Weapons modifiers stacking overflowing

Your tone comes across as rude and I believe you are overly exaggerating the severity anyway. It's not clear if this can be experienced in unmodded 2.6 or if it needs your personal mod to get the values high enough to see the problem. Even then, level 80+ and 33 weapon upgrades sounds like quite a few hours for anyone to even attempt to observe it... Do you have a saved game or replay to post?

Well first of my tone is not rude at all, as i never posted something like "you &$§%#$ f**ks are §$%&?&% devs!" or something along those lines mate .

I was actually quite constructive as i even said them that i found it out as soon as the EoD Juggernaut was released, probably because i play substrate more then the phc and i told them even more actually in my very first post i ever did on this forum, but thats a remark for another story.

Buddy have you ever modded? An overflowing number can not be achieved by a mod (at least not by the knowlegde i have and trust me i have programmed and modded for quite some time ), because mods as well as any other addition (like scripts etc.) needs to be read and in a format the engine can recognize it as data for specific parts of the game itself. If an engine is build with thought behind it and as robust as it can be (robust is a technical term for the ones that do not now it but here is a small link for the fellows that simply lack the knowledge), this should actually never happen because its a technical impossibility and as everything technical is build on math it is consistent, which means it will never happen and thats why i was astouned that it happened in this game that is arguably advertised as being build on a native x64 engine called the oxide engine .

Here it should be a technical impossibility to ever have a number overflowing because the reason numbers overlowed in 32 bit integers was that the limit was the integer itself that had a limit of +/-2^31 and if you stored a number to great for this limit it simply returned wrong and unexpected values (depending on the robustsness of the program) that could ultimately lead to crashes in the worst case or kill your pc alltogether ^^. This has nothing to do with a mod because a mod also just uses the fundament which is the code that stores just the new parsed values in the engine in hopes of it to override the original values that the game starts with but its about the kind of how the value has been stored and not what value you have there because if the value is limited like s.a. then it does not matter how low or high it is it will at some point reach its limit and return wrong values or crash alltogether . A mod has nothing to do with this let alone that my own experience with mods tells me that when a mod does not work the game will tell you this via a crash then rather number overflowing .

I just hope that the devs can have a look at this because it can most certainly happen even without a mod.

Of course you are right that i have some time into the game i have uploaded (around 4 hours for this save alone) but i need to stress test my changes in order for them to work if ever i decide to make a public mod out of it (with a few changes here and there ^^).

Its just that the problem makes it hard for someone like me to work properly on my mod when i know that at some point the weapon modifiers overflow, which like i said should n e v e r happen in a native x64 environment that has been build with x64 support from sratch or at least has been advertised as this and i think you can understand my notion here, can't you ?

Edit: I put in more smilies in hopes of "looking not rude" or "having a rude tone".

64-bit memory addressing does not mean an application has to use 64-bit integers; there are still any number of reasons to continue to use 32-bit integers (bandwidth, interoperability, etc).

Checking math for overflows is a fine thing to do, but it doesn't come for free. There is a reason that few languages do that by default; it can cause a very noticeable performance hit if applied globally, particularly in math-heavy applications.

Yeah i know mate, but as a developer you actually think before you even start writing your first lines of code, ... think about which areas of the code need 64 bit integers and which does not in order to not stress the cpu of your customer or your next neighbor to much so that the resources the pc gives can be more "evenly distributed". This would also prevent having unnecessarily high recommendations for the title itself and thats why i said

this by the way is not critique but rather an objective observation, as i knew or lets say it this way has noticed it in game that obviously the x64 engine does not use 64 bit integers in critical areas like weapon damage calculation and corresponding weapon damage modifiers yet it should considering that we have juggernauts that can vet indefinitly which means 5% each level 'til eternity or the numbers run out hehe . I thought that the programmers had thought about that but yeah ingame i have seen a different behaviour so it led me to those posts you see here . Makes sense right ^^?!

However i hope a dev looks for it because it is a really serious problem that no modder can solve with exception of a dev in the back-end that is responsible for this problem or in which area the problem falls ... .

I... wha....  nevermind. As silly as this is... would you be satisfied if Juggernauts become level capped at something outrageous like level 30, and weapon upgrades capped at something outrageous like level 50? That way, you could test for the 'max achievable values' of your mod to ensure that overflow won't happen?

Pal, this is not silly as its still a serious issue or lets say oversight by the devs, as like i said to you explicitly it is not modding related. My Mod just showed it me earlier because i changed a few weapons in their mechanic like for example the EoD having a true beam cannon instead of a single shot ray cannon or whatever it should be like.

I am certain that you can reproduce this in the vanilla game just that you need to play a bit longer and gain more levels with the juggernauts and/or more quanta or both. By the way both methods are basically unlimited as far as i understood, which means you will hit the ceiling at some point with the weapon damage calculation! Its not a question of what but when .

As this is a grand scale RTS game like SupCom the games can take some time at least thats what my experience told me in Supreme Commander but thats another story ... .

This is basically an issue in programming as i said. Capping would just take away the fun and i do not want to take away fun let alone the dev vision that they have with those special units, so it just needs to be fixed by changing the datatype in order for it to work, or with other methods like multiple lists and linked lists etc. as a small hint for the technically unsavvy ^^ but as its a x64 engine those "dirty tricks" should not be needed .

Or do you have a better solution without taking away the fun and the dev vision from the game jjandrah?

I can promise you it is.

You're arguing in favour of lowering performance for everyone, in order to benefit you, and your mod. You won't hit that in Vanilla without intentionally letting a match go on for a day, which again - who cares? There's actual work that still needs to be done on the game - let's not waste the dev's time making things a little worse.

Mate this has nothing to do with lowering performance for everyone because such a huge performance hit as you make it out and seem to think it be it definitly will not be let alone that most pc builds nowadays will barely notice it if at all by changing a datatype to clean out a clear bug that is in the vanilla game.

Saying that it goes on for a day is also an exaggeration in terms of supporting your argument cause this clearly will not only benefit me but everyone who seriously wants to mod this game which means changing weapons and weapon types or creating completely new weapons and adding them into the game which also could clearly lead to this problem, so do not make it look like as if i am the only one who would benefit from it buddy, as its not the case. Let alone that you or anyone for that matter can not talk for the majority of people out there that currently have no intention to mod the game due to the lack of tools or limited modding capabilities but may turn around if the game gets more sophisticated modding access and who tells you then that they will not do the same that i do currently with my mod just that i lack the tools to do it but still can do it and balance it accordingly ?

You do not know this and i doubt that anyone would then love a game with a native x64 engine where a number overflows cause this problem will then just be delayed thats all instead of fixing the problem now so that every modder can benefit from it now whether he is activly modding it or not or simply is undecided whether he should mod it without running into issues like i did, which would just in the end lead to a post like my one just with a different name behind it that tells the devs that he/she has encountered a number overflowing problem, and then i say congratz buddy but it will probably fall on deaf ears instead of on people that care as much as i do.

This is not only lazy but actually false behaviour just because you think that it benefits just a small minority of people (like modders for example like me). Everyone has the right that the vanilla game functions accordingly and to what the engine was advertised before you bought the game.

By the way the devs time will not be wasted by squashing a bug inbetween the actual work because not for nothing in most patch updates from certain game iterations on certain branches bugs will always be fixed inbetween if they come up and thats just another bug that needs to be fixed out of the game before it spirals out of it and leaves more problems then actual benefits for the product lifecycle at large, especially if the games engine is being used for multiple projects as its being advertised.

I really ask myself why i need to tell you something that is so obvious let alone that its actually in the game and that you can definitly reproduce it yourself even without a mod just by playing a bit longer (definitly not a whole day, i managed it in like i said 3 - 4 hours of ONE game only and without my mod it would still be just one or more hour to go as my mod is very close to the actual game if you looked at it in detail in terms of weapon modifications etc.), while you argue that it will be a huge resource hog without knowing how the games engine works, is being programmed (guess c++ but what else i do not know, possible script languages? etc.) etc. asf. . I mean it sounds to me like you are a dev and can argue for the devs instead of letting the real devs make the decisions which is also very strange behaviour to say the least ... .

Besides who said you will not hit it in vanilla, like i said play the game and prove this way that you never hit it but trust me when you hit it and notice that certain units that actually should do tremendous damage with one shot suddenly do not do any damage or minimal damage because the ai has also put in more quanta upgrades into their hp, will show you that this is definitly a bug which makes modding quite difficult for everyone not only one person as you falsly make it out to be, which is neither healthy for modding in general nor for anyone that is undecided whether he wants to support the game with mods and we all know mods do create a community in and of itself in games as has been shown in classics of grand scale strategy games that i all played like Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander etc. ... .

It sounds like you dislike additional people that like this game and want to contribute to it right?!

Are you able to replicate this bug when not playing on your mod? If you could do that and send me the save game for it, that would be very helpful looking into this. 

Quoting Mr_Mulder, reply 8

It sounds like you dislike additional people that like this game and want to contribute to it right?!

Edit: Double post.

As there is currently a lot of work to do i will not be able to provide that savegame that quick, however when i get the time and the possibility to play at home again i will look into it to play the regular game and give you the savegame as this needs some time which i currently lack considering that the current working project i work on will go live in a few weeks ... .

First of, calm down pal.

Secondly try to not speak for the 99.9999% of people you think you represent, which makes you look rather immature and kinda self-fish to say the least ... . Even three developers still do bug-fixes inbetween or have you slept in your bed in the last few patch updates of this game that clearly state different bug-fixes ?!

You still have not understood me and it seems its impossible for me to make you a concept of number-overflows understandable, but maybe this link (its for C/C++ as i guess that the engine of the game is written in this language, where i still could be wrong but i highly doubt it) will provide where i failed, let alone that the problem would need an explanation in terms of technical expertise that would blow this entire forum which is after all a gaming forum out of proportion and make me look like a lecturer which i am not and do not have time for to make it understandable for you, so there you go.

Like i said modding does not lead to such issues, let alone that it is the sole reason for it to appear, it is rather a coding problem than a modding problem (modding can just lead easier to it) but it seems like it falls on deaf ears with you and i just hope that this article will enlighten you a little bit. Its not easy i know but life is not easy and the world we live in is not build out of thin air or what you can barely see with your eyes if you understand what i mean ... .

Regarding your "not making a difference" counter-argument, i would simply ask you, have you seen the code that led to the problem? Have you seen the solution to the coding problem at hand that you obviously hint to? Where you present when these three devs that work at this project solved it, in order for you to completely understand the problem and use it as an argument against me? You see i could continue on and on and on asking you questions that you all could not answer on which i am not 99.9999% sure (yeah pun intended) but rather 100% sure about as long as RomeoReject is not a developer in disguise that secretly works for Stardock Entertainment .

Let alone that you always talk about "we" and i would ask you who are "we"? Because for me it sounds like someone is in the room with you when you write posts or do you mean something different?!

Last but not least mate if you lack the knowledge about certain matters or simply can not know them to 100% it is quite rude to tell strangers over the internet that they are completely wrong without ever seeing them, let alone knowing them or their profession, or anything of their background, that is. You are rather embarassing yourself and make it quite unpleasant for anyone talking with you because you know, no one wants to be treated like being an idiot if you know nothing about them but probably you'd think, "We know everything about you and your mods?" ... .

Well, jjandrah, Kryo, myself and even GeneralsGentleman (Who works for Stardock) have all said we haven't seen the issue on an unmodded game (And I routinely have matches go for hours). As for the numbers being a potential issue, we know that is a possibility too (http://steamcommunity.com/app/507490/discussions/0/3182216552780753506/).

At this point, you seem hellbent on there being an issue here, so I'll just wait for you to give GG what he asked for.

Well there you go guys.

In the vanilla game the issue came up even more quickly then in the modded game from me ^^. The EoD with which you can quickly notice the number Overflow had just around ~23 lvls in and i had around ~28 quanta upgrades.

There you go the vanilla savegame.

This is a serious issue in the vanilla game that should be on the shedule for the devs in the next patch and bugfix cycle i suppose.

Yeah and now i have disproven you all, and?!

But guess what, i knew this before you wrote your answer because i have programming knowledge, hence i knew you were wrong and have already lost your foundation for arguements against me or my mod as this is not an issue with mods mate ... . Yeah, but i think i have put up enough scientific papers to disprove you (even though you are a modder as you said ) let alone, that i do not have the time for this ... .

Buddy the difference is generalsgentleman is probably not the one who is in charge of programming let alone the lead programmer of the game as far as i can judge it in terms of their YouTube channel and what these guys have done before ... . I do not know what you do but i can program and programming follows math! ! ! Math is consistent and therefore i can already tell when something is broken as soon as a problem occurs like this here, which is a problem in the regular or so called vanilla game, which needs to be fixed.

Its fascinating for me how you can be so ignorant towards a technical problem i have tried with multiple scientific papers to educate you on so that you understand the issue and yet you are still so against something that now has a prove behind it and i already knew it beforehand that prove that i was right, yet you still argued against someone who clearly has stated that he not only has programming knowledge but obviously programs in his freetime and in his job ... .

Even then you still argue against it! Wow, really fascinating!

By the way telling me that this issue never occured to you either tells me that your "method of testing" things is not as sophisticated as my one or that you simply have not played vanilla games as long as you make it out to be, which is a flat lie you know, to all of us ... but whatever ... .

I hope that GeneralsGentleman or any other dev that is in charge for this particular issue takes notes and fixes the problem in the next game version, that is supposed to be released, because a game that has practically limitless leveling should has weapon modifiers and the weapon stat itself which is (especially considering that the oxide engine is a state-of-the-art x64 native engine) equally important to have a datatype that is a 64 bit integer or whatever datatype they want to use in order to solve this critical problem in their regular game as quickly as possible.

Edit: I have updated the first post.

Load up the game and right after the game has loaded you should see the eod with lvl ~23 not one-shotting cruisers like the 2 caregivers that survive multiple hits of its maingun, while just before the eod annihilated dreadnoughts and cruisers alike with a single shot ... .

This should be more then enough of a proof to be given that the devs can further investigate but thanks for the help mate, i appreciate it .