Move_to_new_town bug

[Duck in a Top Hat]

In my scenario, I have a dungeon, and it currently has two floors. I didn't know how to do stairs to a new floor, so I opened The Valley of Dying things in the editor. I found out how Jeff did it in the School of Magery, and I used the same call:

Code:

void move_to_new_town (short new_town,short loc_x,short loc_y)

I put in the coordinates for where the stairs take you in the new town, but no matter what I do, the party ends up in a completely different place! How can I fix that?

[Niemand]

How completely different is the placement? Is it on the other side of town (this would be bad) or is it just off be a few squares (this is to be expected). Keep in mind that in general you're moving a party of ~4 characters which all have to be placed, so the game takes some liberties with arranging them around the single set of coordinates you give it.

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention that, yes, that is certainly the right call to use for such a purpose.

[Lilith]

Make sure there's a sufficiently large empty area for the party to appear in, preferably at least 6 spaces long and 4 spaces wide. The game really doesn't like placing the party in narrow corridors, and it can sometimes freak out and put them somewhere quite some distance away from where you wanted.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Maybe you're switching x and y?

[Duck in a Top Hat]

Okay, so the party appears all the way on the other side of the town, on Blackness. They could not move from where they were placed. I made sure there was room and that it fit Thuryl's measurements, and I most definitely did not switch x and y. I made sure the starting location, and all of the town entrances were at where I wanted the party placed, just in case, but none of this did anything. I'm just going to put the script through Alint while I'm waiting for something else to do; it helped me before.

 

Edit: Alint didn't catch anything.

 

[Celtic Minstrel]

The town entrance and starting locations would have no effect on this; they aren't used for stairways.

 

Can you post the script? Maybe a screenshot of map view or something?

[Duck in a Top Hat]

I'm not sure posting a screenshot or the script would help. Alint didn't catch anything in the script, and, really, what good would a screenshot do? There's enough room for the party, I triple-checked the coordinates, and I don't see what else could be wrong. I think I'm just going to give up on the stairs and condense it into one floor.

[Niemand]

You shouldn't have to make your design bend to what's likely a trivial technical issue. If we look at the script and the town layout, we may be able to help you catch something simple and get this fixed.

[Lilith]

Hey, are you using custom floors? Sometimes the game doesn't like to place characters on custom floors.

[Nioca]

Also, watch for walls. The game doesn't like placing characters on a space that contains a wall.

[nikki.]

I think damaging floors, or blocked spaces might stop the game from placing you on a certain space, but it's certainly something along these lines. The script - it need only be that chunk of code, and not the whole script - and a screenshot would help us figure this out for you.

[Duck in a Top Hat]

Well, thanks, but I already got halfway through it with one floor.

[Ishad Nha]

Alint is not perfect, it has a few bugs, as outlined in the post. It checks scripts only, it does not check Bas files. A problem like this will be completely beyond its scope. Best shot is zip the bas file and scripts then upload them, so we can see what is wrong.

[Duck in a Top Hat]

Okay, I just gave up on my third scenario, and I've started another one. In this scenario, I used the call again. The party popped up somewhere way far off, and it wasn't even on the automap.

 

Here is a screenshot to show my meaning:

Screenshot

 

And here is the pertinent chunk of script:

Code:

beginstate 17;	move_to_new_town(2,16,17);break;

I doubt this will help, but it's more than I gave you to go on last time.

[Ephesos]

Well, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's something to do with the town script for town 2. The coordinates (16,17) should be in bounds on any size town.

[Duck in a Top Hat]

Thanks, Ephesos. I changed the coordinates so that it works with all town sizes, but the party's still coming out off of the automap, and invisible.

[Enobarbus World]

Try making a new town that is completely empty, and just change the 2 to that town number. If the move works, the problem lies in town 2 somewhere (terrian code maybe). If not, the problem is somewhere else.

[Lilith]

Can you give us a screenshot from the 3D Editor of the location where you're trying to place the party?

[Duck in a Top Hat]

As suggested by Thuryl.

The square with the red outline is where you're supposed to go. You end up in the square off in space and out of the town.

[Lilith]

I meant a screenshot of the main window, not the automap, but that might be enough information to go on already. Is the northern half just regular cave floor and the southern half the "solid stone" floor, or are you using custom floors? Try putting the target destination a few steps further north, away from the edge.

[Ishad Nha]

I struck this problem a few times when trying to enter a town from the outdoors. In A Large Rebellion the problem was the town entrances in the outdoor map were too small. In town 14 of River and Leaf the culprit was swamp floor.

[Niemand]

Well, that is a screenshot of the main view in the editor, but in 2D (zoomed out) mode, thus the source of the confusion. I think what Thuryl means is that a screenshot from the 3D editor's 3D mode would be more useful.

 

Also, I agree that the issue may be that the game may not like trying to put the party right up against a large obstacle, like that big area of solid stone appears to be, especially if it's gotten the idea that it wants top lay the party members out in a North-South oriented line. That system is a little finicky, although I can appreciate why this happens, as I would dread having to write the code to handle that job with all its possible cases.

[Lilith]

The engine really should have just allowed PCs to stack on top of each other in crowded spaces like they did when entering combat mode in Exile.

[Niemand]

While that might have been a practical solution, it would have necessitated changes to one or possibly a number of other parts of the movement and combat logic, as the way the engine stands it has some fairly serious issues with cases when multiple characters occupy the same space. Giving more thought to the problem overall would likely have helped, but as has been noted before, the project threatened to suck up more time than Jeff could really afford to throw at it.

[Duck in a Top Hat]

Quote:

screenshot from the 3D editor's 3D mode

I'm not using the 3D editor. I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Niemand]

Ah. In that case, I strongly recommend the 3D editor, as it still has the same 2D mode you're used to, but also has a very handy pseudo-3D mode just like the game itself. If you're on a Macintosh you can grab a copy from the version I maintain, and if on Windows, I think that we haven't yet really got a release version to supercede it, so you'll want the version from Sourceforge.

[Ishad Nha]

The Windows version does work, see the thread:

http://www.ironycentral.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=154452#Post154452

[Duck in a Top Hat]

Okay, I'd just like everyone to know: I GOT IT TO WORK! (Two given up scenarios later ) It turns out that for some reason, the BoA grid is upside down, and (0,0) is the top left! This explains everything!

[Enobarbus World]

*facepalm*

 

I would just like to point out that people repeatedly suggested you post part of the script, and you repeatedly refused, saying it wouldn't help. However, had you posted that one line of code, somebody would immediately have been able to point out the problem.

 

A little humility goes a long way.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Originally Posted By: Skulduckery Pheasant

Okay, I'd just like everyone to know: I GOT IT TO WORK! (Two given up scenarios later ) It turns out that for some reason, the BoA grid is upside down, and (0,0) is the top left! This explains everything!

Actually, this is standard for computers.

[Duck in a Top Hat]

Quote:

I would just like to point out that people repeatedly suggested you post part of the script, and you repeatedly refused, saying it wouldn't help. However, had you posted that one line of code, somebody would immediately have been able to point out the problem.

Well, the good thing is that I fixed it. But you're right, most of my glitches are silly mistakes. But I'm learning, and they're becoming less frequent and easier to solve on my own. Hopefully I won't need any more help in the near future.

[aka Ravenwing]

Well if you do, never be afraid to ask for help here. We've got some amazing scripters, and they can probably catch any simple mistake like that in no time flat. If not instantly, a bit of thinking can do the trick.

 

They're here… might as well learn the easy way, right?