R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

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Eizzoux
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R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

Post by Eizzoux »

Tonight I went to the RELEASES page just to download R'n'D 2.0.0 just to compare that version to "official" recent one. I donwloaded it and just for curiosity moved to "development-versions" and found out there's a new build version which was uploaded just yesterday (on 09.04). I downloaded it, put it in the R'n'D folder, then I launched it.
Ok, no differences in main menu. I'll go check any MM level. Laser charges up, laser stops charging, music starts. Ok, I see, now music starts only after charging the laser emitter, just like in older versions (2.0.X). Good!
Then I checked info screen, no changes, of course. I started scrolling levels and saw 4 players on the right of level preview. Wait, what? So, now if there's multiple players in one level, they will be shown on the right of level preview in main menu. Interesting feature.
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I decided to check Setup. I went to Game & Menu and... Oh my... Network multi-player? Wow, I'm impressed! I wasn't expecting to see that. It searches for a server first, then creates new one. Then when I go back to main menu, the player 1 with text "you" appears on the left of level preview. I wish there could be more options to choose a server or connect by IP of server or some sort of or, if create new one, somehow customize it (at least server name).
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Then there's Preferred network player. Oh, so, that's why these "request.button.player_X" are in the game for a very long time. I'm guessing you are choosing player you'll be playing as if you connect to any server, because if you choose any other player, you won't be really playing as him on your server.
Auto-play next level - it automatically jumps to the next level after completing the current one, and this option is manually turned on. Oh, also, it has a little glitch with jumping to next level - the panel still shows the number of past level. Skip scores after game - it just skips the hall of fame. I wish we could turn on or off these options for levelsets permanently.
Then I went to Touch controls and chose Virtual Buttons... Wow, so many options now! But I can't experiment with them because this dev version is for PC, and PC version doesn't support virtual buttons (I can't even imagine how could it look like if it could support).
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Then I was experimenting with my... small MM levelset. I started playing a tape and... It was lagging for some reason... or maybe it was slowed down, like, 10-20 times... I'm guessing that was made for testing some tape fixes.
Well, I didn't find anything else to look at, but that progress is already pretty big, and I hope this next update is gonna be huge and awesome :D
Last edited by Eizzoux on Thu Sep 06, 2018 2:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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filbo
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Re: R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

Post by filbo »

Hmmm, 4.1.0.1 binary, but `git pull` finds nothing new... ?!

Oh, you reminded me of an issue: I think the high scores ('hall of fame') used to show >1 score for the same user; now only 1. I think I actually triggered that in some discussion w/ Holger. But I don't think 'only 1' was the endpoint I was trying for; more like, 'the same user shall not occupy more than N [?3?] of the high score slots'. Restricting to 1 is especially silly when I am the only player on the machine, so all of my high score files are necessarily limited to just 1. (I kind of half suspect there's a setting for this, which I've forgotten / missed...)
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Re: R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

Post by Holger »

Yes, every now and then I build a Windows executable, so some people are able to test new features and/or bugfixes they requested or need for their R'n'D work (like Jürgen Bonhagen). (A long time ago, I wanted to add some functionality to automatically build and upload "nightly builds" of R'n'D whenever new commits are pushed to the Git repo, but I still haven't done that. Oh well.)

And yes, the next version will contain some interesting new stuff, like a better accessibility of that ages-old network gaming stuff (which was sort of broken in recent versions).
I'll go check any MM level. Laser charges up, laser stops charging, music starts. Ok, I see, now music starts only after charging the laser emitter, just like in older versions (2.0.X). Good!
Yep, that's fixed now -- I think you mentioned this different behaviour compared to original Mirror Magic. Thanks!
I started scrolling levels and saw 4 players on the right of level preview. Wait, what? So, now if there's multiple players in one level, they will be shown on the right of level preview in main menu. Interesting feature.
Yes, this will be shown if you have enabled team mode (or network multi-player mode) and the current level contains more than one player. Makes it easier to detect levels which can be played by more than one person! :-)
Network multi-player? Wow, I'm impressed! I wasn't expecting to see that. It searches for a server first, then creates new one.
Yup, nothing new in general (it already existed for ages, well, decades), but can now be enabled from the setup menu.

What *is* new, though, is a little new feature for connecting to your (local) peer for playing a bit easier: The game does a UDP broadcast in the local network to look for an already running game server, explicitly checks the local host again, if it cannot find one, or else just starts up a new one.
I wish there could be more options to choose a server or connect by IP of server or some sort of or, if create new one, somehow customize it (at least server name).
Yes, that's still missing (although that old command line option for that purpose still exists and works, but it should also be accessible from the setup menu, of course).
I'm guessing you are choosing player you'll be playing as if you connect to any server, because if you choose any other player, you won't be really playing as him on your server.
If the chosen player does not exist in the level file, the game will auto-select one of the existing players.
Auto-play next level - it automatically jumps to the next level after completing the current one, and this option is manually turned on.
Yes, that's the default setting of that behaviour, as it should have been long ago.
Oh, also, it has a little glitch with jumping to next level - the panel still shows the number of past level.
Oops, will check that! :-o
Skip scores after game - it just skips the hall of fame. I wish we could turn on or off these options for levelsets permanently.
No problem, just leave the setup screen with "save and exit" instead of just "exit" -- or did you mean you want to have this setting differently for individual level sets?
Then I went to Touch controls and chose Virtual Buttons... Wow, so many options now! But I can't experiment with them because this dev version is for PC, and PC version doesn't support virtual buttons (I can't even imagine how could it look like if it could support).
This makes it possible to define your very own grid of virtual buttons on touch devices (differently for portrait and lanscape mode).
Then I was experimenting with my... small MM levelset. I started playing a tape and... It was lagging for some reason... or maybe it was slowed down, like, 10-20 times... I'm guessing that was made for testing some tape fixes.
No, that must be some sort of weird bug. Do you encounter such slow-down for all kind of tape files (using different game engines), or just MM tape files? I'll also check this myself...
Hmmm, 4.1.0.1 binary, but `git pull` finds nothing new... ?!
Well, I do not always immediately "git push" after a "git commit", as I sometimes change some Git history shortly after committing... ;-)

Try again, it's all pushed now to the repo.
Oh, you reminded me of an issue: I think the high scores ('hall of fame') used to show >1 score for the same user; now only 1. I think I actually triggered that in some discussion w/ Holger. But I don't think 'only 1' was the endpoint I was trying for; more like, 'the same user shall not occupy more than N [?3?] of the high score slots'. Restricting to 1 is especially silly when I am the only player on the machine, so all of my high score files are necessarily limited to just 1. (I kind of half suspect there's a setting for this, which I've forgotten / missed...)
Yes, it depends whether you have a "global" scores directory or not (by default you do not have one). This is a sub-directory "scores" in the folder "CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS" (on Windows) or the program installation directory (or, optionally, whatever you have specified as "RW_GAME_DIR" in the Makefile (there's also a comment about this in there). Else, scores will be stored in your local "scores" folder (inside your personal game data directory).

So, if you have a global scores folder, only one entry will be inserted, while local scores will allow for multiple scores entry (as you're effectively only "playing against yourself" in that case).
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Re: R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

Post by Eizzoux »

Oh, also, it has a little glitch with jumping to next level - the panel still shows the number of past level.
Actually, I just figured out, it shows the number of level I previously played.
Holger wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 11:55 am No problem, just leave the setup screen with "save and exit" instead of just "exit" -- or did you mean you want to have this setting differently for individual level sets?
Yeah, kind of like forced scroll delay value.
Holger wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 11:55 am No, that must be some sort of weird bug. Do you encounter such slow-down for all kind of tape files (using different game engines), or just MM tape files? I'll also check this myself...
Any engine triggers that. Sometimes I'm getting it fixed, with normal speed, but it's very rare. I also got couple more problems:
  • Warp forward speed is the same as Fast forward speed
  • If I'll disable Auto-record tapes and play without recording, then click snapshot undo button, the time on tape will appear frozen in time
  • "Can move into acid" for Balloons is manually disabled in Niko Boehm's tutorials, so level 25 becomes uncompletable
Here I tried to record video to show these issues: Here
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Re: R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

Post by Holger »

Actually, I just figured out, it shows the number of level I previously played.
Bug confirmed.
Any engine triggers that. Sometimes I'm getting it fixed, with normal speed, but it's very rare. I also got couple more problems:

- Warp forward speed is the same as Fast forward speed
- "Can move into acid" for Balloons is manually disabled in Niko Boehm's tutorials, so level 25 becomes uncompletable
Cannot reproduce these problems/misbehaviours (at least on Linux). I have the suspicion that there is memory corruption going on (program is overwriting its own variables by error, which will not cause a "segmentation fault" style program crash. I will try if I can see anything suspicious when running in Valgrind. Please let me know if you should encounter any program crashes with this executable... :-/
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Re: R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

Post by Holger »

... BTW, thanks for the video, which was helpful. Could you please try the following: Select Niko Boehm's tutorial level set, select level 25, quit the game, start the game, directly enter the level editor and check the "Can move into acid" setting of the "balloon" element -- is it already disabled? (If not, it would point to my assumption of bad code overwriting certain variables, although I'm not yet convinced by myself, as that level was freshly loaded from the level file in your video...)
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Re: R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

Post by Holger »

If I'll disable Auto-record tapes and play without recording, then click snapshot undo button, the time on tape will appear frozen in time
Bug confirmed.

Something similar occurs when playing a level for which a tape already exists (also with "auto-record tapes" disabled); in this case the tape display still displays the tape information for the already existing tape. Although one might say that this is correct, it at least looks/feels wrong/strange...

I think I should just remove the possibility to disable auto-recording tapes altogether; it does not make much sense to disable it anyway. (If you don't care about tapes, you can just ignore them, I would say.) Or what do others think about this?
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Re: R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

Post by Holger »

Cannot reproduce these problems/misbehaviours (at least on Linux).
Also tested on my Windows 7 VM now (stock R'n'D 4.1.0.0, but with that new EXE), but I wasn't able to reproduce either of these two bugs (no slow tape replay and no accidentally changed balloon settings). :-o

Do you have a chance to test this EXE on a second Windows machine? Maybe even a Windows 7 one?
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Re: R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

Post by Holger »

Update: Also tested on a Windows 10 VM now, but with the same result: Everything's working just fine (no slowed down tape replay, and no modified balloon settings).

Hmm, no further idea for now... :-/
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Re: R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

Post by filbo »

> Try again, it's all pushed now to the repo.

Wow, yes, I see you committed a whole bunch of changes!

Everything compiles beautifully, as usual.

I have a bug to report, which I'll start a separate post.

I also blather on about the high scores issue; I guess I should also start a separate post on that... If I start a new post on high scores, is it possible for you to move over the previous 2 replies, grafted as the top of that post thread?
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Re: R'n'D 2018.09.04 build review

Post by filbo »

Holger wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 3:01 pmI think I should just remove the possibility to disable auto-recording tapes altogether; it does not make much sense to disable it anyway. (If you don't care about tapes, you can just ignore them, I would say.) Or what do others think about this?
You run on Android now, where storage is likely to be some sort of not very good MMC or SSD device. I think you should not change the game to more firmly commit the player to constantly writing on their poor little write-life-limited device.

Recording by default is certainly reasonable...
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