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Mutated colours all vanished after update


DaveH

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2 hours ago, ZenRowe said:

Here is an option that should work pretty well for anyone that knows that none of the mods they had installed added any custom colors.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1940481639

This mod will try to correct all of your dino colors. It works by making assumptions about what the color definitions array looked like for you before the update that caused this, so It's not suitable for us to do in the core game... but as an option, this should actually work pretty well for many.

I want to call bullpoop on the claim that there is no way for you to figure out what the color ids were prior to the update. The external tool ARK Smart Breeding pulls this information straight from the game files. It accurately identified each and every single color mutation on well over 50 different dinos, even though I installed it and imported my dinos after the screwup. The information is still in our game files. I was able to use this to put my dinos back to normal using ARK Smart Breeding. If this tool (the code for which is open-source and available on github, just sayin') can do it, then why can't you?

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@ZenRoweThats great dude! A developer suggesting a mod to fix the F......up you made. Wonderful!!! BTW.. your last update? Every server that is not the island are f....up... in case you are not reading admins posts on the forum and steam... i guess you are too busy looking at each others nuts to do something....

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On 12/19/2019 at 1:53 AM, ZenRowe said:

The current plan is that we'll be adding an admin command that can be used to reapply the correct colors on tamed dinos (So that in the future any changes to the color definitions array either by us or by mods will be effectively non-destructive).
In addition, because we can't recover the colors lost from this occurrence (the only factual memory of what those colors were is in your head), those colors that were lost will get re-rolled for new mutation colors.
I don't have an ETA on when that will be available, but it's in the works already.

Hi Zen,

Please, please please don't force a re-roll on unofficial servers, I have an accurate list of all of my colour mutations (as do almost all my users) because we all use Ark Smart Breeding and can therefore double check ours and if need be I can roll them back with admin commands. I don't want to go through this process and then find you guys re-roll them all again and I have to go through it again.

Pwetty Pweeze don't force it. :)

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2 hours ago, innerwolf said:

I want to call bullpoop on the claim that there is no way for you to figure out what the color ids were prior to the update. The external tool ARK Smart Breeding pulls this information straight from the game files. It accurately identified each and every single color mutation on well over 50 different dinos, even though I installed it and imported my dinos after the screwup. The information is still in our game files. I was able to use this to put my dinos back to normal using ARK Smart Breeding. If this tool (the code for which is open-source and available on github, just sayin') can do it, then why can't you?

Just to double check before I opened my mouth, I downloaded that source, and while I haven't spent a ton of time looking through it I would say it's doing things in a similar manner to the mod I just linked. Except that in this tool, color indices and matching color definitions have been manually entered into dictionaries (and by the looks of it there are collections of value data for at least some mods that it can download from somewhere? I have never used this tool before, but I am assuming that is how it could be determining any offsets that would otherwise mismatch the index numbers).
Here is even the code where it loads the color data from your saved data:

creature.colors = new int[6];
for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++)
{
	creature.colors[i] = colorModulo(creatureObject.GetPropertyValue<ArkByteValue>("ColorSetIndices", i)?.ByteValue ?? 0);
}

which is just an array of 6 integer values but it's loading in from a byte typed data. a byte can have a range of 0-255. That's all. no color names, no RGB values. each element in the array correlates to a color region on the creatures, and color definitions are not serialized to your save data. Not enough data there to reconstruct a color from.

It's making assumptions still, just different assumptions.
You should actually at the code in this tool, it's pretty impressive, but it doesn't do what you think it's doing.
The only data saved to creatures for each color is a byte value representing the index of the color as it relates to the color definition array. It's not pulling the color definitions from the game save data, they are preassigned in the tool itself. This tool took a great deal of work, time, and loooooooots of manual data entry.

 

46 minutes ago, IanHighlander said:

Hi Zen,

Please, please please don't force a re-roll on unofficial servers, I have an accurate list of all of my colour mutations (as do almost all my users) because we all use Ark Smart Breeding and can therefore double check ours and if need be I can roll them back with admin commands. I don't want to go through this process and then find you guys re-roll them all again and I have to go through it again.

Pwetty Pweeze don't force it. :)

Nothing is being forced. I am adding a console command. The attempt to reassert colors (or reroll if it can't determine what those colors were) will only occur at the discretion of the server admin, or the player if in singleplayer.

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@ZenRowe Thanks for your reply. Ark Smart Breeding is an amazing app and frankly no breeder should be without it. It can read the exported files from the option wheel on a dino straight in or even OCR them in if your setup matches one of it's templates (mine doesn't), it can advise on best breeding combinations, keeps a family tree and all sorts of other useful stuff (and no, I'm nothing to do with it, but have been an avid user of it for a long time). @cad is the main genius behind it, but has other people assisting these days I believe.

Edit: to add the link to the thread on this forum for ASB 

 

As you can see from the below example (my current recently started Rex line), it stores all sorts of stats including the colour zones.

image.thumb.png.f388393a4dfb342b6716331e55751db6.png

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29 minutes ago, ZenRowe said:

Just to double check before I opened my mouth, I downloaded that source, and while I haven't spent a ton of time looking through it I would say it's doing things in a similar manner to the mod I just linked. Except that in this tool, color indices and matching color definitions have been manually entered into dictionaries (and by the looks of it there are collections of value data for at least some mods that it can download from somewhere? I have never used this tool before, but I am assuming that is how it could be determining any offsets that would otherwise mismatch the index numbers).
Here is even the code where it loads the color data from your saved data:


creature.colors = new int[6];
for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++)
{
	creature.colors[i] = colorModulo(creatureObject.GetPropertyValue<ArkByteValue>("ColorSetIndices", i)?.ByteValue ?? 0);
}

which is just an array of 6 integer values but it's loading in from a byte typed data. a byte can have a range of 0-255. That's all. no color names, no RGB values. each element in the array correlates to a color region on the creatures, and color definitions are not serialized to your save data. Not enough data there to reconstruct a color from.

It's making assumptions still, just different assumptions.
You should actually at the code in this tool, it's pretty impressive, but it doesn't do what you think it's doing.
The only data saved to creatures for each color is a byte value representing the index of the color as it relates to the color definition array. It's not pulling the color definitions from the game save data, they are preassigned in the tool itself. This tool took a great deal of work, time, and loooooooots of manual data entry.

 

Nothing is being forced. I am adding a console command. The attempt to reassert colors (or reroll if it can't determine what those colors were) will only occur at the discretion of the server admin, or the player if in singleplayer.

Ark Smart Breeding gets its information from the either the save files (Using Ark Tools) or the export dino feature.

That means Ark still knows the colors some how.

And how the hell do you push such a ground breaking change, without running regression testing on this!!

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@IanHighlander @CyberAngel67
It is definitely an impressive tool.
But do you see the color indices there on the right?
Notice how they are all at 56 or less?
There are 56 color definitions in the core game currently. (And then the dye indices which are all 200+)
Inside of the tool itself they are all predefined to what color they represent. The amount of data that had to be sorted out and manually entered for this tool is insane.
The only thing the tool is loading from the creature data is that byte value itself:
This is the data I just copied from the tool itself (Dictionaries in values.json):

"colorDefinitions": [
		[ "Red", [ 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Blue", [ 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Green", [ 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Yellow", [ 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Cyan", [ 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Magenta", [ 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Light Green", [ 0.5325000286102295, 1.0, 0.5, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Light Grey", [ 0.581026017665863, 0.6000000238418579, 0.5941699743270874, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Light Brown", [ 0.1899999976158142, 0.1374019980430603, 0.09880000352859497, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Light Orange", [ 1.0, 0.4621790051460266, 0.15000000596046448, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Light Yellow", [ 1.0, 0.9519469738006592, 0.25999999046325684, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Light Red", [ 1.0, 0.1809069961309433, 0.15000000596046448, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dark Grey", [ 0.20000000298023224, 0.20000000298023224, 0.20000000298023224, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Black", [ 0.03999999910593033, 0.03999999910593033, 0.03999999910593033, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Brown", [ 0.10000000149011612, 0.038777001202106476, 0.01947700046002865, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dark Green", [ 0.012338999658823013, 0.06499999761581421, 0.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dark Red", [ 0.22499999403953552, 0.01133699994534254, 0.005625000223517418, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "White", [ 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Light Red", [ 1.0, 0.4000000059604645, 0.4000000059604645, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Dark Red", [ 0.10000000149011612, 0.019999999552965164, 0.019999999552965164, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Light Orange", [ 1.0, 0.4749999940395355, 0.30000001192092896, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Dark Orange", [ 0.25, 0.08421099931001663, 0.02500000037252903, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Light Yellow", [ 0.6000000238418579, 0.6000000238418579, 0.36000001430511475, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Dark Yellow", [ 0.30000001192092896, 0.30000001192092896, 0.15000000596046448, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Light Green", [ 0.75, 1.0, 0.75, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Medium Green", [ 0.19499999284744263, 0.30000001192092896, 0.19499999284744263, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Dark Green", [ 0.012500000186264515, 0.05000000074505806, 0.012500000186264515, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Light Blue", [ 0.699999988079071, 0.7499989867210388, 1.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Dark Blue", [ 0.03750000149011612, 0.052083998918533325, 0.125, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Light Purple", [ 0.7799999713897705, 0.699999988079071, 1.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Dark Purple", [ 0.048666998744010925, 0.029999999329447746, 0.10000000149011612, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Light Brown", [ 1.0, 0.75, 0.5, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Medium Brown", [ 0.30000001192092896, 0.23999999463558197, 0.18000000715255737, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Dark Brown", [ 0.10000000149011612, 0.07500000298023224, 0.05000000074505806, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Darker Grey", [ 0.10000000149011612, 0.10000000149011612, 0.10000000149011612, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Albino", [ 1.75, 1.75, 1.75, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "BigFoot0", [ 0.47999998927116394, 0.31043699383735657, 0.23104700446128845, 1.0 ] ],
		[ "BigFoot4", [ 0.824999988079071, 0.7049199938774109, 0.6682500243186951, 1.0 ] ],
		[ "BigFoot5", [ 0.6349999904632568, 0.393326997756958, 0.30162501335144043, 1.0 ] ],
		[ "WolfFur", [ 0.5550000071525574, 0.45945701003074646, 0.3524250090122223, 1.0 ] ],
		[ "DarkWolfFur", [ 0.25, 0.18521900475025177, 0.13375000655651093, 1.0 ] ],
		[ "DragonBase0", [ 0.36000001430511475, 0.1334179937839508, 0.06748999655246735, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "DragonBase1", [ 0.6050000190734863, 0.19322800636291504, 0.09075000137090683, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "DragonFire", [ 0.5099999904632568, 0.07726699858903885, 0.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "DragonGreen0", [ 0.19269999861717224, 0.23499999940395355, 0.15039999783039093, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "DragonGreen1", [ 0.28573501110076904, 0.3400000035762787, 0.1923840045928955, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "DragonGreen2", [ 0.38499999046325684, 0.3754729926586151, 0.26325199007987976, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "DragonGreen3", [ 0.17679999768733978, 0.29623299837112427, 0.3400000035762787, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "WyvernPurple0", [ 0.19092799723148346, 0.17526599764823914, 0.3100000023841858, 1.0 ] ],
		[ "WyvernPurple1", [ 0.44176098704338074, 0.3691500127315521, 0.5350000262260437, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "WyvernBlue0", [ 0.12245000153779984, 0.22390300035476685, 0.39500001072883606, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "WyvernBlue1", [ 0.06300000101327896, 0.10655199736356735, 0.18000000715255737, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Medium Blue", [ 0.11550000309944153, 0.37960299849510193, 0.824999988079071, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Dino Deep Blue", [ 0.05652499943971634, 0.1388539969921112, 0.6650000214576721, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "NearWhite", [ 0.8500000238418579, 0.8500000238418579, 0.8500000238418579, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "NearBlack", [ 0.07999999821186066, 0.07999999821186066, 0.07999999821186066, 0.0 ] ]
	],
	"dyeDefinitions": [
		[ "Black Coloring", [ 0.009999999776482582, 0.009999999776482582, 0.009999999776482582, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Blue Coloring", [ 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Brown Coloring", [ 0.18000000715255737, 0.11999999731779099, 0.05999999865889549, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Cyan Coloring", [ 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Forest Coloring", [ 0.0, 0.15000000596046448, 0.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Green Coloring", [ 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Purple Coloring", [ 0.15000000596046448, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Orange Coloring", [ 1.0, 0.25, 0.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Parchement Coloring", [ 1.0, 1.0, 0.5, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Pink Coloring", [ 1.0, 0.20000000298023224, 0.7599999904632568, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Purple Coloring", [ 0.20000000298023224, 0.0, 0.75, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Red Coloring", [ 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Royalty Coloring", [ 0.20000000298023224, 0.0, 0.4000000059604645, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Silver Coloring", [ 0.75, 0.75, 0.75, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Sky Coloring", [ 0.5, 0.6666669845581055, 1.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Tan Coloring", [ 1.0, 0.8447059988975525, 0.44999998807907104, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Tangerine Coloring", [ 0.42500001192092896, 0.1294659972190857, 0.021250000223517418, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "White Coloring", [ 0.9900000095367432, 0.9900000095367432, 0.9900000095367432, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Yellow Coloring", [ 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Magenta Coloring", [ 0.800000011920929, 0.009999999776482582, 0.699999988079071, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Brick Coloring", [ 0.30000001192092896, 0.029999999329447746, 0.009999999776482582, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Cantaloupe Coloring", [ 1.0, 0.33000001311302185, 0.0, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Mud Coloring", [ 0.05999999865889549, 0.03999999910593033, 0.019999999552965164, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Navy Coloring", [ 0.029999999329447746, 0.029999999329447746, 0.15000000596046448, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Olive Coloring", [ 0.5, 0.5, 0.10000000149011612, 0.0 ] ],
		[ "Slate Coloring", [ 0.10000000149011612, 0.10000000149011612, 0.10000000149011612, 0.0 ] ]
	]

These are an ordered list (meaning they can be referenced by that index values to pull the specific element) And the color name and RGB values. The color data is not coming from the game.
The games save data does not serialize what those indexes represent.

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9 minutes ago, ZenRowe said:

@IanHighlander @CyberAngel67
It is definitely an impressive tool.
<snip>

The games save data does not serialize what those indexes represent.

I don't profess to understand the full workings of it for sure, although I get the gist and do understand serialised lists (PHP/MySQL experience), but new values.json files (and others) are automatically downloaded as required (presumably when @cad or some other poor sod has created a new manual entry for it each time something changes), as you say a lot of work but by god it works well :)

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11 minutes ago, ZenRowe said:

@IanHighlander @CyberAngel67
It is definitely an impressive tool.
But do you see the color indices there on the right?
Notice how they are all at 56 or less?
There are 56 color definitions in the core game currently. (And then the dye indices which are all 200+)
Inside of the tool itself they are all predefined to what color they represent. The amount of data that had to be sorted out and manually entered for this tool is insane.
The only thing the tool is loading from the creature data is that byte value itself:
This is the data I just copied from the tool itself (Dictionaries in values.json):

These are an ordered list (meaning they can be referenced by that index values to pull the specific element) And the color name and RGB values. The color data is not coming from the game.
The games save data does not serialize what those indexes represent.

Yeah that makes sense...

And yes considering how much information is left out of the DevKit, the devs have done well to piece it altogether. Just a shame WildCard can't keep the DevKit up to date to help these tools authors out.

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17 minutes ago, ZenRowe said:

@IanHighlander @CyberAngel67
It is definitely an impressive tool.
But do you see the color indices there on the right?
Notice how they are all at 56 or less?
There are 56 color definitions in the core game currently. (And then the dye indices which are all 200+)
Inside of the tool itself they are all predefined to what color they represent. The amount of data that had to be sorted out and manually entered for this tool is insane.
The only thing the tool is loading from the creature data is that byte value itself:
This is the data I just copied from the tool itself (Dictionaries in values.json):

These are an ordered list (meaning they can be referenced by that index values to pull the specific element) And the color name and RGB values. The color data is not coming from the game.
The games save data does not serialize what those indexes represent.

Hang on wait a minute are you now saying the indexs in Ark no longer point to the same colors?

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23 minutes ago, CyberAngel67 said:

Yeah that makes sense...

And yes considering how much information is left out of the DevKit, the devs have done well to piece it altogether. Just a shame WildCard can't keep the DevKit up to date to help these tools authors out.

I do understand that this inconvenienced a lot of people. I really do. That's why I have been spending my own free time trying to help people understand what happened (even at risk of getting in trouble for oversharing information) and to work on something to prevent it in the future and to try and possibly help find ways to make this less awful for those that were affected by it... all when I would normally be resting.
The change went through testing, but the test conditions that were necessary to have exposed this are not normal for any studio that I have ever interacted with.
Trying to make changes and balances around what impact they might have for mods is downright impossible, there are too many variables and we don't have access to a mod authors code to be able to debug even if we do find an issue, so it's just not something any studio does really. maybe some will test with a few "top mods", but I highly doubt more than that. Most studios would have seen this issue and just gone "oh well".
This isn't the first time an update has broken something with mods and it almost certainly won't be the last, that is just an unavoidable fact about using mods.

Also pushing out devkit updates is ... complicated. I can't do it with frequency, so we try to push them out when the game appears to be stable. we also don't put the devkit out for the sake of datamining, we do it so that mod authors can make mods, and in most cases they don't need the devkit to have the latest information about every class in the game in order to do that.

16 minutes ago, CyberAngel67 said:

Hang on wait a minute are you now saying the indexs in Ark no longer point to the same colors?

No, I was pointing at the specific example that was in the image above that post. There were only indices pointing to the initial core color definitions set.
The lost colors were all mutation color indices that were out of that bounds (not all mutation colors people have rolled were out of bounds though), most often duplicates of the core colors. If that all there were was, duplicates, then it becomes possible to mathematically assume what color it should be (that is what the mod does) because they'll always be in the same order as long as there wasn't a mod in there that added new colors as well.

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1 minute ago, ZenRowe said:

I do understand that this inconvenienced a lot of people. I really do. That's why I have been spending my own free time trying to help[people understand what happened (even at risk of getting in trouble for oversharing information) and to work on something to prevent it in the future and to try and possibly help find ways to make this less awful for those that were affected by it.
The change went through testing, but the test conditions that were necessary to have exposed this are not normal for any studio that I have ever interacted with.
Trying to make changes and balances around what impact they might have for mods is downright impossible, there are too many variables and we don't have mod authors code to be able to debug even if we do find an issue, so it's just not something any studio does really. maybe some will test with a few "top mods", but never more than that. Most studios would have seen this issue and just gone "oh well".
This isn't the first time an update has broken something with mods and it almost certainly won't be the last, that is just an unavoidable fact about using mods.

Fully understand and I am sure the community is grateful as well, I am just saying that Ark is different to most other games. This change was a huge changer for a lot of people and because of this change, then maybe WildCard should have updated the DevKit and ask mod authors to check it.

But I guess where I am coming from is that, when Ark exports the Dino File, that index number and the Admin Commands index number still point to the right area. If what I am hearing, is that color index 14 which is Black, is seen as Black by ASB by that Index number and as far as the Admin commands go.

Don't get me wrong, I sort of understand what you're saying, but I am not running any mods on my servers that change the colors that I am aware of, so why would Mods need to do that in the first place? Is that because Mod Authors had no other choice to begin with, because WildCard chose to limit things in the DevKit...

I think you see what I am saying.

Look, I am either here nor there, as it didn't affect me the extent that it would have affected others.

I just find it hard to believe, that such a small change has such a devastating impact and going forward, this is something that WildCard can't afford to do.

 

1 minute ago, ZenRowe said:

no I was pointing at the specific example that was in the image above that post. There were only indices pointing to the initial core color definitions set.
The lost colors were all mutation color indices indices that were out of that bounds, most often duplicates of the core colors which if that all there were was duplicates then it becomes possible to mathematically assume what color it should be because they'll always be in the same order as long as there wasn't a mod in there that added new colors as well.

So how does ASB still have the right color mutations if those indexes haven't changed in the save file and Export Dino file. I don't expect you to answer it, just think that WildCard need to take more care with changes because of the nature of this game.

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29 minutes ago, CyberAngel67 said:

Fully understand and I am sure the community is grateful as well, I am just saying that Ark is different to most other games. This change was a huge changer for a lot of people and because of this change, then maybe WildCard should have updated the DevKit and ask mod authors to check it.

But I guess where I am coming from is that, when Ark exports the Dino File, that index number and the Admin Commands index number still point to the right area. If what I am hearing, is that color index 14 which is Black, is seen as Black by ASB by that Index number and as far as the Admin commands go.

Don't get me wrong, I sort of understand what you're saying, but I am not running any mods on my servers that change the colors that I am aware of, so why would Mods need to do that in the first place? Is that because Mod Authors had no other choice to begin with, because WildCard chose to limit things in the DevKit...

I think you see what I am saying.

Look, I am either here nor there, as it didn't affect me the extent that it would have affected others.

I just find it hard to believe, that such a small change has such a devastating impact and going forward, this is something that WildCard can't afford to do.

 

So how does ASB still have the right color mutations if those indexes haven't changed in the save file and Export Dino file. I don't expect you to answer it, just think that WildCard need to take more care with changes because of the nature of this game.

I think I understand where your confusion is coming from.
The change we made was fixing a bug in how mod data is merged in when you launch a game. it was resulting in that, for every single mod installed, the core color definitions were being duplicated. That duplication now no longer happens. ASB is doing assumed correction, and since you weren't using any mods that added new colors it's actually easy to figure out what the right color is in your case. It is mathematically consistent.

This bug was actually how people could breed for mutations of the dye colors (That's a whole other topic I'm not going to get into, it was a nightmare to figure out, but don't worry I am protecting that functionality so that people can still get dye colors from mutations)

But that bug actually limited mods and us for that matter, nobody could reliably add new colors to the game, it needed to be fixed.

Also we absolutely cannot push devkit updates before regular game updates, that would straight up break mods.

You are right though, ARK is different to most other games, it is absolutely huge. we could have QA testers testing things months in advance for every single update and issues will still get through because there is just so much cross interaction between everything, so what seems like a small change to everyone (including us sometimes) can have unpredictable rippling effects elsewhere that are sometimes downright impossible to predict. Just because there are issues that get through, doesn't mean we don't test things.
You only see what gets through, not what gets caught in advance.
Everyone wants things fixed "right now", but with months of testing in advance somehow. It doesn't work out like that.

I don't know what else I can tell you, we care what happens with this game, and it really bums us out when these kinds of issues pop up.

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I will first say I appreciate  that this effort is being made to remedy this issue, I play with a handful of mods and have spent a fair bit of time breeding for stats and mutations and would like to avoid losing those efforts. But I would also like to say that better preparation could have prevented this issue in the first place.

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29 minutes ago, ZenRowe said:

I do understand that this inconvenienced a lot of people. I really do. That's why I have been spending my own free time trying to help people understand what happened (even at risk of getting in trouble for oversharing information) and to work on something to prevent it in the future and to try and possibly help find ways to make this less awful for those that were affected by it... all when I would normally be resting.

Just wanted to say that I for one appreciate just how much of your time (work and otherwise time) yourself and a few others of the WC staff members do spend communicating, despite some of the moany errrm people on here (keeping it polite), this is one of the better communicating companys especially these days and it's greatly appreciated at least by me.

I don't think my cluster has been massively affected by this and for the odd few that may have I can admin the colours back in that they have recorded thanks to ASB, my only concern was a possible forced re-roll of colours that was mentioned and as you've confirmed that isn't the case, I just thought I'd give you some info on ASB itself as you mentioned you hadn't heard of it (well worth checking out in my humble opinion).

Thankyou again for your efforts.

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I really hope nobody is still too upset by this. Between the console commands, the mod, ASB/screenshots/memories, and Zen's consistent replies, you guys should be incredibly grateful. This is more than I've ever seen from Wildcard team members as far as addressing issues goes. For me, it's usually not the issue that's so irritating, it's the pure lack of communication. Like on the Extinction launch day, where it was delayed for HOURS, and they gave like one tweet saying it was having nonspecific issues? Yeah that stuff irritates me to my CORE. So seeing Zen here addressing almost everyone's concerns is so refreshing. I really hope you don't get in trouble Zen. They need MORE people like you, not less. 

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On 12/18/2019 at 3:45 PM, ZenRowe said:

It's any mods. what was happening was that every single mod added was duplicating the color definitions in the array. so there were multiple instances of every color.
When breeding and the game chooses random color mutation it randomly picks from any color definition. so not every index for "Red" was consistent. When we cleared out the bloat, indexes pointing to the duplicated colors were suddenly invalid and defaulting to white.

Now, I have a plan for making this problem recoverable from in the future, I can also get the game to reroll some new colors for everyone where there are these color indexes pointing to an invalid color (which is defaulting to white), then maybe there is some incentive to not feel like you have to spend 50 hours manually assigning colors to your creatures, and you might get some desirable colors back.

Thank you for that clarification! I'm a programmer myself and I always love it when we get more information as to what the problem is since it helps me understand it better - and it's super interesting. I'm really grateful to you for sharing as much as you do!

 

19 hours ago, PertySlick said:

I don't think Wildcsrd should have to code around modders.  Modders should have to code around Wildcard.  Think of the impossibility of trying to improve your own game without breaking code written by countless other developers with varying styles, methods, and levels of quality.  When you use a mod there is always a risk as you are modifying the way the original software was intended to operate.  It's unfortunate and I feel for those that have lost a lot of work.  I breed for colors myself so I respect what was lost.

I totally agree. Although, in hindsight, a better option would be to first introduce a patch that translates all duplicated colours to the original ones and then a patch that removes them... It wouldn't help the people who didn't play in between those patches, but it'd help everybody else. I see a difference between coding around mods and not breaking things unless you have to. In my opinion, seeing as they're investigating a fix so that this won't happen again, that falls into the latter category and is something I think they could've done to begin with since they seemed to know it was an issue with all mods.

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10 hours ago, ZenRowe said:

Here is an option that should work pretty well for anyone that knows that none of the mods they had installed added any custom colors.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1940481639

This mod will try to correct all of your dino colors. It works by making assumptions about what the color definitions array looked like for you before the update that caused this, so It's not suitable for us to do in the core game... but as an option, this should actually work pretty well for many.

You are a legend or whoever created the mod is ;) 

thankyou very much :) 

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4 hours ago, Slvr said:

I really hope nobody is still too upset by this. Between the console commands, the mod, ASB/screenshots/memories, and Zen's consistent replies, you guys should be incredibly grateful. This is more than I've ever seen from Wildcard team members as far as addressing issues goes. For me, it's usually not the issue that's so irritating, it's the pure lack of communication. Like on the Extinction launch day, where it was delayed for HOURS, and they gave like one tweet saying it was having nonspecific issues? Yeah that stuff irritates me to my CORE. So seeing Zen here addressing almost everyone's concerns is so refreshing. I really hope you don't get in trouble Zen. They need MORE people like you, not less. 

To that point Cedric would love to be able to do what I did here, but often when something goes wrong on that scale, the engineers are being scrambled to figure out the problem and then immediately hop on fixing it. There isn't always someone to give the information in full to Cedric so that he can give a more detailed update. The chain of communication just isn't always established that fast. In some cases, we just flat out can't talk about a particular issue until after it's fixed because people will take advantage of and abuse it (If that is already happening in a particular situation, we want to avoid making more people aware of it and try to mitigate the damage being done as much as we can.)

Even in this case, it took me some time to figure out what had happened, it was just that the reports trickled in slowly so it happens to look like I had that figured out quickly. I also  happened to be : the one that made the change that caused the issue in the first place, was doing the investigating, and the one working on the fix once it was understood. In this particular case I was the entire chain of communication, and THAT is a very very rare set of circumstances.

4 hours ago, Zahlea said:

I totally agree. Although, in hindsight, a better option would be to first introduce a patch that translates all duplicated colours to the original ones and then a patch that removes them... It wouldn't help the people who didn't play in between those patches, but it'd help everybody else. I see a difference between coding around mods and not breaking things unless you have to. In my opinion, seeing as they're investigating a fix so that this won't happen again, that falls into the latter category and is something I think they could've done to begin with since they seemed to know it was an issue with all mods.

 

I knew about the duplication, but what I didn't realize was that those duplicated colors were actually being rolled in mutations. In all other cases the initial decision of what index gets saved to a creature (in code) is determined by a name lookup which breaks on first match.

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On 12/18/2019 at 8:45 AM, ZenRowe said:

Now, I have a plan for making this problem recoverable from in the future, I can also get the game to reroll some new colors for everyone where there are these color indexes pointing to an invalid color (which is defaulting to white), then maybe there is some incentive to not feel like you have to spend 50 hours manually assigning colors to your creatures, and you might get some desirable colors back.

Thank you for this.  I look forward to seeing this implemented.

I wished there was some way we could "save" the stat/color of our favorite dinos on one server and re-create them on another (where we have access to admin commands).  Like an "export / import dino" ability.

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Anyone else's creatures changing colour?

After the update, my purple mutated allos have turned green, as have some of my featherlights. It seems like they are shifting around colours or something? Either way, sort of defeats the point in spending hours mutating something if ark goes ahead and changes it to something else with every update. 

Anyone else had this issue? I submitted a bug report, but I don't even know if people look at a those :')

https://imgur.com/a/Y7UkSuf 

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2 hours ago, PsychoWo said:

@ZenRowe any updates on the command line or other fixes (other than the linked mod) for the mutation colors?

Not yet, people are off for the holiday so it hasn't been tested and validated yet. Gotta try to make sure I didn't create more problems with with the change.
I'll make sure to update this thread again when it goes out.

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