Comp 198

[wobbly]

Originally Posted by PowerDiver

Did you unzip the savefile?

yes

Originally Posted by PowerDiver

Can you start a new game with no savefile, save, and then load the initial save?

yes, yes, same problem

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by wobbly

yes, yes, same problem

If you can't save and reload a new game, I think the only explanation is that I messed something up badly. Somehow the amount of information written is not the same size as the load is expecting to read. Either that or when a string of characters is written and then read it doesn't match.

Looking at the code, I quickly see one place I was sloppy, comparing read value to 0, writing '\0', for string termination. I don't think that should matter, but is a sign I was making mistakes. I was pretty messed up when I did this coding.

You could send me the initial savefile you produced, and with a lot of luck I might find the problem.

[wobbly]

Scratch that it was a cock-up on my end. Forgot I renamed the comp save to see if it would work. So I can start a new game, save & reload it's just the comp save that's not working for some reason. Which is no big deal I guess, can still take a look without playing the comp.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by wobbly

Scratch that it was a cock-up on my end. Forgot I renamed the comp save to see if it would work. So I can start a new game, save & reload it's just the comp save that's not working for some reason. Which is no big deal I guess, can still take a look without playing the comp.

Nothing special about the comp, just a point-based dwarf paladin with default everything. You could play the same thing if you want, with the only meaningful difference being the town inventory to start the game.

[tumbleweed]

Same assertion failure here as wobbly, on a legacy XP SP3 box.

No issues with saving/reloading when creating a game myself.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by tumbleweed

Same assertion failure here as wobbly, on a legacy XP SP3 box.

No issues with saving/reloading when creating a game myself.

I have a guess as to the problem. I was halfway through redoing the savefile when my grief sidelined the project. I won't get it fixed any time soon. If you want to play the comp, just start a dwarf paladin with point-based stats and default everything.

[the Invisible Stalker]

My thoughts, for what they're worth, starting with the specific and moving on to the general:

Use id is kind of annoying, but the experience system makes testing almost everything kind of a no-brainer. The end result is not that much different from scroll/staff id: you end up not really making decisions. It would be nice to have an id system which required player thought, but I'm not sure how such a thing would look in practice.

The use and abuse of cursed rings of teleportation was kind of interesting. The RNG was kinder to me than it could have been.

Never saw an artifact. From other people's dumps I gather they still exist.

The experience system obviously interacts very badly with the usual comp rules. I'd say the least worst solution is not to divide xp by turns.

Stat draining was annoying, and played some role in my second death, along with carelessness, boredom and UI bugs. In general though I think people obsess a bit too much about stat draining.

I'm glad there was an Eddieband comp, and that it was at a time of year when I could spare the time to make a couple of attempts. It was interesting.

Oddly, I found having played Ironband fairly helpful. A similar play style seems to work well enough here.

Playing with the gcu interface is incredibly annoying. I must have played that interface for years when I was starting out, but I didn't have anything to compare it to back then.

If I were a variant maintainer I would probably play want to play a lot more. There are some interesting design choices, but it's hard to evaluate them having only played two characters, or, to be more accurate, having played one character twice.

I'm not a variant maintainer and never really had that much affection for V, so I'll probably stick to FA and Ironband on the rare occasions that I have time to play.

(EDIT) One more thing: I like the change to stone to mud. That's definitely something I'd like to see copied.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by the Invisible Stalker

One more thing: I like the change to stone to mud. That's definitely something I'd like to see copied.

The change to stone to mud is part of the elimination of ASCs as a standard tactic. It also interacts with symmetric LOS. IMO to make it work you also need to weaken summoners and breath weapons, which of course I did. In particular I changed breaths to be like meteors, a bolt attack that explodes. That makes a corridor full of time hounds or wyrms manageable, which may or may not be feasible with attenuated cone breaths. I dislike attenuated breaths in principle, but have not played enough with them for my opinion to be valid.

I don't know if the dev team reads these comp threads. Perhaps you should copy your comment to the 3.a advocacy thread if you want them to notice your opinion.

[debo]

Thanks to everyone who gave Eddieband a shot, and apologies for the scoring. Thanks especially to everyone who left commentary behind in the 3.a threads!