The shoreline bug

[Benny Moore]

I posted this on the official Rome: Total War forum, but I was mocked by fanboys and the thread was closed. That place begins to annoy me.

Anyway, this is the sort of thing I encounter on nearly every battle involving a shoreline. Usually it's not quite this extreme, but it is almost always present. I know there was a thread about this, but I can't find it. In that thread, some people said that they'd never seen it. Only one or two pictures were posted, and they did not show it very clearly. Here is a beautiful example of this bug.

users.adelphia.net/~j.r.e...ip1743.gif

Now, other than this, the graphics are perfect. I could not ask for them to be any better. This completely kills the immersion and the sense of being there. I would appreciate it if this were addressed in the patch. Personally, I'd rather have no ports, ships, and wonders, if I could have the old, clean shorelines back. But it would be nicest to have both.

[Craterus]

i cant see the picture, i think you need to put image tags around it..

e.g. [img]users.adelphia.net/~j.r.e...ip1743.gif[/img]

[Benny Moore]

I don't seem to be able to edit my posts! That's very odd.

Here it is.

[ShellShock]

On the .com some people seemed to be saying that it was not a problem because the square areas are not reachable. However your image clearly shows that the square beach is part of the playable area.

All requests for another patch to fix this and other genuine bugs (top of the list has to be siege-load bug) seem to have been met with silence from CA, so I can only assume we will have to wait patiently for the expansion.

I put the square beaches at number two in my list of bugs that I would like fixed, for all the reasons you give - it ruins immersion. However, it does not stop me from playing, whereas the siege-load bug does, as it is a massive disincentive to play when I know the AI is potentially crippled everytime I quit and reload. And unlike some people I can only play an hour or so at a time, so this bug affects me badly.

I do not consider as serious bugs (worth fixing by CA) anything that is moddable by the community, e.g., scarface, horse archers etc.

I wish CA and their publishers have a more supportive attitude to patches in future, and we can only hope that the acquisition by Sega will change this for the better.

[Oaty]

Not a bug but a FEATURE!

That square shoreline was a quickfix to prevent CTD's. We could always go back to MTW/STW maps where the maps are preprogrammed and fixed and the maps quickly lose any of thier uniqeness. I like the new map system where not too many battlefields look familiar.

So the question is do you want a limited number of maps for the terrain or do you want unique maps where you almost never fight on the same terrain again.

I'd rather see a much better A.I. in the expansion and still have the square shorelines than rounded shorelines and a slight improvement to the A.I.

Same with cities, although they look nice with all the pretty buildings, I'd much rather have no buildings and just a wall and a town square. Because realistically not all cities fell in a day but once the walls were breached it was a matter of time until the city fell. With camps being built by the enemy in side the city/fortification and working there way to every last defender over a period of days while raping, enslaving and killing the populace. If the A.I. could handle the pathing system I'd be fine. But this would also emphisize that your only chokepoint on the enemy would be the wall itself after that your pretty much out of luck.

[Benny Moore]

Not a bug but a FEATURE! That square shoreline was a quickfix to prevent CTD's.

Where did you hear that? You just made that up on the spot, didn't you?

For your information, we had no square shorelines before the patch. Not one! It is because we get wonders and ports that we have the square shorelines. I know what I'm talking about; I've played with the editor enough to see what causes them. I could fix them (shoddily, because I'm no three dimensional modeller) if I could permanently edit the campaign map, but we aren't allowed to do that. If I had access to the old, prepatch campaign map as well, I could just copy the old one. In short, the need to revert it to the way it was without wonders. I would gladly sacrifice wonders for this, as there are only seven of them - I have only seen three of them - and the shoreline squares show up many times per Rome: Total War session.

We could always go back to MTW/STW maps where the maps are preprogrammed and fixed and the maps quickly lose any of thier uniqeness. I like the new map system where not too many battlefields look familiar. So the question is do you want a limited number of maps for the terrain or do you want unique maps where you almost never fight on the same terrain again.

Yes, I would rather have a few maps that look nice than a lot of them that look hideous and unrealistic. In fact, whenever my friend and I play online, we use the same map the majority of the time (Italian Lowland). Would you rather have one Van Gogh or two dozen sketches by me?

I'd rather see a much better A.I. in the expansion and still have the square shorelines than rounded shorelines and a slight improvement to the A.I.

You speak without knowledge. The three dimensional modellers have absolutely nothing to do with artificial intelligence. Also, the shoreline squares are already fixed in the previous versions of the game. Please stop making out as if having the shoreline bug fixed would hurt the artificial intelligence.

You do realize that Creative Assembly cannot hear your slobbering boot licking attempts here? I recommend taking your Creative Assemblophilia to the official forums.

[Magraev]

I agree that this is a bug that should be fixed. I don't agree with Oaty that it is unimportant, since as you say it looks daft and does little to suspend my disbelief (maybe it weighs it down??).

Honestly though your tone is offensive. I can see how you got a thread closed at the .com if you were as unpleasant over there.

You'd get your point across much better if you stopped acusing people who disagree with your views of licking CA's boots.

Here at the .org we're all great friends

[Benny Moore]

I refuse to be friends with someone who thinks that a problem of this magnitude should remain in the game! The thread was closed because the administrator felt the bug did not need to be fixed, not because of my tone. Here is what his closing post in the thread was.

This strikes me as a minor blemish. You can't fight in the area. Sometimes tiles were not perfectly joined on landscapes in STW and MTW and in STW men stuck in the corners of river tiles and caused you to lose a battle because you could not move them or access them because they had no real place on the map.

I doubt this kind of thing will be fixed as it is pretty minor and does not cause the game to crash. It does spoil the verisimilitude of the landscape. I won't get a rash scratching myself over this itch.

I will not be friendly with people with this attitude! I don't see why I should be expected to, either.

[ShellShock]

I refuse to be friends with someone who thinks that a problem of this magnitude should remain in the game! The thread was closed because the administrator felt the bug did not need to be fixed, not because of my tone. Here is what his closing post in the thread was.



I will not be friendly with people with this attitude! I don't see why I should be expected to, either.

It depends on what you think is more likely to be effective, and particularly what CA are more likely to listen to: reasoned and helpful criticism, or the same but marred by offensive comments.

I don't like the square shoreline bug, and hope CA fix it at some point (expansion?), but I also don't like people who make offensive remarks without provocation.

[Benny Moore]

Excuse me. I did not make any offensive remarks without provocation. Since my reasonable, matter-of-fact post on the Rome: Total War forums, I had to endure undeserved mocking and much imbecilic justification of the bug. Does it surprise you that I react this way?

Oaty did not mock me here, it is true. However, he did attempt to defend the bug, and I consider that provocation enough. Don't you? I paid good money for this game, and although it would be asking too much for a perfect game in difficult areas such as artificial intelligence and other things so complicated that most of us have no clue how they work, I do expect a simple and obvious problem like this to be fixed. I do not expect to have people say that the flaw should be left as it is, and I think that my anger at such people is perfectly justified.

[hoom]

I want it fixed because its ugly & well, ugly
I don't believe its a quickfix (seen zero evidence for this being one)
Oaty does have a point that a substantially improved AI would be better than a fixed shoreline + hardly touched AI.
I do however disagree with the idea that fixing the shoreline would be a big enough task to affect the fixing of the AI since the two tasks would be being handled by different groups of people.

[curmudgeon]What happened to that entry level sub-forum where new people had to prove they weren't asshats before being able to post in the main forums? [/curmudgeon]

[Husar]

[...][curmudgeon]What happened to that entry level sub-forum where new people had to prove they weren't asshats before being able to post in the main forums? [/curmudgeon]

Good question.

I think the shoreline bug is really not the most important one to fix, because mainly(mainly always) it´s just eyecandy. And I would prefer two dozen sketches of you, Qvintvs, because they will be a lot cheaper than the van Gogh.

[hrvojej]

I will not be friendly with people with this attitude! I don't see why I should be expected to, either.

Manners, please. You do not have to be friends with anybody, but being polite is another matter. You can convey your point without resorting to that kind of language.


As others have said, the square shores are an unfortunate side-effect of trying to fix CTDs and deployment problems that arose from maps which were partially covered with water.

[Benny Moore]

Where did you get that information? And why did I not experience crashes on the previous two versions, which did not have the shoreline squares?

[hoom]

As others have said, the square shores are an unfortunate side-effect of trying to fix CTDs and deployment problems that arose from maps which were partially covered with water.

Have CA actually said that?
I dan't recall having seen anyone prove it, just some people repeatedly claim it as a quick fix.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I have experienced this bug in my recent Scicilian campaign as the Greeks, it has not been a major problem, but it was annoying when my cavalry charged through a port, the walls not the open space. It is a bit of an annoyance, but not the top of my bugs list.
You do have a bad attitude, if youi listened to people and treated them respectfully you would get much further, you should also look beyond someones views on bugs and not judge them on this one issue.

[hrvojej]

Have CA actually said that?
I dan't recall having seen anyone prove it, just some people repeatedly claim it as a quick fix.

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.

[aw89]

[curmudgeon]What happened to that entry level sub-forum where new people had to prove they weren't asshats before being able to post in the main forums? [/curmudgeon]

I destroyd it, sorry...

[ShellShock]

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]

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]

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.

[hrvojej]

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.

[Benny Moore]

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]

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

[hoom]

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]

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.

[TF923]

It's also great fun when you see a fleet of ships sitting on the square-shaped land.

[Benny Moore]

I am pleasantly surprised to see that there are people who agree with me on this issue. I was beginning to wonder if the fanatically loyalistic, automaton-like disagreement I usually get in response to this complaint were actually a normal reaction to this sort of thing among gamers.

[Bhruic]

In general, I don't consider it to be a major bug - although it'd be nice to be fixed. But as you can see in this thread, the bug can actually show up in rather nasty forms. That's certainly something I don't want to see again.

Bh