Help with Dungeon Craft Quality Assurance

[manikus]

In an effort to improve the quality and playability of Dungeon Craft, I'm looking for users who will help the developers with quality assurance.

The purpose of DC quality assurance is to find and fix the errors in the various databases. In both the original databases and in my additions there are numerous unintended errors as well as various playability issues that arise with the particular database and it's interaction with the engine, i.e. things don't always work the way we think they do. We also need people to help us test the fixes for the various bugs to make sure that we did indeed fix the bug.

If you're interested in helping out, please post in this thread, or PM me.

[SilentThief]

Well, IIRC the spell 'hold person' can target up to 3 targets and if you target 3 they get a bonus to save(like +1 or +2), and 2 targets get no bonus, and only one target gets a penalty to save.

I don't believe there is any change for less and I dunno if you can target less than 3 in DC.

ST

[manikus]

Originally Posted by SilentThief Well, IIRC the spell 'hold person' can target up to 3 targets and if you target 3 they get a bonus to save(like +1 or +2), and 2 targets get no bonus, and only one target gets a penalty to save. I don't believe there is any change for less and I dunno if you can target less than 3 in DC. ST

It's actually 1d4 targets in a 20' cube, any human, demihuman or humanoid may be a target. There are no penalties to the caster if 3 or 4 targets are chosen and there are bonuses of -1 and -3 to target saving throws if only 2 or 1 target are chosen, respectively. This is for the wizard spell, It is -2 instead of -3 bonus for the cleric spell.

In DC you can target less than the total by choosing "Exit" from the targetting menu, as you can with FRUA and the Secret of the Silver Blades as well.

[Arminius]

As I said over at www.seditionproject.info Forums I'm in. I'll report problems and test fixes.

[manikus]

Originally Posted by Arminius As I said over at www.seditionproject.info Forums I'm in. I'll report problems and test fixes.

Check this thread in the Sedition Project Forums. I tried attaching the .txt file, but it won't let me.

There are instructions for what to do with the quoted code, but it's kind of messy doing it this way. PMs here or there will not let me use attachment either.

If you want to PM me your email address with your report on this first one, I can email you future ones.

Oh, and thanks a lot for helping out. I really appreciate it.

[manikus]

Many thanks to Peter Deal for helping me out. He's been plowing through the spells and giving me amazing feedback.

Is there anyone else who would like to help out? We still have a lot of spells to go. There are plenty for everyone.

[manikus]

Hey Arminius, are you still working on the spells I sent you?

Peter Deal, how about you?

I'm working on fixing the spells I know are broken (or unfinished) and would love to have more to fix before I think about new spells.

I have error reports on clerical spells level 2 to 5, but would love to have more that I didn't have to do myself.

If anyone would like to help, just let me know.

[Paul Stevens]

An update on my work.

Working on the PC Fleeing and causing crash
at end of combat. But......I want to be able
to replay recordings at high speed, for obvious
reasons. Well, if not obvious, then the reason is
that I have to play the game up to the error
many, many tmes and I get tired of waiting. So....

I have discovered several things about DC. Some
of them bugs, some of them bad design decisions,
and some of them simply un-implemented features
that I would like.

The big one is that the program (at least the
debug version) uses about 50 percent of a 3 GHz
computer just idling. It should use a fraction of
a percent. Therefore I could only play the
recordings at 2 or 3 times normal speed. I think
I have that fixed (It was assuming the mouse moved
continuously even when it was standing
still).

Other little problems include a rather un-Windoz-
like method of delaying the action ( Sleeping ).
Ha, ha. Get it? Windoz? Sleeping?
And no code to implement fast playback request.

I am still finding little delays that I want to get
rid of. I should be able to replay recordings at
100 times normal speed. I hope.

Then I will return to the PC fleeing-crash bug
which is probably very simple to fix once I can
figure out how all this combat stuff is supposed
to work. Perhaps getting slow in my old age.
It was not coming easily.

[manikus]

Wow! That's a lot of processor resources to be using up. Does it use that much on older machines (slower) or is it a percentage thing?

I'm slowly working through the spells and discovering that almost every bug and glitch is going away with a reqork of the scripts.

The only script I haven't got working properly is the $CHAR_REMOVESPELL one I've been working on. But, it's still too soon for me to tell if it's me or a bug.

I've also been trying to use DC on Linux, and with partial success. With the newest version of Wine on Fedora 8, I can completely and fully use the editor except for the "Test Design" features, which is no surprise, since I cannot use the engine at all in Wine. I've been reading the Wine forums and looking at a lot of error logs and recovering from a lot of crashes (trying to play DC in Wine crashes Linux after forcing it into 640x480 resoltuion b/c that's what I'm testing it with). I think I"ve figured out as much as I can, and that basically Wine doesn't like DC trying to force it into full screen mode. Even many games written for Linux machines do not work well in full screen mode. I will test out my theory further tomorrow, once I download the stuff to try DC at 1024x768, which is the resolution on my laptop. If we can get DC working in Wine, that could provide us some much needed exposure, not to mention allow people to play DC on their Linux and Mac machines. I'll post more tomorrow.

[Uatu]

Wow, lots of good work from you guys! Thanks again for all that...

I am taking a little peek to see what MFC functions DC uses, to see what I could try and replace them with (so that DC could compile without them...)... But that is about all I can do, I think...