Laundry-List of Bugs/Glitches I Noticed

[Geoff the Medio]

e) This one is subtle. When you click the "colonize" button on a planet box, fleet icons from the galaxy screen are raised to the surface, in front of the planet boxes. I did this by accident once, then again deliberately.

This is actually a bit more general bug: the same thing happens if you drag-drop some fleets or ships in the fleetwind.

This is (hopefully) fixed in SVN.

[qcontinueum]

I'm back with some more stuff:

k) Do asteroid mining facilities do anything? I'd researched both asteroid mining techs, but the numbers here don't seem to add up to me...

glitch3.JPG (169.14 KiB) Viewed 1474 times

L) There's a problem somewhere with the way the HOMEWORLD_SPECIAL is being handled. I have a custom string in place:
'''This planet is the birthplace of your race; you know how to get the most out of it, gaining bonuses to virtually all planetary stats.
<rgba 0 255 0 255>Max Population + 10 Max Farming + 8
Max Industry + 5 Max Trade + 2
Max Supply + 2 Max Construction + 20</rgba>'''

Under normal circumstances it works great. After I loaded a game (when I experienced the production glitch), I get the following:

glitch1.JPG (104.43 KiB) Viewed 1474 times

A similar problem occurs when mousing over industry, trade, construction, or farming:

glitch2.JPG (176.51 KiB) Viewed 1474 times

m) I couldn't reproduce this bug, but I thought I'd mention it: Right after I loaded a game, I went to one of my planets and toggled off the 'buildings' button. I was planning on building some ships. After toggling off the buildings, the complete list of ships should have shown up. Instead, the only ships that showed up were my custom ships.

d) An empty box likes to show itself on the list of planets in a given system. Sometimes, if there are few enough planets, the empty box doesn't show. But sometimes, even if there are only a few planets, the box is about as tall as five or six planets. The empty planet box seems to always show itself if there is enough planets to require scrolling up or down to see them.

Turns out that this was just the vertical bar that shows up when you click on a star. If the list of planets is long enough, the bottom of the stars vertical bar will show itself. It only looks like an empty planet box.

I'm going to double post... I can't attach the save file as reproducible proof for item n.

[qcontinueum]

Again, sorry for double posting, but I needed to attach another file.

n) Regarding the save/load issue I mentioned previously, I'm attaching a .sav file that allowed me to experience it over and over. Launch the game, load the .sav. Game should load successfully, with everything being all normal-like. Then open up the menu and load the same .sav file. Got me the graphic glitch six times in a row. Hope the file is helpful.

Along the same lines, I noticed something else when loading games:
Buttons toggled in the research screen aren't remembered.
Sitrep report shows itself, even if I'd previously clicked it away.
Planets won't remember that I had their resource tab opened.
Buttons toggled in the production screen aren't remembered.

EDIT: I had to compress the file to meet the max file size of 256 KB.

[Geoff the Medio]

k) Do asteroid mining facilities do anything? I'd researched both asteroid mining techs, but the numbers here don't seem to add up to me...

I believe asteroid mines only act on planets whose primary focus is mining. Is that the case for your planet? I can't see for sure, as it's covered by the tooltip in the screenshot, but I'm guessing not from the basic focus and universe bonus.

Also, is that the turn immediately after building an asteroid mine? If so, try another turn later, not the same turn as loading a save.

L) There's a problem somewhere with the way the HOMEWORLD_SPECIAL is being handled. I have a custom string in place:
'''This planet is the birthplace of your race; you know how to get the most out of it, gaining bonuses to virtually all planetary stats.
<rgba 0 255 0 255>Max Population + 10 Max Farming + 8
Max Industry + 5 Max Trade + 2
Max Supply + 2 Max Construction + 20</rgba>'''

Under normal circumstances it works great. After I loaded a game (when I experienced the production glitch), I get the following:

You appear to have edited the name of the special. Your text should go into the HOMEWORLD_SPECIAL_DESCRIPTION string.

Edit: This might also be due to starting a game with one stringtable and loading it after editing the stringtable. That might cause problem, although I don't know how it could cause that particular problem... Did you also edit specials.txt? /Edit

A similar problem occurs when mousing over industry, trade, construction, or farming:

Same reason. That tooltip is designed to show the name of the special, not the full description.

m) I couldn't reproduce this bug, but I thought I'd mention it: Right after I loaded a game, I went to one of my planets and toggled off the 'buildings' button. I was planning on building some ships. After toggling off the buildings, the complete list of ships should have shown up. Instead, the only ships that showed up were my custom ships.

Did you have "Available" toggled off on the buildable items palette?

d) An empty box likes to show itself on the list of planets in a given system. Sometimes, if there are few enough planets, the empty box doesn't show. But sometimes, even if there are only a few planets, the box is about as tall as five or six planets. The empty planet box seems to always show itself if there is enough planets to require scrolling up or down to see them.

Turns out that this was just the vertical bar that shows up when you click on a star. If the list of planets is long enough, the bottom of the stars vertical bar will show itself. It only looks like an empty planet box.

I'm still not sure what you're referring to by "stars vertical bar".

Along the same lines, I noticed something else when loading games:
Buttons toggled in the research screen aren't remembered.
Sitrep report shows itself, even if I'd previously clicked it away.
Planets won't remember that I had their resource tab opened.
Buttons toggled in the production screen aren't remembered.

Not all UI state is stored in the save file. More or less this is a missing feature.

[qcontinueum]

I believe asteroid mines only act on planets whose primary focus is mining.

My bad. I didn't see that.

You appear to have edited the name of the special.

So I did. Oops.

Did you have "Available" toggled off on the buildable items palette?

I don't think so. It was right after I'd loaded a game, so the default options were still toggled.

I'm still not sure what you're referring to by "stars vertical bar".

This is what I meant:

planet_bar.JPG (68.47 KiB) Viewed 1454 times

[Geoff the Medio]

I'm still not sure what you're referring to by "stars vertical bar".

This is what I meant:

That's just empty space below the last planet in the list. The same thing appears if there are too few planets to fill the list.

[qcontinueum]

That's just empty space below the last planet in the list. The same thing appears if there are too few planets to fill the list.

Right, I was just going on record to say that there wasn't a problem. That I had misunderstood what I was seeing. I wasn't expecting the planet list to scroll so far as to reveal empty space below it.

Any word on the graphic problem with loading the saved game?

[Geoff the Medio]

Any word on the graphic problem with loading the saved game?

I'm not a computer where I can test it now. Wait a few hours / a day.

Edit:

Again, sorry for double posting, but I needed to attach another file.

n) Regarding the save/load issue I mentioned previously, I'm attaching a .sav file that allowed me to experience it over and over. Launch the game, load the .sav. Game should load successfully, with everything being all normal-like. Then open up the menu and load the same .sav file. Got me the graphic glitch six times in a row. Hope the file is helpful.

I started FreeOrion v0.3.13, clicked the load game button, selected your save, waited for the game to load, immediately clicked menu and load game and selected your file again, and everything seems to be working fine.

I suspect the save file doesn't matter, but the *EXACT* series of GUI actions you use to load a game might. Can you give an complete exact series of steps, including how long you wait between them and anything you click on or mouse over between clicks?

[qcontinueum]

Here is the exact series of clicks (starting from my desktop):
Start
All Programs
FreeOrion (folder)
FreeOrion (shortcut)
Load Game
AS_Human_0479.sav
Open
(at this point, I wait for the game to load. It loads as expected)
Menu
Load Game
AS_Human_0479.sav
Open

The game screen then looks like this:

post-load glitch

glitch4.JPG (66.7 KiB) Viewed 1416 times

That's the exact series of clicks I use. I tried doing it as fast as I could (my mouse sensitivity is maxed for twitch playing). I also tried doing it waiting 5-10 seconds between clicks. Didn't make a difference. This save file continues to consistently have the graphical glitch.

[Geoff the Medio]

That's the exact series of clicks I use. I tried doing it as fast as I could (my mouse sensitivity is maxed for twitch playing). I also tried doing it waiting 5-10 seconds between clicks. Didn't make a difference. This save file continues to consistently have the graphical glitch.

I still can't reproduce this... This is quite frustrating. I actually have seen the result happen at least a few times, but it doesn't seem to be dependent on the save file or the sequence of clicks used, so I don't know what else to try.

Can you at least avoid the problem by going back to the main intro / splash screen and loading games from there?

[qcontinueum]

Can you at least avoid the problem by going back to the main intro / splash screen and loading games from there?

That's always worked for me. And now when I do have an issue that requires reloading (such as the production bug), I always fall back to the main menu and reload from there.

I'm not involved enough to know what's really going on, but here's some food for though, maybe inspiration will strike: Is loading from the main menu handled differently from loading in the middle of a game? Could it be some sort of race condition? Would it be possible to change how games are currently loaded from in-game to make it more like loading from a clean slate? Issues with initial conditions not being reset perhaps?

(I don't need a reply to those questions, just hoping to inspire)

[OndrejR]

g) On the research screen, after you queue up a tech, it will say "1 turn @ 640 RP" (or something similar) in the lower left corner. It will also say "n turns" in the lower right corner. Unfortuately, the end of the former overlaps the beginning of the latter. The end result is that you can't read the turns to completion on research.

Fixed in svn.

I suggest fully remaking the tech panels to look like planet panels or ship or fleet panels in the sidepanel or fleets window, respectively. (Unless you only want to make a minor tweak to fix this particular problem.)

Only bug this time.

[mZhura]

performance note: between turns, "Downloading New Game State" takes between 15 to 20 seconds. That's about the same period of time as universe creation. Anyway, it seems long.

you're lucky! on my amd 3200+ 1Gb RAM WinXP (500 stars 10 AIs) i'm looking at "Downloading New Game State..." for at least 2-3 minutes!!! and my Task Manager shows memory usage of above 3Gb! (500Mb without FO) so i guess "Python" is the other name for some "Ultimate Evil"

[OndrejR]

On my amd 3200+ 1Gb RAM WinXP (500 stars 10 AIs) i'm looking at "Downloading New Game State..." for at least 2-3 minutes!!! and my Task Manager shows memory usage of above 3Gb! (500Mb without FO) so i guess "Python" is the other name for some "Ultimate Evil"

I have also similar amd 3000+ 2GB RAM and FreeOrion requires only 500-1000 MB on my Linux. Something is broken in the world of Windows(swap? memory management?). Try Windows 7.
Waiting too long for next turn is known problem but it isn't problem in Python language but in FreeOrion. I also wait with 500 stars and 10AIs at least 2-3 minutes, but in that time one AI take only 14 seconds and 10 seconds of that time is initialization which can be optimized. Problem is in way how and with which priority are AIs running.