CTD's in mod using FN_FREE factions

[barocca]

i have one of grells old mods here

the first crusade

he made it for VI, but used the fn_free factions

all seems to be well and good right up till you go to battle
certain units crash the game and i cannot for the life of me figure out why
(it only affects his new factions)
IE:
archers- good

urban militia - crash
mounted sergeant - crash
militia sergeant - crash

the unit prod, build prod and startpos files are here
first crusade

i am hoping this is a simple problem, i'd like to upload the mod working, not crashing
B.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Its the old facshields problem. You have to duplicate the 8 folders with facshield units in them and rename them Custom0-7. Then go into the Crusader Unit Prod and make sure ALL units that fed from the original folders now feed from this one. Grell made this before Lysander came up with the solution. Grell was one of the best, damn shame we don't see him round here anymore.

[barocca]

you are going to have to explain that to me again

how do i feed the units to the custom facshield folders?

and do i also have to duplicate the textures/men/sillyplarsh folders into custom folders?

IF SO, how the heck do i get Crusaders_unit_prod to NOT cause it's own ctd when i try to load the game?

you see i thought the fac shields may have something to do with it

so i duped the textures/men/sillyplarsh folders into custom folders
but when i changed mountedsergeants to point at custom1 i got a wobbly error and CTD on game start (or was that because that unit did not have a facshield folder also named custom1 ?)

B.

(if i remember rightly it was "type not recognised")

[cegorach]

I wonder it the problem is connected to the facshields... If it is I wonder if by eliminating certain pieces of animations it is possible to avoid CTDs ?

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Are you using VI Barocca? The folders have to be Custom0, Custom1, etc. The folders with problems are PlateS, PlateCav, Peasant, ChainHlm, HlPlArSH, MsHelm, MKnight and LArmWCav I believe.

The FacShield folders themselves don't need to be touched at all.

[cegorach]

Only Custom0-7 and not Custom 8 or 9 BKB ?

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Custom 8 and 9 are free. All 10 would have been free otherwise.

[cegorach]

I know, but does it mean that I can't place the CTD causing BIFs in Custom 8-9 instead of let's say Custom 0 and 1 ?

Do I have to use them not the other Customs, I thought it doesn't matter which ones Customs I use as long as they are Customs

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Oh yeah it probably would be ok.

[barocca]

oki

duplicated folder LArmWCav
renamed it Custom0
renamed the lbm and bif files to Custom0
edited mounted sergeant entry in unit prod from LArmWCav to Custom0

load game
error message
description label is unknown: column 27 row 109 Custom0


edited mounted sergeant entry in unit prod from LArmWCav to CUSTOM0

game loads!!

now to test the unit!

[barocca]

oki that worked

folders

PlateCav : LArmWCav : HlPlArSH : ChainHlm : Peasant : PlateS : Mknight : : MSHelm


FOUND A GENERAL BUG
ChivalricManAtArms, their facshield folder is misnamed!!
it IS ChivalricMenAtArms is should be ChivalricManAtArms!!!
FeudalManAtArms
their folder is also misnamed Men

B.

[barocca]

Grells Mod is still unstable

but the facshield fix works quite nicely in MTW-VI standard

here's what CMAA and FMAA look like with their correct facshields



now to get back to grells mod...
B.

[edyzmedieval]

FOUND A GENERAL BUG
ChivalricManAtArms, their facshield folder is misnamed!!
it IS ChivalricMenAtArms is should be ChivalricManAtArms!!!
FeudalManAtArms
their folder is also misnamed Men

B.

It's not a bug.... It's named plurally because it counts as a whole unit, not as a single man.....

[barocca]

it IS a bug, because the units are mAn in unit_prod,
and mEn in facshields,

the misnamed facshield folders cannot be "found" by the game,
causing the facshields to NOT display

renaming the facshield folder to mAn gives the units their shields

B.


Grells Mod is stable in campaign, unstable in Custom Battle - hitting the back button from the unit selection panel causes a CTD

any clues??

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Sounds familiar. Has he added any new units? Do they all have review panel pics?

If not, does he have shields for all his new factions?

[barocca]

as far as i can tell he has "renamed" using the names.txt
(where the game uses name "x", but displays name "y")

he has added complete new strategic units

i will have to go look and check all his new factions have shields (one faction was missing the grey shield, fixed that already)

reviewe panel pics,
seeing he is using internal names for his units they should all be there

another thing i will have to check out



but IIRC this was caused by something else...
(it sounds so darn familiar...)

off to sleep, looong day at work tomorrow

cheers,
B.

[barocca]

all factions have shields,
although they have the grey spotting around the edges,
i seem to be having trouble getting rid of the grey spotting??


as far as i can tell all units have review panel icons


a further event (as well as custom battle problems,)

In a Campaign, if you shuffle too many units around when sorting reinforcements on the "go to battle" screen you can CTD,

sorting them on the battle map during deployment is ok


advice on the grey spotting around the shields,
and on possible cases for custom battle "go back" and sorting reinforcement CTD's
much appreciated

B.

[EatYerGreens]

FOUND A GENERAL BUG
ChivalricManAtArms, their facshield folder is misnamed!!
it IS ChivalricMenAtArms is should be ChivalricManAtArms!!!
FeudalManAtArms
their folder is also misnamed Men

B.

I did a double-take and thought you'd found a bug in the original game!!

I presume you mean this bug is specific to the mod under discussion?

Now, I dunno if this is any help but doesn't NAMES.TXT contain pairs of lists where both the singular and plural forms are tagged to various labels, so that in game messages come out gramatically correct?

(I had to go look at it again and found these).
....
["ChivalricManAtArms_Singular"] {"Chivalric Man-At-Arms"}
....
["ChivalricManAtArms_Plural"] {"Chivalric Men-At-Arms"}

On second thoughts, this isn't relevant to the problem.

What you found has revealed a potential pit-trap whereby a subtle mis-type on a folder name can disconnect a unitprod entry from what it's supposed to point at, causing errors and crashes. What I've mentioned is only dotting I's and crossing T's in getting the descriptive text in the game to work properly. I wonder if adding a new unit but forgetting to amend the text entries also causes crashes?

Also, remember how unit names appear in battles, when you hover cursor over a unit - I wonder if that links to NAMES.TXT entries? Next time I have a unit down to one man, I'll take a closer look at its descriptive text - does it say MEN or MAN....?