[0.295][Bug/Gameplay] End Turn Hotkey problem

For those who hadn't noticed, you can press the space bar to end your turn.  IIRC, it's disabled ONLY when your city build screen is open.  However, at all other times, even when pop-ups that demand your response (research, battles, etc.) are displayed, you can repeatedly end turns, delaying the need to answer and the consequences of not answering!

You can repeatedly complete a research topics before telling the game which one you want to take.

Eventually, you may choose to begin responding to the pop-up prompts.  You find that they are all there, they have merely piled up and you have to deal with them all before you can do anything else.  Combat prompts and everything.  You can choose the same research topic TWICE, maybe even more.  I'm not certain, but I think the same enemy units repeatedly attack you.  You can repeatedly kill or be killed by them when you begin directing the backlog of battle prompts.

It's CRAZY, you're going to want to fix this.

3,031 views 13 replies
Reply #1 Top

I just played a game of doing nothing, only pressing space.  Around turn 30 I got married, not long after I had a child (just think: what would have happened when he came of age, given that I built no cities?) and around turn 90, guess what? Victory-Conquest without ever moving!

ROFL! :grin:

Reply #2 Top

UPDATE! On my next new game, a new Sovereign was added to my roster!  Another Lord Capitar (the one I'd chosen in the previous game) with that graphic of the baby in the rocker as the avatar!  The base stats are really low, not the same as the game-default Lord Capitar!  So weird!  I've never created a new sovereign, I didn't do this.

I twice tried to play a new game with this sovereign but I get that error where the screen is all white and you can't end your turn (even with the space bar)

Reply #3 Top

I got the white screen problem on every new game I attempted to start regardless of the sovereign I chose.  When I quit the game there was a LOOOONG hang before it exited.

 

Here's the debug.err: http://pastebin.com/vDuZ9DCn

Here's the dxdiag: http://pastebin.com/bfYt3Hqm

and the dropbox thing: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5321787/Elemental0_295-2010-03-13T02-14-43-279.zip

Reply #4 Top

So I restarted Elemental and a new game.  The second Lord Capitar was missing and all five Sov's had an avatar pic whereas normally three or four of them are a white disc.

I tried the same thing as before, endlessly pressing space, but after four hundred turns or so, there was no victory and I saw only one NPC the whole time, an NPC hero stack.

I had about five children come of age and discovered that when you own no cities, they stack with the Sovereign instead.  Not just your starting location either, they stack wherever your Sov stands.

So after about 400 turns I was satisfied that nothing was going to happen so I had the kids fan out and auto-explore, clicking ok whenever they landed on goodies, and clicking retreat whenever they came across enemies, never arming anything they picked up.  After over 1000 turns I had encountered both opposing Sovereigns, but was certain that neither had built a city. 

NPC Sovereigns seem to wait until you've built your first city before they build theirs.

So I built one city and tried to see if they had built any but within a dozen turns, the game crashed.

Dropbox of error log: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5321787/Elemental0_295-2010-03-13T03-20-06-841.zip

dxdiag: http://pastebin.com/eVqrHCPN

The game seems to be endlessly stable if you don't enter combat, don't use items, and don't build cities (which also means no research, no building/training, and possibly no NPC's doing the same).

Reply #5 Top

I just played another game where I build a city on turn five and repeatedly pressed the space bar to end the turn, counting up to five hundred.  On about turn ten, I finished my first research project and I did not choose an advancement, but kept pressing space until turn ~500 so the prompt stayed up. 

Meanwhile, from what I could see, some huts appeared and disappeared in the background; they weren't my color so they must have been an enemy.  Around turn 500 I decided to just HOLD the space bar and after a few seconds the turn button on the screen dimmed so I started responding to the prompts.

I chose the Farming advancement NINE TIMES, interrupted by a wedding, two births and comings-of-age, one diplomatic encounter, a declaration of war, one combat with a little soldier, which I accepted and later found out that I won.

When these prompts had passed: Victory-Conquest. :roll: (On the research advancement prompts, sometimes the mining option appeared, sometimes it didn't, meaning that the probability was rerolled each time but the farming advancement wasn't added to my empire until after I'd chosen it nine times and done all of those other things)

My educated guess is that the turn button dimmed because I had already won the game.

Reply #6 Top

UPDATE: I tried a new game since it hadn't crashed and this time SIX more sovereigns had been added: five more Lord Capitar's (my sov of choice) and one extra Procipinee. (sorry, I didn't screen capture it!) Most sov avatar medallions had returned to being whited out, but the extra Procy was that baby-om-cradle backdrop with a pink blanket while two of the extra Capy's were the baby with blue blankets!  Weird!

The new game map was all whited out again and I couldn't save the game from the main menu so I exited.

Dropbox of error log: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5321787/Elemental0_295-2010-03-13T03-43-17-345.zip

dxdiag: http://pastebin.com/U2azbm19

 

I sure know how to bust this game...

Reply #7 Top

Next game, same M.O., planted city, moved Sov into it, chose Civilization as research, but this time just held down the space bar.  This one was less eventful: once advances were going to take 125 turns to complete, I relented, chose Farming like 19 times, witnessed about a dozen children be born and grow up, etc.

The cause and effects of the game are way too separated: I have separated them by HUNDREDS OF TURNS.  The only reason I keep doing this is because I'm hoping that this shines lights on problems beyond the space bar.

One problem is that the game makes you choose actions before receiving the result.  During normal play, you can be faced with multiple battles before receiving the result of ONE battle, and the battles are interspersed with marriages, research advancements, etc., right?

What I've done is show that the problem in the order of things is bigger: In one thousand turns, when you start replying to prompts, you can choose the same research advancement dozens of times before the game realizes that you have already chosen it!

I'm not sure disabling the space bar would fix this all.

Reply #8 Top

I think using the space bar to postpone decisions in one of the things that causes duplicate sovereigns and a white screen of death when you start a new things.  In my last game I just gave up without winning or losing, and started a new game and these things happened again.

Reply #9 Top

The game DOES NOT LIKE IT if you refuse to set a research path and instead hold down the space bar.  After half a minute the turn button on the screen grayed out.  It probably means I "won", though.  I can't click ok to select a research path and the game is frozen.

Also tried this a second time and the turn button grayed out, but this time I WAS able to click ok.  I don't think I actually got to choose a research discipline, though.  Instead I received my messages about marriage and birth and then a Victory-Conquest.

I tried to start a new game but it was a white screen again.  Here's the Sov selection screen with pink baby Procipinee! (only one duplicated Sov this time)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5321787/baby-weird.bmp

Then, for good measure, I went to the menu, clicked New Game, then went 'back' so that I could trick it into letting my load a game instead of continuing a game.  Loading a game crashed it!

I didn't get a new zip file for this one, but I'm pretty sure I got a distinct debug.err in the other location it can be found in: http://pastebin.com/625DATvk

Good night for now, hope this was all somehow useful

 

Reply #10 Top

I somehow have an extra pastebin link...whatever.  Here's the one that was supposed to go with my last post: http://pastebin.com/2RLheFUE

Reply #12 Top

No one else testing this...?
End of quote

I'd consider confirming your findings, but unfortunately my laptop died a few days ago and the desktop I'm using to monitor the forums is too old to be capable of running the game. >:(

Reply #13 Top

Guess I'll wait for 1Z and see if a dev caught on