Myth II 1.7 Final

[Eddaweaver]

I hosted and started a game by myself and after the game started loading it started "waiting" for non existant players. It passed the first one then broke waiting for the second one. The film file of the game contains eight players but only one appears in the Myth interface.

http://hl.udogs.net/files/Quick%20Uploa ... 20film.zip

Another person reported encountering this bug too and said they saw players from a previous game.

[Myrd]

What were you doing right before starting the game?

[Eddaweaver]

Clicked "New" game, Ok, started. Earlier I had played a Grave game, maybe those names came from there.

[devSin]

I'm seeing a strange drawing bug with the selection boxes in 1.7 final that's moderately annoying. Frequently, the top line of a character's selection box will extend way out to some point on the screen (how this occurs seems to be related to the viewport or character position and/or orientation). I've seen it run completely parallel (where it's a yellow line of only a couple pixels extending left about halfway to the edge of the screen), but usually it's extending to some point in the northeast region (this will never extend to the right of or anywhere below the model). There seems to be some interaction with projectiles or animations -- this usually occurs when *something*, other than characters running around or model or media animation, is happening onscreen (an archer's arrow in-flight, especially if it's a fire arrow, or the ground on fire, or a dwarf's bottle being thrown or exploding, or whatever). This seems to happen regardless of the visual settings (I've seen it happen at multiple resolutions, with and without the startup switching resolutions, with high quality and detail textures and without, with the control bars opaque or translucent); OpenGL is the only possible choice for rendering. As far as I'm aware, this issue can only occur with a single character's selection box on the screen at any single time, but I believe it can happen for "highlight" boxes when the cursor is hovered over a character or with Caps Lock on (I'm pretty sure I saw a red one from an enemy I was targeting, but it's not something that happens often enough for me to be certain).

This is all happening on an older PPC Mac running Mac OS X 10.4.11 with a Radeon 8500 and default drivers (with the latest firmware update and last-released ATI Displays and ROM extender, for all the nothing that those do). This does not seem to occur with Myth II 1.6 (I couldn't make it happen playing through the first six levels; 30 seconds after loading a level in 1.7 and I had it occurring), nor in TFL 1.5.

I managed to grab a screenshot with myrkridia fading in and out on in the caverns; every time they'd come fading in, the berserk furthest in would have its selection box top do some funky drawing, and it would flicker between normal and the screwed-up drawing several times as the ghosts pulsed (and would then stop when they faded out, only to start up again when they came fading back in). (I had to swap out to get a screenshot, since holding Command to try and get a screenshot would bring up the Set Selection overlay at the bottom of the screen, which would immediately snap the selection box back to normal, and I wasn't able to "freeze" the problem bringing up the menu either.) If the camera had been moved in the below shot, the issue would have stopped (until another orientation or location was found where it would start happening again).

1.7 selection bug

myth17selection.jpg (31.48 KiB) Viewed 3107 times

[Eddaweaver]

Ramuh is having some kind of trouble
http://www.mariusnet.com/ubbthreads.php ... #Post20422

Has anyone noticed anything odd with the random captain selection? I was in about 6 or 7 co-op games where I was selected every time.

[vinylrake]

Has anyone noticed anything odd with the random captain selection? I was in about 6 or 7 co-op games where I was selected every time.

I don't think that's new, back at least as far as 1.6 I've had nights where in a 2 team game with 6-10 players I ended up as captain 3-4 games in a row, I want to say more than 4 but I can't swear to it - some nights I am cap several games in a row and have the same starting location every game. I've also had it happen in FFA games of 3-4 teams (7-8 players) where I get randomed as captain several games in a row with the same randomed teammate.

[zoso]

that select/deselect bug that pyro and others were talking about previously explains why i've had problems with that on toe's heroes and madmen, since there are often birds flying around.

thought i was just imagining it.

[GodzFire]

More people with that "white screen" issue HERE.

[Khadrelt]

Can I just say I LOVE the new feature that allows projectiles to promote into units? Holy cow! And to think I'd believed my just-for-laughs multiplayer maps couldn't get any stupider!

[Melekor]

Re the white screen thing: We've seen something similar when running OpenGL with 3D fog (on maps that use fog), on some ATI cards on windows. It seems to be a driver bug. I don't know if what these guys are experiencing is the same issue (they didn't give any useful info on the os/build/renderer/videocard/map, surprise surprise) But they might try turning off 3D fog and see if that fixes it.

[Melekor]

I'm seeing a strange drawing bug with the selection boxes in 1.7 final ...

I've reviewed the code for drawing selection boxes, and my conclusion is that this could only be caused by faulty drivers or faulty hardware.

If you are interested in the technical details, basically a selection box is drawn as the OpenGL command glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLE_FAN, 0, 4), with the 4 points set as (x0,y0,0),(x0,y1,0),(x1,y1,0),(x1,y0,0). As you can see, this specifies a rectangle, so it is impossible for it to draw a shape like the one seen in your screenshot if the command executes correctly.

EDIT: I should mention, the array is set immediately before calling glDrawArrays, so there is no chance of the coordinates being corrupted by intermediate code.

[devSin]

If you are interested in the technical details, basically a selection box is drawn as the OpenGL command glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLE_FAN, 0, 4), with the 4 points set as (x0,y0,0),(x0,y1,0),(x1,y1,0),(x1,y0,0). As you can see, this specifies a rectangle, so it is impossible for it to draw a shape like the one seen in your screenshot if the command executes correctly.

Did this change from 1.6 (where the issue still doesn't occur, so something has to be different), then? It's only happening when there are other elements dumping onscreen (as stated, usually projectiles drawing) and is fine in other instances (and only happens for a single box at any one time). (Edit: This does happen in both 1.7 PPC and 1.7 Universal, but not in either 1.6 build.)

It very well could be faulty drivers; doubting there are many 8500 users playing Myth. The hardware should be fine (and certainly, nothing else is acting strange).

[Melekor]

That particular code has not changed since 1.6. Much of the other OpenGL code has though, so the state changes and overall stream of OpenGL commands will be different. Regardless, if Myth requests OpenGL to draw a rectangle, and it actually draws a messed up triangle, that is not a bug in Myth.

[devSin]

That particular code has not changed since 1.6. Much of the other OpenGL code has though, so the state changes and overall stream of OpenGL commands will be different. Regardless, if Myth requests OpenGL to draw a rectangle, and it actually draws a messed up triangle, that is not a bug in Myth.

So basically, the chances of you doing anything to try and see if this issue can be worked around in Myth (wherever it gets exposed) is at or near zero, is that it? ;-)

As expected, the issue doesn't occur in classic 1.7 (RAVE and software, but obviously it's not doing gl() anything there). Finally, it doesn't occur when the Command and Control (preset and ground attack) overlays are being drawn (probably means the special ability overlay too); if it's in a rare spot where it's continually happening, holding either of those keys stops the funky drawing (until they're released).

While I'm here, a couple things:

Should holding down the Shift key when pressing Return to select all unselected allies onscreen add the units to be selected to the current selection instead of replacing the current selection (currently, the existing selection is lost, and the new selection contains only the units now onscreen). It's been a long time since I played Myth, and I keep trying this for some reason and end up deselecting units...

It might be nice to have holding down Shift when clicking the Next Tip button in the Mission Objectives dialog cycle through the tips in reverse (i.e., take you back to the previous tip instead of forward to the next tip).

Is it possible to key Sprayed By Gore off object impacts with Is Bloody projectiles (or maybe only the Bloodstains flag for guts blood)? I don't know if non-damaging impacts are even tracked, but it's the easiest way I could think of hooking this up; would be cool.

[devSin]

Fire is a good trigger (you can have your archers fire off flame arrows or your dwarfs start throwing bottles), but I would have expected it to come up by now if it was common. This usually occurs as the camera is moving and units are moving (likely because that's the majority of the game) and other objects are being animated onscreen, and it will flash up briefly before returning to the correct shape (the screenshot above was a very rare case where I could get it to "stick"). The shape of the incorrect selection box will vary depending on the position and orientation of the offending unit and the camera (all the way down to a nearly 2D line extending left from the box).

Honestly, it looks more like a fifth coordinate in all cases that gets stuck somewhere out in the sticks and creates a filled triangle (a very narrow triangle for the case where it's at a nearly 90-degree angle from the left vertical edge of the selection box, but still a triangle).(Which is bad for me, it seems, since I'd like to play without these freaky devil boxes, but there you go.) Or maybe the top two coordinates really are getting misplaced (the tip in that shot looks pretty wide for a single point). The problem doesn't occur with the software renderer in the PPC build (it's not available in the UB build), of course.

BTW, in the PowerPC build, when Interface Transparency is enabled and the software renderer is used, the dominating selected unit portrait, unit spelling and names, and the minimap toggle button are fully opaque. With individually selected units, the kill count and veteran badges and ammo and special item icons are also opaque (these are all translucent with OpenGL rendering). Also, the frame for the unit portraits isn't drawn (the full square is drawn; the frame draws correctly with Interface Transparency disabled, however).

EDIT: Magic disappearing posts!