0012670: Unit combat reports use repeat system when GENERAL announcement alert exists - Dwarf Fortress Bug Tracker

ID	Project	Category	View Status	Date Submitted	Last Update

0012670	Dwarf Fortress	Dwarf Mode -- Interface, Announcements	public	2024-01-28 14:12	2024-01-28 14:12

Reporter	Bumber	Assigned To
Priority	normal	Severity	minor	Reproducibility	always
Status	new	Resolution	open
Platform	Steam	OS	Windows	OS Version	8.1
Product Version	50.11

Summary	0012670: Unit combat reports use repeat system when GENERAL announcement alert exists
Description	If and only if you've got a GENERAL (indicated by an orange ! in graphics mode, or white !! in ASCII) announcement alert active (i.e., not dismissed by left-click,) then your combat/sparring/hunting reports will start being added using repeats. Unlike the old repeat system, it's not limited to the most recent report being a repeat, but the entire 3000. (This makes sense for the alert badges, but not combat reports or the "All Alerts" screen, which are supposed to be chronological.) For example: Urist stands up. Urist falls over. Urist stands up. becomes: Urist stands up. x2 Urist falls over. in the combat log. (This probably happens between combat logs, too, preventing an entry from showing up if the same message occurred previously where the unit wasn't involved in the conflict.) I assume this system isn't supposed to apply to combat reports, since it makes them confusing. Being tied to GENERAL is also a quirk of combat/sparring/hunting being context dependent and falling back on the default alert type otherwise. (As it stands, this context isn't checked until after the code responsible for checking repeats.) As a related issue, in the All Alerts screen there aren't any "x[N]" indicators displayed on repeats. The announcements should also probably be bumped to the most recent in the list there, instead of remaining where they were before they were repeated.
Steps To Reproduce	1. Have a GENERAL announcement occur that is set to display in Fort mode. The monarch arrival announcements are by default, but it's easier to test by changing the settings of a combat announcement. Setting COMBAT_BLOCK to Fort temporarily should work. 2. Have multiple identical combat messages. This is very likely for STAND_UP and others. 3. Check unit combat logs.
Additional Information	Based on my reverse-engineering, the alert type check seems to be performed inside a "for" loop where it could actually be used as a condition to skip the loop for efficiency's sake.
Tags	No tags attached.

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2024-01-28 14:12	Bumber	New Issue