Bug - Not A Bug SOLVE in A Volcanic Cave not working all the time

[anOtherGrendel]

the first try at using SOLVE in A Volcanic Cave does not work. Attempting to move on the map makes all the rocks disappear. The only way out is to swim back to short.
this has happened twice in the past week.
the second try works, but the rocks still do not all show up correctly.

 

[psly4mne]

The reason this happens is that mafia tries to solve the maze itself, which requires exploring (in order to see the 5 rock configurations), and therefore sometimes gets stuck. Since there are only a small number of possible mazes and they all have different initial configurations, it would be possible for mafia to simply look up the solution in a list. The initial configurations and solutions can be seen at http://ben.bloomroad.com/kol/nemesis/volcano/index.html.

 

[Grotfang]

If you want to use a list-based approach, myself and another contributer put together a script that will do that for you. You can find a copy here. Please note that mafia's handling is more intelligent (it will solve new mazes as easily as those in the lists) and is also easier for you to use, assuming you are fine with handling the need to heal now and again. Also, as I use mafia's "Solve!" function, and haven't touched that script since that button was introduced, it is not supported. However, I do receive notify kmails (still) on a semi-regular basis, and haven't had a bug report, so it is either working for some people, or they just aren't complaining.

 

[Veracity]

Yup. That's the way it works! KoLmafia takes 5 random steps and thereby learns the entire maze. Unfortunately, at the end of 5 steps, it sometimes ends in a position that cannot reach the goal and you have to swim to shore and try again.

I refuse to build in a fixed list of "known maps" since that means that if they ever add a new map, we'd break on it until we changed the source code. The current method NEVER breaks.

This is operating exactly as intended.

 

[StDoodle]

I'd be in favor of perhaps having a tooltip on the "Solve!" button that said something along the lines of "Warning, you may need to heal up to 5 times as KoLmafia learns the current lava maze layout." But really, if you wouldn't have failed at least that many times yourself, why use the "Solve!" button anyway?

 

[Veracity]

I've never seen 5 steps in a row fail. In other words, I doubt that you will ever have to heal more than once.

 

[xKiv]

I *think* I have had a case (long ago) when mafia was unable to solve a maze. If I remember it correctly, it got stuck after *less* than 5 steps, and repeating several times just got it stuck in the same place every time.
But there might have been some changes since then.
The only thing I remember clearly is eventually solving it by hand (using wiki).
Also, I don't think I had that problem ever again.

 

[Veracity]

When taking the initial 5 steps, if there are multiple choices of platform to step onto at a particular stage, KoLmafia rolls a random number to pick one. If you really can hit a dead-end in less than 5 steps and it repeatedly took the same path to get there, you got RNG hosed.

 

[Veracity]

If I remember it correctly, it got stuck after *less* than 5 steps, and repeating several times just got it stuck in the same place every time.
But there might have been some changes since then.
The only thing I remember clearly is eventually solving it by hand (using wiki).

By the way - you can hit the Solve! button at any time; you don't have to be at the starting position. KoLmafia watches the map as you move manually, too, and if you have taken 5 steps, it's got the whole map and is perfectly happy to take it from there - which could be a dead end, but, if so, it will tell you that before moving.

 

[xKiv]

Actually ... looking at the known maps, and (current) mafia code, I have *no* idea how what I described could have happened, even if I forgot to "swim to shore" ... I will have to pay more attention (and write better (= any) notes) if I have this happen ever again.
I suspect problem will be found between chair and keyboard.