Identified AE Bug regarding spawns

[moonligh7er]

Over the span of a day or two of intermittent encroaching mental breakdown to figure out, trying to save my favorite arc AE randomly sabotaged without explanation, I finally figuerd this out. I manipulated literally every other possible before this one, including removing bosses. I suppose population is a top contender, but being able to count just once, was the one thing I thought AE could do consistently (at the end of making a mission, not the 100x it won't bother to count or tell you about an error til you go to publish). And this is why I have trust issues (not just this; AE entirely and specifically lol). The issue was simple population and AE working it out incorrectly on multiple levels; from error recognition/reporting and publishing safeguards to spawning to deciding what not/to spawn in order resolve it's original bad math in order to generate the map.

There's an undersight in the code/logic wherein if you add, 'too many,' elements, even if it's within the allotted number both categorically and totally (and so, 'too many,' is a magic, undisclosed number different from the sum total/s of the numbers builder gives you), the mission will trim off elements without bothering to say anything or generate an error, seemingly starting with the toughest ones. This is disappointing when this caused an all-boss mob of one'f my favorite custom NPC's not to spawn, and game-breaking when this trimming brilliantly included required mission elements. The missing bosses aren't listed under navigation tasks, but the mission won't complete when you do all the objectives it did spawn/list on nav.

An interesting point is that making the bosses that aren't spawning a triggerable spawn versus spawning when the mission starts does not fix the issue. So, there doesn't seem to be a logical provision for, "okay, there's more room now that stuff's dead, we can spawn dude's required mission objective since he did the trigger."

I even set an escort to take me to the objectives as part'f my testing, and they took me to empty space. I think maybe their hench groups were there? But not them.

>> It's code really needs to be made to learn to count and bother to say something about when the numbers don't add up, or at least be clever enough to trim at least starting with non-essential mission elements. <<

This seems like it would be easy enough to fix in coding once identified, and worth it for the hell it might save a user, because this was a full on brain damaged/damaging experience for me and I almost never opened AE again--but I like this arc/game too much and am too obsessive to let careless coding beat me.

I can identify numerous specific glitches from 1.) enemy groups recently added not showing up in the dropdown where you select an enemy group for a mob, etc. UNTIL you click into "edit group" and back out, and then it'll update the list... 2.) to constant random costume color and weapon changes for no reason whatsoever... 3.) to builder not recognizing errors UNTIL you got to republish and then (another fun feature I'm sure has made someone unplug their PC and start therapy) instead of just telling you it just bothered to check and it turns out there was an error and it won't be publishable, returning you to your work, it instead erases all of your work. You could say it's simple enough to save the published work to a backup non-published file before hitting re/publish, but it would be as easy to correct that code for someone with the skills, and 100 things like that add up to it taking 100x longer than needed to build something (eg when new groups dont show on menus it takes 2-3x as long per add, and mind you when you do the trick to refresh the list for the thing you're adding it ONLY does to for that thing, and you'll have to repeat that for each new mob/thing you wanna ad with the new group that's not showing up) and all-in-all being I imagine discouraging for the.. less obsessive?

But this glitch... This was almost the one that started my personal villain arc. Radiance of Theia works again (63222, specifically mission 2). V'sorry to who I was running it with when it embarrassed me second mish. I'm going to spend some time with my happy plant to recover from this which has not been fun. But I fixed it, identified the issue, and there are a few bonus examples of ridiculously bad programming/testing by og devs (I so love them and this game, but I'm not gonna not call it what it is) that I used this issue as a mule to throw out there as well. I need to fix a mission in Gears of Time for what I imagine is the same cause (ran that one before Theia and got embarrassed there too--I guess you can't change one small thing without having to test everything cuz AE's version of logic or the butterfly effect is built out'f recently-emptied, gnarled Monster cans and string--I mean that with love).
 

Edited September 2 by moonligh7er
clarity

[moonligh7er]

Another example found of this glitch, found when AE most recently made me look stupid after the test run went fine...
 

1-2 many patrols or w/e (the ONLY variable I changed between the failed and successful tests) apparently were slightly too many, and what AE decided to trim was a required escort's ability to follow, which naturally broke the mission. And everything seemed to be going fine...

Have overcome this ridiculous undersight through arduous testing and re-testing, but it really is a bad undersight and bug.

Edited September 6 by moonligh7er
clarity