Warcraft III patch "the hell?"

[Perhaps]

"- Fixed DotA-specific sound effects on Intel Macs."

Does this mean we're justified to request that memory leaks are to be removed from EotA in a patch?

[Gilles]

Dear lord, a bug fix for DotA? The sound effects aren't even legal are they?

[jamn455]

I really don't see a problem with it. If they want to fix a problem that is affecting one of the games that keeps Warcraft 3 popular, then why should it bother you. It is not even like the patch was just for that one bug, it was at the bottom of the list of things that were fixed or changed in this patch.

[Soulbourne]

Interesting...I vote we let them try EotA then ask about the memory leak.

[Konnar]

Yes it is realistic to say that they will pay as much attention to 50% of bnet as 0.0001% of bnet.

[Gilles]

Maybe they'll realize the superior everything in EotA and want to help it.

[Soulbourne]

Exactly, that's why I said make them play it first...plus the people who read the patch notes will have their curiosity raised and maybe increase player population...

[DarnYak]

Does seem a bit odd that the patch note references dota specificly rather then the bug i assume every map could have. But meh, who cares.

As for supporting EotA, i'd rather see them provide information/debugging more availible to all developers rather then play favorites. Its quite possible I could fix the things within the map but i just can't locate the causes.

DarnYak

[Perhaps]

"Popular," is exactly why there shouldn't have been a patch fix. Given as big as the community, they themselves should have revamped the sound file itself to work.

The other thing... Har har har, pretentious Mac fucks.

[Emufarmers]

6.52e Changelog:
=================
* Fixed some critical bugs introduced in the 1.22 patch

It seems that they broke CustomKick. This is a sad day for Warcraft 3.

[Perhaps]

Banlist works like a charm for me.

[Emufarmers]

You may want to reread my post.

[Storamin]

"Popular," is exactly why there shouldn't have been a patch fix. Given as big as the community, they themselves should have revamped the sound file itself to work.

The other thing... Har har har, pretentious Mac fucks.

let's bag on the mac...

how bout we bag on vista?

[Stexe]

Uhm... if you guys actually payed attention you'd realize that the DotA sound fix wasn't just for DotA but for many games that used similar imported sounds. Also, I doubt the EotA memory leaks are because of WC3 and need a patch to be fixed. It is most likely bad coding that could be fixed through JASS implementation. I'd be VERY VERY surprised if it was WC3's engine fault and not the coders.

[Stexe]

Does seem a bit odd that the patch note references dota specificly rather then the bug i assume every map could have. But meh, who cares.

As for supporting EotA, i'd rather see them provide information/debugging more availible to all developers rather then play favorites. Its quite possible I could fix the things within the map but i just can't locate the causes.

DarnYak

Have you tried using Vexorian's debugging programs? Have you tried giving the triggers/JASS/code to someone else to look through it? Usually another person will catch things you miss.

Also, how about another EotA version, any ETA? =)

[DarnYak]

Uhm... if you guys actually payed attention you'd realize that the DotA sound fix wasn't just for DotA but for many games that used similar imported sounds.

The question to me is more why they specificly referenced the bug being in DotA, rather then just stating its a generic mac sound fix.

Also, I doubt the EotA memory leaks are because of WC3 and need a patch to be fixed. It is most likely bad coding that could be fixed through JASS implementation. I'd be VERY VERY surprised if it was WC3's engine fault and not the coders.

You're both PROBABLY right and yet almost entirely wrong. I strongly suspect most leaks in EotA could be fixed internally..the issue is there's no documentation from blizzard about what leaks and how to solve it, and everything that's been found so far is either through trial and error or copying what blizzard.j does. All the known ones i've checked for time and time again. Anything obvious is fixed, and almost everything not so obvious have probably been found (I still find some really cryptic ones every now and then, usualy due to a blizzard.j function not behaving as expected). Yet there's still some significant ones causing EotA to lag and i cannot find them.

Have you tried using Vexorian's debugging programs?

Yes, it helped me track down one leak. Problem is the debugging slows wc3 down signficiantly, and it utterly murders EotA. I mean like it runs at 2 fps with just me and no comps playing. I haven't checked it recently, so its possible they added more types of leak tracking since then, but last time it mostly focused on all the well documented ones which i've already covered.

Have you tried giving the triggers/JASS/code to someone else to look through it? Usually another person will catch things you miss.

EotA is such a giagantic mess since i never planned on it getting this large that its nearly impossible for other people to make enough sense of it to even start doing that.


And just fyi, there are a small number of "leaks" in EotA i haven't bothered to fix. All of these leak only once at map start, and have no signfiicant impact. Specificly, lt leaks around 500 handles (mostly locations) at game start, where leaks shouldn't be significant till they're in the millions.

DarnYak

[DarnYak]

I should also add, I remember reading its possible to have spell effect graphics leak (the models themselves), although last i saw nobody's quite sure why it happens (its very rare, only known case I read about was from DotA). This would be 100% blizzard's fault, and a giant pain in the ass to track down. Considering how many custom spell effects i've made for EotA, its not inconceivable this could be one of the issues.

DarnYak

[Stexe]

Well, you answered all my questions except one... any ETA on the next EotA?

Not sure exactly why they mentioned DotA-specific sounds in the patch notes -- my only guess would be because the specific sounds are primarily found in DotA and not in other maps and it would therefore be more specific than saying "some rare sound errors." Maybe it is a nod to how successful DotA is doing? Who knows, not that it really matters, I doubt we will be seeing another WC3 patch for a long, long time (unless it is a minor one to fix stability issues or the rune/tome bug).

Also, how many leaks would you say there are? It seems to lag in some games and in others not so much, so I guess most of the leaks are isolated incidents, or something like that.

I'd check up on Vexorian's work -- he has kept up with it and is just amazing at all things WC3 editor related.

[DarnYak]

Well, you answered all my questions except one... any ETA on the next EotA?

I have some mental roadblocks in the way, soon I hope but I really can't say.

Also, how many leaks would you say there are? It seems to lag in some games and in others not so much, so I guess most of the leaks are isolated incidents, or something like that.

Hard to say. I suspect i know where one of the bigger leaks may be, but i haven't had time to re-write it becuase its a rather large and messy chunk of code.

Some may be AI related, but i've been unable to track anything down in there.

I also suspect there's a category of bugs that's caused by a "rare" series of events, usualy multiple hero spells or effects going off at once. I found one of these to a limited extent for 1.12 (casting one spell and then another in the same area would create bugs - however, none of what I found would really effect the game unless used constnatly in one small area). These spell combo bugs are probably why candle and kedge seem to lag so much more frequently, with all heroes in close proximity its far more likely to cause it. But usualy I would expect to see other side effects when something like happens.

DarnYak

[BLUEPOWERVAN]

I doubt we will be seeing another WC3 patch for a long, long time (unless it is a minor one to fix stability issues or the rune/tome bug).

I wouldn't be so sure. I think it might be the start of a series of wc3 patches, as a part of shoring up battle.net for sc2.

[Storamin]

ETA: 1 year.

[AnAngryBearDoctor]

EotA is such a giagantic mess since i never planned on it getting this large that its nearly impossible for other people to make enough sense of it to even start doing that.

I had an unprotected version of EotA and opened it in Map Editor for shits and giggles once.
My processor died the next day.

[BLUEPOWERVAN]

Once I tried to make EotA a 6v6 capable game! I was going to parse the file out, and try to replace every occurrence of the cpu players to be players 13/14, juggle the slots so that 1-5, 7-11 were on the right team, then finally try to duplicate every bit of script specific to the other players. It was too hard for me to test though, extracting and modifying jass files, then repackaging them. plus I had never done serious work on a map so I was unfamiliar... but briefly I felt compelled, since so many maps suffer from the same issues... I always wanted fmvh to be 6v6!

[Dekar]

6on6 maps have the disadvantage, that player 13/14 always display as grey/black or something similiar on the minimap, no matter what ally settings you have. Its pretty bad for the overview when spawns are near invisible on the minimap.

[Kibiyama]

For everyone wondering why they'd "fix a bug just for DotA":

It was a Mac-only bug, so they had code running on one platform that behaved as expected, but not on another. That's a textbook example of a bug fix.