trickery woes (again) ??

[DDRKirby(ISQ)]

was experiencing major lag in this game, my best guess is that it was due to trickery. the lag was occuring once every second, so i'm guessing it has something to do with the ratio system or something (i don't really understand the new trickery that well).

replay is here, lag starts to happen a lot near the end.

also keep your eyes out for me trying to build towers and then they get destroyed (??) in the middle of construction. wasn't sure what exactly happened. the underlying issues are probably with trickery though.

11-21-08 - VHSR lose.w3g

[Karawasa]

Interesting, I will have to look into this. Has anyone else experienced something similar to either of the two things mentioned here?

[DDRKirby(ISQ)]

i'd imagine the trickery stuttering wouldn't be too hard to replicate. the tower being destroyed might either be something like gunpowder killing towers under construction, or it might be related to trickery.

[holepercent]

i've reported gunpowder destroying towers under construction somewhere..

trickery lag haven't seen yet.. but having that many laser towers in play can cause lag as well..

[DDRKirby(ISQ)]

but again, the lag is once per second, consistently, at the same time as the interest timer decrement, so i'm guessing it's due to some check that trickery performs.

[Karawasa]

If you (or anyone) can replicate the Trickery stuttering in B18, that would be appreciated. Same goes for tower destruction.

[DDRKirby(ISQ)]

replicated trickery lag in both 17b and 18, the problem is exactly the same, and very easy to replicate.

attached is the replay of beta 18. ingame chat explains my findings.

beta 18 trickery woes.w3g

[Karawasa]

As I suspected...should be easy enough to fix by implementing a mana check system where it only checks the ratio when the time to autocast comes (full mana) instead of every second.

[jolin012]

does that mean it will be stuttering every time there is a trickery tower with full mana?

or does it mean that if a trickery reaches full mana it only has the chance to autocast if there is ratio enough to cast the second it reaches full mana, and not after it had full mana for some time?

[Karawasa]

Per conversation on IRC with Sancdar and DDRKirby(ISQ), I have decided to completely scrap the ratio system. It is too much of a performance drag, and has other inherent problems (like not knowing what you can and can't clone).

B18b will see the return of the old Trickery system, but with a new twist. When you sell a tower, if it has the "I was cloned recently buff" then you will lose a random clone of that type. This compromise will prevent the sell/rebuild abuse that prompted me to do ratio in the first place.

[jolin012]

good

(and as always mentioned - with the automatic clone sell on automatic sell that means only abusable in random. and everything is imbalanced in random. remember - aborting an upgrade or building should count as "sell")