3 annoying bugs - anybody have a cure?

I just downloaded Darwinia and started playing it on my dad's dual-2Ghz G5. Runs great, and is fun so far, but I've run into three bugs. The first is very annoying, the 2nd is puzzling, and the third makes it impossible to keep playing.

1. Every so often, my camera drops straight down to the ground. I go back up, and it drops back down to the ground immediately again. And it keeps doing this. The only way I've found to get it to stop is to deselect the currently-selected program and to move my camera to another part of the level

2. This is related to bug #3. When bug #3 happens, the 2 left-over squad members are stuck trying to cross to another island. If I kill that program, only the lead squad member dies - the other two survive, and I can click one and get it to fire its lasers (although Darwinia doesn't officially select it, since ctrl-C causes a different program to die) And if I ignore those 2 squad members, one usually manages to run off the island and disintegrates in the "sea".

3. This is the Garden level. I aligned the first dish with the second, sent my engineer over and aligned the second with the first. Now I'm trying to send my squad through it. If I click on the base of the close transmitter, they just bat against it fruitlessly. I'm assuming the proper way is to click on the far transmitter. I try that, and only the leader goes through the transmitter. The other 2 squad members ignore the transmitter and try to cross the "sea"

Ok, I just realized that I can probably create a new squad on the far side, since my engineer took control of that building. So problem #3 isn't actually a game-stopper, but it's very annoying.

Anybody seen these before, or have a fix?

I'm not sure about #1, but #2 is a known problem, I think.

When sending something across a transmitter, all you need to do is point one transmitter at the other. Then, you select the squad and click on the transmitter. If they don't go through, look for something that looks sort of like an opening or a door on the building, and position your squad so that they are in front of that before telling them to go in.

Also, I don't think there's actually a leader to squads.

Aranor, on Mar 31 2005, 03:12 PM, said:

1. Every so often, my camera drops straight down to the ground. I go back up, and it drops back down to the ground immediately again. And it keeps doing this. The only way I've found to get it to stop is to deselect the currently-selected program and to move my camera to another part of the levelView Post

That happened to me too, when I accidently bumped either the E or Q keys (I'm usually using my scroll wheel).

I experienced bugs #2 and #3 but only on the first transmitter in the game. The other ones have worked fine so far. I'm playing on a Dual 867 MHz G4 tower.

I may have also experienced bug #1. In my case, the problem was that I pressed the E key and Darwinia didn't notice when I let go of it. I pressed down the E key again and then let go of it to gain control of the camera.

It sounds like the positioning may be off slightly on the radar dish. Make sure you are clicking near the entryway, as grunadulater suggested, but if it still happens it's likely that the landscape is partially blocking the doorway. I'll take a look at the map file and see if that's the case.

Ok, so I've figured out how to go through the transmitters fine, now.

However, I'm still puzzled about bug #1. I can see what you're saying about the Q and E keys, except I don't use those, I was dropping down to the ground far faster than the Q and E keys move me, and it happened all too often, and usually only around the area on the map next to the research cube (on Garden).

Just to note, I fired the game up a second time earlier and didn't see the bug once during that time.

I'm still puzzled by #2, about how terminating the program was only terminating the "leader" of the squad (the leader being the guy in front) and the other two being left. It happened repeatedly whenever I managed to get the leader to go through the transmitter and the other two guys to try to wade into the sea.

Try this: Go to Garden, go to the first transmitter dish, create a squad, and then click on the far transmitter dish. That's how I always managed to get the front guy to go through the transmitter and the other two to try to wade into the sea. Once you get this and the "leader" is on the far side, terminate the program. the other two should be left behind.

I guess that could be classified as a bug. The proper way to send units through is by clicking on the close (transmitting) radar dish, and not on the far one. If you click on the far one, you're just going to confuse the heck out of the unit AI.

Aranor, on Mar 31 2005, 12:12 PM, said:

1. Every so often, my camera drops straight down to the ground. I go back up, and it drops back down to the ground immediately again. And it keeps doing this. The only way I've found to get it to stop is to deselect the currently-selected program and to move my camera to another part of the level

Haven't had this exact situation, but i've gotten stuck in a mode where some control is jammed and usually go sailing off the map while frantically pressing keys and clicking until it gets under control again.

I seem to have a nasty variant or similar situation to #s 2 and 3.

When i get a squad near the first aligned dish, i can generally find no way to get the fools to use it. After multiple tries 1 or 2 of the squad of three will generally start the trip across but never 3. They don't seem to pop out the other end, though, whatever i try. Or sometimes one will but there's no way to get the other two into the stream. Terminating the squad does not solve the problem.

No matter how many things i try, i seem to end up with one of the following:

a - One guy at the base of the second dish and the other two at the other end with no way to unite them.

b - The entire squad non-existent but the mouse pointer stuck on the arrow, even if i create a new engineer or squad so that there's no way to control the new guys, and only the newly created ones appear in the task manager.

c - One guy at the base of the second dish, with the same jammed on arrow situation. Can't control anyone and can't terminate the lone squad member.

The first time i played, by some quirk i managed to get some guys over there and moved onto the second level, where the first couple tranports worked, and then i ran into the most frustrating situation of all.

I fixed the machine but whenever i clicked the tower, the viewpoint immediately began bouncing all over the place and continued until i deselected the tower, at which time i'd find myself viewing things from some distance from the tower, proportional to how long i left it bouncing. This happened on every subsequent time so there was no way to align the dish.

733 MHz G4 with 1 GB RAM under 10.3.8 on an account with minimized # of processes giving me a pretty rotten frame rate on the second level. :blink: