Bug Reports |
Hi Folks.
Feel free to add or respond to this thread since I can't find a sticky dealing with this subject (Admin... hint, hint). Please be civil in your postings, concise as to the nature of the problem encountered, and refrain from posting any "wish list" items under this thread. Thank You.
Bugs I have found so far...
- Even after matching the game settings (in this case, race attribute points set to 3000) to allow for loading of a previously saved empire, an error box pops up stating that the race attribute points don't match, so the empire cannot be loaded. After backing out once or twice to the main screen, or by loading previously saved game settings, you can then get the game to load the saved empire.
- Device context does not support <Alt> <Tab> functionality (apparently due to the false window open under the full screen GUI). Not a big problem except when trying to escape the game due to a malfunction without shutting down Windows altogether. (Running under XP SP2, Pentium D 3.0 GHz, 2 Gig. RAM, NVidia GeForce 6800 with 1 Gig RAM).
- As alluded to above, have had several crashes, all have been associated to end-of-turn processing.
- Encountered bug when initiating espionage (political) against a weaker computer opponent where the computer locked up at the "Post-turn processing". Computer processor (the game seems to only use one CPU) was running constantly between 50% - 75% and seemed to be stuck in a loop. Did not see available memory being eaten up (Thank God!).
You folks have done a really good job considering the complexity and detail of the program. This is a marked contrast to how Infograms/Atari ran the old Microprose franchise "Master of Orion" into the ground. MoO wouldn't even run on the majority of computers and Infograms walked out on the support (first patch took 4 months to get out, and the idiots there ran the support the same way the Iraqi Information Minister used to report the second Iraq War, "We have no bugs! It is you that has the bugs! Good Bye! <click>) to the point that they had to change their name to Atari just to avoid the torrent of negative press.
Please, keep up the good work! Go forth and do great things.
Here is What I Repoted in Another Thread
I’ve read through the patch list and here are some items I’ve found that are not on your list. I’ve played about 100 turns so far with the full version.
Questions:
1. Why does the Medical Bay Level 3 cure level 3 plagues but the Medical Lab Level 3 only cure level 1 plagues? Is this a design feature or a bug?
2. In the help it show that Cultural Achievements give 0% bonus? Is this by design? Do I need to get to level 2 before I get the bonus? If so I’m afraid I’ll never use them because of the expense. Reported Fixed in upcoming patch!
Bugs:
1. On the Quadrant Map the Show Ally Systems and the Show Enemy Systems display the same systems. The Show Ally appears correctly. There are no enemy in my friendly sectors and there has never been any combat in those sectors so they should not show up as enemy sectors.
2. Enemy Fleets entering my mind fields are triggering the Tactical / Strategic option window. Once selected it goes to the appropriate display and plays out the timer with no action. I should only be receiving a message telling me the minefield was triggered.
3. If the population on a friendly plant goes to zero and the construction queue still has items in it, you get a Log reported stating “Lack of Resources”. This often leaves me confused because I look up at my resources and see that I have plenty. I’m getting used to it but the message should really read “Lack of Population” when this situation occurs. Not a big deal but thought I would mention it.
4. If you transfer a ship that has expended all of its movement points into a fleet that still has movement point, you can continue moving the fleet. The fleet’s movement should be set to zero.
5. Satellite groups are not being re-supplied when they are placed in a non-planet hex, even when there are supply depots in the sector. They should be. It is a pain to manually re-supply them.
6. Fleets are taking all the supplies from satellite groups when they are in or pass through the same hex. This would not be a big deal if these groups were re-supplied automatically but it often leaves the groups without a defense. It does not happen every time. I think the fleet must be at some key level of supplies to make it happen.
7. I have a repeatable save that shows a very bad Land Combat bug. When I invade the planet, none of the buildings are showing up and all the units from both sides are stacked on top of each other making it look like there is only one unit from each side. Also during the combat a dozen enemy Weapon Platforms are showing up that really do not exist and cannot be destroyed making it impossible to take the planet by storm. Please let me know if you want me to send the save somewhere.
8. Drones are broke. They will not move in combat.
User Interface Improvement Suggestions:
1. On the Fleet Transfer screen please put the Ship’s Damaged Percentage to make it easier to remove damaged ships from the fleet. This is a big one for me.
2. On the Construction Queues screen please put the Hold, Emergency Build, and Repeat Built options on the menu to the right. This will save many clicks. As it is now, for each planet you have to do the click following:
Add to Queue
Queue Settings
Pick Hold, Emergency Build, or Repeat Built option
Close
Close
Repeat for each planet
3. Under the Construction Queue/Create Custom Layout, can you please put an option for Colony Type? I use the Colony Type to help me organize what type of structures I want to build.
4. It would be nice if you could sort the columns on the research screen.
5. On the Set Construction Queue / Reorder Item, please add Go to Top, Go to Bottom buttons.
6. On the Construction Queues Screen, please add a Go To button so we can go to the selected planet. I do almost all of my construction from this queue and this would help a lot. By the way it was a brilliant move on the designers part to let us customize the list on the various displays.
7. Please have the Select Button automatically selected when the row is highlighted. Many times I thought I had something selected because I highlighted the row only to find out that I had to go back and specifically click on the button.
Something similar...
Mmmm....
Most of what I see there are what we as programmers call "wibn" (wouldn't it be nice). Though it is interesting to not that I have not seen #7 or #8 on your "bug" list. My drones are working just fine (killed 2 enemy ships with 2 class 4 drones so far). I would suggest you look at your design. Do you have engines? Do you have a warhead? When choosing a strategy for your drones did you choose "Kamikaze"?
I also have invaded planets and while my present troop design sucks (two land cannons each, move 3), they still manage to dink something now and again as they seem to cover the map (as opposed to staying in a stack).
SE5 is a very richly detailed game, and most of what you are purporting to be bugs appear to be auto-behavior settings that have not been set correctly. Play around with them and see if you don't see a differnt result.
Sincerely,
Kahn
Drones not MOving
Drones failing to move is a known error; at the moment all units require ground movement to move in space, and the drone engines don't get that ability. Its been fixed in the patch, and it can be modded around.
There are 10 types of people in the world:
Those that understand binary, and those that don't.
Found one more...
- I've seen this somewhere here before, but I have recreated the crash to desktop (repeatable no less) when I take a captured enemy ship and use it to kill another enemy ship of the same class. You get an access violation error that takes you to the desktop. I even have a saved game that I can initiate it in repeatedly.
Rilbur, you mention a mod that corrects drone movement, for my edification could you list the file and line that does that? I'm curious as it seems my drones are managing to kill things.
Sincerely,
Kahn
Drone Movement fixed in1.07
It was a fix in patch 1.07 but yes the drones will still fire at enemy ships in range of their targets in the release version.
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Yes, but where?
Maybe I'm making an invalid assumption, but since this seems to be something that was addressed in a mod, I presume there is a plain text table somewhere (maybe several inter-related files) where this change was implemented. Since someone has already found a "solution", I would like to check it out an verify that it actually works with out a.) having to re-create the wheel; and b.) applying the mod, thereby changing countless other variables in the game as well.
Captain Kwok, you mention a patch 1.07. Since we don't have a patch for the retail version yet, I also presume this was for the beta. Is it still around, and is it complete, or incremental (You can tell I wasn't involved in the beta. Wish I was after initially being involved in the GC2 beta.)? If the patch doesn't arrive soon I would be interested in reverse engineering the corrections made by the patch/patches and creating a package that could be installed until the official patch is released, then properly uninstalled (I'm anal retentive as to making packages that completely uninstall) once the patch becomes available.
Sincerely,
Kahn
Mod Fixes
You can mod the drones as a work around. As I said before, they can't move in space unless the engines they're given have ground movement, which requires modding. Just go the appriate file in the data folder (Components.txt, iirc) and add the ability for ground movement.
In the patch, I believe they've corrected the code that (Mistakenly) requires ground movement for space units to move in space.
There are 10 types of people in the world:
Those that understand binary, and those that don't.
Request to move thread!
P.S.: I noticed that the SysOp created a new forum folder for bug reports finally. Could he/she be so kind as to move this tread now into the appropriate folder.
Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,
Kahn
Thanks Rilbur! <NT>
Sincerely,
Kahn
quick 1.08 bug report
After playing a few turns with the patch I noticed a couple possible bugs...
The game would drop to rediculously slow frame rates when opening a planet report sometimes... Not sure what triggers it and it doesn't happen all the time.
Ships would sometimes lose their orders. I had a ship surveying a system and for some reason the ship dropped the order for no reason.
When opening the planetary construction queue, sometimes the game hangs for a few seconds before opening the screen. Queueing up production seemed to bring it back to normal.
Bug reports
Forum here if anyone else missed it
That forum has been there for almost a month (3 weeks and 3 days to be precise) 
Unfortunately, there's too many bug reports spaced all over for him to feasibly move them all from the various sub-forums into the bug reports forum.
I advise you to just re-port the issue in that subforum and leave this one to die a slow forum death 
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I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26
Well, I removed "Drone" from
Well, I removed "Drone" from the ship's engines availability and added "Drone" to the fighter's engine availability. I'll see how that "flies" (couldn't resist the pun).
Sincerely,
Kahn
Dropping movement
Ships would sometimes lose their orders. I had a ship surveying a system and for some reason the ship dropped the order for no reason.
Did they see another empire? By default ships will clear their movement when encountering another empire. You can turn that off in Empire Options.
After Patch. Still bugs
After installing patch 1.o8 I still have the same problem that was reported by Kahn 2 days before the patch (see above post). I can not load saved empires without repeated clicks back and forth between the interface. I don't know if the patch was supposed to fix this problem, or if this is even the right forum to report this continued problem.
if i were made a moderator
if i were made a moderator i'd make the sticky bug thread. or atleast i'd try hard.
Another bug would be on the same loading of empire the saved empires lose all their default techs and get those points back. but once you add a default tech, you can't remove it. so when i load my empire, it has 0 lvls of rock colonization. and then i add one, and then try to remove it, and i can't. Just seems like a bug to me, but perhaps its purposeful and i just am not familiar with it enough.
Belay that!
Made the change just before having to go out for a while and it occured to me that I didn't check the tonnage and spce requirments first. The aformentioned change will throw off these units, so adding a ground movement section (see below) would be the prefered way to go (until the patch).
(example for the "Contra - Terrene Engine")
Ability 3 Type := Ground Movement Bonus
Ability 3 Description := Generates [%Amount1%] bonus ground movement point.
Ability 3 Scope := Space Object
Ability 3 Range Formula := 0
Ability 3 Amount 1 Formula := 1
Ability 3 Amount 2 Formula := 0
Ability 4 Type := Ground Movement Standard
Ability 4 Description := Generates [%Amount1%] standard ground movement.
Ability 4 Scope := Space Object
Ability 4 Range Formula := 0
Ability 4 Amount 1 Formula := 1
Ability 4 Amount 2 Formula := 0
of course you will have to adjust the "Ability" number to be unique.
Sincerely,
Kahn
You don't need this any more.
Install the patch that just came out and it'll fix the drones without having to do the ground movement change.
Yea, just reverted back and
Yea, just reverted back and installed patch and within 5 minutes I found the first bug 
Strategic combat, killed enemy ship with a massive number of drones (Boy, they do move fast!) and got a crash to desktop with the following error:
"Access violation at address 0047DC59 in module 'SE5.exe'. Read adress of 00000000"
To be fair, this was from a saved game, so I will start from scratch later tonight an see what happens.
Sincerely,
Kahn
Drone launch-
Anyone else finding that launched drone groups start out with 1 strategic move, then revert to full movement the turn after?
Starting a new game will
Starting a new game will probably fix the problem.
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Your pain will be legendary even in Hell!
er... are you sure
Another bug would be on the same loading of empire the saved empires lose all their default techs and get those points back. but once you add a default tech, you can't remove it. so when i load my empire, it has 0 lvls of rock colonization. and then i add one, and then try to remove it, and i can't. Just seems like a bug to me, but perhaps its purposeful and i just am not familiar with it enough.
There's a whole bug forum.... do you really only want a single bug thread?
______________________________________________________
I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26
I'd definatly want that.
I'd definatly want that. imagine, a singe thread that breifly lists each known and uncorrected bug, and has a link to a thread for each one, where more information is. would that be so bad? i'd like it, personally. then when i want to know if a bug has been mentioned or reported, i could jsut go down the list and look. if i had questions or thought i was in a similar situation, i could check the link to the detailed account of the bug. but maybe that would just be retarded.
Furthermore, i had the flipping proccessing hang up this morning and threw my computer off a skyscraper, i'm using my buddies to type this. or nearly.
Ive Noticed a couple not
Ive Noticed a couple not listed here. First with Carriers i find that with fighter tech going to level 9 all three carrier types are all within 50 tons of each other. ALso I like games with Larg maps Well i changed my settign .txt files to allow the up too 25 systems and since then have seen one in awhile like every 10 turns the game will lock up after processing all the orders.
Sincerly,
Jazz
That Which DOes Not Kill You Only Serves To Make You Stronger
Problems running at 1280 x 960 resolution
I have a standard 21" CRT monitor and the 1280 x 960 resolution isn't being displayed correctly. The image is stretched out to much vertically and scrunched in horizontally. This resolution displayed properly in the demo and is kind of annoying because the 1024 x 768 resolution is too big, but 1600 x 1200 is a little too small to read allot of the text. the 1280 x 960 is right in the middle and was perfect on the Demo. Hopefully someone reported this.
re: Display Stretching
You are probably running in 1024x768, stretched to fit.
Double click the SEV icon to start up the game, but don't click "Play", instead click "Setup". The second option down from the top is Display Settings. Click that, and select 1280x960.
Note that the video modes available there are due to your video card and driver, not the game. They will be different for everybody. For instance, I don't have a 1280x960 mode available to me, but I do have a 1360x768.
Still needs work...
Well I've been running patch 1.08 for a while and every game I've played has resulted in the game crashing whenever I kill an enemy ship. I keep getting the "Access violation at address 0047DC59 in module 'SE5.exe'. Read address of 00000000" error. The violation address will change each time, but it still keeps trying to read address 00000000 (this is a clear indication of the program trying to access a memory object that has already been cleared out [unmalloced]).
Sincerely,
Kahn
Two more for consideration...
Sincerely,
Kahn