pop-pop 1.0.3 -- got any bugs?

We're working on pop-pop 1.0.3 to iron out any bugs. If you have 'em, post 'em here. Try to be as concise and descriptive as possible, so we can do our best to track 'em down and exterminate 'em! πŸ™‚

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Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
Some people's minds are like cement: all mixed up and permanently set...

There seems to be an odd bug that sometimes causes a registered player's computer to crash when they are playing an unregistered player. I played one person 3 times and somehow crashed their computer every single time. (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum67/HTML/000240.html#")this topic(/url) as well as a few others within the past few months have more bugs.
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Clones are people two.
If UPS and Fed-Ex merged, would they be Fed-Up?
Play a network game of pop-pop before nobody plays and interest goes pop-pop!

(This message has been edited by Thunderforge (edited 04-22-2003).)

Do you mean bugs that still exist in 1.0.2? Is there any way to get 1.0.3 currently?

Anyways, for .2 the bug that still annoys me the most is, if your computer sleeps while pop-pop is open, upon waking the mouse is disabled--not in the tracker or the select screens, but only in the game itself. The workaround is to quit the game every time either before entering sleep or after waking, but that can get a little annoying... and even worse is if you forget and are then stuck with a non-working paddle! I don't know if this afflicts anyone else, but it's been a constant problem in my case.

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'I still want to see a good linguistic analysis of the "was like" situation (and its distribution vis-a-vis "went").'
(url="http://"http://squibix.net")Squibix Web(/url)

I think I've already covered this one in a previous bug report, but it's true if you switch out to IE and back again whilst in the tracker too. I used to think you had to reload pop-pop too (and to be honest, that is usually quicker) The other fix I've found is to go back to the select screen and start a 1player game. This seems to reinitialise the drivers. You can then escape from that and re-join the lounge. Whether this or restarting pop-pop is quicker depends on the speed of your computer, I guess.

Addendum: I use a laptop (as most people must know by now) and the trackpad always works fine. It is only the external mouse that suffers from this.

(This message has been edited by Crono (edited 04-22-2003).)

i´m not sure if anybody else has this problem, or if it has already been reported, but when i hit the volume-key on my keyboard when the game is open instead of ß or ´ to regulate the volume nothing works anymore - i can´t click anything (in the pop-pop-menu) anymore - nothing happens. i have to restart the game. (it´s not that bad because after making that mistake 1089 times i got quite used to it and only forget it once in a while.

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It is more a wish than a bug report. It would be nice to be able to regulate the volume of pop-pop independent from the system volume. This way it would be possible to listen to music (e.g. itunes) and still hear the pop-pop sound effects but much more moderate relative to the music.
I'm using 10.2.5 if this is interesting.

A second wish ist to block the possibility for people who join games to change the game settings. IMO only the host should be able to define how many rounds, in which level and with which handicap the game is played.

Thx in advance for all improvements πŸ™‚

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Have a look on my inofficial tourney-system: (url="http://"http://pop-pop.webhop.net")http://pop-pop.webhop.net(/url) πŸ™‚
Hyko, the great Offender πŸ˜‰

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Originally posted by Hyko:
**It would be nice to be able to regulate the volume of pop-pop independent from the system volume. This way it would be possible to listen to music (e.g. itunes) and still hear the pop-pop sound effects but much more moderate relative to the music.
**

You can already do this, although it is not exactly a feature of the program: just rename the music folder, and the music will not play. You can then regulate the sound levels to get the right blend of itunes and pop pop effects...I guess it would be nice if this could be done in the game though.
I agree that host's should have the ability to lock their settings.
While we are discussing feature requests, I have one of my own. After one reaches a certian point of skill, the pop pop AI no longer holds any real challange. The only way to play a good game is to find someone good on the tracker, which can be difficult sometimes. That is why i propose the pop pop time trial. Basicly, it would be a practice kind of game mode. You would not really be playing against an AI. Rather, you would be the only pop 'field' on the monitor (much like the existing target practice mode) and you would choose your basic game settings (number of bricks that fall each minute, number of specials activated on your screen each minute, precentage of hollow bricks returned as metal ones, the rate that the bricks fall, etc.) before the game. This would be better in some ways than the existing pop tournament game, because you can really customize the dificulty of your game, and it can be much harder than the AI is now because the computer does not have to figure out how to move the paddle about to send the bricks over, when to power up, how to dump massive amounts of bricks, etc. I know this would be a pretty big addition, but it would be good to see what others think...

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Originally posted by :redface::
**You can already do this, although it is not exactly a feature of the program: just rename the music folder, and the music will not play. You can then regulate the sound levels to get the right blend of itunes and pop pop effects...I guess it would be nice if this could be done in the game though.
**

Thank You for the hint! I will try it.

But I have to (try to) report a bug which sometimes occures during gameplay.The ball does not bounce off from the paddle but suddenly occurs in the center of the game area. This bug occurs IMO more frequently the smaller (by shrinks) the paddle is. I guess it is something like dividing by 0 ... but therefore i am not the expert.

Sorry i cannot describe it more precise because the situation where it occurs is mosttime in the middle of a multiplayer battle πŸ˜‰

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Have a look on my inofficial tourney-system: (url="http://"http://pop-pop.webhop.net")http://pop-pop.webhop.net(/url) πŸ™‚
Hyko, the great Offender πŸ˜‰

Of course this isnt a bug report, more of a wish,, but I think itll be cool to increase the difficulty of the computer poppoppers ... I can beat the computer on expert all the time, but I still cant seem to beat players like Crono or Lumisa,,, etc... Living in Hawaii makes it hard to play all the time on the tracker, making the difficulty level of the compuer, would help all of us get better I think,,,,, maybe programmers could study the style of someone like Crono or Lumisa, and make the computer likenened to their skill... perhaps,,,,

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Originally posted by HoNu:
**Of course this isnt a bug report, more of a wish,, but I think itll be cool to increase the difficulty of the computer poppoppers ... I can beat the computer on expert all the time, but I still cant seem to beat players like Crono or Lumisa,,, etc... Living in Hawaii makes it hard to play all the time on the tracker, making the difficulty level of the compuer, would help all of us get better I think,,,,, maybe programmers could study the style of someone like Crono or Lumisa, and make the computer likenened to their skill... perhaps,,,,

**

I guess you could do a bit of real machine learning there. Some sort of Baysean or re-enforcement learning or what have you. If you got the AI to watch all the net games that were played too, it could be trained up fairly quickly - after all, pop-pop doesn't have too large a state space I'd guess, and for the most part, you could assume a mirror image down the centre to make it smaller πŸ™‚

The idea of a computerised me or lumisa is not terribly appealing though - you'd get too good at beating us, and we'd be playing ourselves! πŸ˜‰

Actually, made me think of something daft to try along the lines of blindfolded and/or drunken pop-pop: get two mice and play against yourself for real! πŸ™‚ Now that would be interesting. πŸ˜› Not entirely sure it would be of any use - but who knows?

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Quote

Originally posted by HoNu:
**Of course this isnt a bug report, more of a wish,, but I think itll be cool to increase the difficulty of the computer poppoppers ... maybe programmers could study the style of someone like Crono or Lumisa, and make the computer likenened to their skill...
**

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Originally posted by Crono:
**I guess you could do a bit of real machine learning there. Some sort of Baysean or re-enforcement learning or what have you. If you got the AI to watch all the net games that were played too, it could be trained up fairly quickly - after all, pop-pop doesn't have too large a state space I'd guess, and for the most part, you could assume a mirror image down the centre to make it smaller πŸ™‚
**

hmmm... did you read my post above? (i realise that it was a bit long...if i hadn't wrote it i probally would have skipped over it too!) I think i've hit on a rather elegant solution to this problem, which i seem to share as well... right now, the only way to get better is to play really good poppers, and they aren't allways on. πŸ™‚

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:)Β™

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Posted by Crono:
Actually, made me think of something daft to try along the lines of blindfolded and/or drunken pop-pop: get two mice and play against yourself for real! πŸ™‚ Now that would be interesting. πŸ˜› Not entirely sure it would be of any use - but who knows?

unless youre ambidextrous and can split your attention evenly i dont think thatd be a very fair match πŸ˜›

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"So, to those who would point to the views championed in Lord of the Flies, that humankind's violent nature is innate and will ultimately cause its downfall - to them I say: not with the kids I see every day."--Tim Comolli, My High School's Imaging Lab Director

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Originally posted by Planet_Buster:
**

Quote

Posted by Crono:
Actually, made me think of something daft to try along the lines of blindfolded and/or drunken pop-pop: get two mice and play against yourself for real! πŸ™‚ Now that would be interesting. πŸ˜› Not entirely sure it would be of any use - but who knows?

unless youre ambidextrous and can split your attention evenly i dont think thatd be a very fair match πŸ˜›

**

Your probably right, since your dominant hand would win more frequently. If your up for a similar challenge though (which is up in the ranks of blindfold and drunken pop-pop) then try the same thing Crono suggested, but using your feet! It makes things much more interesting (and if you think doing that would be hard, try playing PoG with your feet). The only drawback is that you can't use the pop power and the magnet (unless you use your hands).

EDIT: Sorry, that was not a bug in pop-pop. Back to the topic!
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Clones are people two.
If UPS and Fed-Ex merged, would they be Fed-Up?
Play a network game of pop-pop before nobody plays and interest goes pop-pop!

(This message has been edited by Thunderforge (edited 04-28-2003).)

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Originally posted by Thunderforge:
EDIT: Sorry, that was not a bug in pop-pop. Back to the topic!

anklebiter coughs

No, indeed it was not. Starting new topic for this. Please take this there.

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With a name like anklebiter, just what did you expect? (url="http://"http://www.foxchange.com/~matt/")http://www.foxchange.com/~matt(/url)

When playing on multiple monitors, if you "full screen" on your main screen, it screws up the resolution and contents of the other one (ought to at least blank it, if it does this!) Also, when returning from full screen, the monitor arrangement is not restored properly either.

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I don't know if this was fixed in 1.02 (i can't remember if it has happened since the update) but on a few rare occasions pop pop would fool my computer into thinking it had two monitors: I would start up the program and it would instruct me to 'click here to play on this monitor". It would run fine, but when i exited, my menu bar, control strip and most of my desktop icons were on my phanthom monitor (and i could also move my cursor over to the other monitor as well, sometimes losing it), and i would have to force restart to bring things back to normal. I have a g3 laptop running os 9.02. This hasn't happened in a while, and only happened two or three times, but crono's post reminded me of it.

Sound control, please!!!! when I quit Pop-pop my systems volume shoots up, it freaks me out sometimes, especially late at night!!!

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If I notice a problem in the Win version when playing a beta-tester, should I post about it to the pop-pop_beta list?

Ioni's special move in 1 player vs. comp is still messed up. Every time the computer opponent uses it, in addition to the barrage of flowers the ball is deflected when the flowers appear. This is highly, highly annoying, almost imbalances Ioni, and is not consistent with the special move in 2 player situations.

So fix it, please =D

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actually, I think ioni is meant to do this, and quite useful.
In fact, I would go as far as to say its the only thing which stops her being totally useless πŸ˜‰

Oh, that and if you've got the faster computer you can kill the other person just by dropping their fps to zero πŸ˜‰

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