Hammer of Code

Today marked what was probably the first more serious bout at testing the ruleset. While I had played a little last week it wasn’t with much attention to detail. Today, however, I took care to think about things that might go wrong, and more systematically test actions that might cause errors. Since I feel the majority of my errors (and the worst code of the ruleset) lies in movement (particularly attacks/collisions) and colonization my focus has been on combining the latter in potentially abusive ways. It seems to be well established (and correct me if I’m wrong) that individual moves occur without error; Hence I’ve been stringing together attack and colonize movements to cause errors (logical or otherwise.)
Testing for the day didn’t uncover any move related bugs. I did make note of one bug though. Here’s a quick run down:

• Test1 fights and conquers test2 - no problems
• Close test2’s client and relogon as test3
• Test3’s client shows Sadr as owned by test3, but the client gives the “you own no objects” window
• Reloading the universe and advancing a turn both do not fix the display.
• Test3 conquers 3 territories. No change.
• Test1 conquers test1.
• Test1 loads next turn properly, receives “Winner” message
• Test3 client causes the server to crash when loading universe
• Server crashed on a Bus Error during “Get Message frame”

I can’t really say much else about that bug other than I will try and replicate it with a gdb’d tpserver tomorrow.

What I did this weekend:
After months, if not years, of anticipation I finally caved and started playing a semi-translated version of Mother 3. For anyone who doesn’t know about Mother 3 it is what would be Earthbound 2 in North America had it been translated or released outside of Japan. My interest has recently been sparked by the recent activity of the god among men “tomato.” With tomato’s menu translation and a game script at my side the experience has been almost the same as playing the original Earthbound, which I might add I am also currently playing. Tomato is currently working on a full translation for Mother 3, and has been for over a year now I believe. Speculation has been that he will be complete in little under half a year, at which point North America will collapse under the glory of an English Mother 3.