Help needed testing 3.2.x Campaign games!

[-Philosopher-]

At the risk of putting words in vexed's mouth, I think, that for now, the main concern is that the missions work and do not throw error in the logs and missions play similar as before.

That was understood, but I guess my question is about which before? The beginning, or the last one before this one (i.e. 1.10 vs. 3.1.5)?

If we have 1.10 -> master differences and 3.1.5 -> master differences (that both affect the way the mission plays), which are the priority?

Does the corrected campaign mod contain any changes to alpha 5, or just alpha 11?

[Bethrezen]

Why is it so important for them to move as a group at all? It doesn't affect the overall experience of the stage - which is fairly consistent across all four versions of the game I've been looking at (more than I can say for many of the other stages we've been testing) - possibly because of the way the stage is designed, the artefact group is back together in the place they're most likely to encounter the player units anyway. Indeed, past attempts to make them move as a group made this worse rather than better.

I strongly disagree with messing with the propulsion - that changes all sorts of other things (unit strength, stage timing, etc.), and if you start messing with even more things to compensate you just end up with more and more unintended consequences.

I think it's best just left alone and maybe picked up if/when formation movement gets looked at as a whole. There are more impactful differences elsewhere that should probably take priority anyway.

Well to begin with if the group gets split up then that makes them easy to pick off, and it makes the level easier than it should be.

Second once the behaviour has been fixed so that the other members of the convoy will attempt to recover the artefact should the one carrying it be destroyed that wont work properly if they are split up again this makes the level easier than it should be.

As for changing the propulsion I'm not really sure how this is supposed to negatively impact things considering 2 of the units are on half tracks already 2 are on wheels and only the last is on tracks.

As far as I'm concerned the current convoy composition makes no sense, either the whole convoy should be light fast units with the objective of acquiring the artefact and escaping the area as quick as possible before the player can catch them.

Or the whole convoy should be slow moving but heavily armoured have a lots of fire power and about 10 times the numbers and be difficult to take down.

The way the convoy works now makes no sense and is simply wrong this is not how convoys work just look at how any real word convoy works and you will never see the sort of behaviour that is being exhibited by the convoy on alpha 11

Here is an example of a real word convoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVWrt6gG8FM

You don’t see members of the convoy just speeding off everyone stays together as a group and they all move at the same speed, and this is how the convoy in v1.10 works as well.

Now since the formation speed limiting has been remove then the easiest work around for that is to change the tracked unit to half tracks, and then if you want to compensate for the fact that the tracked unit has been changed to half tracks you can either add another half track unit or you can upgrade the lancers to half tracks which will make them slightly tougher, now in the grand scheme of things this isn’t going to make to much difference to a player that is attacking the convoy with 10 heavy body units.

With regards to having the convoy start moving a bit sooner on insane, again I don’t really see what the problem is because alpha 11 is a small map and its possible to reach the convoy within about 30 to 45 seconds so there is no need for the convoy to be sitting there for like 2 / 2:30 minutes before they start moving that is far to easy if you want to have a longer activation time on the easier levels fair enough but for insane there is no need for such a long activation time.

In general I'm of the opinion that if the objective of this is to

a.) convert the game to JavaScript
b.) match the original as closely as is practical
c.) make everything work without errors

Then the current setup fails on objective 2 because the way alpha 11 plays out currently is nothing like how it plays out on v1.10 now I realise that it may not be possible to get identical behaviour but that’s ok it doesn't have to be identical along as there aren't glaring and obvious differences to the way in which the level is supposed to play

In the case of alpha 11 there are glaring and obvious differences, the convoy is not working correctly and therefore it should be fixed.

Note the highlighted text

Any bugs found in wzcam would be fixed though. This includes AI misbehavior, broken victory conditions, certain cheat-like exploits. In case when it is unobvious whether a certain behavior of wzcam is a bug or a feature, and it ends up fixed/changed, it is announced on this page.

This issue falls squarely in to the AI misbehaving category.

now as far as the priority goes most of the major stuff for alpha has already been fixed, so the only real issues left are stuff like this that where not addressed in the first pass because in the first pass we where looking for stuff which broke the game and prevented players from playing, and the only reason I'm still on alpha is because i cant get off alpha without cheating.

[Bethrezen]

Alpha 12

Ok so had another go at this with the deity cheat on but I can't seem to identify a specific cause, it just seems to happen at some point as I push up the map, I wonder if this could be a timed thing because they don’t seem to do this at the start of the level it only seems to happen in the later stages of the level or maybe the trigger for the change in behaviour is activated when i start attacking there bases outer premier defences ?!?!?

I really have no idea what is going on because I'm not seeing anything obvious, Its like at some point there is some sort of trigger that makes them switch from attacking to turtling inside there base, although i couldn't tell you what it is.

What i can say thou is what ever is going wrong is incredibly infuriating.

[-Philosopher-]

In general I'm of the opinion that if the objective of this is to

a.) convert the game to JavaScript
b.) match the original as closely as is practical
c.) make everything work without errors

Then the current setup fails on objective 2 because the way alpha 11 plays out currently is nothing like how it plays out on v1.10

OK - fine. We're applying the same principles; we just have a different judgement as to whether this is material to the way it plays out or not.
I'm sure @Beserk Cyborg will take a view as to which way he wants to jump.

Re. your Alpha 12 woes, I've also noticed some turtling and weird clustering around factories. I haven't investigated, but I'm wondering if there's a broader problem with jscam. Here's an example:

In this alpha 9 example, these guys just sat next to their factories, jiggling weirdly and not attacking, like they were trying to do something but were stuck. On previous versions there'd be less of them, but they'd come charging out to attack whatever's outside the base.

[Terminator]

I suggest you to stay in common sense. Just stick to original mission objective. If you need to change trucks on half-tracks - I would say its not a big deal. I dont mind if you add extra enemies on missions so make it harder. Cause new warzone have completely another balance. You may even tweak a balance in there.

[Bethrezen]

Re. your Alpha 12 woes, I've also noticed some turtling and weird clustering around factories. I haven't investigated, but I'm wondering if there's a broader problem with jscam. Here's an example:



In this alpha 9 example, these guys just sat next to their factories, jiggling weirdly and not attacking, like they were trying to do something but were stuck. On previous versions there'd be less of them, but they'd come charging out to attack whatever's outside the base.

that's certainly a possibility i guess it depends on wither the behaviour of units on a given level is handled by that levels mission script or wither its handled from the library script.

I'm not sure because my knowledge of JavaScript is rudimentary at best unfortunately JavaScript wasn't something that was covered extensively, at college so while i understand programming fundamentals well enough my experience coding in JavaScript is limited to doing really simple practice exercises like making a html / JavaScript calculator so the code base for WZ is way to complicated for me.

[Berserk Cyborg]

Ok so had another go at this with the deity cheat on but I can't seem to identify a specific cause, it just seems to happen at some point as I push up the map, I wonder if this could be a timed thing because they don’t seem to do this at the start of the level it only seems to happen in the later stages of the level or maybe the trigger for the change in behaviour is activated when i start attacking there bases outer premier defences ?!?!?

I really have no idea what is going on because I'm not seeing anything obvious, Its like at some point there is some sort of trigger that makes them switch from attacking to turtling inside there base, although i couldn't tell you what it is.

Guess it is a Heisenbug, where studying it alters the behavior of the bug. Oddly, I never encountered it the eight or so times I failed Alpha 12 on insane. I did have much better success without my commander, so maybe that might help. Try putting heavy cannon Python Tracks in front of your lancers since they absorb more damage without being in instant danger. Taking out the LZ is something your bombard hovers should do as soon as possible (you can destroy the cyborg factory near it if you are careful enough).

For Alpha 11, I think the tracked heavy cannon unit needs to be removed if regrouping is to be done right now. The regrouping code does not handle tracked droids well at all (sadly I do not understand it ). So I welcome a new group composition and a new group timer if anyone has any ideas.

I'm not sure because my knowledge of JavaScript is rudimentary at best unfortunately JavaScript wasn't something that was covered extensively, at college so while i understand programming fundamentals well enough my experience coding in JavaScript is limited to doing really simple practice exercises like making a html / JavaScript calculator so the code base for WZ is way to complicated for me.

The campaign library tells them to defend the factory (probably should add a radius so that they actually move to defend the base). Javascript is actually quite simple. Granted, I had experience with C++ and Python3 at the time I started my first conversion (Alpha 9), but I am sure anyone here could pick up any script and learn everything quickly. I learned the basics by tinkering with Nullbot and creating a VTOL based personality for it (Airbot) before moving on to campaign, then creating my own AI, Cobra, from SemperFi-JS. In fact I would say that the new SemperFi-JS AI would suffice to learn most of the JS in the scripts around here as it is made to be a simple template AI.

[alfred007]

Due to the changes the newest mod did in beta campaign I went back to beta 3 to test all these changes. Beta 3 looks good, no errors all looked fine. All I say is that the throttle times of the two heavy factories in the NW base should be decreased. It's 2 minutes at the moment and with a group of 5 units coded for attack it would last 10 minutes on normal until you get attacked. I think you should decrease the throttle times to 90 and 80 seconds.
I had a problem to reload saved games. I couldn't reload any games I saved with the mod. When I tried I heared a "bing" and the game didn't load and I couldn't change the window with shift tab. I had to start the task manager and found a popup window with this error message:

|12:42:40: [rebuildSearchPath:446] Die benötigte Mod konnte nicht geladen werden: Updated-Campaign.wz

Warzone wird versuchen das Spiel ohne sie zu laden.

In english: The mod could not be loaded and the game will try to reload the saved game without the mod.
When I closed this window the game reloaded the saved game, but without the mod. Only when I quit the game and restart it I was able to reload saved games with the mod. Strange

In this alpha 9 example, these guys just sat next to their factories, jiggling weirdly and not attacking, like they were trying to do something but were stuck. On previous versions there'd be less of them, but they'd come charging out to attack whatever's outside the base.

If I understand the code right these produced units only attacks you when a factory has produced at least 4 units. And that for each factory. That means as soon as the left factory had 4 units produced those 4 units attacks you. Same for the right factory. In your picture each factory had produced only 3 units so they wait to the 4th to attack you.

@Berserk Cyborg: Is it possible to change the code in that way that the produced units attacks the player as soon as the two factories had together produced 4 units? Thats something I also thougt about during beta 3, because in the NW base and the Command Center base there are two factories with the same behaviour. With that change you would get attacked more often and it would be more competetive to destroy the base. With throttle times of 60 seconds you get only attacked every 4 minutes on normal or 2:40 on insane and that's more time I need to destroy the entire base in alpha 9. But I don't know if it's possible and if it's possible how complicated and how much work it is to change the code.

With regards to having the convoy start moving a bit sooner on insane, again I don’t really see what the problem is because alpha 11 is a small map and its possible to reach the convoy within about 30 to 45 seconds so there is no need for the convoy to be sitting there for like 2 / 2:30 minutes before they start moving that is far to easy if you want to have a longer activation time on the easier levels fair enough but for insane there is no need for such a long activation time.

For Alpha 11, I think the tracked heavy cannon unit needs to be removed if regrouping is to be done right now. The regrouping code does not handle tracked droids well at all (sadly I do not understand it ). So I welcome a new group composition and a new group timer if anyone has any ideas.

I agree with Bethrezen. With all these problems to emulate a realistic convoy behaviour we shouldn't hesitate to find a solution that makes sense, even if it is not the same way like in 1.10. To start a discussion I propose that we create a group of 6 half tracked mantis tanks with 2 lancers, 2 heavy cannons and 2 HMG or 3 lancers and 3 heavy cannons. And the queue for getting the artifact get decreased to 90 seconds and depends on the difficulty like throttle times.

[-Philosopher-]

Does anyone know if the bug where restoring a saved game restores everything to full health has been raised as a ticket? I would have thought it was, but I can't find anything about it. I'll raise a ticket if we're fairly sure it won't be a duplicate.

[-Philosopher-]

In this alpha 9 example, these guys just sat next to their factories, jiggling weirdly and not attacking, like they were trying to do something but were stuck. On previous versions there'd be less of them, but they'd come charging out to attack whatever's outside the base.

If I understand the code right these produced units only attacks you when a factory has produced at least 4 units. And that for each factory. That means as soon as the left factory had 4 units produced those 4 units attacks you. Same for the right factory. In your picture each factory had produced only 3 units so they wait to the 4th to attack you.

Actually, I was aware of that, so I perhaps should have tried to get a better example. In the case above, I'd already killed a few units before taking the screenshot so there were more units clustered around each factory and not going anywhere beforehand. The weird bit was the "jiggling" - like they were moving and trying to do something, but were constrained.

@Berserk Cyborg: Is it possible to change the code in that way that the produced units attacks the player as soon as the two factories had together produced 4 units? Thats something I also thougt about during beta 3, because in the NW base and the Command Center base there are two factories with the same behaviour. With that change you would get attacked more often and it would be more competetive to destroy the base. With throttle times of 60 seconds you get only attacked every 4 minutes on normal or 2:40 on insane and that's more time I need to destroy the entire base in alpha 9. But I don't know if it's possible and if it's possible how complicated and how much work it is to change the code.

I agree with this. It would seem logical more factories means getting attacked more often, rather than bigger build-ups within a base before attacks.

[-Philosopher-]

Is #4556 still an issue? @alfred007, I have a dim recollection of you reporting something that sounded like this earlier, but that was about the beta campaign, wasn't it? So, I'm not sure....

Sounds like something that should probably be on our watchlist over at viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13753 though. Let me know what you think.

[alfred007]

Is #4556 still an issue? @alfred007, I have a dim recollection of you reporting something that sounded like this earlier, but that was about the beta campaign, wasn't it? So, I'm not sure....

Sounds like something that should probably be on our watchlist over at viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13753 though. Let me know what you think.

No, I haven't reported something similar to that bug in beta campaign. I will have a look at this bug as soon as I'm starting testing gamma campaign and if it's still alive in master we can add it to our watch list.

[Berserk Cyborg]

Due to the changes the newest mod did in beta campaign I went back to beta 3 to test all these changes. Beta 3 looks good, no errors all looked fine. All I say is that the throttle times of the two heavy factories in the NW base should be decreased. It's 2 minutes at the moment and with a group of 5 units coded for attack it would last 10 minutes on normal until you get attacked. I think you should decrease the throttle times to 90 and 80 seconds.
I had a problem to reload saved games.

Forgot about Beta 3, all the other Beta/Gamma mission factories were made faster. Wonder if we should make the last Beta mission have faster reinforcement timers for the land units.

Updated-Campaign.wz

For production, I think a better solution would be to have a way to dynamically decrease all factory throttles after an event or whatever.

[Bethrezen]

Guess it is a Heisenbug, where studying it alters the behavior of the bug. Oddly, I never encountered it the eight or so times I failed Alpha 12 on insane. I did have much better success without my commander, so maybe that might help. Try putting heavy cannon Python Tracks in front of your lancers since they absorb more damage without being in instant danger. Taking out the LZ is something your bombard hovers should do as soon as possible (you can destroy the cyborg factory near it if you are careful enough).

lol yeah.

Although I'm curious why you have never seen that bug because that happens to me pretty much every time I play alpha 12, question is are you just playing through from alpha 11 or are you starting from a save made on alpha 12 ?

See I'm wondering if this might be a reload issue.

See for alpha 12 since I know the start of that can be tricky I'll normally make a save just before I take off that way if I screw up the start of the mission I can just reload and immediately take off again without having to mess about clearing the LZ and getting the ship loaded up.

And I do recall that that last attempt was started from the aforementioned alpha 12 save

It could also just be a matter of the way you actually play the mission, because I tend to have a methodical and systematic approach to this.

Step 1:
Build a pair of repair bays at my LZ and call in the rest of lancer group 2

Step 2:
Call in the first half of lancer group 1 and deal with the computers opening attack.

Step 3:
Once my units have been repaired from dealing with the opening attack have lancer group 2 push east and take out the first 3 lancer towers while lancer group 1 defends against there hovercraft, and call in the second haft of lancer group 1

Step 4:
Once the first 3 lancer towers are down fall back for repair and deal with the incoming attack.

Step 5:
Call in the first half of the bombard group, and have lancer group 2 push east again and take out the next group of 3 lancers and collect the hover artefact, then fall back for repair, if done correctly you shouldn’t loose any units doing this but some times if things go badly then it may be necessary to fall back early and then do this in 2 or 3 pushes

Step 6:
Research, the hover artefact, call in the second half of the bombard group

Step 7:
Recycle lancer group 1 and convert to lancer hover craft, while the bombards provide cover until I can fly the hover lancers back in

Step 8:
Recycle the bombard group and convert to hover craft, the fly them in while the hover lancer provide cover

Step 9:
The bombard group slowly pushes forward wiping out everything in there path while the hover lancer group provide protection, mean while my land based lancer squad is left in position to guard my LZ from land based attacks until my hover bombards can take out the defences so they can push forward.

Usually this whole process will take me around 40 to 50 minutes give or take depends on how well things go so normally I'm reaching there base with about 30 to 40 minutes left on the clock, and its usually at this point where I end up stymied by the massive build up in there base because at some point between me converting lancer group1 and the bombards to hover crafts and reaching the outskirts of there base they go in to turtle mode and I can't get in to there base because there are simply to many of them to go head to head and picking them off with my bombards simply takes to long.

Some how though I don’t think this is only an issue with the units from factories, it also seems like an issue with the units from there drop zone as well because they just start sitting there to, and given that when I saved and reloaded they all came at me at once that tells me that something is causing a misfire in the droids behaviour as I push up the map and what ever is misfiring is being reactivated on reload, which is why in the last save I uploaded I ended up with there entire army coming at me at once, instead of in small groups like they are supposed to.

So I don’t know what is going on or what the trigger is but there is definitely a problem somewhere, because I don’t see this behaviour on v1.10

For Alpha 11, I think the tracked heavy cannon unit needs to be removed if regrouping is to be done right now. The regrouping code does not handle tracked droids well at all (sadly I do not understand it ). So I welcome a new group composition and a new group timer if anyone has any ideas.

To be honest I'm generally of the same option it's why I had suggested changing the tracked unit to half tracks, as for the activation timer for when the convoy should start moving realistically I don’t think you really need more than about 60 to 90 seconds, on insane at least, because alpha 11 isn't a very big map and if you ignore the scav's initially as they are no threat to the player you can reach the convoy in that time frame easily enough, although you could make the activation time a bit longer for easier difficulties.

I think the first move for this should probably be to figure out what the convoy composition should be because it's going to be hard to deal with the other facets of this until that has been agreed, the next most sensible move after that is to sort out the behaviour of the convey so they behave like they are supposed to, then once those 2 things have been sorted out we can see about adjusting the convoys activation timer I think probably about 60 seconds would be a good staring point and seems reasonably fair then it can be adjusted up or down from there, depending on what people think.

@Berserk Cyborg: Is it possible to change the code in that way that the produced units attacks the player as soon as the two factories had together produced 4 units?

I agree with this. It would seem logical more factories means getting attacked more often, rather than bigger build-ups within a base before attacks

Humm… that's certainly an interesting idea and something worth investigating to see how it would play out well assuming it's possible that is.

The weird bit was the "jiggling" - like they were moving and trying to do something, but were constrained.

The jiggling might be something to do with the rally point being to close to the factory, so maybe try moving the rally point a little further away and see if it stops ?

Is #4556 still an issue? @alfred007, I have a dim recollection of you reporting something that sounded like this earlier, but that was about the beta campaign, wasn't it? So, I'm not sure....

Sounds like something that should probably be on our watchlist over at viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13753 though. Let me know what you think.

Ouch that one sounds nasty, wonder if this one is a consequence of the conversion process, like being able to build factories on away missions on unconverted levels, definitely one that’s going to need investigating once we get that far.

Along with the invincible nexus drop ship on gamma 03 reported here

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12714&start=465

For production, I think a better solution would be to have a way to dynamically decrease all factory throttles after an event or whatever.

you kinda lost me there ?!?! you care to elaborate on this ?

[alfred007]

Is #4556 still an issue? @alfred007, I have a dim recollection of you reporting something that sounded like this earlier, but that was about the beta campaign, wasn't it? So, I'm not sure....

Sounds like something that should probably be on our watchlist over at viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13753 though. Let me know what you think.

Ouch that one sounds nasty, wonder if this one is a consequence of the conversion process, like being able to build factories on away missions on unconverted levels, definitely one that’s going to need investigating once we get that far.

No, it's not. In 3.2.3 beta 11 and gamma 1 are not converted into javascript. With the latest mod I will start testing again from beta 3 on and will have a look at it, when I'm at the end of beta campaign.

The jiggling might be something to do with the rally point being to close to the factory, so maybe try moving the rally point a little further away and see if it stops ?

That's a point we should have a look at, because it also happens with the factories in beta 5 and I'm sure that it also happens in a lot more levels.

To be honest I'm generally of the same option it's why I had suggested changing the tracked unit to half tracks, as for the activation timer for when the convoy should start moving realistically I don’t think you really need more than about 60 to 90 seconds, on insane at least, because alpha 11 isn't a very big map and if you ignore the scav's initially as they are no threat to the player you can reach the convoy in that time frame easily enough, although you could make the activation time a bit longer for easier difficulties.

I think the first move for this should probably be to figure out what the convoy composition should be because it's going to be hard to deal with the other facets of this until that has been agreed, the next most sensible move after that is to sort out the behaviour of the convey so they behave like they are supposed to, then once those 2 things have been sorted out we can see about adjusting the convoys activation timer I think probably about 60 seconds would be a good staring point and seems reasonably fair then it can be adjusted up or down from there, depending on what people think.

I agree with Bethrezen. With all these problems to emulate a realistic convoy behaviour we shouldn't hesitate to find a solution that makes sense, even if it is not the same way like in 1.10. To start a discussion I propose that we create a group of 6 half tracked mantis tanks with 2 lancers, 2 heavy cannons and 2 HMG or 3 lancers and 3 heavy cannons. And the queue for getting the artifact get decreased to 90 seconds and depends on the difficulty like throttle times.

I made a suggestion a few posts before. What do you think about it?

For production, I think a better solution would be to have a way to dynamically decrease all factory throttles after an event or whatever.

That would be a lot of work for balance, because if you decrease factory throttles to much you get too much units you have to fight with. But it's an interesting idea. What about to decrease it as soon as the base get attacked?