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[Xavior]

Hrm. I do have the autosave, but it doesn't load at all! Could it have not made any saves to the autosav in the whole game in the last version?

The new crimesquad file was created a half hour later, so it seems so.

I could give you an account on my system for you to ssh into if just not having linux available is your only problem. If you get nx you'll even be able to start up an x session to play around with stuff if you want ;P

The only hostage I've taken was the radio host immediately before dying. I wanted to win the game solely on my own character's merit   The pathetic way I got torn to shreds whenever I went up against security guards alone changed my mind.

[ June 11, 2007: Message edited by: Xavior ]

[flap]

Erase the save file and rename the autosave to save.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

My main problem is that I'm not a Linux programmer, so I don't think that'd help very much. Even if I thought I found the problem I wouldn't likely know how to fix it. You'll need someone who's more Linux-y.

And that's correct, the autosave.dat file is no longer used. It now saves the autosave to save.dat instead of autosave.dat, not both. Your old autosave.dat won't load because it's from the old version, and would load incorrectly.  :p

[Xavior]

INDEED! But if the autosave.dat still existed the way it used to(only saving every few days instead of every day) it would have made it more likely to be able to debug or SAVE Lex from this Conservative Error!

I'm linuxy! But I'm not likely to be able to fix regular errors, let alone OS specific errors. Maybe editting the makefile or using different libraries would do it? Linux usually gets in your way alot less than other operating systems do though(My dad currently has a problem in his program involving windows deciding the current working directory is your profile, unless you run it from a shortcut, in which case the cwd is the shortcut "Start in" directory, unless it doesn't exist, in which case it's the shortcut directory. How weird is that? o_O) Then again, all these crazy errors and segfaults likely get in the way of that logic ;P

[ June 11, 2007: Message edited by: Xavior ]

[ June 11, 2007: Message edited by: Xavior ]

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I don't think Linux itself is the problem, just that the game was not initially designed for portability, and was never tested extensively for Linux. Linux support was hacked in very late in the game, not long before I started working on it in terms of versions, and it has always been buggy.  

[Xavior]

Well, if you want to try it, setting up an account and everything would be trivial, and I've just confirmed the game works over ssh. Just let me know :-o

I'm going out now though.

I think that lockups and possibly the control center for the prison should be in the areas they are in the normal game(though guarded, obviously), and only moved to the secure areas if the area is under high security. Juries should always be safely entrenched within the courthouse though, jury tampering is too serious totake lightly. But generally prisoners you want to get behind bars as soon as possible. Not lead them through the entire police station past all the different officers at their desks to lock them up in some weird room. Or is that how it works?

Courthouse lockups might be secure too, like the jury, I don't know...Actually all this might be a bad idea after all. I just had it in the shower. I just know when I walked in and released the prisoners from the police station when I accidentally loaded an old version it seemed somehow right.

It should definitely be easier for locations to enter high security though. Maybe the heat value of crimes you commit inside gets attached to the location, rather than simply setting a flag when the conservatives are alarmed?

Also, it shouldn't be so easy to get EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY to become liberal in the polls just because you harass the different businesses over and over. I think there should be a maximum amount that different things you can do should influence the polls, maybe theft won't convince more than 10% or 50-60% of the population that industry should stop polluting and the liberal crime squad is the bestest thing evar, but consistently publishing secret documents in a highly read liberal guardian will end up pushing the populace to solving an issue or else.(EXECUTIONS! Damn Liberal Journalists)

Oh, and when the police came after me after only 8 days, the place WAS guarded by a business front. Though it may have had residual heat leftover since it never got invaded the last time I was in it.(Also, if a site gets invaded when no one is there, a business front won't get dismantled...seemingly? It happened in all my safehouses a few times)

And disguise skill can be raised ridiculously just by sitting next to someone who can't detect you and holding s for as long as you please. That probably shouldn't be so easy, but then, if there's a skill-cap based on stats, maybe that's not so bad.(Just wandering and exploring a place typically gives you a point or two a day)

[ June 11, 2007: Message edited by: Xavior ]

[Xavior]

What the...damnit.
Another broken save

Made in a perfectly ordinary way by accidentally pressing X

It segfaults as soon as the game tries to load. There should probably be checks to make sure the files the game is writing/reading is sane before it splodes mysteriously.

What the...a Secretary just knocked 25 of my main character's teeth out(I caught the message) as an Urban Commando...that does not seem right. Can you even hit 25 teeth at once? Let alone knock them out..damn, I should have kidnapped her to find out her stats.

Another save - This one made automatically and segfaulted upon loading after I got crushed into a cube while driving(probably irrelevent) -- I think these two are connected.

Yet another -- This time it's nothing but a perfectly ordinary squad of hippies.(who again died) But two of them were in the hospital. I seem to recall people being in the hospital for the other crashes too. Maybe it has something to do with it?

I decided to try the game in windows. O_O There's alot more stuff missing in the linux version than I thought there was. How hard would it be to make the windows code portable?

Also, Bug: When your compound is under siege and you wait, anyone inside gets teleported to safety in the homeless shelter ^_^ Cute, but, probably not intended.
Facilities still get dismantled if you give up.

O_O And why would the corporations have raided an apartment to execute a sweatshop worker? Once he made Akira a guard uniform to break a hacker out of life imprisonment, I left him there alone for a few months before the corporations executed him(I assumed it was just the police coming to deport him..)

-- Getting arrested for kidnapping a police officer doesn't result in a charge. I disbanded the squad to avoid the weirdness and got hit with harmful speech

if(LCSrandom(ceosleepercount+1)||!LCSrandom(40))
Uhm...doesn't || mean Or? So..if either a random number between 1 and your sleepers isn't less than 1, or a random number between 0 and 39 is 0... you get a warning from a ceo?  I like the possibility of a CEO giving you a warning even if you don't have a sleeper though           "I'm a big fan, and I don't want you to die!"

Your comment above agent sleepers refers to corp raids instead of CIA raids.

        if(bury.size()>0)addstr("Some Liberals have");
        else {addstr(bury[0]->name);addstr(" has");}
        addstr(" been while disposing of bodies.");

Uwaa?

People can Move to the free clinic while under siege. Probably not supposed to happen(But I need every advantage I can get to drive off corporate mercenaries with 9 hackers...well..3 now. -- Oh, nevermind. I can leave now too. I drove them off for the day.

[ June 13, 2007: Message edited by: Xavior ]

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I don't imagine they'd have the police lock-up by the front door in the lobby, where anybody can walk up.  

I did some copy/pasting of sleeper-related comments, so I'm not surprised on the cia/corp mix up on sleeper.

The last bit of code is probably trying to say that they got arrested for unlawful burial while disposing of bodies.

[Xavior]

I've seen the massive conservative response!         It was neat! I got the hell out of there when it happened though. I didn't fancy my ability to slice up swat teams ^_^

Lol, well, the people getting teleported definitely weren't innocent(they were actually the people generating the heat for the raid) so if that's the case, it definitely needs to be fixed.

Corporations are scary

I thought the dating thing might be, but it was new!

What DOES the if(LCSrandom(ceosleepercount+1) do? It certainly doesn't return true no matter what(as evidenced by my 6 horribly torn up hackers in the free clinic ;P) and I get confused by alot of that sort of code sometimes. Particularly the parts where things get reduced with variable>=number

Yes, but the fact that it's broken in the code made me think it might be broken when the message occurs(I've never been arrested burying bodies though)

And it's also rather hard to shoot every last one of someone's teeth out too. Maybe it should be an LCSRandom(Teethnum) maximum, and they have to get 32 to take out the last of your teeth, with the total number of teeth actually knocked out dependant on the size of the weapon(bullet) and the strength for punches?(Probably add another descriptor or two for nearly no teeth too)

What the. This month's liberal guardian is suddenly popular among the homeless community as toilet paper....Wtf o_O

I have 18 Elite Liberal Journalists who have been writing for years and their work alone(along with the help of some equally awesome hackers because special editions give juice to everyone) has turned most issues to 100% liberal, and they haven't stopped writing. It may have been a special edition even. Do they get old after awhile if you keep saying the same things?
Coincidentally, I think the article messages should be managed better. Maybe just all the day-to-day messages should be put on a blank screen with them listed on lines and pages if there are too many.

[ June 13, 2007: Message edited by: Xavior ]

[ June 13, 2007: Message edited by: Xavior ]

[Xavior]

I think writing might actually be a bit too powerful. I have an idea though.
Think of the Liberal Guardian like a normal newspaper. When you do commit crimes, normal newspapers write articles about you, and depending on the page number the article is on, the article's power is decided.
The Liberal Guardian has x pages, with x articles each.(What's the maximum page number for a newspaper? It can be a bit longer though, since the Liberal Guardian is a monthly newspaper)  Each article that's been written for the guardian gets assigned a page number at the end of the month depending on it's importance to the current state of affairs.

Here's where I get a little hazy. Maybe when you look up polls, you get an interactive screen, letting you prioritize issues for inclusion in the Liberal Guardian? Or at the end of the month, you can get a screen of issues, with the number of articles written for each one, and you can press letters until you run out of page room. Anything you don't publish will probably get lost(or have a negligible effect posted to the Liberal Guardian Blog ;P)  Maybe the game will calculate what would have the most Impact automatically. But that would be no fun  

I noticed a piece of code where controversial articles make the people like you less(but have more effect) If you publish your whole newspaper with articles related to an issue that's almost arch-conservative(everyone in the country agrees, so they must be right!) it should generate ALOT of hatred, probably crash your approval rating, and possibly get you invaded by the people you're attacking, especially if your newspaper gets a really wide audience      

I get the feeling you've said most of this before though :-o But it's probably good to put it together.

[ June 13, 2007: Message edited by: Xavior ]

[Jonathan S. Fox]

LCSrandom(ceosleepercount+1) returns true if a random number between 0 and the number of CEO sleepers you have is positive. If you have a CEO sleeper, you have a 50% chance of getting a tip. If you have three, you have a 75% chance.

>>= and <<= are bit shift operators. The variable to the left is the variable to be adjusted, the variable to the right is the number of bits to shift it. <<is>> is bit shift right. If you're not familiar with the bit implementation of integers, what this means is that any variable adjusted by <<number>> (number) is divided by 2 to the power of that number.

So, for example, (num >> 2) means the same thing as (num / 4), and (num <<= 1) means the same thing as (num *= 2).

In theory those are extremely fast operations, but in practice, the compiler will probably convert (num / 4) into (num >> 2) anyway, so it doesn't really matter and probably is better at making the code look fancy than anything. Although, if you're trained to think in binary, it might be easier to understand sometimes, frighteningly enough.  

If you went on a rampage shortly before the end of the month, you may have so upset everyone that they stopped reading the Liberal Guardian.

In a test game, I actually beat the entire game without breaking a single law, simply by running the Liberal Guardian. I agree that's overpowered, and I think that it should require an active LCS to keep it popular. Editorials and such are just filler, and the emphasis should remain on 1) putting your spin on your actions, and 2) publishing any special features. Right now the other articles are cool because they're new, but they are too verbose when you're passing turns and take up too much of the emphasis. On a slightly related balance note, sleepers also need some tweaking (both sleepers and the paper go into the same pool of "liberal influence" points used to tweak public opinion moves at the end of the month).

[Jonathan S. Fox]

By the way, I'm very proud of the massive conservative response. Having siege units active in a non-siege scenario was impossible before, and I had to add special hybrid handling that would enable me to flip a switch to turn on the siege attackers without actually engaging anything else. Nothing too hard, but the magic of it was that after substantial surgical editing, I ran one test and immediately it worked perfectly. Nothing weird happened, it didn't act like you were in a siege in any way that I didn't intend, there were no display bugs, nothing... nothing went wrong! A bunch of cops just started storming through the front door of the crack house, exactly as I'd imagined they would when I first envisioned the feature, all the way back before I ever started working on the source code. One shot and it worked exactly as intended. It was a truly glorious moment.

[Xavior]

And it remains so even now      

In case this makes it easier.

And a mysterious reversal(months later)

Update on Siege Teleporting. Anyone who isn't in a squad vanished to the shelter.
Including the people actually wanted for the murders they're invading us for o_O The only people left were perfectly innocent soldiers that haven't had a chance to kill anyone yet    

EDIT: Well they have now.
So that's what happens when you sent a SWAT team to take out a few hackers and some college students.

Anyway, if the police letting everyone who's not in a squad leave peacefully is intended, and everyone leaves, the police stay outside sieging it until you give up and let them dismantle everything.

[ June 13, 2007: Message edited by: Xavior ]

[ June 13, 2007: Message edited by: Xavior ]

[Jonathan S. Fox]

It's also possible that your paper is so popular the variable is rolling over. I'll have to look at the code (which unfortunately, I won't have time to do until this weekend)

[ June 13, 2007: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

[Xavior]

Ah well, you'll have plenty to do then*laughs* Maybe I'll figure out enough to be able to actually do something good :-o

Is it possible to get some of your changes up? I know you've fixed a few bugs, and bugs are annoying      

Or have you added enough that it isn't likely to work anymore without finishing it?

I think perhaps writing articles should exercise persuasion. But then, it's very hard to exercise and quite powerful, and if it rose from writing articles it would make it fairly easy(though it would take dedicated writing) Though the created writer-types do come with persuasion as well as writing.

My writers are all college students and have 17 writing over ~3 years/34 months

My main, who occasionally takes breaks from writing to perform Liberal Acts of Heroism, has 11 writing, and 10 persuasion(just from being awesome).

[ June 13, 2007: Message edited by: Xavior ]