Bug reports

[Dalai]

Maciek
Agree with Karmakeld, you are so great with game's content!

Regarding luck and morale above 10 or below -10. Does it really make sense? Let's take morale. 10 morale means guaranteed morale next turn. It means you can not be any happier. You are absolutely happy.

Now you cast sorrow on the happy stack. Does it make any sense that the stack remains totally 100% happy in spite of sorrow?

I kinda feel it's not really that unequivocal.

dalai, btw there's a similar bug with another decrease/ script. if you try to decrease dwelling population, this will also go beskerk after loading. Instead of decreasing, it will generate 65.489 monsters pr. turn.

It has been fixed too.

If you continue this bug-guessing game, you may easily run out of pleasant surprises

[Maciek]

Thanks, Karmakeld and Dalai. The analisys is there so that it can be checked. Perhaps the new version has some diferent values somewhere or perhaps I made a mistake somewhere. Corrected 3 obvious mistakes in my previous post (corrections in bold). I wrote 'Morale' instead of 'Luck' in section about Luck.

I mostly skipped Mirth, Fortune (and advanced classes that give those), Sorrow, Misfortune, Fizbin of Misfortune and Spirit of Oppression because they set Morale/Luck to a specific value, overwriting all scripted values and other bonuses/penalties. Therefore, I think they're not important in setting the limits.
But thanks for checking, CTPAHHuK.

Now you cast sorrow on the happy stack. Does it make any sense that the stack remains totally 100% happy in spite of sorrow?

No, it doesn't. But Sorrow is stronger than scripts and bonuses/penalties. But, if you throw a Cloud of Despair (brings 'normal' +10 down to 0) on the stack instead of casting Sorrow, it can make sense that the stack is so happy that it stays at +10. Or, let's say, that it goes down to +5 instead of 0.

[Dalai]

No, it doesn't. But Sorrow is stronger than scripts and bonuses/penalties.

Yes, poor choice of example from my side.

But, if you throw a Cloud of Despair (brings 'normal' +10 down to 0) on the stack instead of casting Sorrow, it can make sense that the stack is so happy that it stays at +10. Or, let's say, that it goes down to +5 instead of 0.

You got my idea. In you last example we see that technically Morale was limited to +15.

We must find a way to balance bonuses and penalties in the way that makes all of them relevant an all situations.

If I see +10, I cast -10, I expect to see 0. But for my enemy, if he gathered bonuses to the total of +20 and my -10 cast destroys them all - it seems unfair. We have to find some middle ground.

[Maciek]

Poison Attack and Vial of Poison ignore all Magic Resistance unless it's 100%. Are there any plans to change that?
Death Ward does lower the damage.

[Akul]

Is Equilibris usable in Windows 7 64-bit? I installed it and while H4 itself runs, Equilibris complains that it is not a proper Win32 system.

[Dalai]

Poison Attack and Vial of Poison ignore all Magic Resistance unless it's 100%. Are there any plans to change that?
Death Ward does lower the damage.

Good catch There were no plans, but now we have to have a look at this (most probably) bug.

Is Equilibris usable in Windows 7 64-bit? I installed it and while H4 itself runs, Equilibris complains that it is not a proper Win32 system.

We have a multiple reports about perfect compatibility with Win 7 64 bit. At the same time some people did run into compatibility problems. I think it's quite complex because there are so many game versions.

I run it in Windows 7 64-bit Home Edition just fine. But I never installed it - I just copied my previous installation from Win XP Pro. I'm not even sure if it's important

[Yurian Stonebow]

Is it possible at all (of course using your best knowledge, tools and assets) to fix the original Heroes IV bug where the AI does not know how to buy creatures from the Nature Town's Creature Portal?

[Dalai]

Not at this point, sorry

[Yurian Stonebow]

@Dalai:

Sorry to hear that it isn't possible at this point. I was hoping that you'd say it is and has already been implemented in the next patch that has all of Max's goodies in it and is all but just waiting to be released in the nearest future.
But alas, being a pessimist as we Finns tend to be, I kind of "knew" it already in my heart that you'd say it can't be fixed this time or at all. These are my honest thoughts, I'm not trying to be a wise-@ss here.

Another well-known bug that's been around since the very beginning:

Enemy AI hero offering the player Gold in order to be allowed to retreat from battle, but retreats all the same without paying if the player refuses.

Call me pessimist, but I believe I know the answer to this one already...


-Yurian

[Dalai]

Unlike the portal bug, I don't think we tried to fix retreat bug. May be there is still hope.

But first I want to be sure about the bug itself. As I understand, if you take the money - enemy will retreat with the army, but if you don't - only heroes will flee from battle. Is it not by design?

To soothe your northern pessimism a bit, I can say that mapmakers will be able to ban ALL the spells they want, including those that magic heroes start with.

[Yurian Stonebow]

I did some more testing on my own, and to my embarrassement must bend a knee right here: I was wrong. AI's retreat from battle works as intended.
Sorry about that, I was really trying to help you in the ongoing hunt for bugs.

What caused me to (hastily, as it later turned out) suspect a bug was my belief that it was connected to another known, and well-proven bug:

Combat Script Problem: When using the Combat Script both the Defeated and the Victorious branches execute regardless of the combat’s outcome. (Version WoW)

Has the aforementioned bug been fixed? Is it "fixable"?

To soothe your northern pessimism a bit, I can say that mapmakers will be able to ban ALL the spells they want, including those that magic heroes start with.

Yes, this is true. I'm a Heroes IV map maker myself, which means I've seen the map editor, tried it "a couple of times" and am now slowly beginning to master it. Too bad the otherwise splendid editor itself has some major scritpting bugs such as the example above clearly demonstrates.

WBR,

Yurian

[Yurian Stonebow]

"There is a bug in Campaign mode, where certain skills are never offered to your heroes even when they are able to receive them natively. For example, if you played on the Might campaign, even if you hired a Mage from the external tavern (say, on Map 2), you will never be offered Life Magic or Death Magic for this mage at level-up time, even though these skills are within the allowable set for Mages. Instead, your Mage will actually get offered Nature Magic, Tactics, etc, which aren’t normally in the set of offerable skills. A Cleric would never be offered Order Magic, etc. It appears that campaign skill restrictions on your primary hero are also inadvertently applied to secondary carry-over heroes."

-A bug in original Heroes IV as reported by a guy named yimingliu on his blog.

http://blog.yimingliu.com/2007/02/03/ha ... aved-game/

Have you Equilibris guys run into the bug and if your answer is yes, have you tried to fix the issue? Other people there commenting on his blog seem to agree that his method to eliminate the bug works just fine.

Wbr,

Yurian

[Dalai]

I don't recall researching this particular bug. But again - is it a bug or is it the way it's meant to be? All campaigns have been extracted from game files and are available as standard campaigns, which can be opened in campaign editor. My first impulse would be to check if those skills are banned. If they are - it's not a bug, but a mapmaker design decision. If you or someone else thinks it is a bad and unfounded decision - it's a completely different story.

[Namerutan]

The second map for the might campaign in H4Std has custom settings for the available skills, and there are 5 forbidden skills including 4 Schools of Magic: Chaos, Death, Life and Order.
So, at least for this case, the game is working as intended (not a bug).
However, if you hire some hero with any of these skills as starting skill, you will be offered to improve it. Also, secondary skills as Healing or Ocultism are not forbidden.

[Dalai]

Also, secondary skills as Healing or Ocultism are not forbidden.

It means that those schools of magic can be learned in Magic Universities, if they are present on the map.

[Namerutan]

Also, secondary skills as Healing or Ocultism are not forbidden.

It means that those schools of magic can be learned in Magic Universities, if they are present on the map.

Yes, but in this map there are no ways to learn these magic schools:
- No Magic University
- No Witch's Hut
- No School of Magic
- Just 3 Altars: one of Tactics, one of Scouting, one of Nature Magic.

[GreatEmerald]

I'm not sure if these were mentioned and whether they're relevant in Equilibris, but in the original:

1. When your troops have a Magic Mirror cast, and the enemy kills the stack with magic, the Magic Mirror graphical effect appears yet doesn't do anything.
2. Druid's Chain doesn't seem to work right. It's supposed to be a +1 level to Summoning skill, yet at Master I still get White Tigers etc. and not Elementals.

[Namerutan]

Druid's Chain doesn't seem to work right. It's supposed to be a +1 level to Summoning skill, yet at Master I still get White Tigers etc. and not Elementals.

I confirm this. The Druid's Chain increases the total experience points of the summoned creatures, but it does not affect to the type of creatures summoned.
I don't know if this could be easily fixed, but otherwise it could be changed at least the description for that artifact.

When your troops have a Magic Mirror cast, and the enemy kills the stack with magic, the Magic Mirror graphical effect appears yet doesn't do anything.

I'm not sure about this. The visual effect triggers often, for any spell, but not all spells does something to the original caster. For example, if you use mass area spell on the enemies, a Faerie Dragon inside that area would mirror the spell back to the caster, but doing nothing. Could you add some details?

[GreatEmerald]

I'm not sure about this. The visual effect triggers often, for any spell, but not all spells does something to the original caster. For example, if you use mass area spell on the enemies, a Faerie Dragon inside that area would mirror the spell back to the caster, but doing nothing. Could you add some details?

In my case it was a Genie casting Ice Bolt on my Færie dragon. The way mirroring should have worked in that situation is obvious.

But even in case of mass spells, it should be either reflected back as a non-mass spell, or the visual effect should not play in that case.

[GreatEmerald]

Two more things come to mind:

• The AI seems to be cheating with surrender, because in one battle I knocked out the enemy hero, they had 4 Troglodytes left, surrendered, and yet I didn't get to keep the hero. Yet when that happens for players you only get away with the troops, not the hero.
• Can anything be done about the sound volume when casting mass spells?