Important Check Hint Broken

[shirosoluna]

Important check hint type was changed in the following suspected PR's, as part of 8.3.41

2447
2438

This change somehow now no longer allows hintable regions for No Logic seeds which do not have a playthrough or similar hint regions as in logic seeds.

This did not fix the issue of being able to remove regions from being hintable, which is a separate problem and now prevents this hint distribution to be used for other settings than just league.
This hint type is no longer usable as an "Important Check" hint type to state only # of major items in a region.

Previous version of 8.3.30 worked
Latest testing of cached web versions give this error, and persists up to latest 8.3.56

Error Message: [romBuilding] Randomizer Python code error - ValueError: Total of weights must be greater than zero
https://ootrandomizer.com/seed/get?id=2006821

further discord conversation https://discord.com/channels/274180765816848384/476723801032491008/1439966167904026724

[fenhl]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Roll a seed using the following plando:

   {
       "settings": {
           "logic_rules": "none",
           "hint_dist": "important_checks"
       }
   }

2. Generator fails with the following exception:

   Traceback (most recent call last):
     File "C:\Users\fenhl\git\github.com\fenhl\OoT-Randomizer\stage\OoTRandomizer.py", line 57, in start
       main(settings)
       ~~~~^^^^^^^^^^
     File "C:\Users\fenhl\git\github.com\fenhl\OoT-Randomizer\stage\Main.py", line 46, in main
       spoiler = generate(settings)
     File "C:\Users\fenhl\git\github.com\fenhl\OoT-Randomizer\stage\Main.py", line 125, in generate
       return make_spoiler(settings, worlds)
     File "C:\Users\fenhl\git\github.com\fenhl\OoT-Randomizer\stage\Main.py", line 195, in make_spoiler
       build_gossip_hints(spoiler, worlds)
       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
     File "C:\Users\fenhl\git\github.com\fenhl\OoT-Randomizer\stage\Hints.py", line 1345, in build_gossip_hints
       build_world_gossip_hints(spoiler, world, checked_locations.pop(world.id, None))
       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
     File "C:\Users\fenhl\git\github.com\fenhl\OoT-Randomizer\stage\Hints.py", line 1632, in build_world_gossip_hints
       hint_type = random.choices(hint_types, weights=weighted_hint_prob)[0]
                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
     File "C:\Users\fenhl\scoop\apps\python\current\Lib\random.py", line 489, in choices
       raise ValueError('Total of weights must be greater than zero')
   ValueError: Total of weights must be greater than zero
   

This seems to be a side effect of #2438: Hints.is_checked for a location doesn't just check whether the location itself is in checked but also whether its hint area is. This causes all Sometimes hints to be skipped because they're considered “already hinted” by the Important Check hints. The reason this issue only manifests on No Logic is that there are no required items, so no Goal hints generate, so the generator falls back to the Sometimes hints.

The question now is what we want to do about this. In my opinion, having an area hinted as Barren should prevent Sometimes hints in that area from generating, which necessitates the current behavior of Hints.is_checked, and Barren and Important Check hints should remain mutually exclusive, as was decided in the June 2, 2025 dev team call and implemented in #2438. But having Important Check hints prevent Sometimes hints from generating might be a bit too much.

[aofengen]

I feel like adding a parameter to hint distributions to allow for the original intended version of important checks to work should be doable. Something like "important_checks_hint_all_regions": true should work? The original intent of the setting was to guarantee all regions hinted irrespective of other settings, and that should be (and previously should been) respected, imo.

[fenhl]

I'd say that's a feature request that, while it would serve as a workaround for this bug in its original context, should be considered separately.

[aofengen]

that's a fair point - given the discussion we were having in the discord, I misinterpreted this issue as being the functionality of the important check hint type, rather than the explicit bug that had been discovered