The shoreline bug

**ShellShock** · 03-29-2005, 09:07

Originally Posted by hrvojej

I can't give you the exact quote either. But this is the info I found when I searched the forums here and at the .com when I first encountered the ugly squares, which was back when the 1.2 patch first came out. I had no CTDs myself prior to this, but I can confirm that the AI had no small problems handling the coastal maps. And it still does in those maps that are unaltered (I remember a really bad one near Tarentum in 1.2). I think, however, that it was mainly a matter of not having enough space to deploy if large areas were water.

If this is true, then introducing a new bug (square shores) to fix a more serious bug (CTDs) is progress of sorts, but not ideal. I hope in the expansion CA can fix the CTDs without having to resort this frigs like this.

**hoom** · 03-29-2005, 11:00

Well I've seen lots of people call it a hotfix but in the absence of proof in the form of a CA quote it is a bloody ugly bug that needs to be fixed.

I believe that CA simply failed to take into account what happens when you place a terrain feature near the shoreline.
Almost all occurences of the square shoreline I have seen involve stuff like a rock being placed near the shoreline rather than the water being near the deployment area.

Further, I had a battle with water being a major part of my side of the map and no sign of squared off shoreline.
I had a near full stack + 4 units of reinforcements making the full stack.
My deployment zone was limited to the part of the map that was not underwater.
This was still plenty big enough to fit a huge full stack and then some.
My army started on the land.
My reinforcements were cut off by the water but 3 of them spent the greater part of the battle successfully navigating the (not squared off) shoreline to the playable part of the map without loss.
The battle did however chug something chronic which I believe was the pathfinding code working hard to navigate the shoreline.

To me this indicates that the squared off shorelines have nothing whatsoever to do with deployment zones.

**jimmyM** · 03-29-2005, 11:08

Well said. I played round with a coastal map in the editor, and I think if I remember correctly that introducing a feature (in this case a town) caused one of these squares to appear on the coastline next to it - though you may have to experiment to verify this.

**Benny Moore** · 03-30-2005, 02:06

Originally Posted by jimmyM

Well said. I played round with a coastal map in the editor, and I think if I remember correctly that introducing a feature (in this case a town) caused one of these squares to appear on the coastline next to it - though you may have to experiment to verify this.

You are quite correct, and I've stated as much before. If people would use the editor, they would easily see just what causes this bug. It has nothing to do with game crashes.

Also, I never had a game crash in a shoreline battle, or any battle, before the patch (back when there were no shoreline squares) or after the patch. All of my many crashes happen on the campaign map. So the shoreline squares aren't there to fix crashes caused by normal shorelines, because normal shorelines did not cause crashes.

For the final time, I recommend playing around with the editor for ten minutes. You will see what causes the bug. They introduced it when they gave us wonders, ports, and ships on the battle map, and I wish that they would revert it to the old. Who wants to see a wonder once every three hundred battles when the rest of those battles are riddled with shoreline squares?

**The Stranger** · 03-31-2005, 09:04

berfore the shores were perfect and i never had CDT's maybe it's your graphic settings

**hoom** · 03-31-2005, 20:13

The absence of CA quotes on anything these days is quite pervasive, so I don't think you'll be in luck with finding that kind of proof.

But the burden of proof is upon those who claim it to be a hotfix to prove that its a hotfix and not simply a bug introduced when enabling wonders and other features to be visible in neighbouring squares on the battle map.
In the absence of proof of hotfix this is a bug.
And frankly even if it is a hotfix, that implies a patch or free service pack to properly fix it.

**hrvojej** · 03-31-2005, 20:19

Originally Posted by hoom

In the absence of proof of hotfix this is a bug.

Erm, I never said it wasn't (and downright ugly to look at too). I was merely trying to point at what caused it based on the info I gathered earlier.
Cheers,

edit: In case I wasn't clear enough: my opinion is that they tried to fix something, but broke something else in the process.

**hrvojej** · 03-29-2005, 12:23

Originally Posted by hoom

Well I've seen lots of people call it a hotfix but in the absence of proof in the form of a CA quote it is a bloody ugly bug that needs to be fixed.

The absence of CA quotes on anything these days is quite pervasive, so I don't think you'll be in luck with finding that kind of proof.

And the AI is the one who's having problems with deployment and pathfinding. And whatever the reason was for these squares to appear, it's definitely not a very fortunate or pretty one.