Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2914
Registered: 06-21-2014
IP: Logged

Discovered while playing in RPG 1, whatever version Steam is on. It's possible this has been fixed in RPG 2 by addressing a similar bug, but also possible it's still happening; I'm having trouble reproducing it deliberately, so I'm making a report here in hopes that we can figure out for sure whether it's fixed.

Here's what happened. The last level (not counting the Vaults, which are mainly a story level) is called Nameless Fortress. To enter it, you're meant to hit an orb that increases the enemy stat multiplier globally - all enemies get double health, attack, and defense, and give quadruple GR and REP.

I was getting my scores rejected by the spider. When I was doing a run, I noticed something odd; sometimes I'd attack an enemy, take damage, then undo and not take any damage.

I was somewhat tired at the time, so I chalked it up to moving into enemies rather than attacking with the sword and not noticing until I took the damage. But when I tried another run this morning, I noticed that there was a gel baby which, boosted by three brains, did over 4000 damage to me. And I needed nearly 300 more attack to make it free. But I remembered that during the previous run, I killed it for free, which was very helpful because it was protecting a big cache of stats.

So I started to suspect that the undo behavior was actually a bug and not faulty inputs on my part, and I had unwittingly used it to get the free kill. I couldn't replicate it after this, though.

What I think may have happened is that the enemy stats didn't update on undo sometimes. I know that the multipliers were in effect generally because I took damage from rock giants while having 500 defense, and I also remember (but am less certain about) getting boosted rewards. So this wasn't a case of somehow skipping the boost, but rather of it sometimes not being in effect.

Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2914
Registered: 06-21-2014
IP: Logged

kieran was reminded of this bug when I mentioned this: https://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=40625

However, the behavior described in that thread only happens with custom characters. What I experienced was happening with normal monsters with stat multipliers in effect, and the multipliers had been set in a different room entirely. (On a different level, in fact.) I can't say for sure whether it's related.

I would guess that the issue is somewhere in the code that applies stat modifiers. I'll report more details if I manage to reproduce this.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 4001
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Nameless Fortress has historically had issues with score verification back in the RPG 1 days. We never did figure out why. Based on this, it sounds like something, somewhere, is causing a desynch bug where the local gamestate differs from what you would get by playing back the moves, such as an undo desynch. This would explain why the score verification was flaky, not actually an issue with the spider, just easy for the player to fall into a desynched state.

I'm not willing to spend lots of time looking into an RPG 1 engine bug as development has ended on that engine version. If somebody can see this happening, please export your save game and attach it, especially if it's happening in RPG 2.