Treasures of Galápagos [Quenched]

[cairnswk]

playing this map in three games - it seems to have a bug in two of them. All started fine but now the territories seem to have gone "random" I started on reef 9 now i am not there and there is nothing there. Silver appeared next to me out of nowhere as hw started on reef 8 and green on reef 7.
http://www.conquerclub.com/game.php?game=3106102

similarly this has gone wrong as well, once again started on reef 9.
http://www.conquerclub.com/game.php?game=3114544

the game logs seem to have "adjusted" to the bug.

All seems fine in this game - same map.
http://www.conquerclub.com/game.php?game=3113629

Regards
Pempi

Pempi...i apologise, but lackattack has just uploaded the adjustments to this map to make it more balanced.

Unfortunately there is no other way of doing this apart from stopping and starting the map. There was a large outcry from the community because of the imbalance, so it had to be rectified and quickly this time (not like Das Schloss). I'm sure you'll pick it up quickly.

[edbeard]

it's weird that no armies show up on Reef 9 or the territories next to it. Anyone willing to join a game vs me to see if the errors are really gone?

three player

Game 3125819

pw: testing124

[Lincecum]

Playing this map in Game 3112111 and it seems my territories got partially randomized, including re-writing the logs with seemingly impossible moves to "show" how I got to current (incorrect) state.

Seems this problem is acknowledged above, but how about a formal announcement somewhere on the site, or at least leaving a PM for people playing the map or a post on the games impacted?

[cairnswk]

Playing this map in Game 3112111 and it seems my territories got partially randomized, including re-writing the logs with seemingly impossible moves to "show" how I got to current (incorrect) state.

Seems this problem is acknowledged above, but how about a formal announcement somewhere on the site, or at least leaving a PM for people playing the map or a post on the games impacted?

Yes apologies for that one too, and to everyone else who is going to be affected by this "adjustment"
However, without sounding too glib...isn't it wonderful when life throws a little surprise at you??

[ABSOLUTE_MASTER]

Seems this problem is acknowledged above, but how about a formal announcement somewhere on the site, or at least leaving a PM for people playing the map or a post on the games impacted?

I guess that'd be asking for too much.... It seems to be easier to confuse everyone and let everyone think there is something wrong with the map..

There is life outside the Map Foundry, if you guys are going to make a change WHILE the map is being used, it could be nice of you to let players know (pms, general forum...etc)

I was so happy for playing the Galapagos map ( I'm from Ecuador) and this just ruined the experience..

Here is another post about the same issue: http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=60549

Is there something strange going on with that map, or is it me? Just took my turns in 2 games, armies showed up where they weren't before and there are squares without any armies on them. This one of the games as an example:

Game 3088782

Looks to me like there is some glitch somewhere, or am I missing something about that map?

.

On a different note, the map is really nice, me likes....

[cairnswk]

.....
There is life outside the Map Foundry, if you guys are going to make a change WHILE the map is being used, it could be nice of you to let players know (pms, general forum...etc)
On a different note, the map is really nice, me likes....

Thanks for your comments ABSOLUTE_MASTER....i'm sure this can't be that bad a deal that you'd throw Cc away simply because the mapmaker FIXED THE MAP, to make it better and more balanced for everyone.
I am not going to go to the extent of PMing everyone in the 277 active games at present, nor am i putting up a discussion thread in GD, this is what the foundry is for and the announcement was made here. You obviously found it.

EDIt: If i was to Put up an announcement in GD, you'd probably complain anyways saying i don't go to the GD to read the threads before playing my map.

I am pleased you like it...

[cairnswk]

EDIT: Adjustments made to this map:

1. all luggers neutral start should increase to 10.
2. lugger wolwin will border Darwin only
3. territories around MA3 adjusted because it was the only tert between that reef 3 and lugger genocruz
4. the decay bonus can be removed from the snorkel
5. the bonus for lugger and snorkel needs to come down to +1
6. the bonus for water and snorkel needs to come down to +1
7. luggers still connect to every other lugger
8. terts IW1 and IW2 have been added to the bottom left of map
9. new reef between MA2 and Lugger Genocruz
10. Water added to Isabela North
11. various neutral starts increased and decreased where necessary to better balance the map

Starting neutrals


Small

Small w/ armies


Large

Click image to enlarge.

Large w/ armies

Code: Select all

Test results:
Summary: 0 errors and 0 warnings detected in _galapagos_240808.xml (173 continents, 73 territories)

http://h1.ripway.com/cairnswk/_galapagos_240808.xml
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s282 ... s_v26S.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s282 ... s_v26L.jpg

[Lincecum]

Cairnswk, a few things:
1) I really like the map (I actually came back from an *amazing* trip to the Galápagos Islands to find it had been installed - a very pleasant surprise...if anyone wants to see trip pics PM me) and appreciate the countless hours of work you and many others do in creating maps and adding game functionality, which expands the Conquer Club experience for all. So thanks!

2) (And this part isn't really directed at you, but a general statement for "the powers that be" - whoever that may be in this case) CC is just a game. Yes, my single game on this single map is messed up, but I can accept that and move on. However in my case CC is also a paid service. I tend to hold paid services to a higher standard than free sites with respect to expectations of service levels and customer service, and, were this not "just a game" (or if it were a game with financial stakes), I would be raising some serious hell about it. Food for thought.

3) I realize it would be difficult to notify via PM or by posting a message in every current game using this map. However, I also have no idea how frequent this kind of snafu is. If it is infrequent, I think the difficulty of someone (not necessarily you, perhaps mods/admins) making some sort of announcement is justified. If frequent, perhaps CC should make an administrative tool which makes this kind of notification (by map or other attribute) less difficult. At the very least, it might be worth investigating how many games are actually impacted so a determination can be made how much work this would be and what an appropriate response is.

4) I highly doubt my current opponents read the forums for this kind of information. I highly doubt my current opponents read the forums at all. I know that the forums exist enough that I was able to find my way here and write about my problems. Again, food for thought for customer service/communication efforts.

5) On the positive side, I've got an idea for a new map - one where your territories get shuffled every few turns!

[ABSOLUTE_MASTER]

"Map Foundry: This is where maps get made. Check out what's in development and give us some feedback."

"Final Forge: Maps that may be nearing the end of production"

I may be wrong, but I believe once a map is quenched and it's available for everyone, updates should be posted in GD.

And you shouldn't guess about me so quickly, I did come to the forum and read the first pages with info about your map before joining the game and while I was playing it... My bad, I should have read all the way to page 24.

You are a great map maker, but maybe, just maybe, it may have been a good idea to put a little note in the first page of this thread indicating that the map was being fixed, I'm not even saying GD, just the first post here.

Now I'll and let you continue your good work.

[rom_tobins]

Now i haven't played the game with its updates yet, but i think the point your missing is there not complaining about changes...just errors that are happening sense the changes have been made.
For example this game log below:

t-o-m is starting on SA3 and not a reef,
SA3 is able to directly attack Espanola.
reef 7 can directly attack San Cristobal
cgblack started on IS5
IS5 can directly attack Lugger Tortisa

Also noticed cdblack took 3 territories...and considering lugger has 10 on it....he must have had some nice dice...thought thats not relivent. Anyways that is the very first round and the errors i caught




2008-08-19 19:38:19 - Game has been initialized
2008-08-19 20:16:52 - t-o-m gets bonus of -1 armies added to SA3 <----
2008-08-19 20:16:52 - t-o-m receives 3 armies for 1 territories
2008-08-19 20:17:52 - t-o-m deployed 3 armies on SA3
2008-08-19 20:18:06 - t-o-m attacked Espanola from SA3 and conquered it from neutral player <----
2008-08-20 08:55:39 - DimnjacarStef gets bonus of -1 armies added to Reef 2
2008-08-20 08:55:39 - DimnjacarStef receives 3 armies for 1 territories
2008-08-20 08:56:15 - DimnjacarStef deployed 3 armies on Reef 2
2008-08-20 08:56:19 - DimnjacarStef attacked MA1 from Reef 2 and conquered it from neutral player
2008-08-21 06:52:39 - cena-rules gets bonus of -1 armies added to Reef 7
2008-08-21 06:52:39 - cena-rules receives 3 armies for 1 territories
2008-08-21 06:52:50 - cena-rules deployed 3 armies on Reef 7
2008-08-21 06:52:55 - cena-rules attacked San Cristobal from Reef 7 and conquered it from neutral player <-----
2008-08-21 11:21:15 - japser_be gets bonus of -1 armies added to Reef 3
2008-08-21 11:21:15 - japser_be receives 3 armies for 1 territories
2008-08-21 11:21:19 - japser_be deployed 3 armies on Reef 3
2008-08-21 11:21:25 - japser_be attacked MA3 from Reef 3 and conquered it from neutral player
2008-08-21 16:14:30 - edgarhons gets bonus of -1 armies added to Reef 4
2008-08-21 16:14:30 - edgarhons receives 3 armies for 1 territories
2008-08-21 16:17:19 - edgarhons deployed 3 armies on Reef 4
2008-08-21 16:20:01 - edgarhons attacked FE1 from Reef 4 and conquered it from neutral player
2008-08-21 18:50:20 - cgblack gets bonus of -1 armies added to IS5
2008-08-21 18:50:20 - cgblack receives 3 armies for 1 territories
2008-08-21 18:50:23 - cgblack deployed 3 armies on IS5
2008-08-21 18:51:10 - cgblack attacked Lugger Tortisa from IS5 and conquered it from neutral player
2008-08-21 18:51:19 - cgblack attacked TO2 from Lugger Tortisa and conquered it from neutral player
2008-08-21 18:51:45 - cgblack attacked FL1 from Lugger Tortisa and conquered it from neutral player
2008-08-21 18:51:57 - cgblack fortified TO2 with 1 armies from FL1

[rom_tobins]

hmmm wait a sec.....nvm that game log should be from before the upload....but...the attack log obviously has been affected by this...

[joriki]

However, without sounding too glib...isn't it wonderful when life throws a little surprise at you??

First of all, I appreciate very much that you put all this effort into this interesting map for everyone to enjoy and then put even more effort into improving it when people complained.

However, to be honest, your answers (not just this one) do sound a bit glib to me. You seem to see this just as a couple of games going slightly haywire and people shouldn't get too hung up on their games. I see it more as damage to people's trust in the reliability and integrity of *all* their games -- once you've experienced this sort of thing, you know that things can just get changed around behind the scenes, this time you happened to find out, perhaps next time you won't -- there's not the same level of trust as there was before that everything is being done by a well-tested program in which this sort of bug would no longer occur. Obviously that's not the end of the world and most people will probably keep playing, but it's quite a bit worse than just screwing up a handful of their games.

Also, a large part of the chaos was unnecessary -- if you'd appended the new territories at the end, the indices for the existing ones wouldn't have changed and it would have been "just" a couple of border changes and some new territories popping up, which would have felt more like just the map changing slightly and not the whole game being thrown into random chaos.

Anyway, bygones -- it seems to me that what's needed is a mechanism to change maps such that games in progress aren't affected.

[rom_tobins]

Alright by the looks of it this error has occurred in games already started before the upload of the changes. from what i figure at least. So anyone who has a problem with there game....should try starting a new game before they start complaining.

[rom_tobins]

However, without sounding too glib...isn't it wonderful when life throws a little surprise at you??

First of all, I appreciate very much that you put all this effort into this interesting map for everyone to enjoy and then put even more effort into improving it when people complained.

However, to be honest, your answers (not just this one) do sound a bit glib to me. You seem to see this just as a couple of games going slightly haywire and people shouldn't get too hung up on their games. I see it more as damage to people's trust in the reliability and integrity of *all* their games -- once you've experienced this sort of thing, you know that things can just get changed around behind the scenes, this time you happened to find out, perhaps next time you won't -- there's not the same level of trust as there was before that everything is being done by a well-tested program in which this sort of bug would no longer occur. Obviously that's not the end of the world and most people will probably keep playing, but it's quite a bit worse than just screwing up a handful of their games.

Also, a large part of the chaos was unnecessary -- if you'd appended the new territories at the end, the indices for the existing ones wouldn't have changed and it would have been "just" a couple of border changes and some new territories popping up, which would have felt more like just the map changing slightly and not the whole game being thrown into random chaos.

Anyway, bygones -- it seems to me that what's needed is a mechanism to change maps such that games in progress aren't affected.

joriki you shouldn't feel so offended because of the change, first of all...maps are never really changes after they have been put into game play...and i'm sure no one new the uploading the changes would have such an affect on the already started games...

[joriki]

hmmm wait a sec.....nvm that game log should be from before the upload....but...the attack log obviously has been affected by this...

It seems that territories are saved as numerical indices in the logs, and these are converted to the territories' names when the log is printed -- since two new territories were inserted, the indices of all the territories that come after them in the XML have changed, so they're now mapped to different names when the log is printed. I believe this should be affecting the following territories:

Isabela West
IS5
Tortuga
Reef 6
SF4
SF3
Santa Fe
SF5
Reef 7
San Cristobal
Reef 8
TO1
TO2
Lugger Tortisa
FL1
FL2
Floreana
FL3
Lugger Floreola
ES1
Reef 9