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.

[VikingHorde]

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 was never able to make the descriptions show in all era's, used a huge amount of time trying to solve it. It doesn't affect gameplay, but it sucks because it looks like a bug in the mod. If you are going to try and solve the description problem, then it would be a good idea to do it as the last thing before release. It will properly take a lot of time and strength, so it is better to release a mod without descriptions than non at all.

[barocca]

i know this is a pain,
i had to dso it several times for Samurai/Shog mod

you made the map in LMM?
i'd suggest remake it from the bitmap

remember to add all the changes you have manually made to startpos to the bitmap (land bridges and such)

REMEMBER you may have to readjust castles and ports
(LMM gets them close, but orientation for ports always needs tweaking)

B

[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.

[WesW]

Sorry, BKB, I was really sleepy when I made that post.
I did change the names back to the originals, but unfortunately it didn't fix the problem.

As for the graphics, I thought that all of them had been taken off the internet from various historical sites. I'll certainly make a note in the readme.

As for the crash, I have noticed that it doesn't always happen at exactly the same time during the AI turn.
I found a few bugs in the buildings and units texts last night which could or would have caused crashes in certain situations. This crash occurs even if their are no buildings or units present on the map, however.

[WesW]

Well, I have made some progress. It turned out that there was one final error in the neighbors section. Since I had reverted the provincial names back to the originals, I was able to alter the original campaign text to use the new map, and it now seems to run correctly. The fully modded file still crashes when the leader portraits should appear.

If you have more than a couple dozen factions in the game, do you need to use one of the higher map resolution settings? It looked like 24 or so is all that would fit in the row.

I think that it has to be something about the campaign file to crash the game at this point. If it's not the number of factions, I guess I'll continue to alter the campaign file to isolate different parts of the mod until I can figure it out.

Edit: I tried the game with a higher resolution, and the portraits appeared! The game still crashes part-way through the AI turn, but at least it's progress.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Its not the number of factions - its normal that they don't all fit on the screen. I take it you've changed your new sea names back to the normal ones as well?

[WesW]

I have finally gotten everything working, just as I was being fitted for a straightjacket. I have posted the working beta on my webpage, replacing the buggy files. All the time I was scouring the files trying to find the bugs, I caught other errors and such, so this should be about as finely polished a beta as you'll ever see. I am sure things will crop up here and there, and the overall economic system needs to be observed and adjusted as necessary, but I expect that the mod will be ready to go gold relatively quickly, knock on wood.

It turned out that there were two different bugs, both of which caused the exact same type of crash, and the crash was only obscurely related to the causes. They were based upon hardcoded requirements which were unique, undocumented to my knowledge, and totally inconsistent with the rest of the file. This was perhaps the most difficult case to diagnose that I have ever run across in over five years of modding. Sometime I'll make a post in the bug thread detailing them.

Thanks again to everyone who chimed in with suggestions and advice.
BKB, I think the mod would have worked without changing all the names back, but if I hadn't, I would never have been able to isolate these bugs, so it wasn't wasted effort. Changing everything back allowed me to mix and match the modded and original units and buildings texts, which finally allowed me to determine that, although the completion of a castle triggered the crash, the causes themselves were in the units text.
I should have kept a diary of my efforts so that I could include it in an application for a job in the industry, because I don't know how many pros would have been able to isolate and solve these without any access to the hardcode.

Anyway, it's done. I'll start the official beta thread sometime shortly, but I thought I would let you guys know first. Installation instructions are detailed in the Intro readme, but all you need to do really is make sure the executable is pointed to your MTW folder. It used to be pointed at the Total War folder, but this should be easier. Remember that only the Late campaign is included.

[Bartix]

The leg end returns again! Wes! MedMod!
It's alive!
excited now to try

[sprucemoose]

wes

i get a CTD when i attack scotland with the english,it lets you organise your forces but then crashes as the battle sceen loads

[WesW]

I'll check that out SM.

I have just finished posting the official beta thread in the Engineering Guild, so please make future mod posts there.