Artifact Scramble for LA on pawn switch

For any of you whom have ghosted, fired a nuke, or got out of a vehicle, you've noticed that the artifact moves one forward.

I think that it's related to the actuall Loaded Artifact Class calling the switch to next artifact, even when it doesn't grant any.

I need to look into it some more, but if anyone is fishing in there and see's the bug, give a shout here.

Hey ...

It's wierd because a couple of things that might cause this bug, should also cause other "bugs".

It's very possible that ModifyPawn is being called - at least at the end of Ghost, I'm not so sure about other cases. There's an "Other.NextItem" line that could be triggering this. If this line were moved to giveArtifact, it might fix the problem. I don't know yet ... I'm working on something else and would like to fix that first.

Depending on the case though, if MP were being called in DruidArtifactLoaded, you'd expect something silly like getting the artifacts you tossed at the beginning of the round back. Unless certain local variables are "remembered", which they shouldn't be ...

I'm going ahead and playing with Pinata right now, but will test this if I get done with Pinata at a decent hour.

EDIT: Well, that theory didn't work (put in a debugging line, and it's not what I thought it might be). I do however now have a working Pinata fix.

I don't see anywhere in DruidsRPG where this could be happening.

Hmm... There's got to be a .nextItem somewheres...

Yeah but I've looked at both your code and Mysterial's, and it's not jumping out at me.

I wonder if it could be something stupid in the core code, considering where it's happening ...

I noticed when I was debugging the engineer stuff that ModifyPawn gets called client side when you get out of a vehicle, but not server side. Same could be happening on end of Ghost?

Szlat wrote:

I noticed when I was debugging the engineer stuff that ModifyPawn gets called client side when you get out of a vehicle, but not server side. Same could be happening on end of Ghost?

Bizarre.

I checked with a server side debugging line to see if that were the case but it didn't puke anything ... I dunno if it would client side, and I dunno how to check that.

But I'd say that if you weren't hallucinating, that's exactly what's happening but again I'd also say that it's probably something in like the UT2004 core (not even RPG).

Actually, it probably is client side. To check you look at the UT2004.log in the c:\UT2004\System directory after exiting the game (after it happens). (Assuming your logging the information.)

Considering that you're making your way through death right now, I'll wait to play with this until after you've committed it all to CVS.

You know something ... Szlat's probably dead on.

I know somewhere along the line it looked like ModPawn was being run with Denial and Ghost (if Denial was purchased first, prior to my PD fixes). Seeing as how my Booster would experience getting his weapons back after ghosting because Denial's PD would "take them away," and MP would "give them back". Wierd Wierd! My fixes stop it only because Denial's PD doesn't take the weapons away, so Denial's MP wouldn't have anything to do ...

But the new death will fix it (again) and once we've converted death over for everything, I'll play around with DAL's NextItem line - maybe there's some place to put it where the client won't call it with vehicles/deemers/ghost/etc.

This happens with Medics too btw - haven't had a chance to look into it yet.

I think I've fixed it.

In any Ability that has a ModifyPawn that grants artifacts, there's always that:
Code:

 Other.NextItem()

At the end of any code that gives an artifact. Why?

I think it's to ensure that no player starts with a "blank" artifact - or in other words, no SelectedItem (which I've seen like once, and I think in rare cases "bugs up" when people have artifacts but don't see one right off the bat until they switch to an artifact).

I have changed it to:
Code:

 // I'm guessing that NextItem is here to ensure players don't start with
 // no item selected.  So the if should stop wierd artifact scrambles.
 	if(Other.SelectedItem == None)
 		Other.NextItem();

In:

DruidArtifactLoaded
AbilityLoadedHealing
AbilityLoadedMonsters
AbilityLoadedEngineer

At most I think people may notice a different artifact as their "start" artifact.

A perfunctory (not even really an "alpha") test after a suicide triggered ghost with my medic illicited no switched artifact. I'm guessing that with things that interfere with normal client control of a pawn, and then restore normal control, cause the client to run "ModifyPawn" again. While the client cannot magically grant itself new artifacts, it can trigger a "NextItem" command. Now, since there's a check to see if an artifact is selected, and if it is, do nothing, that should fix the issue.

cool, and also smart catch!