Can anyone give me a method for triggering/duplicating the AA unselectable unit bug? I know it exists, but I've never seen it myself. I would therefore like to know how to cause it on command so I can test a method for eliminating it (as Doodle suggested). I make no guarantees it'll work even if I can implement it, but it's worth a shot. To do this, however, I need a means of causing the bug so I can test...so go to it, [MM]!

If this works, I'll be releasing an updated AA with some other fixes I wanted to make. Heck, if it doesn't I might release the update anyway. And I might finally get around to making a trailer to see if we can snag bored people off of YouTube to play mods

From what I have experienced, it's completely random
But I'm thinking there will be someone that knows more than me.

AA unselectable bug? Elaborate.

Units randomly become invincible and cannot be selected at times. Only way to make them normal is by casting a spell on them, such as stasis.

Are they using a transparency setting?

Some of them do, but they're not the problem ones. Regular units can become unselectable and we're not sure why.

The only time I ever encountered such a problem was when I tried to turn zerglings into Shadows in AO. Under the fog of war, they'd become unselectable and invincible randomly (seemed to be aggravated when they burrowed as well).

Past that I'd either account it to the version you're using or firegraft. Unless you're doing something really weird.

Right now I'm personally more concerned why, out of the blue, Datedit refuses to do anything anymore. It just crashes or spams unhandled exceptions/access violations over and over and I can't even get a listing of sprites.dat or portraits.dat.

Version's correct and DoA has no clue what's causing it.

When you say "under the fog of war," what exactly do you mean?

Well, the units wouldn't become invincible when they were visible. I think it has to do with how the transparency is handled outside of render. Shadows, ect. aren't shown under the fog of war, and units were never meant to be given these special settings. So it's no wonder the game doesn't really know what to do with them. Burrowing also changes the states as well, so the engine probably gets confused. And with how the newer versions broke a lot of stuff in relations to id's and stuff... you can't really predict how that's going to work out.

But it never bugged out units who weren't given transparency settings. I guess the only way to accurately test is to re-create your settings in 1.10 and try out the mod in 1.10. If it still doesn't work, then you've done something to the units to cause them to freak out. But AFAIK AA is just a bunch of air units a la ITAS and there isn't anything terribly special about them.

Can you think of any reason why units not having shadows would cause this?

Also, Doodle's suggestion for fixing it was to give every unit an enable/disable script. Any feedback on this?

EDIT: Is it possible for iscript entries to call scripts that are outside of their header-defined area?

Shadows are just underlays. Removing them won't do anything. Half of AO's units don't actually have shadows.

What do you mean by enable/disable script?

And for the edit question, no, not that I've tried. You can't for example have lolnigaz.txt call a line from lolfaggots.txt. (The game doesn't have these txts after all)

But if you globally decompile you can call anything from anywhere. That's what "local" blocks are. I don't see why you couldn't have the Zergling call a Marine's idle. But know that the marine's idle will default back to the marine's looping animations and never return to the zergling's (Until you give it an alternate command).

I know that last bit. I decompile all my scripts universally, so that would be no problem. I was planning to have an infinite wait 125 loop as a script for the enable/disable animations for all the units.

Well if you are serious about trying to fix it I suggest trying your mod in 1.10 with SG/MG and seeing if you can replicate it.

Once we are on common ground I can more effectively route out possible causes for you.

I wouldn't be able to replicate it in 1.10--there are too many exe edits that are fairly important for gameplay.

Also, I was hoping that one of the people who's actually reported the problem to me could give me circumstances in which it's happened and, if possible, a way of duplicating it

Odd one. I've never experienced this bug myself as well.

I tell you, BroodKiller is just a maniac with this mod and loves it like no other. The few times I've played with him and ShadowyMoon he has rambled on about how certain things cause this and that. Most of the time I don't know what the hell he's talking about, but you might contact him too. He is really active @ the AAAI thread.

One bug that was annoying that was accounted for was the permacloaked units. This was especially prevalent with computer units for some odd reason. I don't know what causes this, but I've seen it in other mods as well. Bkiller did seem to know the answer to what causes this, but I can't recall what the hell he said. I was too busy trying to stay alive in most of the games I've played with those 2. A cheezy work-around that was implemented for this bug was that every unit was given the detector ability and this is no longer an issue. Post-game replays are really funny to see how sometimes dozens and dozens of units are permacloaked, but of course in game everything looks normal.

Good luck with your findings and look forward to an updated version and the video! Myself, I haven't fiddled with the mod in quite a while now, but we did manage to build a more maniacal Team vs. version for those 2 blood-thirsty guys BKiller and ShadowyMoon as they so demanded. I think they got what they wanted!

Who cares about gameplay. We want to test something. If it doesn't appear then it's a result of the exe edits themselves. Then, it's firegraft, and you have your source of the problem.

As I said, if you're serious about fixing it, you'll bring it onto a platform that is known to be free of problems. There you can start figuring it out. Right now you're just shooting in the dark... and I cannot help you.

Also I've never had problems with permacloaked units. And ITAS has tons of them.

isolating variables is always a good idea when troubleshooting. Replicating a test mod in another platform would seem a good idea. Even duplicating the error in the current mod would be nice to know where and when this is happening at the least.

The permacloaked bug was misleading. There are no permacloaked units in AA. The mod tho sometimes will turn a non-cloaked unit mysteriously into a permacloaked one on it's own accord; including units with mana bars, which is a real problem.

That is a weird, weird bug. I know that there was an exploit you could turn burrowed units permacloaked in 1.10 but that's quite a bit stranger.

Now you guys are beginning to understand why I stick with 1.10

I thought someone said it had to do with some specific spell being used on it... I've seen it before, but it was more of me looking at a battle when people started shouting "No! I can't click it!".

I don't know of any spell that can do something like that, unless you're messing with ASM injection or something. If is indeed a spell somehow causing it then it is an extension of a more serious issue that you probably won't be able to fix without either removing the spell or giving up on 1.15

In either case, all you have are guesses right now.