Mazz 6 End of Game Area Effect Problems

[ducky]

Yo CP,

So I just got to see a clear example of the harmless area-effect spells problem first-hand, and, unfortunately, it's pretty bad.

We had a nearly flawless run of heroic going on, right up until the end. With the aforementioned problem in mind, we even made a special effort to rid the map of liches as fast as possible.

When the black thrall came, we had something like 91% (w/o suicided striders), and we even had an unusually good stranglehold, having killed so many units that there really wasn't (at least, not relatively) all that much going on by the time the watcher came.

However, it got to the point where stuff stopped working, and we saw things like this:

-rab vs. black thrall
dream on clumped black thrall w/o red vengeance did zero damage, causing the spell to just multiply and multiply
-pally vs. black thrall
healburst did nothing
-mort vs. fetch
our level4 250+ kill mort started wailing repeatedly on... fetch, to no effect
-pathfinder vs. bush
our pathfinder couldn't blow up a single bush.

By the time we died from melee damage, there was only really one big clump of melee enemies left, and they were just swimming in blue dreams.



In short, from that game I believe that:
a) if it weren't for this bug/limit/whatever, we would have won heroic,
and
b) despite our best efforts to compensate for the known bug/limit/whatever, we were unable to overcome it.



I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unless this is fixed, I don't think anyone's ever going to beat it (although it's been said that heroic was beaten in the beta; though I am curious how you guys never ran into this problem (you must've beta'ed heroic how many times?), at any rate, if this happens even earlier on leg, well then it will most certainly not be beat). Not to mention that it really spoils the fun of a well-played game when you're defeated by impossible factors beyond your control.

Anyway, I can send this film somewhere if you wish.

duck

[rabican]

I would like to point out that this are of effect shit started happeneing when there were practically NO area of effect shit going on. 4 spheres of annihilation, mort shooting and... well, thats it, nothing more and death bolt did less damage than bush attack.

[CheezeFist]

hate

[Grayswandir]

This is just an idea and probably won't work that well...but have you tried blowing up body parts and the random crap that enemies leave behind when they die (except the important stuff ya' know...) to make it disappear? I know some of the stuff, like armor just bounces around, but you can get rid of the soft parts (eg: ghol limbs, thrall legs, etc...)

[ChrisP]

Last night on Heroic we had the Watcher stoned and killed all but maybe ten black thrall before beholders stoned us and mariliths finished us off. Few days before we were also just as close to winning on Heroic, and neither time, nor when we won Heroic using a cheat beta, did this bug appear. That's three out of three times I've personally gotten to the very end of a bug-free Heroic game, so I know it doesn't always occur. I also still believe the difficulty setting has relatively little impact on it.

Maybe one thing we tend to do differently though is we tend to pop small groups of black thrall as they come to us and not wait till they clump into super groups. This probably keeps the dispersals from becoming perpetual as often.

Yes, I'd like to see the film. Email it to mazzvi@hotmail.com if you will. However, here's about the only options:

1. Petition CIK and Myrd to increase the area of effect detonation limit for the final of 1.6. I can tell you though, they're rather conservative when it comes to making changes like this, and for good reason, as half the community threatens to convert to radical militant Islam if they accidently introduce a new bug. Also, at this very late stage in 1.6 development, it'd be akin to being on the final leg of a cross country driving trip and turning around to pick up a favorite music CD you forgot at home.

2. I can make a patch for the plugin. There's at least half a dozen other very minor bugs as well. For those willing to use Omnipatch the download would be smaller than 1 Mb. However, all I can really do to fix it is decrease the frequency of pops multiplying. This will, of course, weaken the spell as most of the time a single pop turns itself off before it can kill much. The reason the spell was made to multiply in the first place was because it was so crappy without it. Also, unless I virutally neuter the spell, there'll be no guarentee it will never happen again.

Incidently, this same bug had to be present in Mazz 5 and prior as the dispersal spell is identical since Mazz 3. Black thrall do have a bit more health in Mazz 6 (pops can last a bit longer on Mazz 6 black thrall, thus slightly increasing how much time pops have to multiply) but not enough to totally explain why it was never encountered before other than freak bad luck. At any rate, just in case there's something else very odd going on, I'd like to see if I can get my hands on a version of Myth from Myrd that has an in-game area of effect damage counter/debugger before I resign to having to force every Mazz player to download a version 2. I'd also like to know how other people feel about going this route.

3. The final option is to live with it. I guarentee no one is as dismayed as I am about it, but I am sure Heroic (and Legendary) can be won despite the bug - and I aim to prove it. Yeah, you guys probably would have won if it weren't for this bug, and that sucks, and I'm truly sorry. We worked on Mazz 6 for many months to try to make it a 100% fun experience, so when something like this happens, my heart sinks. But ya know, it can be shrugged off as just another challenge (albeit a sucky unfair one) and it can be taken as a counter balance to the Paladin bug, which without, some wins might have otherwise been loses.

Opinions on these options are very welcome.

[ChrisP]

Grayswandir, though at first I suspected projectiles or objects being the culprit, viewing a film of it occuring with a counter on showed they had nothing to do with it.

[CheezeFist]

Personally I dont want to waste my time playing when a bug will ruin all the effort.
2+ hours just to see if it may or may not bug out is not my idea of fun.

Grayswandir, you dont understand. Once the Watcher appears we can't blow up anything. The only damage can be done with melee. We couldnt even pop a bush.


I would have to say patch the plugin.

[Grayswandir]

I meant if you try to play again, but yeah, like what ChrisP said above, it wasn't the projectiles and objects...
*blinks*
I thought of something...Probably been mentioned before but I'll suggest it anyway...
Does Myth II have a limit on how many explosions can go off at one time (eg: like 40 explosions at once...)? Something that once it's reached, might cause problems later on or something because it's broken? Or could it be a problem with the amount of memory a computer has?

I'm just throwing things out here...so I dunno.

[buckweaver]

All of these did happen on my host, hmmm. Is it possible it's me?

(edit)
448 meg Ram
2.17Ghz
blah blah blah

[rabican]

there was no pops going on when the bug starts really biting (unless behes become deathbolt resistant at end.. =) ) there is practically nothing going on =)

for me it seems that bug occurs less often if we play BADLY :O

i've beaten mazz6 maybe 6-7 times with various difficulties and this has only happened in heroic (5/7 times i've really gotten into blackthrall) so i'm fairly sure difficulty has major impact to it. can't say anything about leg.

first times i tought dispreal dream was bugged , then the explosions thingie but... it really doesnt explain why it happened last time

::sends film and lets someone who actually knows something about mapmaking to figure it out::

[GodzFire]

Here's a nOOb's idea as well. It appears as time goes on during a game, bodies of slain monsters suddenly break apart, and/or pieces disappear. I believe this is to solve the problem of maximum projectiles. Could a fix be to lower the time before it happens even more?

PS- Chris did you get that e-mail I sent you about changing units to be invincible?

[ChrisP]

Grayswandir, yes, the limit on simultaneous explosions (anything that does area of effect damage) is 24. Up to 24 simultaneous explosions at a time will do damage, but anything above that 24 doesn't. Theoretically, even when this bug occurs there are still 24 explosions doing damage at all times. The film I watched of the bug demonstrated this (black thrall were still slowly getting damaged) so also in theory, there is no way blue pops can go on indefinetly. Actually, this bug probably has been happening since Mazz 3, but was never noticed since, till now, it never lasted as long. Important to note is that other long lasting spells such as Whirlwind, Fire Fountain, Fire wall, Sphere of Annihilation, Attraction, and Seversect each create one or more constant explosions, even when they aren't close enough to any units to do damage, and so are more likely to prolong the bug for the duration these spells are in effect.

Cheeze, I agree. But so far, that I know of for sure, the blue dispersal bug has occured in 2 out of 5, or 40%, of Heroic endgames. As a sample of all endgames, however, the percentage is much much lower, and probably not worth patching over - a patch can only reduce the risk in proportion to how much dispersal dream is weakened.

Again, there is nothing yet to suggest that Heroic has a significantly higher risk of the bug. And the more I think about it, dispersing smaller groups of black thrall instead of really big groups should greatly reduce any risk. On the other hand, the bigger problem is the Watcher's red pop. You can't control how that's used and if it perpetuates on black thrall (since it heals them) chances are no amount of waiting for it to end will help.

Buckweaver, no, it isn't related to your host.

I will post any further conclusions after I receive and view this new film.

[ChrisP]

Okay, watched the film very closely. I still stand by my instinct that dispersals shouldn't be this much of a problem, just like they weren't a problem in previous Mazzes. And for brief periods in that game there really was enough going on to breach the 24 explosion limit with or without dispersals. But... there is something more going on here than meets the eye.

My thanks for the reports and films and my sincere regrets for the aggrevation. I will do what it takes to fix this problem, but it may be a week before I can have a patch completed and tested.

Myrd, any chance I can have a private build with an explosions counter? Something is either detonating and then remaining or otherwise somehow tying up the limit, but without a counter, sorting through hundreds of projectiles without much of a clue will be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Godz, no, I didn't receive your email. Projectiles or objects like body parts aren't causing this. Myth can handle up to 8192 objects at a time and Mazz 6 probably generates millions over the course of a game (many you never see). Mazz 6 even cleans up its script after itself and is really efficient in most ways, but this is something new and related purely to detonations/explosions.

[Grayswandir]

Would it help to limit the duration of Whirlwind, Fire Fountain, Fire wall, Sphere of Annihilation, Attraction, and Seversect? I mean, yes having a Sphere of Annihilation bouncing around for 2+ hours is cool...but is it really necessary? it seems to attract more attention from baddies than you want sometimes...or...this may sound strange...would it be possible to change the projectile tags in Fear to something else so the explosion limit isn't set upon certain spells?

[buckweaver]

BTW I am Timmah gru