A modder's guide to CTDs

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Here's a neat new one:

CTD when one faction seems to be attacking another faction only. The CTD occurs at the moment where the intermediate battle initiation screen should pop up. For example, you click an enemy faction settlement to attack, and you might get the "Attack Neutral Faction?" pop up, but then as it should next load the screen that judges both armies, and lets you choose whether or not to fight the battle yourself or auto resolve it, at that precise moment there is a CTD. This does not seem to occur when fighting against rebels of any sort.

I'll try to update this as progress is made.

[Dol Guldur]

So you are saying this does not occur when the factions involved are at war as there would be no pop-up attack-confirmation box? So the error is attached to diplomacy or to the generationof the "at war/broken alliance" event? Events would be my first port of call I think.

[Dromikaites]

Campaign Map Loading Kick to Main Menu: when two characters (generals, captains, spies, etc) are placed on the same tile in the descr_strat.txt.

If we exit the game after the Kick to Main Menu there is no error message. This makes the error sometimes hard to discover.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

So you are saying this does not occur when the factions involved are at war as there would be no pop-up attack-confirmation box? So the error is attached to diplomacy or to the generationof the "at war/broken alliance" event? Events would be my first port of call I think.

It now seems to occur sometimes even when factions are already at war. No characters involved at all either - outside of a city in the open field.

Happening right at the moment the window should open for withdraw/autoresolve/fight options are available. Will keep looking.

And now it is happening when some other factions attack my city, if they were not at war previously - or if they are sieging me too even at war.

And now ships attacking neutral factions cause the CTD too.

[Dol Guldur]

The elements - as I am sure you know - for the scroll would be an event title, an event string, an event image, music, interface-related TGA files and the "bi options" header on/off depending on whether it is 1.5 or BI (i.e. night attack box) in the DS file.

These are the very obvious things.

[Agraes]

I was codding rebels for ATW and I noticed CTD on AI turns, I was firstly thinking it was related to names but after some expirimentation I concluded this was caused by rebel armies being placed on the sea. I know it can looks weird, but in my case the army was more on the beach, the strat map did load but CTD occured on AI turn.

[Roman_Man#3]

not sure if this was mentioned.

I took a culture out of descr_sm_factions.txt, mainly for the reasons that I didn't need it.

It seems you need a faction with the Egyptian culture(one I took out, may be for more cultures), or it will CTD with a message about descr_building_battle, because as soon as I gave the slave faction Egyptian culture, it worked perfectly.


How wierd

I will test more cultures later.

[Makanyane]

It seems you need a faction with the Egyptian culture(one I took out, may be for more cultures), or it will CTD with a message about descr_building_battle, because as soon as I gave the slave faction Egyptian culture, it worked perfectly.

It has done that to me too in BI when I took hun culture out of sm_factions, lines it was objecting to in descr_building_battle where ones like

##barb_log_wall.tga
{
roman ##roman_log_wall.tga
hun ##roman_log_wall.tga
eastern ##eastern_log_wall.tga
nomad ##eastern_log_wall.tga

I found taking the lines out for the affected culture fixed problem - as far as I remember that was only file it was funny about. Would be curious if you find same sort of fix works in RTW?

[Roman_Man#3]

I am sure taking the lines out would work. I wish I had thought of that. hehe.


At least for future reference it was taking the culture out of descr_sm_factions that caused it.

[Abokasee]

Found a KTM, having a invalid entry (Ie having an effect that dosnt exsist) will do a KTM

[Dol Guldur]

Just as a clarification, the CTD that occurs on trying to view the faction stats for top 5 factions DOES kick in if you have a shadow faction as one of those five minimum factions *if* it is not resurrected at the time of viewing.

EDIT: And to confirm also what Makanyane and RedSpot have implied - it would see that shadowing (and possibly spawn on event - untested) cannot co-exist in a BI mod along with superfactions. Adding superfaction lines whilst shadow factions are present in the DS.txt file will cause a CTD at the end of the campaign loading bar.

[Makanyane]

Started doing this yonks ago and keep forgetting to do any more about it....

There is more up to date version of the list in first post on the wiki
RTW:_Modders_guide_to_CTD's
which should hopefully include most new confirmed CTD causes that got mentioned in thread.

Please help keep that version up to date and add anything you notice that's missing.

[Luciano B]

I encountered a strange CTD problem I have come across while beta testing our mod "Paeninsula Italica". The game crashes during the loading phase of the saved campaign games. Our mod is based on RTW/BI; I'm using RTW/BI Gold edition, the one which comes with "Total War: Eras"
...suggestions?

[Patrizius]

a new error:
CDT if you put volcanes in the sea(at thebeginning of your turn)
CDT if you put non naval unit in pirates slots in descr_rebels

hope it helps ;)

[Squid]

For the pirate CTD, does it CTD if there's at least one naval unit, or do all units have to be naval units?

[Patrizius]

it CDT both if one naval unit is assigned to a non pirates group in descr_rebel_factions.txt and if you assign a non-naval unit to a pirate group.if you make one error and other units are correct you will get random CDT on different turns if you re-load the game.it's very hard to dscover because it depends on what unit is choosen to be spawned and if the bugged unit is not choosen nothing happends

[Patrizius]

i have just finded the bug that destroyed my mod for 2 weeks XD
CDT when AI tries to recruit a special unit that has some animals assigned in a wrong number
For instance if a elephant unit can handle 3 passengers and in the "soldier" entry in the edu you write
"soldier elephant_unit,9,6,1"
(error this should be "soldier elephant_unit,18,6,1".This because 6*3=18 as the elephant can carry 3 passengers each one and they are 6)
you will get a CDT without an error message.

the same is true for handlers(dogs or pigs + men must be less than 60 or you will get a CDT)