bugs in DEFCON 1.4.3

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RE: SOFTWARE BUG REPORTING
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Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Commander in Chief has just authorized the use of nuclear weapons (authorization PAPA OSCAR ECHO). It is your responsibility to see that they are deployed and utilized effectively. To that end, you have been given access to the latest in strategic and tactical software on the planet. However, due to the effects of extreme environment, nuclear fallout and radiation, EMP, and enemy activity, it is possible that this software may misbehave. Please report any "bugs" to CentCom as quickly as possible by replying to this message.

Please be aware that replies to this message should only be to report new bugs, and not confirm previously reported bugs, unless new information can be provided. Please provide as much information as possible, so that our crack software engineers can solve your problems as quickly as possible. At the very least, please provide the following information:

• Name, Rank, and Serial Number

• Mac OS X Version: e.g. Mac OS X 10.4.8

• Hardware: please describe the hardware that Defcon is running on, including model (iMac, PowerBook, etc.), proc (G4, Core Duo, etc.), RAM amount, and video card

• Bug Description: please be as detailed as possible

In order to help you provide this information, DEFCON will attempt to log any unexpected behavior. When you report a bug, please check the following two locations for error reports, and attach them to your message:

~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Defcon.crash.log
~/Library/Logs/Defcon/

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Do Not report bugs as follows:

Quote

Defcon just crashes all the time

This does not explain what is going on, and does not give our software engineers a place to start looking for the problem. Reports such as these will result in demotion in pay step and/or grade.

Do report bugs as follows. Long crash logs or debug logs can be attached to your post:

Quote

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Darwinian, General, 15-458
Mac OS X 10.4.8
Hardware: 15" PowerBook G4, 1 GHz G4, 1 Gig RAM, otherwise factory default
Bug: Defcon seems to crash at random. It only seems to happen in multiplayer games. It may be related to my poor internet connection. I have attached a debug log, and a crash log.
Debug log:

SDL Version: Compiled against 1.2.11, running with 1.2.11
Defcon 1.4 mac built Apr 11 2007
Parsing archive main.dat...DONE
Found installed mod 'Cold War Polar 0.51' in '/Users/xander/Library/Application Support/DEFCON/mods/coldwarpolar/' (CRITICAL)
Found installed mod 'emoticon v1.0' in '/Users/xander/Library/Application Support/DEFCON/mods/emoticon/' 
--LOG TRUNCATED--

Crash Log:

**********

Host Name:	  nausicaa
Date/Time:	  2007-03-07 09:52:22.886 -0800
OS Version:	 10.4.8 (Build 8L127)
Report Version: 4

Command: DEFCON
Path:	/Applications/Defcon/Defcon1.4.0b2.app/Contents/MacOS/DEFCON
Parent:  WindowServer (58)
--LOG TRUNCATED--

Other info:

Quote

I've got a few bugs and UI issues I'd like to see fixed, but I'd like to know which ones I should bring up here, and which ones I should go to the original authors. Presumably you are only concerned with crashes, hardware incompatibilities and graphical issues?

We've got a shared bug tracker, so unless it's definitely a feature request (and also not Mac specific), go ahead and report it here.

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View Posthalprinp, on Apr 19 2007, 06:36 PM, said:

Mac OS X: 10.4.9 8P135
Hardware: Dual 2.7 Ghz Powermac G5, 2.5 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition (128 MB VRAM)
Bug description: Going into submarine mode creates a looping timer

The timer to go into the Submarine mode for a carrier loops.
Video (made by Snapz Pro X of course) should say it all:
http://idisk.mac.com.../defcon_bug.mov (6.2 MB)
More to come...

This is proper behavior. Notice that sonar ping whenever it hits zero? You'll also notice that silos in air defense mode count down to when they shoot another anti-air missile.

Name, rank, serial: Kickme, Demo, 183179168192172185
Mac OS: 10.4.9
Hardware: Standard 15" 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 1 GB RAM and 126 MB GDDR3 RAM
Bug: Defcon crashed in tutorial one, the second time I did it, after changing the silo to ICBM launcher.

logs

This post has been edited by kickme : 19 April 2007 - 11:09 PM

Mac OS X: 10.4.9 8P135
Hardware: Dual 2.7 Ghz Powermac G5, 2.5 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition (128 MB VRAM)
Bug description: Alternating between window mode messes up resolution

If you go into window mode by clicking "User Manual" on the main menu or "Click here to download more mods" in the Mods menu, the game goes into window mode (which is good) but it also shrinks the resolution. So when you go back into full screen mode, your full screen state is in that reduced resolution. I then need to go back into the Screen Preferences to change back the resolution I had before.
This does not affect pressing Command+F nor double escape.

Trying to complete Tutorial 4/7 (Turn on your radar view to see your radar range) - I have done (bottom radar icon, I presume), but I still cant proceed to the next tutorial. I did have trouble with the previous tutorial (launch fighters), but that suddenly decided I had completed it and decided to proceed to this one.

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: Pop-up menus in the main menu tree don't disappear when you invoke them and then click another part of the window. Instead, they behave like windows of their own, and are partially obscured by the window from which they were invoked. The first time I saw this, I thought it was a way of letting me tear off menus in order to access them more quickly while in-game. Unfortunately, they disappear when another menu is invoked. While tearable menus might be cool for certain options, the quick and less confusing solution to this issue would simply be to have pop-up menus disappear when they lose focus.

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: Windowed mode uses the same resolution as fullscreen mode. Especially on LCD monitors, it is usually desirable to play the game at the highest possible resolution while in fullscreen mode. In windowed mode, however, playing at the highest resolution obscures part of the game window. This means that when switching back and forth between modes, one always has to change the resolution as well as the windowed setting. This problem could easily be alleviated by associating a separate resolution setting with each mode, and having DEFCON switch to the appropriate resolution when windowed mode is turned on and off. e.g. When I switch from fullscreen at 1680x1050 to windowed mode, DEFCON should automatically change its resolution to 1024x768 (the resolution I last selected while in windowed mode)

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: Windows and widgets are moved unnaturally by resolution changes. It appears that window positions are defined only in pixel coordinates across resolution switches. This means that changing from a lower to a higher resolution can leave windows in in the centre of the screen, and changing from a higher to a lower resolution results in windows being almost entirely off-screen. The transition would be more natural if window positions were stored in normalized device coordinates across resolution switches, leaving everything approximately where it was before the switch. e.g. a window which is at (0.5, 0.5) should remain at that location when the resolution changes.

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: Right-click doesn't work with Microsoft Intellimouse Optical Mouse. The middle mouse button and scroll wheel work, and right-click works in every other game and program I've used. For some reason right-click simply doesn't register in DEFCON.

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: Zoom level responds poorly to trackpad scrolling. I believe this is a Mac-specific issue. Using two-finger trackpad scrolling, the viewport usually zooms out, even when scrolling upwards. The only way to get it to zoom in while scrolling upwards is to scroll very quickly, which makes it difficult to attain the desired level of zoom. This issue probably has something to do with the finer granularity of trackpad scrolling as compared to mousewheel scrolling.

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: Zoom doesn't maintain absolute cursor position. From what I have seen, there are two standards for scroll wheel zooming behaviour in environments such as DEFCON. The first is to ignore the position of the cursor, and simply zoom towards the centre of the screen (see Google Earth/Maps). The second is where the viewing area is zoomed such that the cursor's position remains fixed both in terms of its position on the ground, and its position on the screen (see Black and White 2, Supreme Commander). DEFCON uses a cross between the two behaviours which is less usable than either of them, in that it zooms straight in and then drifts slightly toward the cursor. This means that although positioning the cursor over an object at the edge of the screen will cause the viewport centre to move toward that object, the object will not necessarily remain on the screen. The second zooming behaviour described above is more functional and intuitive than the current behaviour.

Mac OS X: 10.4.9 8P135
Hardware: Dual 2.7 Ghz Powermac G5, 2.5 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition (128 MB VRAM)
Bug description: Refresh Rate drop down menu has no entries for CRT monitor

If you click on the Refresh Rate drop down menu in the Screen Options, no menu items exist if you are using a CRT. None are there for a LCD as well (which is expected).

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: Styles are stored inside DEFCON.app. This is confusing behaviour for a Mac application. Support files should all go in ~/Application Support/DEFCON/ (like mods currently do).

@muriac, on Apr 20 2007, 06:03 PM, said in ATTN: DEFCON Bug Reports:

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: Styles are stored inside DEFCON.app. This is confusing behaviour for a Mac application. Support files should all go in ~/Application Support/DEFCON/ (like mods currently do).

The default styles, and any edits that you make to them, are stored in the app bundle. However, styles, like everything else, can be placed in a mod. I have a mod that contains nothing but styles. That mod is always active, which allows me to select any of the styles that I want, at will, from the style editor. This should probably be documented, somewhere, but it is useful.

xander

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: No way to drag the screen without a middle mouse button. Because a lot of Mac users have single-button mice or trackpads, it would be useful if there were a modifier to duplicate the middle mouse button dragging functionality. Command is a commonly used modifier for this functionality.

Darwinian, General, 15-458
Mac OS X 10.4.9
15" PowerBook, 1 GHz G4, 1 Gig RAM

In the ASW banner ad, nukes are shown launching during Defcon 2. This is impossible, and should be fixed as soon as possible.

Thank you,
xander

@darwinian, on Apr 20 2007, 09:59 PM, said in ATTN: DEFCON Bug Reports:

Darwinian, General, 15-458
Mac OS X 10.4.9
15" PowerBook, 1 GHz G4, 1 Gig RAM

In the ASW banner ad, nukes are shown launching during Defcon 2. This is impossible, and should be fixed as soon as possible.

Thank you,
xander

I did notice this earlier today, but I figured it didn't matter all that much, since Defcon 2 really doesn't change anything anyway, and the banner looks cool.

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: Info pane toggle preference not saved between games. The info pane is probably not useful to most players after they have learned what each unit does. However, it is on by default and must be switched off manually every game. The location of the info pane should be saved between games.

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: The "time" column header displays the wrong triangle when sorting. If you click the "time" column header, it will display an inverted triangle, indicating sorting from greatest down to least. Instead, the list is sorted from least to greatest. The direction of the triangle should be changed for each sorting case.

Name, Rank, Serial Number: Muriac, Demo, none yet
Mac OS X 10.4.9 (8P2137)
Hardware: MacBook Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, otherwise factory default
Bug: Some commands given on mouseup regardless of where mousedown occurred. Pushing the mouse button while the cursor is over a scroll bar, and then releasing it over a column header will cause the column header to behave as if it had been clicked. Interface elements which behave like buttons should not respond to mouseup events if the mouse button did not go down over them.