Been trying to find the cause of the following bug:
If you are warp 0 and raise/lower shields or cloak/decloak, there are
certain situations where this information is not passed on to other
players on your tactical. The following conditions must be met:
1) The other player must also be at warp 0.
2) There must be no one else who can see your ships on the galactic who is
doing anything. For example, if there is a fed ship in galactic visual
range, and you are testing the bug with 2 ori ships, if the fed takes any
action at all (move, fire, change direction, etc), then the bug does not
occur. However if the fed is out of galactic visual range, then no matter
what he does, the bug will still occur.
I noticed that a "fix" to this bug is to comment out the following in the
function sndFlags in /ntserv/genspkt.c
/* With short packets 2 flag sampling, these don't need to be sent */
if (send_short>1 && pl->p_no<32)
mask &= ~(PFSHIELD|PFCLOAK);
Basically, shield/cloak info is not sent by the small update (indeed,
requesting a small update does not refresh cloak/shield info, the
bug still occurs). I don't believe this is the proper fix, but it at
least does narrow down what is going wrong. However, I cannot figure out
the packet sequence, namely, what the threshhold is for triggering the
server to send more than the basic small update info to players. I find
the whole packet code some tortuous and confusing, especially the whole
F19/short packet 2 flag sampling deal. Any help in finding the cause and
a proper fix would be appreciated.
Bill