Modding Bug Question

[Phlagm]

I've run into this once before long ago, and I can't remember what the hell I did to fix it:

I've got a quest that I'm trying to debug.

It's EXACTLY a quest I already have in the game working perfectly, only this one has some extras and is behaving badly. SO the section that fails does this: It pops up a window, with a Y/N. Then when you click Y, it loads another window. However when you close that window, it won't let you click the engage buttons on any planets until you do something like removing an installed item and reinstalling it.

One odd thing about it, is that everything in the PAGE executes except the INIT command, but if I take the init command out, it still has this problem. Any ideas?

[Phlagm]

One other problem is that there's an ITEM command in this PAGE block and but then <uvar=newitem> doesn't work. It just leaves a blank.

[sgqwonkian]

Is the game paused? I've found that the TIME command sometimes pauses the game. It has something to do with where in the quest you put the TIME command, and whether you have "endquest" before, in, or after your GOTO or YSNO PAGE.

I know you mention nothing about the TIME command in your post, but the symptoms are the same - it's like everything freezes up and the engage buttons stop working. The first couple times it happened, I actually rebooted 'cause I thought it was a hang/crash.
Instead, it turns out to have just put itself on pause. As soon as I hit the spacebar, a bunch of time rolled forward and I could engage again. I've considered doing this intentionally on a quest: "You encounter a space-time distortion that traps your ship between heartbeats." But it seems awfully cruel to be that annoying on purpose.

[Phlagm]

Hmmm. Good god, I think that may be it. Of course now I've tinkered with it so much that I've got it crashing, but I do have an older version saved. I'm going to go try that. Yeah, uninstalling and reinstalling items unfreezes it, and that is something that moves the clock along. I'll try it here in a little bit, and if it works, then I've got one other issue to work out, and then I'll have a new, and I think sufficiently interesting mainquest...which involves some cleverness on the part of the player. Well, the first time, anyway. Maybe I'll make variations to keep it from getting stale as fast. But I do like to think that at least one aspect of this quest will really make some people have to think outside the box.

[Phlagm]

Much to my extreme annoyance, I have discovered another "present." The TIME block wouldn't seem to work anywhere in the page to which the first is redirected. This baffles me to no end, because I have another quest that does exactly that. I'm going to look into it some more, once I have a completely working version of this quest.

Oh and my most recent discovery. INIT won't work in a GOTO page. If I put it in the parent page, it works, if I allow the user to have a choice, the INIT won't work. This is a significant blow to the coolness of my quest.

[Phlagm]

Hah! Just when I decide to get frustrated and complain, that turns out to not be the case. It may be the location of the INIT in the PAGE block (maybe?) that was the culprit. All I did was delete it from the PAGE to which I moved it, and put it back on the GOTO page.

Very odd, and aggravating. But so long as it works. In other obnoxious news, I'm getting an increasing occurrence of random unpopulated homeworlds. I'm not pleased

[Phlagm]

I take back my take back. I realized I didn't save the file after changing it back, and INITs don't work in GOTO pages. How frustrating.

[sgqwonkian]

Phlagm said: In other obnoxious news, I'm getting an increasing occurrence of random unpopulated homeworlds. I'm not pleased



From some research I did with the "FLET bla attack bla" command, I suspect the program generates the homeworlds off-map everygame for the races that don't occur on the map. Either that, or if it can't find a homeworld they just attack to a random off-map world.

If it's the former as opposed to the later, then you could solve your depopulation problem with an "always" quest that has "existing" flags in the STAR blocks. Set it to generate a small extra fleet for each race's homeworld. It's a bit kludgy, but it would solve the problem.

[Phlagm]

Yeah, I was actually considering that very thing. The only part I don't like is when you generate the third fleet at that homeworld. I'm thinking I need to scale back the size of my urluquai fleets, anyway. It's the conundrum of wanting a big enough fleet to defend the homeworld adequately, but not so big as to make it horribly overpowered. And if anyone plays it on SMALL/LESS...screwed. But you're right. All those things are better than rolling in to an unpopulated planetand getting three items for defeating a nonexistent Tan Ru.

[Fingers]

Unpopulated homeworlds will occur if you run out of fleets or ships (assuming you didn't just somehow blow up the homeworld fleet). The numbers.ini file contains the maximum values, try increasing them. The quest method will not help.