Exult Forum

I just loaded up Black Gate again in the latest binary on windows, and I had a few strange things happen early in the game. I had a bunch of people sitting down in an inn but they weren't sitting on the chairs, they were sitting on air.

In the second case, I brought it on myself but maybe it is something that can be investigated. I let Katrina and Spark die in the giant cave north of Cove. I flipped on the Hackmover and hauled Spark in my right hand and Katrina in my left and headed back to town. It was rather odd to see Spark flopping around like a weapon in Avatar's hand. Anyway...they suddenly vanished, and I entered combat again to finish off a single giant that followed me. Suddenly, they ran up from the sides of the screen with a tiny bit of HP! Free resurrection?

I also walked into the mayor's office in Cove, with Katrina in the party...and suddenly the mayor was having a conversation with Jaana about going with me, and I hadn't even visited her yet.

Snapshot or rc1?

It was the snapshot from yesterday I think, I thought the number from the title screen was enough. I have a savegame right after the two party members resurrected themselves.

I can't expect perfect behavior if I'm cheating, but it was really strange.

I don't know if these are bugs, per se, or just weirdness. I had an exactly similar situation happen, I hackmoved the two dead party members into my hands and headed for Jhelom. (turning off hackmover after doing so.) On the way, I got stopped by some spiders and the avatar went to 0 health, but didn't die. I could walk around, but I couldn't enter combat, nor double-click on anything. When the avatar regained 1 segment of health, I could once again enter combat and click on things. Will probably Help! back to LB for resurrections and head back to Jhelom next play time.

Another oddity. I was exploring the caves south of Jhelom, after having recruited Shamino and Dupre. This time, Shamino and Spark stumbled into a fire field, and died. Now, there's an image of them standing in the flames, but I can't interact with them. Their bodies are lying on the ground as well, and can be picked up to move. I don't want to submit a bunch of things that aren't engine problems though.

More. I was walking around the swamp in Minoc, there's a place where there are boards leading into the swamp like a walkway, so I went to check it out. It immediately locked up solid. I had to start the task manager to kill the process.

stderr.txt:

Warning, trailing slash in path: "\"
Warning, trailing slash in path: "\"
Warning, trailing slash in path: "\"
Couldn't open SI 'paperdol.vga'.
Support for SI Paperdolls in BG is disabled.
Couldn't open SI 'shapes.vga'.
Support for SI Multiracial Avatars is disabled.
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (17 >= 1)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (17 >= 1)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (17 >= 1)
SFX -1 is out of range
SFX -1 is out of range
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (10 >= 10)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (10 >= 10)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (10 >= 10)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (10 >= 10)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (10 >= 10)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (10 >= 10)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (10 >= 10)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (10 >= 10)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (10 >= 10)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (10 >= 10)
Shape::store_frame: framenum >= frames_size (10 >= 10)
SFX -1 is out of range

That spot is 23N 40E and it is repeatable, on my system.

Please use the bug tracker, that many bugs are going to be overlooked if it's only on the forum.

Submitting the ones I have a save for, and trying to reproduce some others. Are companions supposed to pass out before they actually die? If so, that would explain the first oddity I ran into. They were simply passed out when I picked them up.

I've run into the avatar being ambulatory but unable to do anything else several times now, when he's got no red showing in the bar.

I can't seem to reproduce the crash on the Isle of Fire, nor the odd conversation including Jaana when she's not actually with me. Gotta love those intermittent bugs. I'm not in the habit of saving every 30 seconds, but I suppose I should get into that. :p

Yes, people can go unconscious without dying. If the party member is dead, their death sprite is very obviously a corpse (most of them are pretty gruesome), and double clicking will bring up a death box inventory like it does for dead enemies; otherwise they just lie down on the ground like they're sleeping. Yes, this can also happen to the Avatar, and what you described is what is supposed to happen (similar behaviour to the original - you can access the save/load menu and press z to see stats but can do little else - you can't interact with the world because you're unconscious!), although this was not the case in Exult until relatively recently. However, I also had trouble once recently with the Avatar seeming to wake up from unconsciousness but not quite - (as you said, ambulatory but unable to do anything else and health still at 0 or below) - that is a bug.

The case of the party members dying in fire but the alive body still seeming to be present as well sounds like a bug - you could file a report on that if you like. (I remember a similar bug in the original, especially after in Serpent Isle, but I don't know if this is related to that.) The freeze walking in the swamp is also obviously a bug and is definitely worth reporting, with as much detail as you can muster, and a savegame if possible (if you can provide a savegame that requires minimal steps to reproduce the problem - like, "if I load this savegame and immediately walk straight south, the game freezes every time" or something like that, that'd be ideal).

I did just that regarding the swamp bug, a savegame immediately adjoining the error, and attempted to recreate the others in detail. Some were one-off occurrences for me so I'll file a bug report if I run into it again.

I also added my experience to a couple bug reports in the tracker. The crash I got in FoV had an identical error message to an open bug in the tracker from 2009.

Overall, for a wholesale rewrite of the engine, Exult is really well done. And to see progress on the engine even now is really quite a feat.

On that note...it might be helpful to have the option for a timer based quicksave or even a separate save folder for timed saves, like Civilization 3 has. I know it can be remedied by being more careful, but finding a bug only to realize I last saved 40 minutes ago really stinks. :p

Okay, another strange thing but probably a limitation of the engine. I was putting the talismans on the Core...and one fell behind the pedestal and I couldn't see it anymore. Hackmover to the rescue, but that is a pain. :p