Help needed with graphics glitches for MM4

[WesW]

I am trying to finally finish version four of the Medmod, but I have run into a couple of problems which have me totally stumped.

1)After ending the first turn, the Thinking sign flashes, but when the leader pics for all the other factions should appear, the game CTD's.
At this time, I have placed the mod into the default directory, rather than continuing to try to use the buggy scenario system. Portraits work fine in the faction selection, stack info and unit info screens. It campaign has about 27 factions.

2)Map texture tga's don't show up properly in the game if I save them using either PSP or UP. They look fine in the programs, even Mithil, but in the game they show up with a heavy purple tint. I seem to remember altering the maptex in years past using PSP with no problems.
Unaltered files and those from other mods work fine initially, but if I simply open and save them they show up with the purple tint.
I save them as 24-bit compressed files. Uncompressed files crash the game.
The purple tint does not appear if I save the file as 16-bit, but the image becomes blurry.

[VikingHorde]

2)Map texture tga's don't show up properly in the game if I save them using either PSP or UP. They look fine in the programs, even Mithil, but in the game they show up with a heavy purple tint. I seem to remember altering the maptex in years past using PSP with no problems.
Unaltered files and those from other mods work fine initially, but if I simply open and save them they show up with the purple tint.
I save them as 24-bit compressed files. Uncompressed files crash the game.
The purple tint does not appear if I save the file as 16-bit, but the image becomes blurry.

This is the background map file right? (sorry, have not editted the maps for a year now). I used an old program called CorelDRAW 9 to edit the background map and then saved them as TGA. I have a feeling that some of the new programs use new standards of TGA's and other file types. This is why I always use the old program (plus I don't have money for new ones ).

[WesW]

Thanks, VH, that makes sense. It sounds similar to the problems with new versions of DirectX that are so common. I'll try to "acquire" an older version of PSP and see if that does the trick.

I spent all afternoon today working on the neighbors and border info sections of the campaign text. I must have missed this area somehow when I was forming these areas last year, because I must have found upwards of 75 errors.
The game still crashed at the same point when I tried it out, though.
This point in the turn is also when pieces start to move on the map, so there is a chance that whatever is causing the map glitch may be causing the crash.

If I can't fix the crashes by the time I have the rest of the beta ready, I'll go ahead and post it and hopefully one of you guys can help me out.

[WesW]

VH, you were right about the tga problem. Thanks a bunch. I used PSP 7 to open and saved the defective file, and it showed up correctly in the game. I am so thankful that I won't have to start over with it.

I wasn't able to work on the mod over the weekend, but I got in a few hours today. I decided to make a couple of final changes to the map, so I spent the time implementing those. During that, I found one last error in the Broders section, so I'll cross my fingers the next time I hit End Turn. Wish me luck.

I still have some map work to do, implementing the new changes, and then I have to finish adding the rest of the units and buildings to the campaign map, but that should be all, other than fixing whatever bugs remain in the files.

[VikingHorde]

VH, you were right about the tga problem. Thanks a bunch. I used PSP 7 to open and saved the defective file, and it showed up correctly in the game. I am so thankful that I won't have to start over with it.

Your welcome

[WesW]

I now have all the text work done for the beta. The game still CTD's when the AI is Thinking, and I am still at a loss as to why. I finished going over the neighbors and borders sections a second time last night, and found several more errors, but I feel sure that everything is now correct.
Another odd bug that I can't figure out is why none of the new factions' descriptions show up in the faction selection screen. I compared my file with VH's XL file, and everything seems to match. This should not be something that would affect gameplay, however.

I still need to go over the readmes and update them with the changes I have made since resuming work on the mod, but this shouldn't take too long. After that, I will begin posting the files to my website, and start the beta thread in the Engineer's Guild. Hopefully someone will be able to figure out what is wrong or missing that is causing the CTD's.

[WesW]

The beta is now posted at my webpage- Link .
It still crashes during the thinking stage, so I hope one of you guys can spot the flaw in my setup. I think it is a graphics glitch, propably a section I didn't know to include or have named incorrectly.
There are also links to the four main readmes for the mod, if you want to wait until the CTD issue is resolved before downloading the components. I think they make for very informative and exciting reading.

The Late campaign is the only one included for the beta. The others will not be available until the public release.
The changes to provincial names have not yet been made on the strategic map, though they do show up correctly in the tooltip popups.
Also, most graphics for the new factions are still placeholders, as are many office titles, and a couple of unit descriptions have not been written for the review panel, though they are all included in the Faction Descriptions readme.
Other than these, however, everything else is completed and should only need few if any adjustments for the public release.

I have not yet created the official beta in the Engineering Guild, since I want you guys can check out the CTD. If it isn't solved in the next day or two, I'll go ahead and make the official thread, but it would obviously be nice for the mod to be actually playable before announcing it to the masses.

Thanks for the faction descriptions info, VH. It would appear that these links are hard-coded like the Viking campaign descriptions.

Thanks for the tips, Barocca. I never could figure out how to work with the LMM, unfortunately, but that means that I did create the LBMs from bitmaps.
I'll go back and recheck the ports, too, since I found out just yesterday that I had not included one for one of the new provinces.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I might have a suggestion as it made my mod crash. You can only add 8 NEW provinces. Use new names for these, but may I suggest changing the names for any additional provinces you may have used back to the original ID's. For example, call ID_GOTLAND ID_MALTA instead. I think this may have something to do with the hardcoded events. It worked for me anyway.

[Duke Dick]

may i ask if all the battle flags were made by you wes, because they are pretty good stuff.

[WesW]

That makes a lot of sense, VH. I'll definitely try that.

Duke, iirc, all the new graphics were sent in by the guys who worked on developing the new factions last year. All of their work was really amazing. I think that students of history will be very impressed when they read the unit descriptions and start seeing all the historical figures popping up as generals and other units. I feel that the primary focus in a game has to be gameplay, but altogether there were hundreds and hundreds of hours spent on historical research and development for the mod, down to things like trade goods and resources.

I bundled an Historical notes doc in the Charts and Readmes folder, where I collected a lot of the stuff that the guys sent in. I'll try and go over it sometime, now that the other stuff is done, and refine it.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Wes I think you mean BKB not VH.

Also, I'm pretty sure a few of those battle flags might be mine - Almoravids, Georgia, Kievans, Armenians and Sweden I'm almost certain about. I think a few of the others (Crusaders, Teutonic, Portugal, etc.) may also have been taken from my mod though I did not make these so that's fine (but some of these sets were incomplete before I finished them). I'm ok with it but a credit in the readme would be nice.