The Energon Pub

[ashe5k]

Yep, pretty sure it's one of two things:

1. Some dependency has been broken in alt-mode-recolor.php, the script that creates the recoloured images. This was my working theory, but thinking about it some more it's a little strange that it's still returning the default image - I would expect a broken image or an error image (the grey Optimus semi, with a red X).
2. As above, but also Ryan's put in a "temporary fix" for the broken images by redirecting to the default image. I'm now leaning towards this theory.

This is assuming the script still functionally matches the original version I wrote in like 2005 - that didn't output the default image in case of an error, but I know this is one of the game functions that's been amended a couple of ways over time. In either case, I think it's unlikely to be resolved by accident, so all we can really do is wait for it to be addressed unfortunately.

It really is one of those features where you don't realise how much you'll miss it until it's gone.

If you guys can make me a list of things I've broken recently in HMW, I would appreciate it. I should have time to start working on other areas of the site now that I've gotten the "big" launch underway.

Armor (this was pre-site redesign though I think). We can't equip armor, our bot/cons just get an error message.

Alt Mode recolors (only the base color for hte alt modes shows up instead of the recolors)

Leveling Up Screen (the page is exceedingly spread out and hard to read to see what you can select to level up

Timers and Bars (the status bars showing repairs, health, and winning percentages are either really thin at about a pixel tall or really thick. I don't have a screenshot of the size they used to be)

Those are the ones I can think of.

[Seibertron]

Armor (this was pre-site redesign though I think). We can't equip armor, our bot/cons just get an error message.

What is the error message that you receive when trying to armor up?

[Seibertron]

Also, I made some changes to the hmw_battle script tonight to solve a few php errors that are showing up in my error logs (it's the code that determines the faction winner). I executed the scheduled tasks and see that the script executed without error, but i'm not not sure if I inadvertently broke something else. Please let me know if I introduced a different problem and I'll revert it until I have more time to work on it.

[Silver Wind]

Armor (this was pre-site redesign though I think). We can't equip armor, our bot/cons just get an error message.

Alt Mode recolors (only the base color for hte alt modes shows up instead of the recolors)

Leveling Up Screen (the page is exceedingly spread out and hard to read to see what you can select to level up

Timers and Bars (the status bars showing repairs, health, and winning percentages are either really thin at about a pixel tall or really thick. I don't have a screenshot of the size they used to be)

Those are the ones I can think of.

* CR Chamber has no submit button. This can be worked around by setting the option to use the CR automatically after a mission/arena fight, but I remember automatic CR having the downside of significantly increased energon costs as late as 2008 (when I took a really long break from HMW).

* This predates the site redesign, but from what I understand there have been complaints about alt rotations being borked for both factions for quite some time.

* The error [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file /var/www/vhosts/seibertron.com/httpdocs/includes/database.php on line 207: mysqli_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be mysqli_result, boolean given is still appearing at the end of the list of combatants when viewing a completed mission.

* Display of combatants for an -in-progress mission is still a complete hodgepodge. For example, "Inferno: Treason" has not yet begun at the time of this post. The Autobot side is filled up but I'm seeing no one (not even mine), and the Decepticons have just one slot left but I can only see Heliocon and Louie.

* This last one isn't a bug per se, but it's a problem nonetheless: We have no HMW admins. Psychout inexplicably lost his privileges at some point, so there's been no one, for example, to refresh the 10/10 weapons supply since the ultimate weapons are not recycled back into the general populace like the "leveling" weapons are.

What is the error message that you receive when trying to armor up?

I had to hunt through Glyph's post history to find it (didn't know Murderbot had books ), but this is what he posted back on June 4th.

[Seibertron]

* The error [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file /var/www/vhosts/seibertron.com/httpdocs/includes/database.php on line 207: mysqli_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be mysqli_result, boolean given is still appearing at the end of the list of combatants when viewing a completed mission

This is an incredibly easy error to fix. Can someone provide me with the full URL so that I can nip this in the bud? That is just a page that is not rebuilt to use the new database and for some reasoning is ignoring how to do it the old way (presumably from it being code different from the rest of Seibertron).

[Silver Wind]

This is an incredibly easy error to fix. Can someone provide me with the full URL so that I can nip this in the bud? That is just a page that is not rebuilt to use the new database and for some reasoning is ignoring how to do it the old way (presumably from it being code different from the rest of Seibertron).

I assume you mean mission URL? I've got this one right here as an example. https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwar/view_mission.php?mission_id=355312

[Glyph]

* The error [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file /var/www/vhosts/seibertron.com/httpdocs/includes/database.php on line 207: mysqli_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be mysqli_result, boolean given is still appearing at the end of the list of combatants when viewing a completed mission

This is an incredibly easy error to fix. Can someone provide me with the full URL so that I can nip this in the bud? That is just a page that is not rebuilt to use the new database and for some reasoning is ignoring how to do it the old way (presumably from it being code different from the rest of Seibertron).

Every mission log. I think this is what you were trying to fix in the battle script re determining the winner? (which was not broken, as far as I know) But it's not generated by the battle script and written to the HTML log file, it's an error thrown by the mission log page itself. For example, here:
https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwa ... n_id=40976
in a mission which far predates the recent work.

[Glyph]

Armor (this was pre-site redesign though I think). We can't equip armor, our bot/cons just get an error message.

What is the error message that you receive when trying to armor up?

Ryan - see posts here and here where we've already workshopped the armour bug since it first appeared in October.

BTW - I'd have replied to this sooner but it looks like all my thread subscriptions / reply notifications have stopped working.

[Psychout]

Is there any way we can get rid of the 20vs1 missions? There isn't enough low level bots online these days to make those worth it. I find, more often than not, my level 0-2 Cons facing off against a maxed out level 11 by themselves. always coming out with 0xp because of it.

Just so this doesn't get lost at the bottom of the last page GP, this is something the game admin were able to do but now cannot.

If it becomes available to us again in future, I'll add it to the list.

[Bun-Bun]

Wait... this game still has admins?!?
Who knew!

[DISCHARGE]

https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwar/view_mission.php?mission_id=357710
https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwar/view_mission.php?mission_id=357709

I've encountered 2 missions with me exiting 0% stasis lock while not having any mission interaction at all

[Glyph]

That's worrying - suggests a DB error somewhere in the process (unexpected zeroes are always suspicious!). I don't currently have the resource to check for that exact scenario but a quick investigation turned up a similar situation where a lone opposition bot was simply ignored in the battle script and the battle reported a default victory, with the ignored bot exiting on 0% health. Earliest example is from 5 June, around the time we were seeing some DB and script changes (ironically it's one of my characters - I hadn't noticed!):
https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwa ... _id=349080

I found 132 missions matching that pattern between 5 June and now. I'll do some digging later when I get chance and look for missions matching DISCHARGE's pattern - an ignored bot exiting in stasis lock while other bots were correctly included in the battle. It'll be the same cause as the 'empty' missions I found, just with more bots so a battle actually happens, but it might be possible to find a pattern.

[Glyph]

Thought of a way to identify affected missions from the data I already have; found another 263 missions (total 395) like the ones DISCHARGE showed. Earliest affected mission was #348840 on 4 June, tallying with what I initially found above.
https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwa ... _id=348840

Looks to me like the problem is happening at the point of adding the character to the mission in the battle script (the DB clearly knows the character is in the mission so it's not failing to join, and doesn't seem to be at the post-mission update). At a guess, I'd say the character is being brought into the mission at 0 health for some reason - health presumably gets set to zero either when they join or when the battle starts - so they never get selected to act. As to why it's only affecting a handful of missions/characters... no idea at this point.

--EDIT--
The thick plottens... Checking to see if it's only ever affecting 1 bot at a time (it isn't), I turned up this mission with 3 ignored bots:
https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwa ... _id=353178

But the important thing in this mission is Dewey - they weren't ignored and were active in the log, but finished on 68% despite not taking any damage and there's just no way to make their XP/En score work even accounting for overkill.

Makes me wonder if this could possibly be related to the "ghost" issue we've seen in the past, when the missions table was cleared down but the mission_characters table wasn't, so records from old battles got mixed in with new ones? But if it were that simple, we'd see examples earlier than June since it seems to be affecting around 4% of missions since then.

[Seibertron]

I appreciate all of you compliing errors for me to review. I started digging through some of the code tonight. I cleaned up the War room page for activate and deactivate, cleaned up the active roster. I got really close to having the sort feature working for active bots, but had to disable the public facing code for it do to an erro or that I ran out of time trying to fix tonight. I will continue working on code for HMW throughout this next week and can hopefully address the bugs you guys are experiencing

[ashe5k]

I really like the status displays! Very slick!

[Bumblevivisector]

Getting used to the new war room display, but I'll probably appreciate how it looks on mobile phone before long.

One problem I just noticed this morning: Once I have 6 'Cons active, the DEACTIVATE and ACTIVATE buttons disappear, presumably until the next mission ends, bringing active team members down to 5? This makes it impossible to select a better character for a particular mission once you see what's available. Or am I just not seeing the button?

Tried going back to my PC, checking the box, and hitting ENTER, but that didn't work either.

And yes, I've been having random missions that end instantly and award just victory points, but haven't been keeping track to provide usable data, sorry.

[Silver Wind]

I don't know if this is necessarily a bug, but I've noticed that my 'bots are no longer sorted by total XP earned (from most to least if at same level). This matters to me because I'm the sort who likes keeping all her 'bots relatively close together in range and will, from time to time, leave an outlier dormant until the rest have caught up.

[-Soundwave-]

I don't know if this is necessarily a bug, but I've noticed that my 'bots are no longer sorted by total XP earned (from most to least if at same level). This matters to me because I'm the sort who likes keeping all her 'bots relatively close together in range and will, from time to time, leave an outlier dormant until the rest have caught up.

This is me, I play from the bottom up. It is currently by id number, so you know who was your 1st bot and your last. It's odd.

[Glyph]

I don't know if this is necessarily a bug, but I've noticed that my 'bots are no longer sorted by total XP earned (from most to least if at same level). This matters to me because I'm the sort who likes keeping all her 'bots relatively close together in range and will, from time to time, leave an outlier dormant until the rest have caught up.

I'm not sure if it's intentional or not - Ryan mentioned some issue with sorting above? - but yeah: order by ID isn't useful, order by total XP (aka score) is. Seems likely that the sorting got removed when Ryan rearranged the registry view and the DB defaulted to using the character ID.

[steve2275]

Total xp Ideeed

[Bumblevivisector]

DEACTIVATE is pretty consistently disappearing whenever I activate 6 Cons. This is impeding gameplay worse than team members being displayed in a less logical order.

[Glyph]

DEACTIVATE is pretty consistently disappearing whenever I activate 6 Cons. This is impeding gameplay worse than team members being displayed in a less logical order.

Reproduction steps for bug hunting:

1. Activate 6 bots - War Room still shows Deactivate link
2. Put one active bot in a mission
3. Return to War Room - there are now 5 "Active" bots and 1 "In a mission", but the Deactivate button is not shown

[Bumblevivisector]

DEACTIVATE is pretty consistently disappearing whenever I activate 6 Cons. This is impeding gameplay worse than team members being displayed in a less logical order.

Reproduction steps for bug hunting:

1. Activate 6 bots - War Room still shows Deactivate link
2. Put one active bot in a mission
3. Return to War Room - there are now 5 "Active" bots and 1 "In a mission", but the Deactivate button is not shown

Blackout has disabled my PC, and it's so hot I can't think straight, but I'll try:
1. 6 Cons activated, DEACTIVATE button still present.
2. Put all but 2 into missions, back to War Room, DEACTIVATE is gone.
3. Put one more into mission, back, still no DEACTIVATE. Gave up and put 6th Con in mission.
4. Waited for next mission to end, activated new 6th Con, DEACTIVATE still won't reappear.

On several occasions, 1 or 2 Cons will just disappear from the War Room entirely, a tad disturbing. No discernible pattern so far.

Has no one else experienced any of this?

[Bumblevivisector]

And this time I remembered to only activate 3 in addition to the 2 in missions for a total of 5 active...DEACTIVATE still gone.

[-Soundwave-]

And this time I remembered to only activate 3 in addition to the 2 in missions for a total of 5 active...DEACTIVATE still gone.

Same here Deactivate button gone. But I haven't had any missing cons.