rocks for brains) to screen cap the game screen when it started acting weird just before the crash.

So I describe it.
There is (was) a Darly colony 5 parsecs from me (I had range 4 only) but on this turn it simply vanished and there were darly transports leaving it in the direction of the, uh map edge (which it lay quite near to).
Weirder yet all my fleets were permitted to fly to it with 4 fuel range even though they needed 5. No extra tanks I swear.
Then when I clicked on the darly ship in orbit the program crashed.