The Blind Sentinel - [Feedback and development topic]

[WhiteWolf]

Hi all,

It's been a long time. Still, slow progress has been going on, and now 1.4.6 is updated with the following changes:
1.4.6 Release notes:
- finished Bloodsword graphics
- started to rework the Northern graphics
- finished Archer, Longbowman, Spearman, Axeman
- updated to newer soldier sounds here as well (same as in The Stone of the North), and added a few extras (f.e. elves)
- excluded creeper maps, until micro_ai's are introduced (campaign now reduced to only 27 scenarios)
- fixed a gameplay bug
- very little balancing (1st map)

Best regards,
WhiteWolf

[Wisanggeni]

Hello,
I am reported a bug in the scenario "The Blind Sentinel", after some turn i have manage to see the cell for "Gildred" unit, after some chat from "Capatain Vormund" the prisoned Gildred unit is missing and i stuck in this scenario and can't open the gate to Armory area because i didn't find any key in any where, and a gate cell in up to the Northen Woman Prisoner cell can't be opened (or it would be left like that?)

Thanks
I'm truly sorry if my word confuse you because of my bad english

[WhiteWolf]

Hi,

Sorry, Gildred not appearing is a bug. I'll upload a fix patch in a few minutes. After downloading it however, you will have to restart the map from the beginning. Load your "ThBlSe-The Blind Sentinel.gz" (autosaves won't be good!), or the last turn of the previous map, win it quickly, and you're good to go.
Reasons:

Spoiler:

This is a variable-based bug, which means, that an important variable was missing at the very beginning of the map. If you try to load it after this point, no matter of the fix, the bug will appear again, the map has to be restarted. This is why autosaves from this map won't be any good. Either load the main-save of this map, or load the last turn autosave of the previous map.

The keys seem to work fine here. Here's a little walkthrough:

Spoiler:

You don't need keys to open the gates at 10,14. After you killed everyone in that room, open this gate and proceed to the next room.


In order to get the key, you have to kill the Keykeeper unit on tile 8,15. After you kill him, you can access the armoury, and also move on to the next room.

Sorry, I don't know what northern women cell you're talking about Could you give the tile coordinates (x,y)?


EDIT:
Updated to 1.4.7

I checked by the way, and this gildred bug is old and has been solved some time ago. Made it another workaround, so try to update, but...sorry for asking, but this could also be a source: do you use debug mode during gameplay? Do not. Debugging can be useful in some cases, but if overused, it can cause severe variable-leaks which cause bugs like these.


Best regards,
WhiteWolf

[Wisanggeni]

The cells gate that i mean is in 10,14 and 11,15 both of them can't be opened or didn't make any event when a unit even captain Vormund it self stand in front of that cells gate
I'm so sorry for asking this bug, because i have search in this forum and i didn't find it (maybe i didn't search it carrefully ),
and for the debug mode (i even didn't know about this), i just play the Wesnoth normally i think

Thanks for the guide and the walktrough

[WhiteWolf]

Ah, got it. Those gates don't open, because you are only allowed to proceed once you had freed Gildred And that was prevented by the bug.

Retry then with this fix, it should solve all of the issues

[Wisanggeni]

I'm so sorry for disturbing you with this question about the same bug again, i have updated the Campaign TBS in Wesnoth Game Application, and played the previous scenario of "The Blind Sentinel" (scenario "The Citadel") and the bug of missing Gildred after some chat from Captain Vormund is still appearing again in me in this scenario

it's pity, when i love to play this campaign but i can't do anyting
once again i'm truly sorry if i disturb you with this

[WhiteWolf]

No need to be sorry, and you're not disturbing This topic is here exactly for these cases, and providing bug reports is very important, especially when the bug doesn't seem to appear for me. (But appears for players.)

The problem is, I don't see why it doesn't work. It works fine here, no matter what I try
I must note however..."The Citadel" as previous scenario? Interesting, because that scenario has been removed since 1.4.6. The file hasn't been removed, so theoretically it's possible to access it, but not during normal gameplay. At the moment, I don't know how this is possible
Nevertheless, even this can't cause the Gildred bug.




EDIT:
OK, I checked again by jumping to the Citadel map, and that is definitely what causes this.
Something nasty is going on here, because Gildred is simply forgotten I can't even find him in the recall list. Give me a little time, I'll check it out






EDIT 2:
Yes, the Citadel map is definitely what makes this bug. It's long to explain, the point is, that Gildred is removed from the map twice - first on the Citadel map, secondly, on the Blind Sentinel map, and the second time, a non-existent unit is being stored, completly eliminating Gildred.

Now the only question is how you got onto the Citadel map
My only guess for now is...I have none Have you played TBS with the 1.4.5 version? My only guess is that you were already on the Citadel map when you updated to 1.4.6. That could have caused this incompatibiliy error.

The problem is, this issue can't be fixed through patches, because the bug is burned into your Wesnoth saves.
You can probably work it around, by loading the last turn of the At the Gates of Barag Gor map. Win it quickly, and this new version must take you immediately to the Blind Sentinel map.
Contact me if it works. If you somehow manage to end up on the Citadel map again...then also contact me There is another workaround, but that would be lot more tricky and complicated.







Regards,
WhiteWolf

[Wisanggeni]

EDIT 2:
Yes, the Citadel map is definitely what makes this bug. It's long to explain, the point is, that Gildred is removed from the map twice - first on the Citadel map, secondly, on the Blind Sentinel map, and the second time, a non-existent unit is being stored, completly eliminating Gildred.

Now the only question is how you got onto the Citadel map
My only guess for now is...I have none Have you played TBS with the 1.4.5 version? My only guess is that you were already on the Citadel map when you updated to 1.4.6. That could have caused this incompatibiliy error.

The problem is, this issue can't be fixed through patches, because the bug is burned into your Wesnoth saves.
You can probably work it around, by loading the last turn of the At the Gates of Barag Gor map. Win it quickly, and this new version must take you immediately to the Blind Sentinel map.
Contact me if it works. If you somehow manage to end up on the Citadel map again...then also contact me There is another workaround, but that would be lot more tricky and complicated.

Yeah I have played this campaign before the update (maybe its from version 1.4.5) and i didn't play this campaign again because i stuck on scenario "The Citadel" from can't avoid the patrol guard and the citizen unit in that map the other reason because i have some other issue about my school work (so i'm take a leave for playing Wesnoth for some month) and after my school work have done, i continue playing this game again and update this campaign and start playing again for this campaign from my last map, then i found this problem

P.S. sorry for my bad english

Spoiler:

and my problem i don't understand how to attach an image to my post for sowing the error (i hope your last suggestion will be fixing the problem)

Thanks, i will contact you letter if have the result

[WhiteWolf]

I have played this campaign before the update (maybe its from version 1.4.5) [...] update this campaign and start playing again [...]

Bingo then That's gotta be it. Pretty unlucky I gotta say Try restarting it at the "At the Gates of Barag Gor", it'll work then surely

[WhiteWolf]

Hey,

Uploaded 1.4.8 with a complete workaround for this bug, if anyone else has this, but does not read the forums.
Basically 1.4.8 is only an override which solves the issue automatically.

Release notes:
- fixed a very rare but game-crash backward save-incompatibility bug between <=1.4.5 and 1.4.6/7 (1.4.7 did not solve the issue)

Regards,
WhiteWolf

[tribes55]

One of my favorite campaigns, I also really enjoyed Invasion of the Western Calvary. I'm not sure if you recall, but I gave you feedback awhile ago on the campaign.

Very entertaining and unique gameplay-- especially with the early incorporation of the loyal units and very limited scenarios to get mages, something I didn't pick up on soon enough, unfortunately.

Somethings I would enjoy to see; mostly small things, are small events that contribute to character development and story development.
An example would be "The Desert of Death" scenario, where you meet Lady Lovissa's sister, Mary.
When you take the final blow to kill Mary, her sister shouts, asking for you to stop.

I would like to see events that (if possible) prevent the sisters from fighting, or possibly a dialogue when a sister goes within the other's line of sight.

Or, maybe, in scenarios such as the "Welcome to the North" scenario where you're venturing beyond the "new wall". It's the objective to sneak past the garrison without getting their attention to reach the sign northeast of the map. Could there be a dialogue for when one of their soldiers meet see you? Or maybe when you strike the garrison's authority, the Mace-fanatic, it would engage you in a dialogue expressing his ultimate surprise that Wesnothians managed to make it this far, and so on. We see this in some other scenarios, but usually as death messages.
Edit:
Bugs:
I've also noticed that I cannot promote some of my units. There seems to be a trend with the loyal units that I keep from scenario 1, although I may be wrong.
Whenever I select a catapult in the siege mission, The Sack of Preston, it will destroy the area around it the next turn. I can't control where it shoots, as it automatically will shoot where the unit's position is itself, as if I was ordering it to attack that hex by selecting it. I get a message that they're reloading, and I can't change where they shoot next turn, so they always end up killing themselves.
Thanks for the great campaign.

[WhiteWolf]

Hi,

I'm glad you liked it

I find your ideas great, I hope I can create some of them the following weeks.

If you scroll back a couple of posts, you can see, that the promotion has been a debate for long, and I admitted that the tech-tree is simply illogical and not well-planned. (As captain, you promote to vassal lords? ). This includes that you cannot promote loyal units, or any unit that was not recruited by you at some point. The main criteria for a unit to get promoted is that it was recruited. Don't ask me to point out the logic - there is none, at the beginning I thought this to be like this, and I left it like this.
The whole tech-tree is in need of a redesign, however, apart from these problems, it works fine. So it's just not on the top of my priority list, I'm sorry. Some day it will be redesigned and replanned, but not right now.

I'm going to check out those catapults as soon as I can.


EDIT:
Which version of TBS do you use?
Could you attach a game replay of the map?
The catapults are fine here. There was a similar bug like the one you described, but it has been fixed about 2-3 versions ago.
No matter what I try, the catapults work here, I can't reproduce the bug. A game replay, or even a screenshot would help a lot





Thanks for posting, check out Stone of the North if you want to continue the story

Best regards,
WhiteWolf

[tribes55]

Thanks for the info.
Concerning the promotion system, you said that you can't promote units you haven't recruited-- I don't see a problem with that, but I do have some loyal units that I am capable of promoting. My Bowman named "Blemyrcyn", (not sure if names are dynamic at start)
Here are some photos of that very incident:
https://i.imgur.com/bYAQdai.png
https://i.imgur.com/emYHvOU.png
Yet when I select most other loyal units, I cannot promote them.

Anyways, yes, I can upload a replay. I didn't know how to get one without beating the scenario, so I just used debug mode to end it.

Concerning the catapult
In the replay, it only happened to one of them. I'm hoping that I'm not misunderstanding the directions.
Here's the replay:

My mistake, I forgot to include the version.
The version is "1.4.7".

[WhiteWolf]

Hmm...the problem is, for some reason, wesnoth replays cannot record the unit switches made by catapults. Anyway, I see that something is not right there

Still, I can't get my catapults to explode themselves here. I played the whole scenario, shooting the catapults each turn, and nothing unexpected happens. (Same difficulty, even the same moves as in your replay).

Sorry for asking, but are you absolutely sure you were using 1.4.7 already at this map? (and not only updated to it after this point?)
At the moment, I really have no idea what brought this about.

The only way a catapult can explode itself, is that it moved (=fired) adjacent to itself. That way you can explode it, however, here that wasn't the case. The only time when this can happen unwillingly, is that during movement, shroud (or fog) limits vision, and when an enemy unit is sighted, the unit stops, and triggers the event which causes it to blow at that location. This is stopped by the fact, that when you select the catapult, all shroud and fog is lifted from the map, giving you a full vision. After the movement, fog and shroud is re-applied to your side.
This algorithm getting buggy is only specific to versions before 1.4.0.
A catapult cannot explode itself unwillingly, and I can't see how an accidental self-explode is possible

At newer versions the only funny things happen, when you try to fire a catapult to a location of a currently unmanned catapult. A sane player wouldn't do that Still, that does make certain funny results, but again, you didn't make this move.

I have absolutely no idea. If you start the game now, debug to the map, and try it again, does the self-explode still happen? Could you check please?

Best regards,
WhiteWolf

[tribes55]

Yes, at the time, I was at version 1.4.7.
I've tried multiple things:
I've updated the campaign to the latest version, then reloaded the scenario by beating the scenario prior to it
I've turned down my acceleration speed
I've turned down my Window's Mouse's Doube Click speed.
Yet, the problem still occurs. I'll try to get an actual video so that you can see everything.

Thanks,
Dean