[WIP] ToEE Front-End X 5.0 Progress Report

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

UPDATE: Updated the Gold Release to build 4. Fixed a bug that caused a crash when parsing modules that do not support Delayed Blast Fireball (was related to the code overhaul to support drop-down menu functionality).

Thanks for the report, Zoltec! Please give gold 4 a try, it should no longer bug you with the error. Seems you're the only one actively testing, by the way... Thanks for that! It's kind of funny and sad at the same time that it took almost a couple weeks for anybody to notice a glaring issue like that, and only after the issue had to go from the experimental build into gold. Seems like hardly anybody wants to actually get hands dirty and test stuff, everyone wants to get a bug-free front-end without helping out with testing (as such, people only ever download gold releases and hardly ever download experimental builds). Oh well. Let's just hope there are no more issues like that in gold 4.

On a more serious note - people, please help test the new front-end. Everything that is missed while testing the front-end is going to end up straight in v7.9.0 in a little over a week from now. The better you test the new TFE-X, the better your experience with the new modpack is going to be! Thanks in advance.

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

@ Gehennis: please update to gold 4 as soon as possible, all previous builds are considered obsolete. Still, the issue you're mentioning is a gameplay issue, not a front-end issue - please report it to the Co8 modpack bug report thread, hopefully it'll get fixed before v7.9.0 if it's a bug!

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

@ Zoltec: Sounds good!

@ sirchet: It's OK to overwrite the old version with the new one and proceed from there, it'll work just fine.

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

@ Zoltec: The new TFE-X automatically cleans the game cache on startup. The function is exactly the same as in the old front-end, the difference is only in the fact that in the new front-end it's a necessity while in the old front-end it was an option (which was actually a bad thing because it was never meant to be turned off by end users as that could have led to in-game issues). There should be no difference in keeping the 'clean game cache on startup' option enabled in the old front-end and running the new front-end with no such option at all (and I don't experience any difference in that regard on any of the systems I've seen TFE-X operate on). Thanks a lot for testing!

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

@ Zoltec: Quick'n'Dirty and Mersenne Twister are both random number generation algorithms that were at one time introduced into the game by Troika. The Circle of Eight has nothing to do with the implementation of those algorithms, both were coded by the original game developers. Initially the game shipped with the algorithm called Quick'n'Dirty, which is known exactly for something suggested by its title - it's a fast number generation algorithm that, unfortunately, can suffer from repetitive "random" numbers, so random number generation is not effective and, as such, players complained about getting six critical misses in a row etc. So, with patch 2 (I believe it was patch 2), Troika implemented another random number generation algorithm called Mersenne Twister, which was supposed to cure the non-random random numbers sickness. However, while Mersenne Twister is indeed better than Quick'n'Dirty, it is not ideal either and, as such, users still complain about lack of randomness in rolls from time to time. Some even claim that "the Circle of Eight modpack ruined the game because the rolls are less random than they were in vanilla" (even though, like I said, Co8 has nothing to do with the implementation or reimplementation of random number generators in ToEE ). But for the sake of completeness, we decided to include a possibility to switch over from the new RNG algorithm to the old, vanilla one just so that users can check it out if they want (and either be happy or, more likely, switch back because random number generation with Quick'n'Dirty is even more bugged than with Mersenne Twister). In practice, it's very difficult to test the difference between the two (as random numbers are involved), you may get different results in different playthroughs, so I actually don't even recommend testing them - the option definitely does switch the random number generators around and that's what matters. In practice, there's almost never a good reason to switch to Quick'n'Dirty, so the option was made only for the sake of completeness and to prevent people bitching about the "new algorithm being worse than the old one".

By the way, a good idea about the extra PC/NPC ratio options! I don't remember if there was a good reason these particular options were not included (I remember we had a discussion about that, there might be a hardcoded limitation of some sort), I'll ask around and if there wasn't, I'll add these two options as well.

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

@ Zoltec: No problem at all! Let me know if any issues show up!

- Agetian