Battling with Weird Bugs

[Exile]

No, I'm not talking about a '50s sci-fi flick, I've encountered some strange quirks in my newly-finished scenario. Here's a list. I may add to it as I go.

1.) the "r" key, which is normally used to order settlers to build roads, now activates the pop-up window that asks me if I'm sure I want to stage a revolution.

2.) the "c" key, which normally centers the map on the unit that's flashing, now activates the "goto" command and a pop-up window appears with a list of cities on it.

3.) For the first time ever, I'm manually writing an events file instead of using the MGE editors to create it for me. Of course, things are not firing, going wrong, and not appearing at all. So, is the difference between lower-case and upper-case important? Looking at half-a-dozen other events files from other scenarios, I notice that the commands and triggers are all written in caps, while the other stuff is written in lower-case letters. Is this important? How does one go about using the "parsing" thing? The instructions in the manual are, not surprisingly, completely inadequate in describing how the thing should be used.

4.) Lastly, DON'T tell me not to ever use the MGE editors. I've already heard it, thanks. I KNOW they're wacky and I decided not to use 'em this time. And, of course, everything is going wrong despite that. Typical.

Wrestling, but it's getting the best of me,
Exile

[Paul Hanson]

For you first two points, I believe you have the Caps Lock key on, or something similar.

As for your third point, I believe that the events aren`t case sensitive, but don`t hold me to that.

And as for your fourth point: OK then, I won`t.

[Exile]

The caps lock key! OF COURSE--THAT'S IT!

Now if I could just figure out what's up with the events file . . .

Thank you,
Mr. Hanson

[Gothmog]

Questions 1 and 2. I think you have the caps lock on.

Question 3: Case doesn't matter for the trigger and action keywords, but it might for things like unit/tribe/city names. To debug, insert @debug in your events file after the @BEGINEVENTS statement.

[Exile]

Ok, I inserted the "@DEBUG" on the line right underneath the "@BEGINEVENTS" line.

Now what?

Run the scenario?

Exile

[BeBro]

Yes, start the scn, then civ2 will "debug" the events. Means: it will go through the events and check for errors. It stops when it finds an error (and you can see in the debug window where exactly the line with the error is), then you can correct it manually, or it runs the scn normally when there is no error.

[Gothmog]

Yes run the scenario, a window should pop up tracing the statements as they are executed. It will stop when the first error happens. You will have to repeat this process until you find all of the errors.

You should also know that @debug doesn't catch all errors. If you specify an illegal location or misspell a city name, that won't be caught.

[Exile]

Well, I ran the scenario, but nothing except the usual happened. Without giving too much away, I created a series of events that are almost identical. There is a broad selection of units that, if destroyed by the protagonist civ, should, through "createunit" events, produce specific units for the protagonist civ near its capital city. I've destroyed a whole selection of these units, and no units have yet been created by these events. I know that I must have an event for each type of unit specified, but I'm not seeing any units being generated at all. And the parser isn't telling me anything yet.

Any ideas what's going wrong?

Wrestling with creation (but getting beat),
Exile

[Allard HS]

did you perhaps by accident, or did the MGE/FW editors, or however else, mess up with the @ORDERS thing in RULES.TXT? That might explain it, though I do not see a centering thing there.

[Exile]

No allard, the two knowledgeable persons who told me to release the caplock key were correct. That problem is solved.

Right now all that's really preventing me from releasing test versions are the difficulties with the events file.

Exile

[SCDARS]

If you sent me your events, rules, and the scenario file packed as a zip, I'll have a look at it. For my address see my signature.

[Exile]

On its way.

Exile

[SCDARS]

I looked into it an I found several errors (typos at most, but the makro language is not tolerant if a single letter is missing) which prevent the eventsfile as a whole from being loaded:

- you mixed up the arguments needed for owner in you createunits.
After owner= should stand the CIVILIZATION (plural) NAME, not the adjective, i.e. "Hungarians" instead of
- make sure that you type "veteran=" instead of "VETRAN="
- I also think it's DESTROYCIVILZATION instead of DESTROYACIVILZATION, but I haven''t rechecked it.
- on time you wrote "unit=Tyrkish Spahi" instead of "unit=Tyrkish Spahis"
- same with "Horse Archer" instead of "Horse Archers"

One basic advice I can give you is to develop events one after another, and check them often during development.

For your convenience I've attached a corrected version of the CreateUnit-Events, the other mistakes (owner=?) should be easy to sort out.

[SCDARS]

So are your problems solved by now?

[Exile]

SCDARS,
Well, first I want to thank you for your generous offer to help and for your sincere efforts. Secondly, no. I copied the files exactly like you sent them and they still don't work. Henrik is looking into the problem.

Exile