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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [World War II] >> War In The Pacific - Struggle Against Japan 1941 - 1945 >> Pilot limit issue?

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Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 3:34:23 PM

Speedysteve

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Hi all,

I remember reading before in the support forum about the pilot limit issue being a problem since once reached you can't receive anymore replacements into your airgroups!

Is this definitely the case and has a work around being devised as yet?

Reminds of good ol BTR days

Steven

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 3:37:18 PM

Rainerle

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If it's the same than BTR than just ask JCL which solution he came up with !

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 3:48:01 PM

Speedysteve

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I think it is a different problem than the BTR one but similar in the end results.

PS. JCL is AWOL nowadays unfortunately.

Steven

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 4:07:17 PM

dereck

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If other have this same problem take the route I did and PM Frag, Mogami, Joel Billings, Erik Rutins and Marc Schwanebeck. I got a reply from Joel Billings:

quote:

I've sent your note onto the programmers. I'll let you know what I find out.

Joel

But the more noise people make about this the more chance there MAY be of getting a utility we can run to clear out our pilots. I don't think there's need for a patch if a simple standalone utility can be made available that we can run to clear the unneeded data in our games out. Definitely may be easier to write than a whole new patch.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 4:14:25 PM

Sardaukar

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It really sucks if this "feature" stops air war in middle of 1944... I wonder if it affects everyone ?

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 4:21:17 PM

dereck

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

It really sucks if this "feature" stops air war in middle of 1944... I wonder if it affects everyone ?

Yes. The 30,000 pilot limit is HARDCODED so if you destroy a lot of planes between you and your opponent it's just a matter of time since none of the 30,000 slots are ever cleared out.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 4:28:32 PM

gunner333

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God, new bug in the town.
And this time we got show stopper.
But, hey lets be positive. This bug give us a great opportunity. Untill mid of 44 your play
WITP after 30000 pilots limit is reached you got WPO. Very good, we got 2in1 game set, what a bargain.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 4:28:45 PM

Speedysteve

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It hasn't affected me as yet but I know from hearing from people who have reached late game (like yourself) it will crop up as you say.

I'll PM them all (seeing if the chappie I know who helped solve the BTR pilot issue could help with this).

Steven

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 4:30:18 PM

Marten

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there is simple solution to the problem: instead of engaging in air to air combat, destroy planes on the ground.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 4:48:25 PM

Speedysteve

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Lets try and remain calm all.

I'm fairly certain there will be a work around it may just take a while to get it sorted

Steven

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 4:52:37 PM

dereck

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Marten

there is simple solution to the problem: instead of engaging in air to air combat, destroy planes on the ground.

Marten, THOSE planes destroyed on the ground COUNT against the hard-coded limit also.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 4:54:21 PM

siRkid

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I've e-mailed Mike and he said Gary is looking into this but what he really needs are some saves that have this problem. I've not been very active but you can still send them to me at sirkid@cfl.rr.com and I'll make sure Mike gets them.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 4:56:07 PM

Marten

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quote:

ORIGINAL: dereck

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marten

there is simple solution to the problem: instead of engaging in air to air combat, destroy planes on the ground.

Marten, THOSE planes destroyed on the ground COUNT against the hard-coded limit also.

naval bombardment not often kills pilots...

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 4:56:38 PM

Speedysteve

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Hi Kid,

Would it help if I asked the guy who made the BTR utility to solve this problem (in BTR) to drop one of you guys a line?

Steven

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 5:10:31 PM

siRkid

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I can't answer that I've been out of the loop too long.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 5:11:37 PM

Sardaukar

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Good to know that it's been worked on !! Now, everyone with the bug, send saves to Kid. Quicker this gets repaired, better for all.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 5:19:54 PM

Don Bowen

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I am not 100% sure but I believe that "dead" and "missing" pilots are no longer kept in the database as of patch 1.602. The pilot display has changed and there are other pilot allocations.

I BELIEVE that the problem (with the latest patch) occurs only when there are 30,000+ active aircraft in the game.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 5:37:34 PM

Rob Brennan UK

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what on earth posessed them to implement a max pilot limit anyway ? Personally i can see no logic behid it whatsoever, especially if its a combined jap+allied losses ..

Mayeb someone with an old eugenics philosiphy decided that only a certain percentage of a given population are able to fly so hard coded it in :)

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 5:56:44 PM

jwilkerson

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A guess as to why ...

Most of the database gets loaded into memory so the turn will process quickly ... one easy way to do this is to have a fixed size for each major area ... as can be seen this "advantage" has trade-offs but dynamic options also have trade-offs in that they require more processing time for managing ...

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 5:59:40 PM

Speedysteve

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Kid - ok no probs. If it can potentially help etc just holler me.

Rob - Not sure why they had the limit and if so why so low but as I say BTR had one too. It's a Gary signature thing

Don - That being the case would still make sense for this to appear in 44 right?

Regards,

Steven

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 6:04:19 PM

Don Bowen

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Yes Sir Joe - all the items are loaded into core in fixed length arrays. Pilots, leaders, planes, squadrons, bases, land units, ships, classes, and Task Forces. Michaelm is way ahead of me on this one and it is he that determined the 30000 pilot issue.

Besides pilots, possible problem areas are airgroups and land units. Both have a limited number of available "slots' for divided or "split" units. I suspect there is a limit for Task Forces too but I've never come upon it. Basically, anything that can be "generated" by the game has a limit.

I agree that internalization was used for execution speed. Also probably because it has always been used and I suspect that Matrix had a lot of re-useable code based on it.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 6:08:56 PM

Speedysteve

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What you say make's sense Don.

Steven

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 6:31:29 PM

dereck

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Marten

quote:

ORIGINAL: dereck

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marten

there is simple solution to the problem: instead of engaging in air to air combat, destroy planes on the ground.

Marten, THOSE planes destroyed on the ground COUNT against the hard-coded limit also.

naval bombardment not often kills pilots...

It seems to equate destroyed planes and pilots the same. In my game i have over 21,000 destroyed planes and have this problem - doesn't say how many of those planes had a pilot in them or not.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 7:10:18 PM

dereck

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Everybody ... I received this PM from Joel Billings concerning this bug and he requested a save file. I'm going to reply back to Joel to see if they still want MY save file since I'm at v1.3 but you others who are experiencing this and running the current version PLEASE send your save files to the email address listed in this quoted message from Joel?

quote:

Can you send a save to 2by3@2by3games.com. Gary says only pilots of note should be saved, so this would seem to be a bug.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/26/2005 7:34:18 PM

Damien Thorn

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen

Besides pilots, possible problem areas are airgroups and land units. Both have a limited number of available "slots' for divided or "split" units. I suspect there is a limit for Task Forces too but I've never come upon it. Basically, anything that can be "generated" by the game has a limit.

I had the problem with air groups. I wasn't able to split any more because I had used up all of the 'slots'. I haven't had this problem yet with land units but I'm sure I will. I've got tons of fragmentary units all over the map. Actually, I do it on purpose to decive allied intellignece reports. When you get a message that the 34th inf div is in 10 different places it is almost usless information.

They should just increase the size of each array. It's been a few years since WitP came out and everybody probably has a computer with thwice the memory, hard drive space, and processing power now. Double the size of all the arrays and we should be good.

Damien Thorn.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/27/2005 12:14:18 AM

Mynok

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30,000 makes me suspect this is a two-byte *signed* array size, rather than a two-byte *unsigned* array size, which would give around 65000 slots. This may also have something to do with the compiler, as different C compilers had different philosophies as to whether an int was two bytes or four bytes (i.e. 16-bit or 32-bit). Some had 16-bit int's and 32-bit long's, while others made both 32-bit and made the programmer use short's to get 16-bit numbers. All, of course, take an unsigned modifier and default to signed.

< Message edited by Mynok -- 9/27/2005 12:15:36 AM >

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/27/2005 12:21:33 AM

dereck

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Mynok

30,000 makes me suspect this is a two-byte *signed* array size, rather than a two-byte *unsigned* array size, which would give around 65000 slots. This may also have something to do with the compiler, as different C compilers had different philosophies as to whether an int was two bytes or four bytes (i.e. 16-bit or 32-bit). Some had 16-bit int's and 32-bit long's, while others made both 32-bit and made the programmer use short's to get 16-bit numbers. All, of course, take an unsigned modifier and default to signed.

Very true.

It would depend on the default of the compiler especially if they didn't specifically define the variable as *unsigned* and it defaulted to *signed*.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/27/2005 1:36:11 AM

scout1

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Oddly enough, I don't think this one really needs a save game file for 2 reasons

1) It's not a bug, but rather a game design limitation
2) It ought to be really easy to check for Mike, just pre-populate the pilot slot to 30k and
try to bring in reinformcements

Unless its a memory thing, why not just increase the hardcode limit to 60k (or some other large number) ?

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/27/2005 1:40:03 AM

dereck

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quote:

ORIGINAL: scout1

Oddly enough, I don't think this one really needs a save game file for 2 reasons

1) It's not a bug, but rather a game design limitation
2) It ought to be really easy to check for Mike, just pre-populate the pilot slot to 30k and
try to bring in reinformcements

Unless its a memory thing, why not just increase the hardcode limit to 60k (or some other large number) ?

Well, they asked for a save so if you have had this happen PLEASE send them a save file.

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RE: Pilot limit issue? - 9/27/2005 1:43:57 AM

scout1

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Don't get me wrong, if I had a save, I'd send it. Just in this case, I'm not sure that it's fair for them to ask for one. It's a question as to the game design itself. This should really be a simple check, what happens when you exceed the design intent ?

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