Bug Reporting

@Grave - Thanks for the heads-up. We just need to create tags for the new BtS orders like Blockade, Sea Patrol, etc. Also, I guess when a unit is on the move it does it too? We need a goto tag then. These are simple graphics, so when I get some time I'll see about working something up in Gimp.

I have a couple of quick questions.

1. I have a game I started with BUG mod 2.00 (I use it in my //MODS// folder) Can I throw the new version in and continue with my game that's in progress?

2. With my current game I go into the BUG settings and make changes, but the changes I make are never saved nor even implemented in the game.

The folder names in mods is: BUG Mod and there are two ini files in the root of that directory (no where else) BUG Mod.ini and BUG.ini. I am using my own set of leader and civs via customassets.

Can someone please help me figure out why I can't save changes? The mod worls fine on default settings, but there's some things I need to change.

I answered in this post, please reply there.

@EF:

Did you by any chance screw the Permanent Alliance code when coding your nifty alert ? In my recent game I was best buddy of Saladin and shared a defensive pact for quite a long time. Your alert came up, telling that he was willing to sign a PA. And we did so. So far so good - the odd thing was that I was 3 turns away from Fascism which enables PAs. Nobody had the tech either as nobody had Assembly Line and I got the free GG too. So, by definition this PA shouldn't have been doable as the enabling tech wasn't discovered yet.

Speaking of PAs: Would it be possible to code a "turns of mutual war / turns of defensive pact counter" ? IIRC a PA is possible if a) the leader has an attitude towards you above the XML coded threshold, AND b) you shared 40 turns of defensive pact or c) 20 turns of mutual war. It's often hard to tell how long there is to wait, so such a counter would come in handy...maybe on the Military Advisor as the front interface lacks of space...

Imhotep

Did a quick search on this thread so I'm hopeful that I'm not bringing up an old issue:

When I use the 'advanced start' feature in a game and go to purchase Techs, the text below the screen is totally garbled and the cost of the purchase is '???'.

·Imhotep·;6139753 said:

Did you by any chance screw the Permanent Alliance code when coding your nifty alert ? . . . Your alert came up, telling that he was willing to sign a PA. And we did so. So far so good - the odd thing was that I was 3 turns away from Fascism which enables PAs. Nobody had the tech either as nobody had Assembly Line and I got the free GG too.

Click to expand...

[Edit: I'm playing a game now and see that Communism also allows Permanent Alliances. Did you or the AI have Communism already?]

I don't see how the alert code could trigger this. It works just like OB, DP and tech trading: it asks each AI if they or you can trade and are willing to trade the item. If so, it just displays an alert. The code i added a) does no modification of data (there's no function to do so anyway) and b) isn't anywhere near the C++ code that allows an AI to offer the item.

Do you have an autosave from shortly before this happens? Or even a save after the fact might help if you still haven't completed Fascism. The only possibility I can think of is if Saladin had completed Fascism first, and you coincidentally got a GG from battle on the turn you completed Fascism. I know that's unlikely, but it would explain it. Do you get GGs during AI turns if you're attacked enough to earn one?

As for your idea for the counters, that seems like it might be crossing the line of showing data you don't normally see in the game. Sure, you can look in the XML, but that's over the line in my view.

From the BUG Test SG thread:

GreyFox said:

A note on the BUG mod -- the glance screen seems to report the wrong the values for the first row ... there seems to be a constant -ve offset throughout.

Click to expand...

Do you mean that the modifiers an AI has against you don't add up to the total modifier displayed on-screen? That would be a bug.

If instead you mean that you have a -2 modifier from Mansa Musa while he's Cautious and a +1 from Saladin but he's Annoyed, that's just a fact of the game. The game has hidden modifiers based on various criteria like being Aggressive, or in the top half/bottom half of the scores, etc. These are not shown in the list of modifiers, nor are they calculated in the displayed score. They affect the score that is used to determine the actual attitude.

I'm thinking of removing the total modifier (the value in []s) from the screen as it's a) misleading and b) meaningless. A +4 means nothing and cannot be compared to any other AIs number. In fact, it doesn't even compare to the number from the same AI later in the game.

In its place, I could add some new icons:

• Will stop trading
• Will DoW
• Will sign peace
• Would sign peace if other AI would ("Talk to them")

Are there any other checks to perform between pairs of civs?

Yes, I mean the AI's attitude score towards human doesn't add up to what is shown. For instance:


Lincoln should be +2, but is showing -5. Oranje should be +4, but is showing -3. Seems to be constant -7 offset somewhere. The attitude color is correct though.

--

Neat! Can you please answer the following questions to help me find the problem?

• Does it only affect the attitudes toward you? Do all the AI-to-AI numbers add up right?
• Is it consistent throughout the game? Is it always wrong by the same amount or does it change? Is it ever correct? If it changes, can you correlate it to any actions in-game?
• If you save and restart, does it show the same discrepancy?
• Are you running any other mods, or are you using a custom DLL?
• What version of BUG are you running?

Both the text and the # BUG displays come directly from the DLL, and BUG doesn't alter the DLL. I'll have to delve into the code to verify that that hasn't changed.

Could you please post a save so I can check it out? Thanks for the report.

EmperorFool said:

Neat! Can you please answer the following questions to help me find the problem?

• Does it only affect the attitudes toward you? Do all the AI-to-AI numbers add up right?
• Is it consistent throughout the game? Is it always wrong by the same amount or does it change? Is it ever correct? If it changes, can you correlate it to any actions in-game?
• If you save and restart, does it show the same discrepancy?
• Are you running any other mods, or are you using a custom DLL?
• What version of BUG are you running?

Both the text and the # BUG displays come directly from the DLL, and BUG doesn't alter the DLL. I'll have to delve into the code to verify that that hasn't changed.

Could you please post a save so I can check it out? Thanks for the report.

Click to expand...

I will answer your last 3 questions, and let you figure out the first two

• As far as I see, only the first row is offset. AI-to-AI seems unaffected.
• Yes, saving and reloading from the save gives the same thing.
• No other Mods running.
• Running BUG Mod 2.1

Here is the save.

Just installed BUG Mod 2.11 to a fresh Civ Complete (German Version) Installation and I can confirm that it is NOT working as stated by another poster in this thread a couple of posts before. There is absolutely no User Interface anymore.
Two Questions:
1) Is it possible to put a "Warning"-Message in the start of this thread or in the README, so that other users won't fall in this trap ?
2) Should I post a bug in the SF Bug Tracker ?

Better yet, place the "warning" as Admiral Vader calls it (I would call it an instruction or footnote) in the "Latest Version" thread, where the installation-info is posted.

@Admiral Vader: did you or did you not get the BUG working reading Kerndall and EmperorFools previous posts.

EmperorFool said:

[Edit: I'm playing a game now and see that Communism also allows Permanent Alliances. Did you or the AI have Communism already?]

Click to expand...

Ah, you'll always learn something new . I wasn't aware of that Communism also allows PAs as I seldom resrarch the tech with all those BtS Corporations . So, no bug then as the AI of course did have Communism.

EmperorFool said:

As for your idea for the counters, that seems like it might be crossing the line of showing data you don't normally see in the game. Sure, you can look in the XML, but that's over the line in my view.

Click to expand...

No, I don't think so. I'm not speaking of the hidden thresholds - that of course is data you can only dig out of the XML (which is a quite poor design as are all the hidden diplo modifiers btw). I'm only speaking of the time counters. There is a way to access the data within the game, you could simply note the turn you signed a DP or entered a mutual war on a paper and then count. Not very comfortable. Or within BUG, you could set a reminder. Better, but not perfect. AFAIK the time length is the same for all Civs, so there is no hidden information - it's 20 or 40 turns (maybe scaling with game speed ?) whether you want Gandhi as ally or JC. Conclusion: I'd see no problem with this with the aspect of BUG not altering gameplay (which it does even with 2.11 of course as you're playing way more effective than without).

Imhotep

P.S.: And what about my airport city bar icons ?

walbeek said:

Better yet, place the "warning" as Admiral Vader calls it (I would call it an instruction or footnote) in the "Latest Version" thread, where the installation-info is posted.

Click to expand...

I was thinking something like "Warning: Do NOT install this Modification if you have the Complete-Edition of Civ4 otherwise you'll end up messing with your registry" I was suggesting this, b/c on my first installation I was *stunned* to see Civ4 stripped of its User Interface and quickly considered a reinstall of the whole game.

@Admiral Vader: did you or did you not get the BUG working reading Kerndall and EmperorFools previous posts.

Click to expand...

After adding the missing INSTALLDIR-Key to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4 - Beyond the Sword" the Game just loads fine with BUG running. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+O works now and I can quit the Options-Screen safely.

I hardly consider this a Noob-friendly way of fixing this behaviour. And I, too, was very reluctant messing with my registry. [Edit: Don't get my wrong, but I think that the average Joe Doe isn't aware of how to add a String to his/her registry.]

@Admiral Vader - Can you please use regedt32 (Start : Run... : regedt32) to find the key for your installation. The normal game is at


I suspect yours will look like this:


The easiest way to get BUG to work is to simply create a duplicate key named as I have it above as a sibling of your key. Inside that create a String Value called "INSTALLDIR" that has the same value as the value in the "Complete" reg key. For me that's "C:\Games\Civ4\Beyond the Sword"

Please try that and let me know if it works for you. I'll make sure to have Alerum update the Latest Version page and install directions with what we figure out here.

Edit

That's what I get for not going to the next page of new replies before replying. So anyway, instead of doing the above (which you already did) can you please post the key that your Civ Complete reg key was under? That way I can alter the code hopefully to search for both keys. This would make it "just work" out of the box.

EmperorFool said:

That's what I get for not going to the next page of new replies before replying. So anyway, instead of doing the above (which you already did) can you please post the key that your Civ Complete reg key was under? That way I can alter the code hopefully to search for both keys. This would make it "just work" out of the box.

Click to expand...

I'll post a Screenshot of my Registry-Keys as soon as I get home from work. Your reply was appreciated regardless

EDIT as promised:



In the shot above we see the following path: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4 Complete"
The INSTALLDIR-String by default is only present in this key as shown above. Especially there is no INSTALLDIR present in "... -Beyond the Sword".

I had to insert this manually to get BUG to work as shown beneath:



Hope, I could be of service

I'm having a problem with the Options screen (Ctrl+Alt+O); I'm unable to exit it. I've seen this problem reported before, but I'm using BUG out of D:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword. I'm running MarnzMod at the same time, if that could cause complications.

@Admiral Vader - I've made the fix in SVN. To test you'd need to remove the "Beyond the Sword" key you added.

@PotatoSamurai - Are you logged on as Administrator or some other user? If another user, you'll need to move/copy your "My Games" folder from "Administrator/My Documents" to that other user's "My Documents" folder.

If you are logged in as Administrator, are you using "Civ4 Complete" or did you get Civ4 and the "Beyond the Sword" expansion separately? If "Complete", the fix above will solve your problem (hopefully). Grab the latest from SVN and try again, please.

You should be able to use BUG with another mod (though you may have trouble if they both change the same files). The problem you are having is specifically caused by BUG not being able to find the directory where it should write the new INI file. One thing you can try is to modify one of the BUG files:

CustomAssets\Python\Contrib\CvModName.py


Change "BUG Mod" above to match the name of the mod folder where you have the other mod installed. Look in your "Mods" folder and copy-n-paste the value from there. The double-quotes around the name in the PY file need to remain. You may end up with something that looks like this:


Also, copy "BUG Mod.ini" from your "My Games\Beyond the Sword" folder to the "MarnzMod" folder.

Let me know how these work out for you, and if none we'll go from there.

I am not using Complete, BtS 3.13. I only have the Administrator account (using an nLite-ed WinXP), so that shouldn't be it.

I tried the fixes you suggested, but no luck.
I'll try using BUG in vanilla BtS and see if that works, although I definitely want both MarnzMod and BUG together.

As a sidenote, in CustomAssets\python\Contrib I saw a number of odd files.
CVMODNAME.$$$ 0kb
CVMODNAM.PY 1kb with only as text within it, and
cvmodname.py, the file you instructed me to edit. These all normal?

UPDATE: Tried BUG in vanilla (having reverted the cvmodname.py). No dice, exit button still fails.

PotatoSamuari, I know you want to use MarnzMod, but to test this a bit more fully would you mind backing up your stuff, and reinstalling BUG without anything else loaded? This will let us know if it's BUG or something else.