Bug on the Firehole

[Reg O]

Hi Paul
I would like to report a bug to you. I was fishing the Firehole river, with a #14 black gnat, Expert mode. It was on the screen when you push the arrow key twice to the left. It has the highway and some cars and a fisherman on the right bank. I hooked the monster that is usually right at your feet when the screen loads. It ran up the left side of the screen right along the edge of the picture, about 2/3 of the way up, and then started to jump. It kept jumping in the same spot even when I took the tension off the line and let out lots of slack line. After letting it jump while I tried to make it move, I finally tightened up the line and broke off. When I did this it quit jumping and disappeared. I don't know if this is something you can fix, but I thought I would mention it to you. Great game, and in case I forget, I'll take the new game on disc on the 15th for 5 bucks off.

Reg O

[paul]

Hi, Reg! Thanks for the report. I'm not sure exactly what happened there. Maybe while he jumped he got pulled to a spot the game considered dry land, or too shallow to swim, and he couldn't fall back down so he got stuck in a jump. I'll see if I can find a specific cause and try to clear that up.

I'm doing some rather extensive testing with the Third Edition now and finding just a few other bugs. I went through all the sites (actually over 475 in this edition) and found a few of the sites in the current game are missing sound files. Those will be fixed in the release. It's almost ready!

Thanks for your support of the game!

Paul

[Kaldi]

Whilst trying to beat the high score posted for the 5 Challenge I have been trying to catch Steelheads on the 2 rivers where steelies are available. I am able to hook the fish and despite initial surges the fish start to tire and with a little luck I can recover line with an occassional run, which presumably means I could land the fish. however after struggling for about 10 minutes all of a sudden the fish starts to take line and does not relent, "Screaming Reels". If the rod tension is relaxed then line can be recovered for a couple of seconds but then the line tension goes straight back to above the drag limit with the resulting line loss. The only way out is to break the line. Furthermore the Firehole bug appeared on the Polis River (opening Screen). It would seem that for both bugs a loop is entered and that the only way to exit the routine is to break the line. I have reinstalled the game as I have not a hope in hell of getting any where near the posted top score for the 5 Challenge, if this keeps happening

[Pitti]

Hi Kaldi,

I found this bug too at the new atlantic salmon river. I lost my last 4 fishes because of this bug.
Paul knows about the issue and will look at it after his homecoming.

About the contest:
I will cancel the current contest up to this bug is fixed. It's impossible to run a fair competition under the circumstances.

We'll replay it after the fix is available.

Regards Pitti

[paul]

A little update on this one: What's going on is that the hooked fish is determined to get as far away from you as possible. On some fishing sites a fish can run off into the distance, spooling your reel to break off. In others there's no water that far away in view. The fish won't swim out of the visible area (it's no fun fighting a fish that's out of sight) so when they reach the far bank they're confused. They want to go farther away, but they can't go on land, so they thrash at the shoreline. It happens most often when using a leader that's too light to give the fish much resistance, like the steelhead on an 8X leader. I'm working on that today. When they hit the bank I want them to change course, usually heading for deeper water. I may adjust the odds of a break-off or hook slipping when dealing with a fish far too strong for the leader as well.

Paul

[Pitti]

It happens most often when using a leader that's too light to give the fish much resistance, like the steelhead on an 8X leader

Paul, I don't think the leader size is the primary problem.
I never used an 8x leader at the highlands of scotland, but got the problem also when a 2x or 1x was used for salmon. For example site 6 is a very small pool and it seems impossible to stop the fish inside this arrea without it reaches the problem-zone.

Regards Peter

[dcarp]

I only ran into the problem while using the super light leader during the last challenge. There have been a couple times when the fish appears to be "stuck" jumping, but after a couple of minutes of putting some tension on the fish, moving the rod to different angles, etc, it will work out. (I thought this was a feature )

Dave