File: Known Issues

These are issues I know about but that I do not currently plan to fix.  (And since Demeter will probably be retired after its evaluation, this means they will never get fixed.)

Author - Zach Tomaszewski
Created - 04 Dec 2010
Version - 05 Feb 2011


Topic: Marlinspike Bugs

* [None currently known.]


Topic: Demeter Bugs

These bugs cause programming error messages, game crashes, infinite loops/lockups, etc.

* [None currently known.]


Topic: Demeter Irritants

These are annoying things that strain story believability or things that, as author, I really wish didn't happen this way.  But most are minor and/or occur only in fringe story paths anyway.

Actions:
* Interacting with unconscious NPCs still affects their affinities.

* Because of the hacky way waits are processed when you just hit enter at the command prompt, the turn is not actually incremented and processed fully.  Thus, if you die as the result of a "just hit enter" wait (as opposed to actually typing *wait*), there is another hack that ends the game at that point (so that you are not given a prompt again once dead).  However, this hack means the game seems to crash in those interpreters (such as Gargoyle) that don't wait for you to close the window after a quit.  Thus, this is only a bug depending on your interpreter.  (It works fine in Zag.)

Reactions:
* Occasionally an NPC will call for another to defend her when she has just been defended.

Scenes:
* <GoParty_Moves_Along>: If the PC is not in the GoParty but standing in either the Mess Hall or the Storage Area, she throws off the GoParty's motion.  The GoParty will repeatedly leave and reenter for as long as the PC waits there.  Not quite sure what's causing this; appears to be a conflict between <GoParty_Offscreen> and <GoParty_Moves_Along>.

* <GoParty_Moves_Along>: If you drag the sole NPC in the GoParty down the stairs into the Entryway, this does not end the GoParty state.  So the NPC will just exit again.

* <GoParty_Offscreen>:  Sometimes this would play better if it required a DELAY before playing.  That is, NPCs are sometimes able to time-lapse and get a number of actions done in one turn.

* <GoParty_Reentry>: Grabbing everyone currently locked out is a little tricky (they could be dead/not present, etc), so I just took the shortcut of grabbing the current GoParty.  But, since the reentry vote is based partly on affinities for those locked out, this can change the chance of being locked out.  For example, in the most common story path of going into the Zeppelin with Major Winters, you can usually get back in if John is still alive but will be betrayed if John is dead.  This is annoying, since the gondola NPCs should not have this knowledge.

* <GoParty_Reentry>: If the NPCs in the gondola betray a locked-out NPC, need to keep replaying this until the Revenant finally kills the GoParty.  This is tedious.

* <GoParty_Reentry>: Would be nice to have a sort of <GoParty_Reports> here when betrayed, or at least <Evidence_Revealed> to those in the gondola that the Revenant is dead.  If this news properly affected beliefs (which I don't think it currently does), this might break the betrayal after a few attempts.  Ah well.

* <Impromptu_GoParty>: There is a pause if a lone PC (all NPCs are dead) tries to leave the gondola.  (That is, it takes two tries to go up the hatch.)  I could prevent this scene from playing but doing nothing, but it does form a GoParty of the PC, which is an important state to have establish for later scenes..  The pause is minor and it is unlikley to have no NPCs, so I'll leave it.

* <Landfall>: Proably should have toned down the references to the earlier death of the revenant, etc when reinc is off.

* <PC_Unconscious>: Any offscreen GoParty that is active at the time of PC's loss of consciousness do not act or return until after the PC wakes again, which is supposed to be a couple hours later.  But it's too hard to reliably run the GoParty offscreen for such an extended period.

* <PC_Unconscious>: If the Observation Deck hatch is broken earlier, the PC can walk right back in after being locked out by NPCs.  (I could have NPCs push a couch to keep the door blocked, but... too much work for such a fringe occurrence.)

* <PC_Unconscious>: If PC falls was part of GoParty and there is a rescuing NPC that returns the NPC to the gondola, it'd be nice if that rescuer filled in everyone else in the gondola (and so updated their beliefs and affinities) with a silent <GoParty_Reports>.  (Would require too much NPC moving around and offscreen work for something not very obvious anyway.)

* <Pursues_Plan>: Could be massaged a bit for how it repeats.  For example, an NPC seeking ESCAPE will check the command hatch each visit; this should either not repeat or else obviously hook the previous attempt. 

* <Revenant_Acts>: I should probably have conceded to the requirements of a good story here (over "world realism".  As it is now, Revenant_Acts is rule-based: If the dice come up a certain way, the revenant will appear or attack or whatever.  Larger search parties and previous injury discourage the revenant.  However, this can lead to long periods of aimless wandering back and forth waiting for the revenant to show up.  So, I probably could have conceded something to this: after so many movements or waits without anything else exciting happening, it's time to force the revenant to act.  (Of course, this also would require another 100 lines of code or so.)

* <Revenant_Acts>: If you leave a Revenant behind in a known location, it stays there until Revenant_Acts actually moves it to a new location.  This means you can get "revenant foreshadowing" at other locations, but upon returning to the last known location, the revenant is still standing there (and probably attacks you on sight).  The revenant is known to be a fast mover and does occassionally attack on arrival, though; so this may not be all that noticable.

World:
* Sacks of food: This was a major headache.  I want to be able to refer to the food itself for things like eating and looking at it.  However, when dropping it or giving it to another NPC, I want "food" to mean the whole sack it is in.  It is workable enough for now, though: the latter uses direct the player to manipulate the sack instead.  Still, an irritation!

* Unconscious NPCs: Should really be labelled as " (unconscious)" in room descriptions.  However, this means change their _name_, which means they'll be listed as " (unconscious)" everywhere their name is used.  Since this change was an afterthought halfway through the implementation, I didn't want to mess with the possible ripple of bugs this would produce in existing code.


Topic: Unverfied Bugs

These have been sighted but are very hard to reproduce and so may or may not still exist.

* <Revenant_Attacks>: May attack the last person that attacked it even if that aggressor is no longer present.
* Sometimes low-impact attacks ask if you if you want to use a carried weapon, and sometimes high-impact attacks don't.  (Something to do with a Attack turning into a Kill?)

See also <Unimplemented>.