The official patches by Joymania - The uncensored story!

[Litude]

So we all know that Joymania released a few patches for The Peasants Rebellion that did pretty much no useful changes. Because of being curious, I actually went and did some additional research to find out what the patches actually did.
Note: I'm merely listing the changes caused to the game exe file, not changes done to other game files

Bad stuff caused by patches:
- Sixth line in messages is cut in half (leaves less space for messages) [1.52]
- Screenshot function removed [1.53]
- Messages are not saved [1.54]
- Track removed from CD-player [1.56]
- The TYPE 2 attack no longer works standalone, another attack type is required before it for TYPE 2 to work [1.56(?)]
- Unconfirmed Soldiers do not get "drunk" [1.56]

Neutral/arugeable stuff:
- Pause no longer darkens screen [1.53]
- Pause key changed to 'P' [1.53]
- AI changed [1.56(?)]

Useful stuff caused by patches:
- Game no longer crashes under Windows XP [1.58]
- Music volume remains constant when track changes [1.52]

- False belief: Fish cheat code did work back in 1.471
- False belief: The sound level option is broken in all versions
- False belief: The sound level momentarily goes higher when track changes in all versions

Unknown stuff (from official changelogs):
- Crashes caused by invalid computer configuration fixed (What's this?) [1.54]
- Loading problems of certain saved games fixed (Never noticed either?) [1.54]

Does anyone else see the irony in Joymania's patching? The thing here is that I'd really like to restore the 1.471 or 1.50 exe for Service Release 3, but the one and only useful thing the official patches did was a quite important thing...
Now I just wonder if it somehow would be possible to fix this problem in the 1.471 or 1.50 exe.

Or does anyone here know of any other good things caused by the official patches? Naturally, it could be that there was some critical bug in the old versions that was never noticed, but I can't help but think that the more Joymania touched the game code, the more broken the game became.

[kuba11100]

I've been testing 1.471 demo for a while. I was really surprised. It was more stable than 1.53 - it didn't crash when building. Screenshot worked. Unfortunately, the demo is very limited and I wasn't able to test such things like "drunk soldiers" or slow reaction.

I've also tested 1 TPR in 1.5 and 1.53 using F8 all the time - 1.53 crashed after few seconds, 1.5 after few minutes - I was lucky? (I remember that some time ago, playing 1.53, it always crashed during fight).

Still there were bugs like not transporting wares (stone to storehouse, skins to tannery from swine farm if there's no butchery).

I'm unable to test 1.471 full, there's no patch to make it and my CD contains 1.53 :/. I also don't know what's the difference between 1.471 and 1.5. I'll test 4 TPR in 1.5 to check that "drunk soldiers" bug.

[Litude]

Okay, in case anyone is interested in doing some tests, you can download the game exes from here:
1.471 REL
1.5 REL
1.52 REL
1.53 REL
1.56 REL
1.58 REL
These will work fine on any non-unicode version of the game.

I've been testing 1.471 demo for a while. I was really surprised. It was more stable than 1.53 - it didn't crash when building. Screenshot worked. Unfortunately, the demo is very limited and I wasn't able to test such things like "drunk soldiers" or slow reaction.

Yeah this too amazed me.

I've also tested 1 TPR in 1.5 and 1.53 using F8 all the time - 1.53 crashed after few seconds, 1.5 after few minutes - I was lucky? (I remember that some time ago, playing 1.53, it always crashed during fight).

I guess it's the Windows XP crash bug?

Still there were bugs like not transporting wares (stone to storehouse, skins to tannery from swine farm if there's no butchery).

Yeah the AI was already updated from the very beginning.

I'm unable to test 1.471 full, there's no patch to make it and my CD contains 1.53 :/. I also don't know what's the difference between 1.471 and 1.5. I'll test 4 TPR in 1.5 to check that "drunk soldiers" bug.

I haven't found a single difference between 1.471 and 1.5 either, I'm betting it was some patch to fix some bugs in the Net-Games lobby.

What I'd really like to know is whether 1.471 or 1.5 crashes randomly when playing under Windows XP (I know 1.52 and 1.56 did, but neither of these seem to crash under Vista so it's hard to test).

[kuba11100]

Played 4 TPR on 1.5 REL: enemy attacked, it hadn't crashed (using F8 all the time, including fights), no drunk soldiers after 3:00.

Check if 1.53 crashes under Vista - run 1 TPR and use F8 all the time - it have to crash.

---edited---
Tested 1.471 with single mission - time for some bad news:
- slow reaction after training townhall soldiers
- after automatic track change the music is louder, but it still shows previous amount (clicking in options turn volume down)
- AI build issues: they build more than one of every type of building (not like in 1.58 SR2), but they don't build every type of building (no barracks or workshops!). Also, after killing laborer performing task nobody will replace him - building will stop.

[Litude]

Played 4 TPR on 1.5 REL: enemy attacked, it hadn't crashed (using F8 all the time, including fights), no drunk soldiers after 3:00.

Sounds great! I'm mostly worried that there might be random crashes for people if older versions of the game are used.

Check if 1.53 crashes under Vista - run 1 TPR and use F8 all the time - it have to crash.

I ran 1.53 and played mission 1 TPR and it didn't crash. I guess the bug is XP specific.

[Litude]

That AI buiild issue does sound real nasty though

[kuba11100]

A bit of another testing:
2 TPR:
- crashed twice when using F8 during fight
6 TPR:
- bug with no AI building after save and quit
- all buildings built by AI
- all enemies attacked
- NO DRUNK SOLDIERS!

//AGAIN wrote few seconds after new reply!

[Litude]

So it's really a trade off... I'd really like to use 1.471 or 1.5 but the crashing isn't all that nice
You get crashes with both 1.471 and 1.5 but not 1.58?

[kuba11100]

It crashed in 1.471 and 1.5 during fight only with F8. It was not making game unplayable like in 1.53, which was crashing very often, during fights or completeing building a house. I also remember some crashes in 1.58 SR2, but rare. But notice that even a game manual says that using fast mode is not recommended during fights and the game disables it (but not makes it impossible to enable) when "Your troops are being attacked".

(edited: it crashed in the same reason in 1.58 SR2!)

I still don't know how it's working on different systems (2k, wine, ME (does anybody use it?) ) - I think it works good on 98, but it's been ages since I played it there. Also, it surprised me that even 1.53 works good on Vista - it was terrible on XP.

Maybe using 1.52 will be better than 1.5 - I have never noticed cut messages and music volume is fixed there.

1.3 have less bugs (and features)

[Litude]

I'm planning to release a Russian patch for the next SR3 beta release and it turned out that a lot of messages used the last line so I would have to squish them which is hard as I don't speak the language.
So you think that 1.52 or 1.5 would be better than 1.58?

[kuba11100]

As far as I know, the music files in KaM are normal MP3 files. Maybe you should use 1.5 and make music files more quiet with software like Audacity? I don't know is that making trouble, I remember when I swapped one song with some other MP3 it was playing, but also during films and it didn't switch (maybe it requires certain data like frequency?).

I've also tested 1.471 under Wine 1.0 on Debian Lenny. When Wine set to emulate 98, and not using F8 during fight, it's good.

Have anybody else tested it?

[Litude]

Yeah but distributing all audio files would end up making the patch very big...
If there was a commandline tool that would be capable of reducing the audio volume level this would be an ideal solution for the problem, as I could just launch this tool during the patching process reducing the size of the patch by a lot. I found some tool called Sox which I'm looking into.
EDIT: Sox doesn't support MP2 so I'll need to find another solution.
EDIT2: Distributing the audio files would add another 30mb to the patch, so a command line tool for this would be a great help.

[kuba11100]

No... NO... NOOOOOOOOO! It crashed once without a reason... 1 TSK... no F8... when fighting... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

If you survived reading the message above: some music info: tested custom MP3: before it wasn't reacting at the music volume change, it was playing always (during films) and it didn't swap to next one.
I save it with parameters:
Channels: 1 (mono)
Frequency: 44100 Hz
Resolution: 32bit float
Sample rate: 128 kbps
And it worked fine. So, if Sox support MP3s and we'll find some converter, it'll be good.

[Litude]

Just what I feared about the crashes... I do remember 1.58 crashing very seldom but I doubt that was the case for you...
As for the music, well it might be possible to convert the music to wav which SOX can handle (it doesn't support MP3 either) and then convert the music back to mp2. This way the quality loss should be about the same as just directly decreasing the volume level directly.

[The Dark Lord]

I don't want to interrupt your conversation, but I'd like to say something.

Harddisks of 1 TB do already excist, and few people have less than 40 GB. What is the problem of a patch from over 30 MB? The time in which you download it increases, but if it makes the game more stable it's worth it. Secondly, you overwrite old KaM music, so there is no extra space required. What's the problem?