Korath's Shandalar Updates: Bug Reports

[quatrocentos-e-vinte]

Some autosaves from immediately before duels that freeze would be helpful.

Shadow works for me, though I notice that Soltari Trooper doesn't have it set. If you were seeing it with some other card, I need a full repro, not just "it doesn't work". Screenshot at a minimum.

Protection from creatures used to be Battering Ram's "banding while attacking" ability; I missed one check while removing the old functionality.

All time-skipping effects always end up working for the AI. Whoops. Fixed that.

Sorry about the lack of savegames. In fact, I haven't been able to reproduce any crashes since. If I do get a crash, I'll make sure to get the autosave.

You are right... the Shadow thing is only for Soltari Trooper. Sorry about that...

[Korath]

1.) Gloom is totally broken. Somehow, I can't play lands of that color or even pay the 3 extra mana to pay a white spell if it's on the board. Basically, it just locks me out of white.

Frack. I'll look into it. I suspect it's something I did somewhere else rather than something I did directly to Gloom; but Gloom's mechanism isn't as well-understood as most of the rest of duel, since it's been broken in Manalink for a very long time.

2.) Eldrazi Spawn cannot be sacrificed for mana.

They can, but had to tap to do it (and so couldn't while summoning-sick). Fixed.

3.) Library of Alexandria glitches sometimes when interacting with cards like Sylvan Library or Crystal Ball and, temporarily, will not let you draw even though I have 7 cards in hand.

This was a problem for a long time in Manalink. I was hoping that it was mainly because of cards added there, not because of problems with the original Microprose cards. (It's definitely not Crystal Ball's fault, and doesn't appear to be Sylvan Library's either.)

Cards in play, on the stack, and in hand are all kept in the same unsorted array, card_instances[][]. (Cards in libraries, graveyards, and exile are kept separate, and nothing is stored about them except for a four-byte id.) Since a fair number of cards care about how many a player has in hand, and iterating over the whole array to count how many instances are valid, not in play, and not on the stack is relatively slow, a separate count (hand_count[]) is maintained for each player.

The problem was that the functions to draw a card, to discard, and various actions that could add or remove a card to or from a player's hand (bounce_permanent(), kill_card(), put_into_play(), many others) didn't change hand_count[] themselves; it was the responsibility of the individual cards that used those functions. This path was fraught with peril and bugs, usually manifesting either with Library of Alexandria (as you observed) or a "discard your hand" effect demanding that you pick another card to discard when your hand was already empty - but it wasn't ever the fault of Library of Alexandria or Lion's Eye Diamond or Wit's End or whatever; it was some other, completely innocuous and non-obvious card that failed to adjust hand_count[] like it was supposed to.

(Annoyingly enough, the variable that displays in the title of the "Your Hand (6)" window, while it's always correct for the current game state and doesn't need to be manually maintained like hand_count[], isn't reliable during AI speculation and so can't be used.)

We eventually got rid of this error by making draw_a_card() and discard_card() and add_card_to_hand() and all the other functions of this sort maintain hand_count[] instead of making individual cards do it. I've done the same in expanding Shandalar. It's certainly possible that I overlooked a function needing a new version that maintains hand_count[], but I don't think so.

I'm really not looking forward to tracking these all down again. Hrm. Maybe I'll recalculate hand_count[] de novo during recalculate_all_cards_in_play(), which has to walk the card_instances[][] array anyway and gets run fairly frequently (almost exactly corresponding to whenever state-based actions are checked under modern rules).

4.) Seat of the Synod, and perhaps other artifact lands, are considered spells and can be countered.

Yes, and Dryad Arbor, known. They trigger lucky charms, too.

Here's the big one: 5.) Armageddon totally froze up the client vs Winged Stallion late-game. It looked like that AI was 'thinking' but never resolved. Eventually I got 3 error messages and I had to close out the game. For some boneheaded reason, I didn't take a screen shot. I will try to reproduce this glitch and post it again.

I haven't touched Armageddon, nor anything relevant that it calls. This is 99% certain the fault of some other card on the battlefield or in the AI's hand.

Also, how do I install the enemy decks overhaul? The bad guys are still playing with awful cards like Coral Helm.

Well, there's better enemy decks in this thread, but they still only use the original 650ish cards in the original game. Nobody's released decks using the new card pool yet.

There are instructions here how to make the Manalink deckbuilder only display cards available in Shandalar. (Don't use the rarity.dat file attached to that, though; it's almost a month old. There's an up-to-date one included in the Ruined Tower release zip.) It only took a couple substitutions to change Merfolk Shaman's deck from "laughable" to "pretty scary when you're only starting at 10 life"; I know I'd find new AI decks to play against to be pretty motivating.

[gmzombie]

for sure merfolk is scary with even 12-15 life. they multiply like rats lol

[mathusalem]

OK, korath I installed Bog wraith's pack and everything is going smoothly... I guess I did something wrong with my installation.

[gmzombie]

Just a quick note the AI decisions on desert is weird. Don't know if it's a bug or just old programming but they like to bit their own creatures with it. I am not by a comp at the moment.

[Korath]

I've noticed the poor Desert AI too, but haven't touched the card yet.

[Bog Wraith]

Just a quick note the AI decisions on desert is weird. Don't know if it's a bug or just old programming but they like to bit their own creatures with it. I am not by a comp at the moment.

That Desert bug has been there since the beginning, just like the Giant Growth that the AI casts on the opponents creatures.

[cholulaablongata]

Sweet, I'll give the overhaul decks a shot when I get the chance. From what I understand about that thread, users have been tweaking the enemy decks and somehow uploading them to manalink so that they could run AI gauntlets in order to determine if they're relatively balanced. Is that right? I have some deck ideas of my own, but I'm not exactly sure how to do this.

As for the bugs, I found a few more last night:

1.) Islandhome is causing cards like Sea Serpent to bury regardless of whether or not the controller or the enemy have an island in play.
2.) Mana Vault is not allowing for pay 4 to untap activation during upkeep.
3.) Living lands is not affecting dual lands like Savannah.


That's all for now. I shall continue the grind ever so diligently. Just thankful to be a part of this awesome project. Thanks!

[stassy]

- Phantasmal Terrain will crash the game when cast, either in normal or debug mode
- AI can cast Phantasmal Terrain but doesn't seems to change the land type

[Korath]

Sea Serpent, both Phantasmal Terrain bugs fixed. Mana Vault is probably a result of it not having a needed flag in the Manalink version of the csv; but both it and Living Lands will need to wait until I have more than ten minutes at a time free again.

A list of original MicroProse cards that have the same "When you control no [something, usually islands], [do something, usually sacrifice this card]" clause as Sea Serpent would be helpful. Dandan and Pirate Ship both just call Sea Serpent's function, so those two are ok; but if any have a separate implementation, they'll have the same bug Sea Serpent does. (Maybe not so obviously as burying themselves at start of turn; but they'll still bury themselves if you have no appropriate lands and something like Mirrorweave has changed them into a different card, for example.)

[cholulaablongata]

I just found an odd bug. I entered a dungeon and noticed that, after multiple duels, cards started disappearing from my deck. For instance, I triggered land tax during upkeep and couldn't find some of my basics. Hovering the mouse over the library revealed that indeed there was a lower card count. After exiting the dungeon everything went back to normal.

[Aswan jaguar]

The requested list:
Island Fish Jasconius,Merchant Ship,Serendib Djinn.

EDIT:Destructive Force Destructive Revelry seems that needs artifact or enchantment on battlefield to be cast but then it asks for creature or artifact and enchantment is illegal target.And makes damage always to it's owner.

[Korath]

I just found an odd bug. I entered a dungeon and noticed that, after multiple duels, cards started disappearing from my deck. For instance, I triggered land tax during upkeep and couldn't find some of my basics. Hovering the mouse over the library revealed that indeed there was a lower card count. After exiting the dungeon everything went back to normal.

This is a feature, not a bug; it's the "One deck for all duels" dungeon rule that sometimes shows up.

The requested list:
Island Fish Jasconius,Merchant Ship,Serendib Djinn.

Island Fish Jasconius and Merchant Ship both forward to Sea Serpent, so they're already fixed too. Serendib Djinn will need a separate one. (And it needs to sacrifice itself, too; currently it just destroys - one worse than Sea Serpent, which buried itself instead of sacrificing.)

EDIT: Destructive Force seems that needs artifact or enchantment on battlefield to be cast but then it asks for creature or artifact and enchantment is illegal target.And makes damage always to it's owner.

Destructive Force isn't in the game, and it's not immediately obvious which card you meant.

[Aswan jaguar]

Destructive Revelry.

[Korath]

Fixed Destructive Revelry targeting artifact or creature, and damaging its controller, but couldn't repro it being castable if there's enchantments but no artifacts available to target.

Gloom was charging as an additional cost instead of , which I've fixed. I don't see how the executable let lands through without charging for them, too, but I've fixed that as well. And fixed (most of) the new and reprogrammed enchantments not getting affected by it; enchantments with activated abilities with a mana activation cost of still won't be affected by it just yet.