Re: [Rails-users] Bugs and wishlist for 1856 on rails 1.9.0 - new tests on 2.0RC1

[games.bazin <gam...@or...>]

Hello all

I replied yesterday but messages bounced back - probably due to the zip attachement

I'm trying again.  I changed the extension to z.i.p so you need to change it back

 

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Hello again.

 

Thank you Martin & John for your answers.

I hadn't notice 2.0RC1 was "ready to play" but now i did so I have tested again my second game on windows with 2.0RC1.

 

btw, I *love* the new map and the UI improvements !

 

 

Some anomaly have disapear, and I found some new.

This time I also payed attention to save the game regularly so you will find all this in the attached s.zip file.

Most of the saves were made at the begining of each SR and OR.

 

Here we go for my findings

 

>From my previous message 

 

> anomaly 1 : the +20 bonus from the port disapears when the first T5 train, while it should only disapear when T6 is bought
John : I believe you're correct, this is a bug which has always been there.

=> Still present in 2.0.RC1.   Exemple available in SR5.1 when CA plays.  If this can be fixed that would be nice.  Workaround available through manual revenue adjustment.

 

 

> anomaly 2 : situation : company A must buy a train and decides to it from company B. (lets say a T4 for example). Assume company A has only $100 in cash. Rails displays a text like : "you may add up to $250" (i.e. difference between T4 nominal value and cash availble in A). But according to the rules, the president may not add money to buy a train if company A buys from company B, only if it buys from Bank or Open Market

> anomaly 3 : situation : at CGR formation, GW has 3 loans and posseses only $34 in cash. According to the rules, the president should only be offered the choice of 0 or 3, but not values in between (1 or 2 are not allowed in this situation).

Confirmed by John to be minor bugs. 

=> Still present in 2.0.RC1.   Both not a real issue as you can  still play by the rules by not using the offered possibilities.  So should be fixed in an ideal world, but no urgency. I prefer that you work on the wishlist at the end of this mail :)

 

 

> anomaly 4 : seen in both games on 1.9.0 : company tokens are not properly displayed on the gray toronto tile #124
=> no longer present in 2.0.RC1 where tokens are properly displayed on the gray toronto tile #124.  Anomaly solved.

 

 

> anomaly 5 : seen on 1.9.0 : situation : during the operating round of company A, his president must sell [shares of] company B to raise money according to forced sale rule. As a result, this changes the position of company B on the stock market (drops to lower values), but 1.9.0 doesnt update the company operating order (behaves has if B was still in it's original position before the sale)

john : I haven't seen this. If it happens it is a bug.

=> I haven't tested yet if this can be replicated on 2.0RC1 yet.  Will let you know.

 

 

> anomaly 6 : seen on 1.9.0 : 1.9.0 doesnt update the certificate limit according to the new (lower) number of available companies when one companie disapears during OR.

john : Good catch! This is a bug. Steve Thomas's FAQ for the game agrees

=> I haven't tested yet if this can be replicated on 2.0RC1 yet.  Will let you know.

 

 

> anomaly 7 : seen on 1.9.0 : situation : during stock round, before the purchase of the first T6, player's worth is sometime wrongly displayed at the begining of the stock round. The issue disapears if you save and reload the game.

=> I could not reproduce the issue on 2.0RC1.   However, I found other display issues, see Anomaly 10 below.

 

 

 

> anomaly 8 : situation : bankrupcy. during an operating round, forced sales, the president has $63 cash, must raise more cash but cannot sell anything. rails ends leaving $63 in the president's cash and worth, while according to the rules, the president's cash should be reduced to 0
John : This is a bug, and probably applies to most or all games, not just 1856.

=> reproduced in 2.0.RC1.   In fact, the issue in this situation is that the game doesn't really complete bankrupcy as it expects the president to sell something but nothing is available for sale.   So the game becomes stuck.

 

 

> anomaly 9 :  my mistake.  I made again the computation when replaying the game and rails if correct, I was wrong in my pbem.  Forget this one :)

 

 

 

New strange anomalie found in 2.0RC1 :

Anomaly 10 : display issue and corrupted save files.

 

This took place at the end of OR 5.2, after pressing on the Done button at the end of Marco's BBG  (BBG is the last company to operate in OR 5.2).

Button Done remains pressed and nothing happens.

A second push on the button Done generates a popup message : "Action Marco executed NullAction, mode=Done, OptimalLabel=NULL is not allowed  [OK]"

Once [OK] is pressed, OR 5.3 seems to start (GW, first company to operate in OR5.3, is displayed on the map window) but the title of the window still indicates "OR 5.2 (2 out of 3)"

 

At that point, I saved the game.  Game name was generated automatically with mention of OR5.3 as it should, so the issue was in the title of the window being not refreshed.

Then, I quit and reload OR5.3.   New issue : saved game cannot be reloaded, the progress bar freezes at 92% while in "initializing loaded game".

 

I then tried to reload saved game made at the begining of OR 5.2 but same issue : same freeze at 92% while in "initializing loaded game".

I then tried to reload saved game made during OR5.1, just before CGR creation :  this file I could reload.

 

I then proceeded again with the end of OR5.1, then with OR 5.2.

Same issue took place on the "Done" button at the end of Marco's BBG :  button stays pressed and nothing happens.  Second press on the button generates the same error message.

[ok] then brings GW at begining of OR 5.3 with a wrong title (5.2) in the window.

 

This time, i continued playing OR 5.3.

I could play the game normaly, but noticed a big inconsistency in the company cash displayed  in the map window : GW, LPS, CGR all displayed wrong cash company value at the end of the company turn (it was not updated as it should), while in the Status window, the company cash was correctly displayed.  TGB cash was not modified during the OR 5.3 so i couldn't say if the display was correct or not. However, BBG then displayed the correct modified company cash value both in map and status windows at the end of it's Payout.

 

I saved just before the final Done at the end of OR 5.3 just in case, then pressed Done.  No issue this time, SR 6 started normaly.

 

At that point, I saved SR 6 at it's begining.

Then quit and reload : reload was ok. From there I could play normaly up to the end.

 

You have all the saved game files in the attached zip if you want to understand this mess :)

 

 

> [wishlist] 1 :Add a more general moderator option that allows to transfer shares between bank and open market and player, and that allows to change the position of the shares on the open market.
John : I agree. Allow any certificate to be moved between any two hands.

=> Two uses for this : allow to continue the game after a bug or a former misclick, and allow to accomodate for local rules (i.e. my team plays with slightly different version of CGR share allocation during CGR formation, this would allow us to adapt the repartition given by the official rules).

 

 

 

 

> [wishlist] 2 : During the stock round, in the game status - stock round window, add a "-" to indicate that a player has already sold from a given company.

=> I saw that something similar (pink background color) was implemented in 2.0RC1, that's great thanks !

 

new wishlist based on 2.0RC1 experience :

 

 

[wishlist] 3 : when a company enters the brown area, it's background color in the strock round window becomes brown (good idea) but that brown is much to dark and prevents reading the share value.  Please use a less dark brown

 

[wishlist] 4 : I like to play the OR with the OR map in full screen.  This works well.

I'd like to do the same thing with the status map during the SR, but it keeps receizing to a smaller size after each action. Very annoying.

 

[wishlist] 5 : when company A buys a train from company B, user is promted for the amount payed by A.

Allow the user to specify a negative number, like "-x" meaning : all cash from A but $x

Allow the user to specify 0, meaning : all the cash from A

 

[wishlist] 6 : during OR, once you have selected a tile to be placed, you must click on LayTile (and then very often on Skip as you dont lay a new token).

Nearly all buttons have a keyboard shortcut but LayTile and Skip don't.  Please add a keyboard shortcut to each.

 

[wishlist] 7 : please add an option so that the game automatically generates a save file at the end of each company turn during Operating Rounds, and at the end of each Player6 action during Stock Rounds.  I dont mind filling my disk (i can clean it after with a few clicks) but I would like to be sure i can revert to a recent save if my computer crashes for any reason.

 

 

 

Again, many thanks, this programm will save us hours !

 

Eric

 

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Stefan also wrote :

> There is no need to replay them in Rails 2.0 now, usually they should be loadable in 2.0

Had I known :) well, i'll get the 1.9.0 files too this evening then.