THe Bug Fix Chronicles EP1 :OH WAIT A SECOND
It’s often like waking up from a nightmare. You’re just chugging along in code, switching things up, screwing around with settings, testing things, and then you see it. THE ONE SPECIFIC THING THAT YOU MISSED. And it’s always something stupid, like a comma in a bad place, or an extra space that just disintegrates the syntax.
I once had everything in a code die without explanation, and the IDE wouldn’t recognize anything. All of a sudden my code won’t load into the mission environment, none of my flags are triggering. I’m scared because I don’t know what I did wrong and it looks like I’ll have to start over. While this sheer terror is overcoming me, I have people upset that I cant patch the server with other bug fixes because I don’t have it working yet. Then I see it: oh shit, that’s supposed to be a 5 not an S. Everything else works, I patch the server, and then I go cry myself to sleep.
And then I have the crazy bugs, like post persistence script failure. Excuse me, what in the fried extra crispy mc fuck is this shit? Fun Fact: DSMC works by building a new mission file from the mission state every time it receives the command to save. That isn’t inherently a problem, except when it’s interrupted, or there’s a bad save, it might lose a script or 2. Actually, that’s not a big deal either. I have a fix for it now, so I’m not super worried. Ok, you guys are smart readers, you can guess there’s a but coming up. There’s no point in me even writing it, because you already know it’s coming. So I’m just not going to.
But
There’s a big issue with the warehouse script that I failed to acknowledge. I.E players like to bomb shit. Warehouses work by storing the metadata for units and templates and such and attaching it to an in game unit. Which works great, until the warehouse is bombed to oblivion. An error won’t immediately appear, as the unit will still be in game, just denoted as dead. EXCEPT, when DSMC creates a new mission file, it won’t save the dead unit for the next round, because it’s dead and adding clutter.
A lesser blue pilled beta male unlike myself might struggle with this information, but not I. No dear reader, I fly an F-14A. And as such, I do have a solution. Just make the warehouse objects immortal. I’ll lose a few points on realism, but I’m not totally sure it matters. It’s one of those things that if done right I’m not positive anyone will notice. It does mean I need to rework some details out. oh wait, hold on a second, that’s right. DCS is stupid and won’t let you make a static object immortal. Of course, this means that this problem will be consistent and to a degree required for DPTST to continue.
Alas this bug has become my nemesis. And like they always say, the best revenge is a life well lived, in the other guy’s house with the other guy’s wife.
So what’s the workaround? I don’t know, but I’m going to figure it out, because this shit is annoying and I want it dead
P.S. I feel a little bad, because a really good post about future DPTSTS and a Ready Room episode, keep getting pushed back, but I think it’s just a little more important to keep you up to date on what’s up with the server. In any case, both will be out soon-ish
