Illegal land-raising trick

[Buster's Uncle]

Okay, this is getting consistent results in v2.0.  Press "[" and have a party.

[Yitzi]

Er...the game you just uploaded has no formers active.  You sure you didn't upload the first game by mistake?

[Buster's Uncle]

Crap.  I must've saved it in the wrong folder.  Cost me a few hours of last night's game, too.  Hold on.

[Buster's Uncle]

Odd - it seems that the game defaults to the last folder it saved in, not the folder it just loaded from.  I didn't do anything wrong except not look around to see which copy it was saving in - and there go a bunch of turns.

I finally got a lowering that didn't turn the base square rolling, but it worked on the next try.  It's possible you'll need to reload - but it's worked seven out of eight times.

[Yitzi]

Well, this is a hard one, as switching to the debugger seems to make it not happen  (I may do more testing, though).  But in case Scient wants to have a try, here's what I've figured out:

The square information is stored at position 2CXsquare# plus the DWORD at 94A30C.  (This is quite a bit beyond the data segment used for most things, by the way.)  Square# here is determined by taking the second coordinate, multiplying by the DWORD at 68FAF0 (I presume that's map size), and adding half the first coordinate.  The rockiness is found in the 6th byte of the square, at bits 40 and 80.  (Equivalently, it's at DWORD square-start+8, at the 14th and 15th bits of the field.)

Note that the DWORD at 94A30C can (and generally will) change between different loads of the same game.

[Buster's Uncle]

If you provide a link of a game where the bonus-loss happens, it may be possible for someone to take a look at it at some point.

Open the attached save and "]" the active former; you'll see.

[Yitzi]

The earlier game you provided was enough; the problem now is just that the bug is a tough one, and I've got higher priorities at the moment.

[Buster's Uncle]

This is about sea bonuses becoming pods when raised to land - and I dunno if either is a bug.  Just pointing out oddities.

I've noted you can also lose sea resource bonus squares from raising.  Maybe this is already known.

I knew about it. 

Patchers?

The sea bonus is lost, but it becomes a Unity pod on the land raised. This pod acts like any other: it might show up a monolith, a worm, a resource bonus, or whatever else is possible.

That sounds right.

I keep forgetting that it does that, and was disappointed when I was raising land as recently as a few weeks ago - and I've been playing since the year SMAC came out.

If you provide a link of a game where the bonus-loss happens, it may be possible for someone to take a look at it at some point.

[Yitzi]

This is about sea bonuses becoming pods when raised to land - and I dunno if either is a bug.  Just pointing out oddities.

I've noted you can also lose sea resource bonus squares from raising.  Maybe this is already known.

I knew about it. 

Patchers?

The sea bonus is lost, but it becomes a Unity pod on the land raised. This pod acts like any other: it might show up a monolith, a worm, a resource bonus, or whatever else is possible.

That sounds right.

I keep forgetting that it does that, and was disappointed when I was raising land as recently as a few weeks ago - and I've been playing since the year SMAC came out.

If you provide a link of a game where the bonus-loss happens, it may be possible for someone to take a look at it at some point.

Ah, I misunderstood what it was for.  That said, the two (rockiness and the resource transformation) are probably the same bug, and they're too hard for me to work on at this point.  Scient might be able to, though, try asking him.

[Buster's Uncle]

Not sure either is a bug.

[Yitzi]

Not sure either is a bug.

They sometimes happen, sometimes don't, and (at least for the first) trying to investigate it via a debugger makes it not happen.  That is not the behavior of something that was put in intentionally.

[Buster's Uncle]

[shrugs]  The rockiness changing randomly is actually useful sometimes, as formers have a level function but not the converse.

[gwillybj]

Not sure either is a bug.

I'll second that.

[Buster's Uncle]

bump