Cascades resolved before display?

Moon Roach

We've all seen that bug in a waves node, where you kill the last guy in a wave and while he's being killed you see a member of the next wave. (Next Wave, two thumbs up, but I digress.)

Playing The Big Enchilada, on wave 2, I had a couple of Teisatsu left at full health, and made a move. Both Teisatsu disappeared, replaced by Magneto. Then came a tsunami of a cascade, utterly destroying the two Teisatsu. My question is, how did the game know that the end result of that move was going to be end of the wave, triggering the display bug?

I guess it makes sense that the code works it all out and then displays the outcome, but my first thought (protected by my tin-foil hat) was that perhaps the randomness of what falls from above isn't quite as random as we'd been led to believe.

CT1888

I'd keep the tin foil hat in the cupboard for now.
Ultron does all the calculations in the computer within milliseconds, then has to sit there, waiting impatiently for the animation sequences to play out to all the really sloooooow humans playing the game.
You know how a long animation can irritate players? All those gem dropping animations are 1000 times and more worse for Ultron. No wonder he wants to wipe out life on earth.

But seriously. I'm down with the animations catching up with the code.

Moon Roach

CT1888 wrote:

I'd keep the tin foil hat in the cupboard for now.
Ultron does all the calculations in the computer within milliseconds, then has to sit there, waiting impatiently for the animation sequences to play out to all the really sloooooow humans playing the game.
You know how a long animation can irritate players? All those gem dropping animations are 1000 times and more worse for Ultron. No wonder he wants to wipe out life on earth.

But seriously. I'm down with the animations catching up with the code.

How do you know I keep it in the cupboard. Are you... spying on me?

CT1888

Moon Roach wrote:

How do you know I keep it in the cupboard. Are you... spying on me?

No, not right now.

Can you take the tin foil hat back off so I can start spying again please?

Sm0keyJ0e

This has been this way for some time. I originally reported here (3rd reply down): viewtopic.php?f=9&t=38255

Certainly a goofy bug and yes, it makes me leery seeing the AI clearly knows what's about to happen.

Smudge

It's not a bug; you're seeing it correctly. Someone mentioned in a different thread (not going to take the time on a mobile device to search for it right now) that all of the calculations are made after you make the move.

If your team is going to be defeated after you make a match, the game will prevent you from retreating. This was mentioned in the same thread.

I was skeptical myself, but I had an opportunity to test not long ago. I had IM40 and maybe 4thor? slugging it out very poorly against a cascade heavy team. I forget the matchup now, but I think the opponent had some variant of Storm and maybe Loki because I kept facing AP generation and board shake.

I had put Recharge out in the hopes of salvaging the situation because Thor was 3/4 dead, and IM40 still had 8-9k HP. My third character was already gone. Recharge still had one turn to go. Made a match, opponent's turn...

I watched in horror as they happily finished Thor, then tried to tuck in my tail and retreat. The game was non responsive as cascade and ability after cascade and ability fired. Switch to my turn, Recharge goes off and stuns Iron Man. Still can't retreat. The enemy pummels him the rest of the way into oblivion.

Theory confirmed... the game does just run all the calculations and then displays to the player the result of the entire turn. If your team is toast, NO ESCAPE FOR YOU! You have to sit and endure the slow demise of your heroes while you look on helplessly.

It's quite sadistic honestly, but it's not a bug.

Dragon_Nexus

Smudge wrote:

If your team is going to be defeated after you make a match, the game will prevent you from retreating.

Which can be really obnoxious. One time I saw the AI make this ridiculous cascade when one of my characters was at half health and the other was full health. They got a lot of AP from it so I was just going to cut my losses and leave.
Then quit button didn't work.

"Seriously? Not only am I screwed, I'm actually dead by the time the AI's finished!?"

One and a half characters killed by the result of that cascade. I just Alt-F4'd out of sheer frustration.

mazerat

CT1888 wrote:

You know how a long animation can irritate players? All those gem dropping animations are 1000 times and more worse for Ultron. No wonder he wants to wipe out life on earth.

In canon that's why Quicksilver is such a tinykitty.

CT1888

mazerat wrote:

CT1888 wrote:

You know how a long animation can irritate players? All those gem dropping animations are 1000 times and more worse for Ultron. No wonder he wants to wipe out life on earth.

In canon that's why Quicksilver is such a tinykitty.

I initially drafted that post with Quicksilver; X-Factor #87 is a fantastic issue, and I think the first issue with Quesada art I ever bought.

CNash

You can't retreat if you're going to die... not that retreating would help at all, as the currently-running turn is always resolved before the retreat goes through. So you can find (for example, when retreating early in a match) that your team is damaged more than you'd expect, as the damage from the remaining cascades and enemy abilities that you skipped watching will also be applied.

BlackSheep101

Look up Model-View-Controller for an idea of how things like this can work.

Moon Roach

BlackSheep101 wrote:

Look up Model-View-Controller for an idea of how things like this can work.

Strangely, where I work uses C# (for those who don't know, that's called C sharp, even though it's a hash), and the guy who about 8 years ago "came up" with our standard framework used exactly that concept. It's one of the reasons I stick to the database side of things wherever I can, T-SQL is much less arbitrarily mad.

Mawtful

You mean it's not cplusplusplusplus?

Sm0keyJ0e

Smudge wrote:

It's quite sadistic honestly, but it's not a bug.

No, it IS a bug. The fact that your current opponents turn into opponents from the NEXT wave before everything has resolved is most definitely a bug.

Smudge

Sm0keyJ0e wrote:

Smudge wrote:

It's quite sadistic honestly, but it's not a bug.

No, it IS a bug. The fact that your current opponents turn into opponents from the NEXT wave before everything has resolved is most definitely a bug.

The point you are arguing is aesthetics. The fact that the characters displayed on the screen do not match up with the characters that are currently taking damage does not mean that the damage and AP gathered are not being applied incorrectly.

For display purposes, I will concede that it is a bug, yes. However, in terms of gameplay mechanics and match resolution, it is not a bug.

TxMoose

Smudge wrote:

For display purposes, I will concede that it is a bug, yes. However, in terms of gameplay mechanics and match resolution, it is not a bug.

except when cstorm, 3marvel, hulk (the real one), or xpool (and I guess rulk too) are on that next node that you aoe yourself into.... that IS a bug, and quite possibly related.

Smudge

TxMoose wrote:

Smudge wrote:

For display purposes, I will concede that it is a bug, yes. However, in terms of gameplay mechanics and match resolution, it is not a bug.

except when cstorm, 3marvel, hulk (the real one), or xpool (and I guess rulk too) are on that next node that you aoe yourself into.... that IS a bug, and quite possibly related.

Fair enough, and yes, I have experienced a few of these frustrations.

My original quote was taken out of context, however. Having the background "played out" before it is animated to the player is what I was originally referencing. Having your team wiped out by a sequence of events from which you cannot escape is what I was originally saying was not a bug.

Cutting one sentence out of a much greater post out of context confused me. I've gotten about 6 hours sleep in the past 48 hours, give me a little bit of a break

Here is the original greater point of the post that Smokey snipped the last sentence from for reference:

Smudge wrote:

Theory confirmed... the game does just run all the calculations and then displays to the player the result of the entire turn. If your team is toast, NO ESCAPE FOR YOU! You have to sit and endure the slow demise of your heroes while you look on helplessly.

It's quite sadistic honestly, but it's not a bug.

TxMoose

ah, thought you were talking about the display switching, which could easily be related to something we all consider a bug. but you were talking about the inability to retreat. I were confuzzled as well. break given.