TFMurphy
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I know this was mentioned in an Architecture thread, but I felt it needed to be brought up in more detail since there's a number of serious issues and inconsistencies involved. I'll cover a subset of those here that I've tested, though I don't doubt that there's probably more complex scenarios that are also currently broken.

In this case, I created a Custom Weapon with the "Surprised from Behind" trait. This causes the first hit I make in a battle to have 2x ATK if I strike from behind. For the test, I used a bunch of NPCs with the following traits:

1) Normal enemy with high HP and ATK.
2) Same as 1), but also had the "Surprised from Behind" trait, which causes it to take a turn to face you before counterattacking.
3) Normal enemy with high HP, but really low ATK - enough that it couldn't do damage to me.
4) Same as 3), but also had the "Surprised from Behind" trait.

EDIT: In case it wasn't clear, all four NPCs had DEF that was higher than my normal ATK, but not high enough to stop a 2x ATK strike from causing damage. Sorry for not explicitly mentioning that: the first time I tried to make this thread, I lost all the text I'd written due to problems on this computer.

I then tested my weapon against all four of these enemies, with the following results:

1) The Expected Damage of this is Death. I get the first hit and cause damage, but then the enemy counterattacks. The battle continues as you would expect, with my subsequent hits doing no damage, and ends in my defeat.

2) The Expected Damage of this is also Death. On my attack, I cause initial 2xATK damage and the enemy turns to face me, but then the battle aborts. If I then wait there, it will report an invalid move and nothing will happen - the attempted move will be undone. I can, however, circle around the enemy and attack from behind again, causing more damage. Even though I would've been defeated if the battle had continued normally, I can use this circling tactic to defeat the enemy without a scratch. EDIT: And actually, this one has a major inconsistency: the above only works if you don't have Combat Speed at its fastest setting. If you have it at any rate slower, the battle aborts. But if it's at instant speed, then Tendry dies as predicted.

3) Attempting to get the Expected Damage of this battle causes DROD RPG to enter an infinite loop and hang. Actual attacking causes an X to flash up on both Tendry and the enemy, and no damage is displayed. However, the enemy *will* have taken damage as per normal. The battle aborts after this first hit, but I can wait in place to cause more damage and defeat the enemy as such.

4) Again, Expected Damage causes DROD RPG to hang. The X appears over the enemy only when it takes damage, and the enemy turns to face me before the battle aborts. Waiting in place causes no further battle for obvious reasons. I can, however, circle around the enemy and attack again, killing it in that manner.

I'll note that each "attempt" at battle causes Roach Queens to spawn, so an enemy that takes 8 aborted battles to kill would cause a Roach Queen to spawn 8 eggs. Briar is only triggered by the enemy's death though. Both of these are very likely intended, but I'm mentioning this for completeness.

In any case, there's a nasty infinite loop bug in there, as well as an inconsistency there when the enemy has Surprised from Behind (in one case, the battle aborts; in the other, it doesn't and I die). I'm not sure of the best way to solve all these, but the hangs at the very least need to be dealt with.

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[Last edited by TFMurphy at 09-18-2008 01:22 PM]

Sillyman
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Probably the best thing to do is to fix the obvious bugs, then make case 1=Death, case 2=Death, case 3=Either halt battle or prevent battle unless winnable, and case 4=Either halt battle or prevent battle unless winnable.

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Monkey
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File: wtf.png (8.6 KB)
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Umm... I did Test 3, and this is what I got when I calculate damage.


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[Last edited by Monkey at 09-20-2008 05:25 AM]

Sillyman
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That window, as far as I understand it, means the game threw an exception that the C++ runtimes caught to make it display an error message instead of just terminating.

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mrimer
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TFMurphy wrote:
2) The Expected Damage of this is also Death. On my attack, I cause initial 2xATK damage and the enemy turns to face me, but then the battle aborts. If I then wait there, it will report an invalid move and nothing will happen - the attempted move will be undone. I can, however, circle around the enemy and attack from behind again, causing more damage. Even though I would've been defeated if the battle had continued normally, I can use this circling tactic to defeat the enemy without a scratch. EDIT: And actually, this one has a major inconsistency: the above only works if you don't have Combat Speed at its fastest setting. If you have it at any rate slower, the battle aborts. But if it's at instant speed, then Tendry dies as predicted.

I've fixed this so combat no longer automatically ends if you can't harm the enemy on a given round. So, now this fight will play out to the death at any speed setting.

3) Attempting to get the Expected Damage of this battle causes DROD RPG to enter an infinite loop and hang. Actual attacking causes an X to flash up on both Tendry and the enemy, and no damage is displayed. However, the enemy *will* have taken damage as per normal. The battle aborts after this first hit, but I can wait in place to cause more damage and defeat the enemy as such.

I've fixed the hang -- now, when the player and enemy can't harm each other for three consecutive hits, then combat stops. With a backstabbing ability, you can conceivably keep hitting from the back until an enemy dies this way as long as they don't turn around.

4) Again, Expected Damage causes DROD RPG to hang. The X appears over the enemy only when it takes damage, and the enemy turns to face me before the battle aborts. Waiting in place causes no further battle for obvious reasons. I can, however, circle around the enemy and attack again, killing it in that manner.

Fixed the hang (see above). It's still possible to circle around and hit again once from behind over and over.

I'll note that each "attempt" at battle causes Roach Queens to spawn, so an enemy that takes 8 aborted battles to kill would cause a Roach Queen to spawn 8 eggs. Briar is only triggered by the enemy's death though. Both of these are very likely intended, but I'm mentioning this for completeness.

Thanks. Yeah, we could have briar grow every time combat is begun instead of ended, but I don't want people bogged down in all kinds of obscure rules -- or people trying to exploit such in their holds -- where we can avoid it, so I plan to leave this as-is.

In any case, there's a nasty infinite loop bug in there, as well as an inconsistency there when the enemy has Surprised from Behind (in one case, the battle aborts; in the other, it doesn't and I die). I'm not sure of the best way to solve all these, but the hangs at the very least need to be dealt with.

Done for 1.1!

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