Reporting Bugs

[thobson 38]

Apologies if this is in the wrong place.  I have looked and can find nowhere else to put it.

Where should bugs in OFP be reported so they are not replicated in whatever Flashpoint 2 is going to be called?  There are many I know and I am sure most are know about, but I have recently come across three quite unusual ones – again apologies if these are well known to you all.  They were not known to me or to the people I have been discussing them with.

1) Tanks that have no shells cannot get more from an ammo truck.  I presume it is well known that a HEAT mag gives Sabots and a Shell mag gives HEATs, but is it known that a tank that has no artillery shells cannot rearm?

2) The locations of buildingPos is very different after a save and restore than it is before.  There is also a related problem with the action to climb the ladder in a building where saveing and restoring seems to prevent the player from getting the action to climb the ladder.

3) If terrain detail is not set to normal then objects placed on the map will move vertically over time.  I have seen whole trucks sink underground and have seen a building flying several feet in the air.

Again appologies if these are all known and reported

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Do you really think that BIS arent able to find these bugs on their own?

I dont think there's any need for this thread.

[thobson 38]

Yes I do. If they could find them there wouldn't be any and how would they find them if people don't tell them about what they find?

But that aside - even if BIS are aware - what about all the other mission makers who will fall foul of them if they are not recorded somewhere?

[-IT-Q- 0]

hey THobson

dont worry - most ppl here are very familiar with ofp and its quirks, yet our intention was good !

i think in general, it would be best to post such suggestions in the ofp2 sub-forum.

[Garcia 0]

@ July 01 2005' date='17:35)']hey THobson  

dont worry - most ppl here are very familiar with ofp and its quirks, yet our intention was good !

i think in general, it would be best to post such suggestions in the ofp2 sub-forum.

1) Didn't know that, but then again, I never drive tanks...

2) Didn't know that...

3) Didn't know that...

afaik these bugs ain't something that most people know...though, the reason I don't know them is because I've never had terrain detail below normal and I never play SP anymore...though it's still good to tell people about these bugs so people are aware of this when making missions

[General Barron 0]

Do you really think that BIS arent able to find these bugs on their own?  

Well, obviously BIS wasn't able to find these bugs in the past if they still exist . I don't see how anything but good can come from reporting bugs to BIS, in case they haven't noticed them yet.

I'm not sure of the best place to post this to get BIS's attention, but perhaps Placebo would know. Or perhaps a direct email to BIS would be in order. In the meantime, I would suggest posting command bugs in OFPEC's online command reference, so that other editors might be aware of them.

Some bugs I've found:

1) Arrays aren't initialized until AFTER init fields are run. Meaning, if you put this into a unit's init field:

array = [this, 9]; [array, 1] exec "script.sqs"

Then "script.sqs" would be passed NOTHING in the (_this select 0) variable. An akward example I guess, but I've made a few scripts now that have run into this exact problem.

2) Group names don't synch up immediately in MP. If you write this into a unit's init field:

groupA = group this; deletevehicle this

Then "groupA" will only be defined on the server, but not on the other clients. Then commands like "move" will not work. Instead, a delay of a few seconds is required before deleting. I and others have run into this when trying to "set up" groups to spawn into.

3) "Leader" command doesn't seem to work properly in MP. It always points to the original leader of the group, even after he is killed.

4) "Titlersc"/"Cutrsc" commands don't work properly. You are supposed to be able to input how long it will take for the resource to fade in, but doing this changes nothing.

5) "magazines" command returns empty magazines. If a unit has an empty magazine currently in his weapon, then it will be returned by this command. I guess I can understand the bug, but it makes it impossible to accurately know how many magazines a unit has for certain weapons (m203 for example).

Other known bugs (not found by me):

1) "time" variable resets to 0 after loading a save game (actually a pretty helpful "bug" IMO)

2) Actions added to objects don't remove properly when getting into vehicles. If you can see/use actions from objects around you, and then you enter a vehicle, the actions stay in your action menu, even after you move away from those objects. They are not removed until you get out of the vehicle away from the objects.

3) Actions added to players work funky after respawn in MP. They seem to add themselves again each time, resulting in duplicate actions.

4) When called on dedicated servers, "animationPhase" always returns 0, no matter what the actual phase is.

5) "camSetBank", "camSetDive" and "camSetDir" commands don't seem to work at all.

6) "preprocessfile" command doesn't work from addons (?).

7) "Fire" command, when used on units, makes them point into the air and fire. When used on vehicles, they just shoot where they are pointed.

I'm sure there are tons more that I just can't think of off hand.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]1) Tanks that have no shells cannot get more from an ammo truck. I presume it is well known that a HEAT mag gives Sabots and a Shell mag gives HEATs, but is it known that a tank that has no artillery shells cannot rearm?

2) The locations of buildingPos is very different after a save and restore than it is before. There is also a related problem with the action to climb the ladder in a building where saveing and restoring seems to prevent the player from getting the action to climb the ladder.

3) If terrain detail is not set to normal then objects placed on the map will move vertically over time. I have seen whole trucks sink underground and have seen a building flying several feet in the air.

I have just tested and I can´t confirm any of those bugs.

What version are you running ?

[thobson 38]

v1.96.  No addons except for the editor upgrade.

The first one is easy to test.  Put an empty Abrams or other tank of your choice and an empty ammo truck on the map.  Remove the mags from the tank either using removeMagazines - or get in the tank and fire off all 35 shells of a particular type.  That is: empty the tank of HEATs and or Sabots.  Then try and re arm at the ammo truck.  If you clear Sabots first then that is it you get no more sabots.  If you then clear HEATs then prvovided you do not go to machine gun then you may get some HEATs from the ammo truck.  But if you have gone to the machine gun then you don't get any HEATs either.

The scond one caused me a serious sense of humour failure.  I have a cutscene about an hour into my mission that would work fine in testing but just would not work in the mission.  Eventually the test I did was to put a Game Logic at one of the building position and then craete a radio hint that reported on the location of the GL ,  the location of the buildingPos and the location of the building.  After an 11 hour soak nothing had moved.  But as soon as I left the mission and came back in the buildingPos had moved to the ground floor and was almost 10 meters away laterally. The GL and the building were still reporting the same location.  This is a standard building on Malden.  The user action to climb the ladder in these houses appears to suffer a similar fate.

The third one is hard to test.  But I can give you some screen shots that my beta tester have given me.

How are you testing?

[Garcia 0]

3) "Leader" command doesn't seem to work properly in MP. It always points to the original leader of the group, even after he is killed.

Never had this problem

And, I just tested with the tank, and he's right, I didn't get any sabots...I placed a empty m1a1, empty ammo truck, a west soldier, set the ammo of the m1a1 to low...you know the thingy when you place him...shot first the 3 sabots that was left, then the 40 rounds of MG, and then 3 HEAT, drove to the ammo truck, rearmed, and only got 35 HEAT and 500 MG...no sabot...

[thobson 38]

Balschoiw:

I do remain interested in how it was your test failed to show these bugs.  It maybe you have an addon, or somesuch that fixes these problems and I would appreciate knowing what that might be.

Another deeply frustating problem I had was cause by:

deleteVehcile Unitname

doing some very strange things if Unitname is inside a vehicle.

I also now have some Transport Unload/GetOut  GetIn/Load etc waypoints that fail the 7th time they are actioned.  As this is 3 1/2 hours into the mission it is a bit of a pain to test.

freda:

? ? ?

[korax 4]

Hmm. Most likely these are just things that are too small to deserve a patch, or BIS is far too busy programming 3 other games, but I'll add to the list:

Variables cannot be created within an IF statement

IF (Alive Player) Then {Var1=true}

Var1 would still be null unless it is initialized earlier in the script or any other script. same goes with local variables (with _underscore)

Using removeallweapons on a player or AI immediatley after they are killed can crash a multiplayer server

such as in a killed eventhandler which has an immediate removeallweapons on the unit, big no-no!

More to come if I can think of any...

[Daddl 10]

Balschoiw:

I do remain interested in how it was your test failed to show these bugs. It maybe you have an addon, or somesuch that fixes these problems and I would appreciate knowing what that might be.

Another deeply frustating problem I had was cause by:

deleteVehcile Unitname

doing some very strange things if Unitname is inside a vehicle.

About the rearming bug you mentioned: Having played loads of missions where it was required to rearm my tank at ammo trucks I've always been able to do so. Maybe the ammo truck had no ammo on board (check the respective slider in the mission editor)?

As for deleting units inside vehiles that doesn't work. You have to get them out of the vehicle first (eject them before deleting, or first delete the vehicle and then the passenger). This is not really a bug but rather the way the delete function is designed.

I gather you are pretty new to OFP, so don't be surprised if most things you find are either by design (even if we wished there were better ways) or have been well known for a long time.

Anyways: If anything this thread would belong into 'Troubleshooting' but hardly 'Mission editing & scripting'

[Balschoiw 0]

1.I put a T 80 in the editor and an ammo truck right next to it. Fired until it was empty and reloaded at ammo truck. It takes time to fill up all worn ammo, but it works without any flaws.

2. I used a game logic to position some fires at a house as I used it for one of my missions. As it is singleplayer I saved a lot but the fires were still in the correct position, as the house was. Maybe your problem is that the added action gets lost after a save.

3. Objects never move. not left or right nor up or down unless you tell them to do it via script.

There were some issues with vehicles when OFP was fresh released but those have all been solved by patches.

I´m running OFP´s latest version and the tests have been done with no mods or addons.

Edit: I did a little more testing and found out that you were actually right about the tank-ammo thingie, which is, if you give it a second thought a logical thing by the way. The main gun of the tank has two ammotypes it uses. Those ammo is added using the this addmagazine blablabla command. As the main gun has no unique ammo type the mag is removed when ammocount reaches zero and OFP switches to second ammotype, in this case HEAT ammo. The SABOT ammotype is not known to OFP engine anymore so it doesn´t get refilled. If you leave one shot of Sabot and switch to Heat , fire a few shots and reload both are getting refilled as the magtype is still there.

You get the idea ?

[thobson 38]

Balschoiw:

Thanks:

Quote[/b] ]

1.I put a T 80 in the editor and an ammo truck right next to it. Fired until it was empty and reloaded at ammo truck. It takes time to fill up all worn ammo, but it works without any flaws.

As you have now discovered it is a bug that will occur if the tank is fired while it is not next to an ammo truck - which is probably most of the time - and it is a bug that is clearly not widely known about (just look at Daddl's comments he clearly is so new to Flashpoint not have come across it either).  I do not agree with you that there is logic to this other than poor programming.  The script I wrote to get round it is smart enough to detect the type of tank and rearm it correctly.

Quote[/b] ]2. I used a game logic to position some fires at a house as I used it for one of my missions. As it is singleplayer I saved a lot but the fires were still in the correct position, as the house was. Maybe your problem is that the added action gets lost after a save.

You misunderstand the problem.  Of course placing things in buildings should not result in them moving (that is how I am getting round the problem by putting a GL where I want it).  I am refering to the scripting command buildingPos which returns a different value late in a mission after saves than it returns at the start of the mission. In fact the buildingPos at the start of the mission will correctly refer to a location in the building, later in the mission it could refer to a location in the next street!  Also my reference to the action disappearing - this is the standard 'comes with the building' climb ladder action, not an action I have added.  It is there at the start of the mission but not later.  There is clearly something screwed up in OFP's logic there.

Quote[/b] ]3. Objects never move. not left or right nor up or down unless you tell them to do it via script.

There were some issues with vehicles when OFP was fresh released but those have all been solved by patches.

As soon as I figure out how to post screen shots here you will eat those words.  I have seen buildings several feet in the air and trucks completely underground.  All to do with the terrain detail setting.

Quote[/b] ]You get the idea ?

I find that a rather patronsing comment from someone so far off the mark.  Of course I get the idea, you are in effect repeating my original post.

Daddl:

Quote[/b] ]As for deleting units inside vehiles that doesn't work. You have to get them out of the vehicle first (eject them before deleting, or first delete the vehicle and then the passenger). This is not really a bug but rather the way the delete function is designed.

 Not a bug!!?  You guys are in denial.

Gee I thought this would be helpful to some people but all I get is patronising half baked comments from people who seem not to know what they are talking about - but apparently think otherwise.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ] I find that a rather patronsing comment from someone so far off the mark.

Huh ?

I explained why the rearm thing happens. A thing you had no idea about. For sure you can get it done with a script but that´s not the point smartass.

Waste of time researching your "bugs" when all you have to say is some flaming bullshit...

Have fun smartass.

[thobson 38]

If you were explaining why the bug occured, then fine I misunderstood, and I apologise.  I thought you were claiming this was a logical way for the OFP engine to work.

But remember had just read:

Quote[/b] ]I gather you are pretty new to OFP, so don't be surprised if most things you find are either by design (even if we wished there were better ways) or have been well known for a long time

And several of the posts here seem to be in denial about there being any problems at all.

And I did feel you replies were somewhat flipant and didn't really indicate you had read what I had written.

[General Barron 0]

Woah! Calm down everyone...

@Thobson

I think you read Balschoiw's comment thinking there was a tone behind it that wasn't intended. Try to not let one person's post influence how you read another's...

@Balschoiw

I think you are over-reacting to Thobson's over-reacting.

@Daddl

Quote[/b] ]I gather you are pretty new to OFP, so don't be surprised if most things you find are either by design (even if we wished there were better ways) or have been well known for a long time.

Thobson is a knowledgable, regular member of OFPEC. It is absurd to use the date that he joined these forums to try and judge how long he has been playing OFP. You obviously haven't seen his ground-breaking mission 'Abandoned Armies', or else you would realize that he knows way more about ME&S than most 'long time' BIS forum members.

The bugs that he is pointing out (like objects and building positions moving over time) very well may have NEVER been discovered before, because quite honestly, I don't think anyone has ever made a mission like his before.

[Daddl 10]

There has been an influx of new members to these forums with the announcement of ArmA and OFP2 - from his questions I was guessing that he hadn't been long into editing for OFP. If I was wrong about that, then I'm sorry - and that's why I said 'I gather...' instead of just 'You are'. This isn't OFPEC and few people here read their forums on a regular base. You can't expect people here to know all your fellow OFPEC regulars.

So no, I neither know him nor his missions. Do you have any problem with that?

I still can't repeat his ammo bug nor do I see any problem in how unit deletion works (even if it would be nice to delete units in vehicles, it's easy to get around that limitation). The terrain bug is something I can't repeat either, although it's obvious why this might happen when you change the terrain resolution afterwards (for example by playing the mission on a server where by default low terrain resolution is used).

If there's a real bug linked to the latter then this is still the wrong place to post about it: there's a specific 'troubleshooting' section in this forum, and there's always the BIS support email where they actually listen (and sometimes answer) to such bug reports (in my opinion the best place to send an actual bug report).

[thobson 38]

Quote[/b] ]I still can't repeat his ammo bug

Place an empty tank on the map (not a Shilka or Vulcan).  Place an empty ammo truck on the map – but not next to the tank.  Place yourself on the map.

Now there is a choice.  Either:

1) put something like the following in the into field of the tank:  

{this removeMagazines _x} forEach ["Heat120","Shell120","Heat105","Shell105","H

eat73","Shell73","MachineGun12_7","MachineGun7_6",&quot

;AT3Launcher","Cannon25HE","HellfireLauncherM2A2"]

That should deal with most of the armoured units you might pick.  (Bye the way you should ignor the spurious ; in the statement above it is being inserted by this site.)  Or

2) Move the ammo slider of the tank to the furthest left position. Or

3) do none of the above.

Preview the mission.  Get in the tank as gunner.  Make sure the tank is not next to the ammo truck, if it is move the drivers seat and drive the tank away.  Fire off all the rounds the tank has.  Move to the driver’s position.  Drive to the ammo truck.  Rearm – except you can’t get back to the full complement of HEATs and Sabots

If you fire off the ammo while you are next to the truck then the rearm at ammo truck option comes up as soon as the tank does not have a full complement of rounds, and then gets locked.  This is not a good a good test as it is a situation that is unlikely to occur in practice.

The reason I need a script to deal with the bug you are now about to experience is that in my mission I have several armoured units in for repair – so obviously they should not have any ammo up the spout.  I therefore need a script to work around this bug so the player can eventually use these armoured units – should they wish to.

[klavan 0]

1) Arrays aren't initialized until AFTER init fields are run. Meaning, if you put this into a unit's init field:

array = [this, 9]; [array, 1] exec "script.sqs"

Then "script.sqs" would be passed NOTHING in the (_this select 0) variable. An akward example I guess, but I've made a few scripts now that have run into this exact problem.

I've found a way to cheat this bug, by putting:

@time>2

in the init file and then adding eventuals initializations lines after.

I've encountered this problem when I tried to initialize your infoshare script in the init of my missions.

Klavan