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Geneforge pathfinding in Tech Support
Apprentice
Member # 2023
Profile #0
One thing that's annoying me in the Geneforge demo (both Mac and Windows) is that it seems to do a horrible job with pathfinding.

When I'm in combat, and I want to move one character forward, sometimes it'll tell me that I can't get there, even though I can easily do so by clicking halfway there, then clicking the rest of the way.

Worse yet, sometimes, rather than moving straight between two characters (when I know there's space to do so, because another character just did it), it'll run all the way around and waste all of its APs and miss a chance to attack. In one case, the character just took two steps backward and stopped!

It seems to me that this will get worse later in the game (at least if you play a Shaper, because you'll presumably have more creations, and some of them will be melee-only and need to get around the others). And I could see this also causing serious problems around the minefields.

I don't remember the Exile games having a problem like this.

Do other people have this problem?

If this is a known problem, but there's no easy fix, maybe a decent workaround would be an "undo" button--if you've moved, but haven't yet attacked or done anything else, you could undo the move. (Yes, this would allow people to cheat by looking around corners, but I don't think that's worth worrying about.)

A better (but not perfect) fix would be to highlight the proposed path if you let the mouse hover over the destination (or held the mouse button down, or right-clicked, or something).

The undo button would also be nice for when you want to get as far forward as you can without going under 5 AP (although it'd be even better if it showed you on the screen how many AP you'd have left at the destination you were hovering over, or something like that, even without showing the path).
Posts: 14 | Registered: Friday, October 4 2002 07:00
Geneforge XP compatability issues? in Tech Support
Apprentice
Member # 2023
Profile #7
quote:
Originally posted by Tails:
GeneForge doesn't run at all on my Windows 98. GeneForge only seems to work on my Mac OS X, but not Mac OS 9...tis strange, no?
A lot of carbonized apps have problems on OS 9. Make sure you've upgraded both MacOS to the latest version, and that you have the latest CarbonLib. Even still, I've had a few bizarre problems (like crashing when I try to open the instructions, or not responding to the keys in the two columns starting with 9 and 0). Maybe the older (non-Carbon) version will work? I haven't tried that yet.
Posts: 14 | Registered: Friday, October 4 2002 07:00
Geneforge XP compatability issues? in Tech Support
Apprentice
Member # 2023
Profile #6
A few suggestions.

First, check out AVG, a free antivirus program available at http://www.grisoft.com/. I've used it on Win98, 98SE, 2000, and XP on a variety of computers, with no significant problems (unless you're having it check all Outlook Express email, and using OE to read Hotmail accounts).

Second, there's a good chance the problem is your DirectX drivers. Try downloading the newest drivers for your video card, especially if you've upgraded DirectX, especially if you upgraded to a beta. If this is the problem, it's easily possible that all kinds of other programs might work fine, including non-DirectX games or even DirectX games that don't use the one particular feature that's buggy on your system.

Third, you could have a bad memory chip, or just a badly-seated memory chip. This can cause intermittent problems that usually show up only when you stress the computer in certain ways (by running a memory-intensive game, for example), and won't show up during the Power-On Self-Test. There are about a billion free memory test programs out there; do some research and find a good one. I have a linux box that would usually fail when recompiling the kernel, but would almost never fail when doing anything else, and I eventually tracked the problem down to a very-intermittently-bad memory chip.

Finally, if you really think the modem is the issue, completely disable it, uninstall the drivers, and disconnect it from your computer, and see if GeneForge still causes problems for you. If uninstalling your modem fixes everything, and you can't afford the $12 for a new modem (or $5 for a used one), then try reinstalling the drivers (and check to see if there are specific drivers for your modem, although most don't have them). Also, see if there's anything funky in your BIOS settings relating to the modem or the com ports.

Hope this helps.
Posts: 14 | Registered: Friday, October 4 2002 07:00