Massive multiplayer bug discovered in Heroes 3!

[UndeadHalfOrc]

So for a few months now, I have two computers at home networked together and it allowed me to do some serious quirky testing with H2 and H3's TCP/IP capabilities.

If player A attacks Player B's hero, and Player B wins and gains one or more level ups, Player B has to select which secondary skills he wants for his hero, WHILE Player A is still in his turn, right? Player A has this message appearing on his screen temporarily blocking any further actions:
"Please wait while the other player receives level ups", and his screen remains blocked as long as Player B is still in his level up screen.

But it doesn't work properly. In my tests, I've seen it work properly a few times, when Player B only had 1 level up and 1 skill to choose. But most of the times (and every time, if Player B gains 2 levels or more from the fight), when Player B's turns comes up, he's in for a nasty surprise when he looks at his winning hero's screen: the new secondary skills he chose are screwed up (wrong icons, no text) and if he right clicks one of those screwed up icons, the game crashes.

Bottom line is: for any serious H3 games, play HOT SEAT! Hot seat battles all happens on one computer so Player's B's level ups are registered correctly and that's why it never fails.

(EDIT: I was wrong about Heroes 2. See my post below.)

[UndeadHalfOrc]

And yes, I know the date, April 1, believe me this is no April Fools joke.

Anybody else but me have 2 computers linked together? I'd love it if someone else helped me investigate the bug further, especially for Heroes 3 (Heroes 2 is obviously completely unsalvageable, in its current state, due to bad design), so that our expert hackers on the CH community may fix it!

[Ya5MieL]

While the bug might indeed exist (i wouldn't be surprised), it seems it was not causing many problems, otherwise it would be noticed much sooner.

Thats why we should all switch to H5


Anyway.
I don't think editing this might be possible atm.. but it could be useful to groups that are trying to recreate h3 engine. We wouldn't want the bug to be there as well.

Good find.

[UndeadHalfOrc]

While the bug might indeed exist (i wouldn't be surprised), it seems it was not causing many problems, otherwise it would be noticed much sooner.

For the bug to have remained hidden for so many years I have a theory for that. The most likely case of it happening in a real multiplayer TCP/IP game would be for the final battle between two human players WHERE THE DEFENDING player wins (so that enough creatures died for one or two a level ups). As we all know, the attacker is obviously the most likely to win since he was the one who decided he had the likely advantage.

And for those cases, if the bug DID show up, most players stop playing after that final battle anyway because the loser usually just surrenders.

Anyway, my tests were made with the normal, unmodded Heroes 3 Shadow of Death 3.2 with Armageddon's Blade installed. For Heroes 2, PoL latest version (2.1)

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Here is a H3 savegame I made on red's turn, after blue player attacked red's hero and red won. Look at Tyraxor's secondary skills (the first four are OK because he started with those on the map). You can load it on single player or hot-seat 2 player.

http://pages.infinit.net/plague/multiplayer_bug.GM2

[MistWeaver]

So, the workaround is something like - PlayerA after he lost the battle, needs just to wait chat confirm from PlayerB, that he finished lvl ups, right ?

[UndeadHalfOrc]

There's no workaround, the game already blocks Player A from doing anything while Player B levels up. The bug is that Player B's hero is screwed up. Load the H3 save game I provided, you'll see!

The only real workaround I have seen is to save the game before the big battle and do it Hot seat... but it requires your opponent to be in the same room as you.

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Guys, I'm sorry but I was wrong about Heroes 2.

After further tests I found out it works perfectly fine. What it does, is that it HANGS the game only if Player A attacks the same Player B hero again. (without any messages, mind you). It hangs Player A until Player B chooses his skills, and when he's done that, the second battle begins. If Player A leaves Player B alone during his turn (most likely will), nothing will happen at all.

Ignore everything I said about Heroes 2. Only Heroes 3 is bugged.

Heroes 1 network game works fine as well (no secondary skills to select)

[MistWeaver]

I just tested H2 myself, and was going to say that it worked fine for me Still, its nice that you've found this. Now we know how not to act in MP game

[Yurian Stonebow]

I hope this is not considered offtopic or double thread...

I don't much play multiplayer via the internet, but it seems that 3do/NWC (and probably Ubisoft version as well) Heroes III and its expansion packs are somehow "hostile" towards Win XP. The game plays fine multiplayer TCP/IP sessions with Win 98 and no odd things happen... So what's with XP? The aged system of H3 cannot recognize updated versions of same program under a newer operating system?

Are we doomed to play with third party products?? Hamachi, anyone?



Yurian