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Steamhammer 1.4a3 with last-minute bug fixes

New tournament version with last-minute fixes! I set to work on version 1.4 for release around the end of the tournament, and thought, “Well, what could be a better start than a bug fix?” I ended up fixing 2 bugs that could help in the tournament and have low risk of causing other problems. I changed gears, and now 1.4a3 is uploaded.

• Why does Steamhammer sometimes make a hydralisk den versus zerg, when it is explicitly coded to never make hydralisks in ZvZ? Once I realized that it only happens when the opponent went random and rolled zerg, I was able to trace the bug. It turned out that the actions are out of order: Steamhammer first makes its strategy decisions, then checks to see if the enemy race is still Unknown. So in the strategy boss’s first production round after it finds out the enemy’s race (which is usually the first round out of book), it thinks it still doesn’t know. “Hmm, better be ready for anything.” Facepalm!

• In a test game after fixing the above bug, Steamhammer skipped lair tech (in ZvZ!) and rushed to hive for ultralisks. I’ve seen that misbehavior before. It hurts badly when it happens, and the fix turned out to be trivial. A condition was miswritten with && instead of ||.

There must be dozens of play bugs that are hard to trace or even to notice because their effects are rare or subtle....

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LetaBot on :

It gets even worse when the behavior is due to how the StarCraft engine works internally. The most well known example is units not moving/shooting when spamming commands.

In my LetaBot version I reduced the apm spam in TvZ because although my bot was close to winning some games, it couldn't finish them because all the units didn't move anymore.

McRave on :

Talking about last minute updates... McRave had a serious bug with storming when it only saw at least 30 units. Oops, huge typo. I found out about this while I'm at work, without access to my code. Jaj22 and Hannes were able to figure out editing my DLL to change it to 3. Updated with 5 minutes to go. Anxiety is real. GL with the tournament Jay!

Jay Scott on :

That is a great story! When you tell it to your grandchildren, be sure to talk about poring over a hex dump and flipping console switches. :-)

krasi0 on :

Have you confirmed that the DLL works after the direct edit? :P

McRave on :

Yes thankfully they tested it too!

Tully Elliston on :

Steamhammer is off to a nice start - 3 wins, no losses :)

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