Korath's Shandalar Updates: Bug Reports

[jiansonz]

To be honest, I've only ever noticed it with Winter Orb.

Kormus Bell, Ankh of Mishra and Meekstone come to mind. I thought about Howling Mine as well, but I see that it has received errata to still work in combo with e.g. Relic Barrier.


Yeah, I think it would even be wrong to change artifact cards that were created after the rule change.

[Aswan jaguar]

I had enchanted an AI's forest with Contaminated Ground which was also enchanted with 2 Wild Growth 's.AI had 3 more forests in play and a Force of Nature.Then in first upkeep AI had to pay or not upkeep cost for Force of Nature AI decided to pay and tapped the 3 forests and then got in an endless loop whether to tap the 4th land that was now Swamp but could provide green mana from 2 Wild Growth 's.The window of Force of Nature pay upkeep selecting yes kept reappearing for ever then the no room assertion error appeared also and I had to kill the program through task manager.

[jiansonz]

I was duelling a Whim that cast a Psychic Venom on my Mishra's Factory. During the AI's next turn, it attacked with a power 1 creature. I activated the Factory and my Assembly Worker blocked and survived. At the end of the turn, when the Factory stopped being a creature, the Psychic Venom went to the graveyard.

[Korath]

Force of Nature: maybe it'll go away once we're using Manalink-style upkeep costs instead of the built-in ones, or when mana burn is disabled? I'm not looking forward to debugging it otherwise.

Mishra's Factory: card_assembly_worker() itself destroys all enchantments that are attached to it and that don't have HARDCODED_SUBTYPE_LAND when it unanimates. This is irritating, because it's actually redundant to a similar clause I found and removed in get_abilities() which destroys all enchant-creature auras attached to permanents that were once creatures but aren't anymore. Fixed.

[jiansonz]

This may be a tough one: when the AI decides which creatures to attack with and which creatures to block with, it does not look like it takes Deathtouch into consideration at all. It acts like it isn't there, which often leads to some bad tactical decisions.

(example: We both have plenty of life. I attack with my little Deadly Recluse, and the AI will happily block it with a Wall of Stone. Wall dies, and the next turn the battlefield is wide open for my power 6 creature.)

I have not played enough Manalink to see if it's different there.


Ending with something positive: in the version you released today, zombies along with a Zombie Master regenerate correctly.

[Korath]

It actually is different in Manalink (as it happens, it was me who put it in there); I just haven't gotten around to porting it to Shandalar yet. It hijacks the mechanism that makes the AI reluctant to block Thicket Basilisk with a non-wall, or Battering Ram with a wall.

The bad news is that most other AI decisions on who to attack or block with are much harder to manipulate.

Zombies: only the vanilla ones.

(If folks could start mentioning which version they're observing their bugs in, I'd appreciate it.)

[gmzombie]

Using the newest software i was playing against creatures that have land tax in their hand and they never get lands from their deck. though they shuffle all the time. Also would the videos work better if they were in a modern format? i can probably get them reconverted to a different format if you think that will make them work.

[Korath]

Land Tax: It's because the AI doesn't speculate during upkeep; it selects cards with Seek the Horizon just fine, for example. Even so, the way I have tutoring set up, I'd have thought it would pick at least one basic land at least half the time if it searches at all.

I've fixed Nafs Asp and Living Lands/Kormus Bell; the latters' bug also affected Conversion. I've also made Kormus Bell properly change the animated lands' color; I'm surprised the Microprose version didn't, since it specifically uses Fourth Edition wording for just about every other card, and the Fourth Edition version of the card is the only one to be printed that specifies color.

On the other hand, Kormus Bell isn't changing its displayed wording when I Magical Hack it, and I can't figure out why. The same data works fine in Manalink, and the functions that do the text replacement are identical, so far as I can see. Oh, duh, its because WORDSTOHACK_BLACK (and the other colors) has more entries in Manalink's Text.res than in Shandalar's UIStrings.txt.

[Huggybaby]

We'll have a proper bug tracker for you soon Korath. Goblin Hero is on the case.

[Aswan jaguar]

Ruined Tower 2:
AI with Man-o'-War has the same bug we used to have in Manalink - AI isn't forced to return target creature with Man-o'-War when AI is the only one with creatures in play.
I don't know if it happens to human,too.

Edit: Intimidate doesn't work correctly AI attacked with 2 Highborn Ghoul and I couldn't block them with any of my 3 black creatures the ghouls are also black so I should be able to block them.

I had also a crash in the beginning of a game in my starting hand I hand a card that was invisible I could just see the frame first turn I clicked on it and it crashed.

edited: This bug-above crash is really big one,I resumed the game and in my first battle I realised that it made all my lands (except the one with indestructibility Darksteel Citadel ) get lost and probably some other cards as I was left with 25 cards in my deck and I had 24 or 25 lands in there and 65-67 cards in my deck.

[cholulaablongata]

I noticed an odd error in which a random card appears in my deck. Killer Bees is not supposed to be there. Also, I'm still having issues with Honden of Seeing Winds. For some reason, even if I flag the upkeep phase, I still can't trigger the draw effect unless I have another Shrine on the board. Here is a screenshot of the random card insert.

[jiansonz]

I've seen the random card thing a few times myself (in all versions of Shandalar, really). It's usually a card that has been in play in the duel previous to the one where it happens.

[Korath]

Man-o'-War: this had the right bugfix in so that targeting was forced like it's supposed to be... and then overrode it by allowing the AI to select a target again, unforced. Fixed for real now.

Intimidate: it was checking the color of the wrong card for the attacker, which is why I wasn't able to repro it before when simzard reported it. Fixed.

Crash bugs: I need all of the text to be able to do anything about them, not just the first page. (Or, better and probably easier, a savegame.)

Honden of Seeing Winds: It's still working correctly for me. Make a video?

Random card in your deck: If it was in original Shandalar, I won't be able to fix it unless someone can figure out a way to reliably trigger the problem.

[Aswan jaguar]

Crash bugs: I need all of the text to be able to do anything about them, not just the first page. (Or, better and probably easier, a savegame.)

1- I meant to ask this for ever but where does it save the error file to then send it to Microprose as it was designed to do?I searched but couldn't find it.Because taking screenshots of some pages is impractical.It is good to know though that the first page error infos are not helping you.
2- A savegame during duel is this possible? Because it doesn't pop up in left click like it does in Manalink.Also shandalar has a similar feature to Manalink's autosave - "resume game" but where is that saved,I searched and couldn't find it.These would really help us,help you.Because they make testing very difficult in shandalar.

Edit: If it is card specific Æther Adept has the same AI bug as Man-o'-War does.

[Korath]

There's a list of files in the "The following files will be included in this error report" part at the bottom of the window, just visible in your last screenshot.

Saving during duels isn't possible unless debug mode is active; but Shandalar autosaves at the start of a duel. Shandalar savegames are groups of three files in the root installation dir: MAGIC3.fce, MAGIC3.SVE, and MAGIC3.map. (For some number, not necessarily 3.) Sort files by modification time to see which one it autosaved to.

The targeting bug isn't card-specific.