City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Death of the buffer bug?

7thCynic

By 7thCynic,
Posted on: 2009-07-15 08:49 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

Posted


Let me see if I can recap some of the history of this chat bug:

Sometime during Issue 14 beta, it was discovered that the Mission Architect was eating typed characters. The reason was determined to be that one of the other key captures were stealing typed characters from the architect and then clearing the buffer. The fix was apparently to have it stop clearing the buffer, which introduced the infamous chat bind bug.

After I14 published, me and a few others observed that the chat bind bug seemed to be the key used in the bind not being cleared from the buffer after the bind is executed.

What we apparently didn't realize is there are multiple buffers for different functions, as Castle pointed out this week: I would guess, one for chat, one for movement, one for the Architect, and one for the Consignment House.

While you're typing in one of those buffers, the keys were also being passed to the other buffers. So movements end up in chat, CH ends up in chat or login, etc.

So the problem isn't knowing *why* it's happening, but finding all the different instances where keys are being captured by buffers that aren't supposed to be capturing them.

Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Figure out what? That when you bid on things then go to chat this is very reproducible? Or that movement keys also show up?
Where do you use movement keys? In the non editable sections.
There was never an indication that the non editable section was the big missing piece.

[/ QUOTE ]

Let me guess - you've been working in software development for 20 years?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Wow this is so obvious. Do they even play the game they make? Or maybe they don't bid at the BM or Wentworths then chat with someone. Or maybe they don't use the keyboard to move then chat with someone.

So silly.

[/ QUOTE ]

These steps alone are unfortunately not sufficient to reproduce the bug reliably.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Figure out what? That when you bid on things then go to chat this is very reproducible? Or that movement keys also show up?
Where do you use movement keys? In the non editable sections.
There was never an indication that the non editable section was the big missing piece.

[/ QUOTE ]

Let me guess - you've been working in software development for 20 years?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, it seems that Fitz should be hired by Paragon to fix all their bugs, which will free up time for all the other devs to focus only on new development.

Thank you for your efforts, Fitz, you singly handedly will improve the game leaps and bounds.

</sarcasm>

Arc #345863 - When The Bough Breaks
"Curse you Perry the Plata...wait, is that Love Handel?" - Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, Phineas and Ferb

 

Posted

Dear Dev apologists,

I'm sorry.

 

Posted

QR: Now that it has been explained, it makes perfect sense and I feel embarrassed for not seeing it before. But only after it has been explained.

There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.

 

Posted

Ooh! I'm late to the party! And Castle's inbox is full!

It does sound like you've got two bugs- because I don't think my reproduction steps will trigger your bug. I repro'd this 3 times in a row, on two different machines- one with Vista, one with XP.

1. Log in (standing in front of Went representative; I never moved. )
2. Click on Went representative to bring up window; click on salvage.
3. Type "kinetic", click on kinetic weapon, buy for 22908
4. Collect kinetic weapon.
5. Erase "kinetic", type "demonic", click on demonic threat report, buy for 22908. [I used a demonic blood sample once and it still worked.]
6. collect demonic item.
7. open salvage window, drag demonic item to the Went-rep window. Type "1" for number to sell, if needed. [I had 2 Demonic Threats, 1 Demonic Blood so this didn't always come up.] Sell for 1.
8. collect money.
9. Repeat 7 & 8 with the Kinetic Weapon.
10. Log out: menu/quit/quit to login screen.
11. Click on "password" field and input first character. Admire the 4-8 extra *'s in the field.

I use "enter" to terminate my password, my bids, my sell prices and my select amounts; everything else I seem to use the mouse for.

I haven't tried to trim this down to the minimum possible number of actions that will reproduce the bug.

Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.

So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Wow this is so obvious. Do they even play the game they make? Or maybe they don't bid at the BM or Wentworths then chat with someone. Or maybe they don't use the keyboard to move then chat with someone.

So silly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, the invincibility of hindsight.

 

Posted

Now THAT's a set of steps.

I'll run through them later and hopefully some others will, too in case Castle's proposed fix doesn't catch this. (Did you really need to buy 2 different things--did you try it with 1?)

Though at this point I'm just sort of hoping they let us custom color our chat bug in I16...

President of the Arbiter Sands fan club. We will never forget.

An Etruscan Snood will nevermore be free

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Now THAT's a set of steps.

I'll run through them later and hopefully some others will, too in case Castle's proposed fix doesn't catch this. (Did you really need to buy 2 different things--did you try it with 1?)

Though at this point I'm just sort of hoping they let us custom color our chat bug in I16...

[/ QUOTE ]

Just to be clear: this isn't my fix, my bug or even anything I actually have a hand in. The programmer involved simply asked me to relay thanks to those who sent in repro steps after my first comment and to let you know that it was hopefully fixed.

As for further iterations of the bug: Yep, certainly possible. We'll deal with 'em sooner or later.

 

Posted

I hope this bug is only fixed blueside. Just to prove that the devs hate villains.

--NT

They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!

If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville

 

Posted

Steps worked, even though I had been playing for several hours, then couldn't quickly find a character that was parked at the market (usually impossible since all my characters log off at the market, but I guess I was lazy this week). And I had already done some searching.

Once I got back to a fresh log in with no values typed in the search box, marching through the steps produced the error.

President of the Arbiter Sands fan club. We will never forget.

An Etruscan Snood will nevermore be free

 

Posted

Don't know about anyone else, but I see this chat bug most often during or after base editing.

I can't swear it happens everytime I edit, but it seems like it.

 

Posted

I have had this bug happen just cause. I didnt have to do anything but log in to the game for the first time in the day. Even after I have not been in game for a few days.