Resolved "Massive" bug caused by naming horse the same thing as a Villager

I named my horse Sebastian.

End result- both my horse and Sebastian showed up in the relationship panel, sharing human sebastian's relationship stats. I have since married human sebastian, and now there's THREE Sebastians in the relationship panel.

In addition, my horse forgets to spawn at the stable and instead spawns randomly on the farm, often off-map. This behavior only started after marriage.

I edited my save file to rename the horse to Sebby, which worked, but the relationships are sitll listed in the panel, the horse still forgets to spawn properly, and I just got a message that said "Sebby is wondering where you've been", which I assume is supposed to be about Sebastian, but instead took teh name of my horse and not the name of my husband.

It's not gamebreaking, but not having my horse is annoying. Any ideas?

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/0sq1rjv9bytt9/Clark_116193691

Here is the save file.

I sent this to ConcernedApe on reddit to see if he could fix it but in the meantime anyone else could help too. I don't want to play until I fix this. But I really want to play.

I call the bug "Massive" because the coding that results in this sort of mixed up information has got to be pretty...well, sloppy, unfortunately, and I worry it'll lead to worse problems. Why on earth does the game consider the horse and the NPC the same thing based on their names? Why does the relationship list call up everything named Sebastian instead of the NPC Sebastian? Why are these things coded in such a way that CHANGING MY HORSES NAME didn't effect anything, and the game CALLS THE HORSE'S INFORMATION when bringing up dialogue about the NPC? This has got to be a messy problem and it worries me. I really hope my save isn't ruined from this.

 

Except for objects (those that you can put in your inventory), that the code usually detect them by their sprite sheet coordinates, usually everything in the game is done by name basis (meaning if you translate stuff, or rename people, the game breaks severely).

If you poke into your save file (it is a XML) you will see the relationships is a list of people by name, and how much they like you, but this affects all NPCs, even monsters probably... I never tested, but if you name your animals to something like "Slime" probably bugs will happen too.

This also applies to some objects, thus why is not simple to add labels to chests (if you just rename the chests, they stop working, lots of game code for the chest check if they are named "Chest"), and why is not simple to add buildings (the game code that create buildings in the farm also use building name, for example it knows to refill your water thing when you use it near a well, by checking if the building is named "well").

Also Cantorsdust's Crops All Seasons mod works by renaming the farm to "Greenhouse" temporarily, letting it do crop calculation, and then renaming it back to "Farm", because the game checks if crops can grow out of season by seeing if they are in a map named "Greenhouse"

 

That sounds like a horrible, atrocious way to handle those things? Am I confused here or is that a really, really bad way to do that stuff?

 

Sometimes it's the only way.

Also this is the developer's first game, and he started it as a project to teach himself how to make games. Four years ago.

 

First or not, that's still really messy. What happens when someone starts the game and their name is the same as an NPCs? What about all the Alex and Sam and Lewis and Leah players? Those are relatively common names, their games are going to be potentially irreparably damaged because the game doesn't care what the name is referring to, it just automatically assumes all instances of [name] are referring to [thing], to the point where even renaming [name] to something else still causes problems. That's bizarre, I have NEVER heard of a game doing this before.

I can't even wrap my head around how the game could possibly have the "Sebby is wondering where you've been" error I mentioned, that's a completely separate value changed to a completely unique name and the game still called it for something, it makes no sense.

I really hope the game gets patched to no longer do this.

 

Oh, that 'X is wondering where you've been' happens to me when I get back from a trip on the bus and I leave my horse at the bus stop. Says Bill has been wondering where you've been (I named him after Beta Ray Bill who is essentially 'alien horse-face Thor' and is a canon Marvel character. And is a ridiculous character.

So at least in that case it's referring to your horse, not Sebastian. I should know, he never wonders where I've been. (hint: I eat pizza with sam twice a week. SHH!)

 

That is bizarre, too. I never would've guessed that was supposed to be about the horse. Those litlte messages in the corner are so rare, it seems weird for one to suddenly show up about your horse every day.

My horse wasn't there, so I didn't assume it was about him at all. I also hadn't talked to sebastian in like a week.

 

Yeah, unless MINE is a bug. But it happens every time I come back on the bus and leave him at the stop.

 

The "wondering where you've been" thing always refers to the horse, it can also sometimes say "waited patiently for your return" or something. It happens when you return from the desert, as far as I know.

 

So I named my Baby "Sam" and my baby now shows up in the relationship list with 10 empty hearts (well, four full hearts and six empty after I started hugging him a lot)....is this part of the game? or another example of the same bug?

 

I get the feeling that's part of the bug too.

 

lol, I thought it seemed a bit harsh that my baby didn't like me when it was born and I had to earn its love with hugs and attention....But still, its not a bad mechanic. It could be a good thing with a bit of tweaking (baby starts off loving you and you have to maintain it by caring for it)

 

Still haven't heard back from CA on reddit. He's a busy guy, though. I did end up just playing anyway despite the bug, rather than waiting to see if he can fix it in the save file, this really sounds like something that needs to be fixed completely in a patch.

 

I have found my horse. It spawns north of the greenhouse, in the cliffside, unaccessible. Still no response from CA. Got banned from the subreddit for asking a mod for clarification on the rules once in private (with no response) and then once in public when he made a "How can we Improve" thread and then he privately threatend ban me if I brought it up again, then banned me when I told someone I couldn't discuss it as I was threatened with a ban. So I can't post there about it, because the mods are power-hungry crybabies who don't like it when they're called out on being corrupt.

This bug is really screwing with my game. I have two sebastians in my house now. One day I had 4 in the relationship panel and now it's back to 3. I don't know what to do.

 

Nag CA on twitter, he tends to help when people do that, sometimes he even offer his personal e-mail address by direct-message so people can e-mail him his save files.

Of course, please be respectful, don't make he regret his consumer-friendly policies.

 

I tried that, but no response. I know he's busy. I am honestly getting a bit frustrated seeing him reply to random threads on reddit like "Help, an achievement didn't show up!" but not getting any help from a direct PM about a big bug that just keeps getting worse.

I almost feel like I have to restart the game to get things back to normal.

 

I wouldn't get too down about CA not responding. As someone who has programmed a little and understands what the process is like, CA is probably focusing on twitter comments relevant to the thing he is currently working on (and trying to avoid distracting his attention with other issues)...which, as he gets closer to eliminating each individual bug, may at times seem like he is focusing on something that is 95% sorted. This bug is a major one and it sounds like CA would need to do some major work on the base code to get rid of it. He may just be knocking over some of the smaller, easier tasks first so that he can fully concentrate on this one and other bigger problems....

 

I'd just like to know he's aware of it, if anything. Especially since it's not so much "a bug" but rather "a really awkward way to code things that leads into bugs". Who knows what problems there could be down the line from something like this, especially if he changes what NPCs do/how they do it/etc later on. How will the game cope with thinking an NPC exists 3 times in one save file?