Legend of the Invincibles

[Dugi]

That is the intended behaviour. Effects of any potions vanish upon levelup.

[fdsfsfdsjkljkl]

Hi again Dugi! I've been working far too much lately, but I recently had the chance to sit down and play through a large part of LotI again. I'm really impressed with the changes you've made!

I've got two things to contribute back to the campaign today. First, here are a few typo fixes:

1. scenarios1/13_Twilight.cfg: "grieviously" => "grievously"
2. scenarios1/16_The_Battle_for_Ogira.cfg: "lenghtened" => "lengthened"
3. scenarios2/09_Underground.cfg: "acenstors" => "ancestors"
4. scenarios4/15_The_Library.cfg: "doubious" => "dubious"
5. scenarios6/04_I_Hate_You_I_Hate_You_Too.cfg: "millitary" => "military"
6. scenarios6/14_Frozen_Land.cfg: "fridgid" => "frigid"
7. scenarios7/02_Search_for_Elves.cfg: "loyality" => "loyalty"
8. scenarios7/12_The_Last_Enemy.cfg: "goddes" => "goddess"
9. scenarios7/15_Annihilation.cfg: "poweful" => "powerful"
10. scenarios8/16_Gates_of_Hell.cfg: "unbrearable" => "unbearable"
11. scenarios9/08_Doom_Ford.cfg: "casew" => "case"
12. scenarios9/34_Urias_Den.cfg: "loyality" => "loyalty"
13. scenarios9/36_Temple_of_Ultimate_Evil.cfg: "allmighty" => "almighty"
14. scenarios9/42_Passage_of_Detriment.cfg: "whithout" => "without"
15. scenarios10/14_End_of_the_World.cfg: "dispell" => "dispel"

The second (and more interesting ) part is that I wrote a quick little python script to extract a "script" of LotI automatically from the scenario config files. I've attached a copy of the "script" as well as the current output to this post. You lose some of the context from the scenario when you read the "script", but it makes it much easier to spot typos or make changes to wording.

As always, thanks for an amazing campaign!

[Dugi]

Welcome back,

Some of these typos were genuine spelling errors I would have never noticed because I thought it was the correct spelling. I have made these corrections in my version. They should be indeed easier to spot with your code snippet, but I fear that I would not be able to spot them myself.

Also, I apologise, but despite the months I had to do it, I have not yet added the piece of code you've contributed due to concerns about creating a load of new bugs. I will look into it soon (now I have just returned from a skiing holiday and I am terribly tired, sorry).

[Delicius169]

Little sugestion: How about changing blood rain visualy into something else? It s hard to see where it s raining, and where it does not. I got in mind some kind of darkness cloud coming from darkness... like is in Neverending strory by Michael Ende.
Or maybe if the rain would be acid-and therefore green, it could be seen much more propertly?

[Dugi]

I have changed the colour of the place to make it more visible (in my version).

[fdsfsfdsjkljkl]

Some of these typos were genuine spelling errors I would have never noticed because I thought it was the correct spelling. I have made these corrections in my version. They should be indeed easier to spot with your code snippet, but I fear that I would not be able to spot them myself.

Glad I was able to help

Also, I apologise, but despite the months I had to do it, I have not yet added the piece of code you've contributed due to concerns about creating a load of new bugs. I will look into it soon

No problem - I hope skiing was fun! It's a tricky bit of code to work with, and the current stuff works fine, so there's no hurry to get it merged.

I was also going to mention that spell_suck seemed to be broken in 3.1.20b, but it looks like that was already reported / fixed earlier in the thread.

[Dugi]

No problem - I hope skiing was fun! It's a tricky bit of code to work with, and the current stuff works fine, so there's no hurry to get it merged.

Maybe it's a bit bold to ask it from you, I apologise if it is, but since you have the most experience with that chunk of code and you're currently playing LotI, can you please use that proof of concept code while playing to make sure that it is not buggy?

[fdsfsfdsjkljkl]

Maybe it's a bit bold to ask it from you, I apologise if it is, but since you have the most experience with that chunk of code and you're currently playing LotI, can you please use that proof of concept code while playing to make sure that it is not buggy?

Sure, there's no better test than a proper playthrough after all. Fair warning: I'll be travelling for work again soon, so it may be a few weeks before I manage to get everything integrated / tested properly.

Once that's done I'll upload a new global_events.cfg and a diff of my changes.

[Dugi]

All right, take your time. Slow progress means lots of random thoughts and random thoughts help with improving the design. Thanks.

[lhaire]

Hi Dugi,

1. The new feature to show items on units on recall list is great, but there seems to be a bug. If you place all the items in inventory using this feature and later recall that unit, that unit stills shows as geared (even though they aren't). Additionally, the weapons they used to have still show up on the weapon list of the unit (right hand side of the game screen). Only once you choose to unequip all items after recalling the unit does everything disappear to properly represent the unit.

2. A suggestion I have made before which I was hoping would make it to the next release isn't there yet, so I'll state it again in hopes you'll consider it. In each of the items inventory categories it would be very useful to have the items sorted alphabetically and/or just listed once uniquely with a number in brackets to indicate how many you have in inventory - e.g. ice armour (5). I find it difficult to sift through the inventory list when you have a lot of one category (for example, after a while you might accumulate 20-30+ armours and you start to lose track which ones you have and how many you have of each kind).

Thanks and keep up the great work!

Cheers.

[Dugi]

Hi,

1. I think I had fixed it recently, but not uploaded.
2. WML is a slow programming language and sorting something would take a lot of time. They are sorted by the order they were put into the inventory, which is the order in which they were saved there. If you have too many items, consider converting some of them into gems.

[matsjoyce]

You could do a heap insert as items are collected (Binary search, O(log(n)), plenty fast)? Burning all the iron armour and ancient armour on sight probably fixes most of the problems, though. It also doesn't have to be alphabetical, just grouping the items would be great.

[Dugi]

The absence of pointers or references in WML makes any sorting algorithm besides the obvious one (complexity O(n2)) very hard. The translation of item number in storage to item properties itself has a linear complexity. The only data structure you have is a vector where any transposition or insertion of elements except swapping elements has a linear complexity. There should be some tricks, like using indexes of next and previous elements as pointers/references in a linked list, but it would be very complicated. The amount of operations needed to reduce the complexity would most likely cause it to take more time than some simple insertion sort (always insert the smallest).

To show how slow WML is, here are some benchmarks (some observed, some read of):

Relative slowness of programming languages:
C/C++ : 1
Java/C# : 4
Lua : 7
Python : 150
WML : 500

[nuorc]

If there was an elegant (=quick) way to group items I'd very much like that.

Smashing is not always an option (never for the potions), as sometimes you (I?) need to keep stuff for the next time you lose your army or for special units/occasions...

Would it possibly be faster to 'build' the groups between scenarios? (A few lose items during a scenario shouldn't be too disturbing).

[matsjoyce]

I'll see if I can cook something up. Inserting to the inventory only seems to occur in two locations, both in utils/items.cfg, so adapting it shouldn't be too hard.