Stripped-Down Mod Folder

[Makanyane]

It is starting to look more like it could be pathing or something else related to size - spent most of yesterday working up a smaller map, reduced Alpaca's base map to about 200 pixels square map_regions, and added land mass, regions etc., but without changing any non-map files or set up. That one hasn't crashed at all yet. (touch wood)

The earlier versions we were having trouble with were 510 pix square like the stripped down map, though with lots of land and regions, they would still have failed under the old landmass problem, so there could be some vestige of that still around ?

[nikolai1962]

The thing about the pathing algorithm is it needs to store information on all the tiles it has checked while it is executing. It has an array of all the tiles it has checked and rejected and an "open" array of possible paths that it gradually goes through till it finds its goal. On a large map this can apparently lead to a huge demand on memory. On land, they can get around this by region-hopping but i don't know how they'd deal with it with a really huge sea. That's why i was thinking it might be pirates. Could be a red herring.

[alpaca]

Yeah you may be right. I also believe now it's got something to do with missions because after removing them it seemed to run more stable.
I'll remove pirates next to see what happens.

[nikolai1962]

yeah, missions could make sense in this context too.

[wilddog]

I've always had a random crash issue on my big map and thought it was somehow mission or possibly event related (partly because I hadn't really edited the missions) and because it seemed to be delayed if I got some sort of event early on (eg candidate for adoption, marriage etc). Makanyane then tried with a smaller map but didn't seem to get the crash so could still be pathing.

I tried running the game automatically using the AI's setup but this used to show the map on the whole screen and then just crash so I didn't know what turn anything had happened on.

[alpaca]

Well missions aren't all there's to it. I removed all missions and all events, but I still get crashes (I think less frequently, mind).
I also made the map smaller to a size of 50 pixels in regions, it has 9 rectangular regions 8 of which belong to england and 1 to France.
I still can't figure out what crashes it but it always happens in the Rebel turn. It doesn't happen in vanilla, does it? I'll try an auto-pilot test.

[wilddog]

alpaca
How do you set up auto turn so you can see the turn you are on? I tried an autoturn set up but the lower part of the screen with the turns etc on it gets covered by the map as soon as I switch my faction to the AI.

[alpaca]

Copy this into your campaign script:

declare_counter turncounter
monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionType england
    log always New Turn:
    log_counter always turncounter
    inc_counter turncounter 1
end_monitor

This will log each turn in your logfile and you can easily see which turn the game went out.

[wilddog]

@alpaca - Thanks.

[alpaca]

Ok after remembering about the no_brigands and no_pirates hidden resources and putting them on the map, the reason for the crashes on the stripped down map are brigands or pirate spawns.
It ran perfectly fine for 150 turns (after which I cancelled) with the hidden resources, whereas without it it'd usually crash within 30 turns.
The question is now why exactly this happens.
On the map I have only English_Rebels, and they are described properly in descr_rebel_factions. Both faction creator and faction in descr_regions are england
The only thing that could screw it up is pirates or brigands spawning on invalid tiles, however I have no idea what could make a tile invalid. You know the stripped map only has a tiny island with uniform height, and the crashes occured on a much smaller testmap than the 510*510 one, too.
I'm not sure if I'll put any more time into this right now as there's more productive stuff to do than wondering about why brigands crash my game.

Edit: By the way, I'll release an update for the stripped map that'll not only have a stripped map but everything stripped (factions, units, cultures, etc.) as a base for TC-style mods

[wilddog]

@alpaca - Interesting to know that an issue may be the spawning of brigands/pirates.

I'll try that out on a simple map as Makanyane and I have been struggling as to why we are getting no crashes with a map with one faction and a fairly consistent crash on go 12 or 15 when we have 2 factions. We used England and Scotland. Crash existed when both were in but if either was taken out the crash disappeared again! The map we are using isn't that big 189*189 on regions.

The release of the base map will at least allow us to baseline against it to try and resolve the other problems we are having.

Back to your Italian Mod then eh?

[alpaca]

@alpaca - Interesting to know that an issue may be the spawning of brigands/pirates.

I'll try that out on a simple map as Makanyane and I have been struggling as to why we are getting no crashes with a map with one faction and a fairly consistent crash on go 12 or 15 when we have 2 factions. We used England and Scotland. Crash existed when both were in but if either was taken out the crash disappeared again! The map we are using isn't that big 189*189 on regions.

The release of the base map will at least allow us to baseline against it to try and resolve the other problems we are having.

Back to your Italian Mod then eh?

Yeah actually that new thing will serve as a base where we can add our stuff.

Edit: And I obviously still have to write that coast filter...

[wilddog]

@Alpaca - I think I understand why we were hitting a problem with 2 (or more factions). Its the pope again. Doesn't seem to be an issue with the AI running as the disable papal elections is switched to off. However, for the normal single player it was still on and causing the crash as none of the actual factions was a papal faction.

In your new set of files you may want to include an amended SM factions with that attribute removed from the Papal_states and also remove it from the Strat file ( I did it to both to stop the error haven't tried if only one of them would stop it).

[alpaca]

@Alpaca - I think I understand why we were hitting a problem with 2 (or more factions). Its the pope again. Doesn't seem to be an issue with the AI running as the disable papal elections is switched to off. However, for the normal single player it was still on and causing the crash as none of the actual factions was a papal faction.

In your new set of files you may want to include an amended SM factions with that attribute removed from the Papal_states and also remove it from the Strat file ( I did it to both to stop the error haven't tried if only one of them would stop it).

His hatness is gone for good, only England and the Rebels are left
Thanks for the tip though.

And by the way, you don't need to remove it in descr_strat. That only sets the AI label you can find in descr_campaign_ai_db.xml

[wilddog]

Alpaca
Thanks - yes I cross checked afterwards that you didn't need the AI label. I just couldn't remember for sure at the time.

[General_Sun]

Hi Alpaca, is this 100% stripped down? It seems as if the minimap doesn't start all the way to the left edge of the map and the left is cut off in fact.

[alpaca]

Hi Alpaca, is this 100% stripped down? It seems as if the minimap doesn't start all the way to the left edge of the map and the left is cut off in fact.

The left hand side of the minimap is cut off because the game has that bar over it which in vanilla hides America. You can amend it by using a script command (unhide_radar or something, I forgot) or by supplying another radar map which is smaller.

[General_Sun]

Thank you for that answer, I knew it had something to do with America but was uncertain how to get rid of it. I even tried to use several events but no avail. Anyway, thank you.

Edit: I just think that that should be included in the stripped down version, as counter-intuitive as that sounds.

[alpaca]

Thank you for that answer, I knew it had something to do with America but was uncertain how to get rid of it. I even tried to use several events but no avail. Anyway, thank you.

Edit: I just think that that should be included in the stripped down version, as counter-intuitive as that sounds.

Well I don't know, I was thinking about including a radar map but right now I'm too lazy to work on a new version.