CTD problem

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Well, there is one CTD that is bugging us. It has only started developing in our newest builds and we are having a difficult time figuring out what can be causing it. If we have more people thinking about the problem, we might arrive at a solution quicker also, so we're pondering what to do. Here is the CTD issue:

Many battles (we don't have stats here, but certainly not all of them) are CTD'ing in the battle load screen, *but* if you saved right before the battle, when you reload the game it works every time. Don't change anything else, but it still works. So usual issues like unit problems and sprite problems seem to be ruled out. We haven't messed with the sky files lately either, and ctd's in mid-battle have been limited to one reported one so far (and it might have been that person's system having problems), so the sky or weather changes don't seem likely as the problem.

We're still thinking about the situation, but we might go ahead and release it and give a stern warning that it should only be downloaded by folks willing to either put up with it till we can fix it or folks willing to help us fix it.

There were a of corrections and problems solved between the 0.72 and 0.74 release and patch, and this one will be pretty similar in that respect. A few other problems have been reported (one specific ctd was repeating and one happened mid-battle), but we've had a lot of success eliminating most all of these that have to do with units. This is the one we need more minds thinking about. The rest of the mod at this point is at a stage where we think people will really enjoy it, so that is what we are facing right now.

I'm not really soliciting opinions on release now or not (sorry, but that's a decision we are comfortable making ourselves) - but if anyone has any ideas about the CTD or experience with a similar one, please let us know.

[-Praetor-]

Have you found any patron, or an increase in the number of times of the CTD, when a certain faction is a combatant on the battlemap? If not (If it doesn`t happen with a certain faction only), might it be a problem of a placeholder unit/horse (a captain for example, or a placeholder mount)?

If you have solved the problem with the palm trees sprites, perhaps the solution might be causing it, or maybe even the palm forests themselves are causing the CTD... if you ask me why, dunno, it`s a hunch.

Good luck!

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Here is the chief point: a battle may crash while loading, but the exact same battle will work upon reload. Same terrain, same units, same everything as far as we can tell.

[abou]

Would it be the EB script? Unless you are the attacker, you can't reload the script if you save at the battle screen (load, exit screen and restart the script); thus, if you reload, no script.

At least that is all that I can think of.

[Dram]

i get a loading ctd the same as you described, in the current release of EB, in both campaign and custom battles, more commonly in the custom battles. strangely though i used to get it really often (like 20% of the time i loaded a battle) when i first installed the game, but then over time its happened less and less, now it occurs rarely, like 1 in 20 times. the only changes i made was installing the reinforcement ctd fix and the new resources mod, but i dont think they have anything to do with it. i havent heard anybody else complain about getting these kind of ctd's so its kind of strange, but i never got them in vanilla or rtr/spqr so i dont think its my hardware/software.

im afraid i dont know what would cause it :sad:

[Birka Viking]

Would it be the EB script? Unless you are the attacker, you can't reload the script if you save at the battle screen (load, exit screen and restart the script); thus, if you reload, no script.

At least that is all that I can think of.


It sounds like you are on the right track....:2thumbsup:

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I think it is happening regardless of whether scripts are running or not, but it certainly is something to keep in mind while testing it.

[Dumbass]

I think it is happening regardless of whether scripts are running or not, but it certainly is something to keep in mind while testing it.

In saying this does it mean you've tested it with and without the script?

If not, then you should try, seeing as some bugs are very unexpected.

[GMT]

I think this might have something to do with the sprites cuz I had the exact same problem you descibe after installing the sprite pack a while ago, hope this helps!

[Ludens]

I think this might have something to do with the sprites cuz I had the exact same problem you descibe after installing the sprite pack a while ago, hope this helps!
I can confirm that the missing sprites of the spritepack caused random CTD's, but this happened in custom battles as well as campaign ones.

Come to think of it, they may not have been that random. As I recall it, the game crashed when I loaded the custom battle the first time, but not the second. However, this was some time ago so I am not 100% sure of it.

[Watchman]

If I'm not mistaken I've been running into this one for a while in .74. The load bar between the pre-battle info screen and the actual battle goes up to around 3/4 and then the game just CTDs without any explanations, right ? To me it happens at random but usually in the second battle after loading the campaign, the first one after loading is always safe. No idea what causes it, but I've gotten the impression it has something to do with the background music playing during the load screen at least in my case as the CTD for some reason seems to hit during certain music notes. Also, unpacking the music .pak with Vercingetorix's extractor seemed to stabilize things at least slightly - it seems to me as if the CTD tended to hit only after I've been playing a little longer, and not automatically on around the second or third battle. Hardly scientifically accurate, that, though.

Is it possible it could be some sort of "memory overflow" issue due to the script and triggered by something in the music files ? Although I'm enough of a layman to not know if that's even theoretically possible or not...

[Kull]

Would it be the EB script? Unless you are the attacker, you can't reload the script if you save at the battle screen (load, exit screen and restart the script); thus, if you reload, no script.

At least that is all that I can think of.

The script - at least when looked at as "loaded or not loaded" - has no effect. I ran an 80 game test this weekend, and 70% of "first battles" CTD. On reload, half the time I'd start the script, the other half I just forgot. No difference. No CTD on the second time around.

[Tyfus]

I have this exact problem in the current build of EB. While playing campaigns I will regularly get a CTD while loading the battle. I've delt with it simply by saving before every battle. It doesn't seem to care if it is a siege or pitched battle because mine CTD's equally for both. I personally thought it had something to do with the script since usually when I reloaded I forgot to start it before the battle and it worked fine. But I confess to having zero modding skills so it could be anything I guess. I would think about things that weren't changed between mods maybe? Obviously it is the same problem in both builds.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

did you have that spritepack rcross? Or were you playing with just 0.74 and nothing else?

[Kugutsu]

Does it happen in subsequent battles (ie: if you CTD, reload, fight that battle, then go back to the campaign and start another battle, will it CTD again), or is it only the first battle that will do it?

Could it be something to do with the campaign rather than the battle? Im assuming somehow the campaign gets sort of turned down during battles to free up memory etc, and perhaps thats not happening properly.

I dont really know how these things work, just trying to offer other possibilities. The fact that it works fine when you reload seems to rule out unit/trait/general problems, or problems with the battle system itself.

[Cheexsta]

Have you guys tried running Filemon to see what files are being referenced at the point of the crash?

[Watchman]

Filemon ? Is that a Pokémon critter ?

It's nigh certainly not an issue with the assorted text files anyway, as -show_err doesn't say anything and those would then turn up about all the time.


did you have that spritepack rcross? Or were you playing with just 0.74 and nothing else?Now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure it's only started in my case after I put in the spritepack as well as some other stuff like the stratmap resources (plus the grass mod thingy). But I'll readily admit I don't have the foggiest how the sprites could be at fault so incoherently, and the new resource graphics would seem a tad far-fetched for a cause. You'd think that if there was some trouble with them it would turn up in some fashion in the stratmap itself, not when trying to load up to battlemap...

And then there's the thing it doesn't CTD all the time, just when loading battles after the first of the game session.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Does the grass mod thingy have any randomness to it? Weather affect it somehow or does it alter skies? Even then though, we are almost at 100% of reload battles working it seems.

[Lusted]

I had a similar problem with TE 5.0, i don't know what the hell i did but suddenly battles featuring greek culture cities with stone walls would result in a ctd sometimes when loading. I changed nothing related to them, so i was stumped. Unfortuantely i never found out what caused it, i think the game jusat got annoyed with all the changes i made.

[Cheexsta]

did you have that spritepack rcross? Or were you playing with just 0.74 and nothing else?
Thinking about it, the spritepack did cause me troubles, where some battles that had units with incorrect sprites would CTD on their first load, but work just fine on their second - generating new sprites and implementing them fixed the problem for me. Perhaps there is a faulty sprite somewhere?


Filemon ? Is that a Pokémon critter ?
No, it's a program that monitors what files any particular program is referencing at any one time. I found it extremely useful in converting RTR to the 1.5 patch in that it helped me analyse the problem where a CTD had no error. Maybe it can help locate the problem.

Filemon link. (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/filemon.mspx)

[Lusted]

I used to have problems with sprites in TE as well come to think of it, but that came from using a modified RTw 1.3 dmb in 1.5, to solve it i just copied all the text from it into a unmodded 1.5 dmb replacing all the text in it. The coding on the 2 files is slightly different i believe.

[Watchman]

A faulty sprite or similar should cause a CTD in every battle where the sprite or whatever is in use, shouldn't it ? And at least the ones I keep having seem to be entirely indifferent to the exact composition of armies, terrain and weather involved - the only common factor would seem to be that they are after the very first battle of a session.

Army size may be an issue at least in part though. I remember having fought a small series of minor battles with bandits without trouble, then *BAM!* all of sudden a CTD. The longer the game has been running the greater the risk seems to become, which is why I've been assuming it's some sort of "memory overflow" issue. Although whether memory-hogging other programs are running at the same time doesn't seem to affect the CTD rate, merely overall game and loading speed.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Rise of Persia had a similar CTD when loading battles. You could play one maybe two battles, but on the second or third you would get a CTD. You could then load a game and play another battle or two without problem. They fixed the sprites in a patch and it went away. Since you seem convinced it isn't the sprites, it could be some other new graphics?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

We're not convinced it isn't sprites.

Any idea about what the ROP issue with sprites was exactly? Were they not present? Wrong format? Some other issue?

[Lusted]

Like i said earlier, i had problems in TE with sprites that related to every 2nd battle fought resulting in a ctd after playing the mod for a while. The solution turned out to be copying the cotents from the descr_model_battle.txt into a clean 1.5 dmb overwriting the original content. There were no problems with the sprites or the way i'd coded them, but it was the fact i was using a modified 1.3 dmb in 1.5 that was cusing the problems, as the way the file is coded changed from 1.3 to 1.5

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Sorry Lusted. Thanks mate. We'll look into that.

[Lusted]

I'd also do that with all your files: find clean 1.5 versions of them, copy the code from your modded files into those new ones and then save them, as the coding(when they're saved) seems to have changed for a few 1.5 files.

[Yun Dog]

Interesting...

Ive never encountered this CTD

playing vanilla 0.74 with not sprite pack

[Geoffrey S]

I've never encountered this bug in 0.74; only got Roman GUI and TK-421s elephant mod installed.

Didn't patch 1.3 introduce a memory leak that still existed in 1.5? Considering the much more taxing nature of EB that could be part of the problem.

[Lusted]

I know there was that issue in 1.3, but i know that 1.5 reduced it lots, or fixed it, can't remember which.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

We're trying it out Lusted. I don't know whether it will work or not, but I just wanted to say thanks for chipping in with some advice having had experience with the matter.

[Dram]

i get a loading ctd the same as you described, in the current release of EB, in both campaign and custom battles, more commonly in the custom battles. strangely though i used to get it really often (like 20% of the time i loaded a battle) when i first installed the game, but then over time its happened less and less, now it occurs rarely, like 1 in 20 times. the only changes i made was installing the reinforcement ctd fix and the new resources mod, but i dont think they have anything to do with it. i havent heard anybody else complain about getting these kind of ctd's so its kind of strange, but i never got them in vanilla or rtr/spqr so i dont think its my hardware/software.

im afraid i dont know what would cause it :sad:

bzzzt some other people mentioned they installed that sprite pack, i forgot to mention i had that installed from the first time i installed EB too. i think it was bonny's sprite pack.

[Kull]

Like i said earlier, i had problems in TE with sprites that related to every 2nd battle fought resulting in a ctd after playing the mod for a while. The solution turned out to be copying the cotents from the descr_model_battle.txt into a clean 1.5 dmb overwriting the original content. There were no problems with the sprites or the way i'd coded them, but it was the fact i was using a modified 1.3 dmb in 1.5 that was cusing the problems, as the way the file is coded changed from 1.3 to 1.5

I made the change you suggested and then ran the same campaign that was generating CTDs in 70% of the "First Battles". After 24 turns and 10 battles, there were exactly zero CTDs, so the fix looks promising. Still looking for others on the team to report similar success. Thanks for sharing, man! :2thumbsup:

[Cheexsta]

A faulty sprite or similar should cause a CTD in every battle where the sprite or whatever is in use, shouldn't it ? And at least the ones I keep having seem to be entirely indifferent to the exact composition of armies, terrain and weather involved - the only common factor would seem to be that they are after the very first battle of a session.
Actually, I find that faulty sprites cause a CTD the first time the battle is loaded, but then the battle loads properly when the savegame is reloaded. When the battle is running, the faulty sprites are shown by a sort of 'sparkly' whiteness/clearness at a distance.

So if that effect occurs, then it's more than likely a faulty sprite. But it seems Lusted's solution is on the right track...

[Lusted]

I made the change you suggested and then ran the same campaign that was generating CTDs in 70% of the "First Battles". After 24 turns and 10 battles, there were exactly zero CTDs, so the fix looks promising. Still looking for others on the team to report similar success. Thanks for sharing, man!

No problem guys, im glad i could help. It's a little known problem that should really be more well known so that mod teams know what to do when it happens. And im glad i've helped make EB 0.8 more bug free!

[Dram]

No problem guys, im glad i could help. It's a little known problem that should really be more well known so that mod teams know what to do when it happens. And im glad i've helped make EB 0.8 more bug free!

good work dude!

*slaps lusted on the back* :2thumbsup:

[Dumbass]

Whoop!:smash: