BAT Errata

I'm using the latest BAT and, when workers complete a chop task, i get duplicate event messages with the results, such as 60 or 90 hammer points provided, which is displayed twice. I am also using the latest Better BUG AI to describe my install, and BAT is running as a select mod.

Are you sure it isn't just one pre-chop and one chop message?

If you don't know what I mean, show me a screenshot.

EmperorFool said:

On the Plot List tab of the BUG Options screen make sure to select the PLE drawing style and check the Filter Buttons checkbox.

Click to expand...

Thanks EF

Fuyu said:

Are you sure it isn't just one pre-chop and one chop message?

If you don't know what I mean, show me a screenshot.

Click to expand...

Here is a screenshot of what I was referring to

EDIT: never mind. It is simply a before and after correct message. sorry to bother

I decide to install the new version of BAT yesterday and try it out again. I've avoided it for a while due to two main issues a) conflicts with the BUG mod b) late game crashes. The conflicts with BUG were mainly the Domestic Advisor, which I posted about before, but the explanation made my brain hurt.

Note, I install as a mod assuming that is the stand-alone version. I play BUG/BULL and BUFFY a lot too.

Anyway, so I load up a game yesterday and played for some time and encounter no problems. BAT seemed very stable and performed nicely. Later, I switch out and played a forum game using BUG 4.3 and the Domestic Advisor looked fine.

Today, I tried starting up a custom game using the BAT mod. Often, I load up and if I don't like the map or Civ and start a new game. Every time I exited back to the main menu I received a crash to desktop.

Any thoughts on why this might be happening? I was disappointed as I thought, after yesterday, BAT was finally going to work for me.


Edit: A while later Windows reported back a possible solution to the error report generated by, I assume, the crash described above. Windows indicated that Java had stopped working and should be uninstalled/reinstalled. I performed the uninstall/reinstall of Java and tried BAT again. I loaded up a new custom game and then exited out of the game. CIV did not crash. This leads to a couple of questions. Does Java impact CIV and/or BAT? Is there something with respect to CIV/BAT that can be done to prevent Java issues? It could simply be an issue with my computer and Java. However, I'd like a better understanding of this, if possible, to prevent further occurrences. My concern is there my be something with my configuration, or just something, that is jacking up Java.

AFAIK Java cannot affect Civ/BTS/BAT as they don't use it. Others have reported this crash upon exiting to the main menu from many mods. I have seen it happen only once (with BUFFY) myself.

The quick solution is to always exit to desktop as doing that and restarting BTS is faster than crashing and restarting. I agree it's suboptimal, and maybe you'll get lucky for a while exiting to the main menu. I'm very glad to hear it's working for you otherwise.

Although it appears to not be a problem at the moment, I wish we could figure out why these things happen.

I really don't understand this crashing business, either. I've tried to make it happen on five different machines: Win 7 x32, and two x64 machines, Vista x64 and x32, and it has never happened to me.

I develop under Win 7 x64 and the only time I can get it to crash is when I mess something up in the XML or python code that I'm fiddling with. rolleyes

I wonder if it's a map script issue...

Lemon Merchant said:

I wonder if it's a map script issue...

Click to expand...

Y'know, this would not surprise me. BTS exhibits some strange map script behavior. Just having map scripts in PublicMaps can cause Python exceptions during startup--you don't need to actually use those scripts.

If it helps, I was trying the Terra map when the crash happened. I normally play Fractal.

Edit: Okay, interestingly BAT is crashing again when I start up a game and exit. I tried it on the Terra and Fractal maps. I doubt Java had anything to do with it and probably was some other error. The only thing I do different since last is using BUG 4.3/BULL for another game. Also, I switch my custom assets when playing different mods. I use a null vanilla version for BAT, a single-player/Blue Marble for BUG, and a Blue Marble/Vanilla for BUFFY.

I'm curious whether there is a log file or something I can give you to give you more information about what is happening. I see some files but they don't mean much to me.

So long as you're using the current version of Ethnic Citystyles by Geomodder, you're going to get art crashes. There is no utility to check for art bugs in the LSystem, and a debug dll doesn't report them either. Geomodder isn't a God, he's a human being, it's impossible for him to have entered thousands of new lines of XML without a typo or two making it in, and with the LSystem this means a crash. It took about 3 months for all the LSystem bugs to be hunted down in LoR, and now it's stable, but LoR is using Geomodder's 0.8 version. If you want, feel free to grab LoR's LSystem art and XML. Also davidlallen is working on getting civchecker to check the LSystem art and files, but I don't think he's done yet. When that's done you could probably use that to find the sources of crashes in there, but for now the current version of Ethnic City Styles is going to crash; no matter what anyone else tells you.

BAT 2.2 uses Cultural Citystyles 0.95, and there haven't been any reports of crashes while playing that I have seen. The only reported crash since BAT 2.2 has been when exiting to the main menu, and only by a handful of people. I've been trying for weeks to get it to crash on my systems this way and I can't. Some people have the problem, and some don't.

I don't believe it's the fault of CC 0.95. Version 0.8 did have a number of issues, and that was the problem with BAT 2.1 (along with VD 8), but those appear to have been cleared up in 0.95. I am currently testing CC 0.98 for the next version of BAT, and so far, there are no problems there.

There has to be another cause.

I'll bet money it's Cultural City Styles. Frankly it's impossible for Geomodder to have done as much work as he has without typos making it in, and typos in the LSystem causes crashes. As I said there are absolutely no debugging tools to find these either, so he's kind of stuck. The only way to fix the critical bugs in the LSystem is to go by user reports, and hunt the crash down for each individual report, I know I had to go through this a month ago; this process has never happened for ethnic city styles.

Basically what happened is Geomodder came out with an update to city styles, and everyone announced things fixed. Calling it so, doesn't make it so. Read through the Ethnic city styles thread if you don't believe me. Anyway unless Geomodder is a super perfect android, there simply is no way all that data entry is bug free.

Are there any good tutorials on the LSystem files? If so, maybe we could make a tool to verify them. If they're XML, even better.

By request davidlallen has added some checking of the LSystem into civchecker:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9109346&postcount=56

Try it, if it's missing something you need I'd ask him about it.

Keep in mind any wrong art definition will cause a crash. The most common cause I found was stuff like the XML called for a nif called NativeCitiesArt.nif, when the actual file name was NativeCityArt.nif

phungus420 said:

I'll bet money it's Cultural City Styles. Frankly it's impossible for Geomodder to have done as much work as he has without typos making it in, and typos in the LSystem causes crashes. As I said there are absolutely no debugging tools to find these either, so he's kind of stuck. The only way to fix the critical bugs in the LSystem is to go by user reports, and hunt the crash down for each individual report, I know I had to go through this a month ago; this process has never happened for ethnic city styles.

Basically what happened is Geomodder came out with an update to city styles, and everyone announced things fixed. Calling it so, doesn't make it so. Read through the Ethnic city styles thread if you don't believe me. Anyway unless Geomodder is a super perfect android, there simply is no way all that data entry is bug free.

Click to expand...

I'm very familiar with BAT as I converted it for Mac BTS before starting my own mod. I've had 0.95 in both for several months and not had a single report of a building art related crash since. Versions prior to 0.95 definitely had some crashes but if any still exist they are extremely rare. I've now updated to 0.98 and zero issues so far.

In summary I can say with experience that Cultural Citystyles is impressively stable and thus Geomodder deserves at least demigod status . It is possible that there are PC crashes that Macs do not get, but that is unlikely.

On the other hand the unit art component of BAT was definitely causing a lot of crashes. I started fixing it up but gave up because the xml was so disorganized and instead assembled my own. I thus haven't tried any of the versions since LemonMerchant took over but from reading the changelist it looks like he/she is doing a fantastic job at quashing all the issues.

Xyth said:

I thus haven't tried any of the versions since LemonMerchant took over but from reading the changelist it looks like he/she is doing a fantastic job at quashing all the issues.

Click to expand...

Thank you, I do my best. And "she" is the correct pronoun.

phungus420 said:

Geomodder isn't a God, he's a human being.

Click to expand...

Xyth said:

Geomodder deserves at least demigod status

Click to expand...

God or Demigod isn't up to Geomodder. I don't know how to become a god, maybe get enough people to start to believe in you .. but for demigods, it all depends on your parents.

Should Map Regen work in BAT? I don't see the option in the menu at the start.

As an update to my earlier posts, I've been playing some games in the new BAT. I should first note that I have not played these game very late - nothing after say 1000AD - so I haven't really reached a point where I used to see lots of crashes in older versions. However, despite the already mention crash when exiting to menu, the game actually appears to run rather smoothly. A few random notes:

1) I rarely reload except when trying out strategies. In this case, I usually exit to menu before loading the game, as doing so with the normal game tends to either be laggy or crashes. Interestingly, I've tried reloading from within the game with BAT and it's actually very quick. Seems like it would be worse than unmodded or BUG, but it's actually much better. Anyway, I though that was interesting.

2) I noticed that the tireme icon is the same as the galley. Not a huge deal, of course, but maybe something worth looking into. (If this is a civ specific issue, please note that I was playing as Sury when I noticed this issue)

3) Regarding the exit to menu crash on starts, it appears for some reason to be rather random. One day it crashes every time while the next I have no problem. Odd.

I will continue to play games with BAT. Usually forum games that come with a WB save. I will report anything I find of interest.

One thing I probably like most about BAT, besides the better graphics, of course, is the beautiful adviser screens - I think they are the best of any mod I've seen. I'm not sure if they are inherent to BAT itself or part of a separate component Mod like VD. Anyway, if everything continues to go smoothly with BAT, I hope to make it my preferred mod over my currently preferred BUFFY.

lymond said:

Should Map Regen work in BAT? I don't see the option in the menu at the start.

Click to expand...

No, map regeneration was broken in BUG 4.3 which is in BAT. It is fixed in BUG (unreleased) and the fix will go into both mods soon when we release new versions.

lymond said:

One thing I probably like most about BAT, besides the better graphics, of course, is the beautiful adviser screens - I think they are the best of any mod I've seen. I'm not sure if they are inherent to BAT itself or part of a separate component Mod like VD. Anyway, if everything continues to go smoothly with BAT, I hope to make it my preferred mod over my currently preferred BUFFY.

Click to expand...

BAT has the same advisor screens as BUG and BUFFY, but perhaps you are seeing the cloud/sky background that comes from BlueMarble? You can install BM by itself to get the pretty terrain and backgrounds in BUG and BUFFY. See the FAQ in my sig if you have questions.

As for the random crashes I wish I could reproduce it. Without a predictable cause I cannot find a solution. Maybe we'll find that Lemon Merchant's cleaning up of the graphics stuff ends up fixing this problem. One can only hope.