1.5 Feedback

[Ahriman]

I'm getting a replicatable CTD (running 1.5.2).
Take the attached save; take the falcon thopter in the northeast of my Corrino empire, and move it east onto the hill tile with the windtrap in BTl territory. Instant CTD.

*edit*
entering worldbuilder to try to see what is around that tile also causes instant CTD.
It sounds like it must be an art issue.

*edit2*
the fact that I'd already explored that area suggests that its not a terrain issue, but rather something with a unit or improvement or city art or something?

 

[davidlallen]

I'm getting a replicatable CTD (running 1.5.2)...entering worldbuilder to try to see what is around that tile also causes instant CTD.
It sounds like it must be an art issue.

I can reproduce this from your save game. I have never previously seen a case where just entering WB causes a CTD. I have been having a problem recently myself which I was blaming on MAF, but I guess yours is the same as mine. I often set a game on autoplay and then minimize it, and come back in half an hour to look at what happened. It happens very often that the game is sitting there waiting for me, but as soon as I alt-tab to reactivate it, then the game gives a CTD. I guess it is trying to display whatever art that was, and failing the same way your save fails on displaying that territory.

I am not sure how to debug. I ran civcheck with some optional flags to display more "possibly missing" things, which also shows many errors with vanilla. It showed some stuff, but nothing remarkable. Does anybody have some suggestions about how to debug? If I remove units from the game the save won't be loadable. There are no obvious missing art files. I cannot display the map, to do some usual tricks like trying to remove buildings which may be causing problems.

 

[Ahriman]

Some more info: whatever it is is probably something generally accessible to multiple factions. I would get the save game when I tried to trade maps with Ix, when I tried moving into the BTl territory (post 61) or when I tried joining a Permanent alliance with Ecaz.

 

[Deliverator]

I've noticed the same thing with autoplays - does the same thing happen with a clean 1.5?

Some process of elimination on the art would be good - I agree it seems like an art error.

 

[Ahriman]

I never noticed it in 1.5 or 1.5.1, but I didn't play them enough to find out.

If there is a full list of art changes somewhere, I can mention which ones I know I have built myself, and so we could rule them out.

 

[keldath]

I can reproduce this from your save game. I have never previously seen a case where just entering WB causes a CTD. I have been having a problem recently myself which I was blaming on MAF, but I guess yours is the same as mine. I often set a game on autoplay and then minimize it, and come back in half an hour to look at what happened. It happens very often that the game is sitting there waiting for me, but as soon as I alt-tab to reactivate it, then the game gives a CTD. I guess it is trying to display whatever art that was, and failing the same way your save fails on displaying that territory.

hey guys, been catching up on your recent work, everything is so awesome,

had some exp with wb related ctds, its probably some art file that causes it, probably some resource, try to roll back a version and track it.

cheers guys.

 

[davidlallen]

I never noticed it in 1.5 or 1.5.1, but I didn't play them enough to find out.

If there is a full list of art changes somewhere, I can mention which ones I know I have built myself, and so we could rule them out.

The easiest way to find all the art changes is to open the zipfile deliverator has sent, and look for which assets/art/*/* directories are there. There are four new units: devastator, missile launcher, swordmaster, sardaukar legionary. All four of these show up OK in the pedia and I can place and move them OK in game. Almost all of the bonuses have new nifs and some new skins. All of them look ok in the pedia except diamond, which is blank in the pedia. Your save game shows diamonds in your home area fine. I did not try individually placing each bonus in game.

When I see the crash, usually I have done ctrl-z to see the whole map at the start of the game, but I get the crash when I try to redisplay the map after some long autoplay. So I do not think it is quite as simple as a completely broken art file. It might be a particular bonus in combination with a particular improvement, which would not show up in the initial map.

In your save game, I have driven that thopter straight south, then around to the east and finally north. The area which causes the crash is apparently quite small, directly east of your thopter. I wish we could see what is there. Do you have an autosave from earlier in the same game, which might not crash when displaying there?

 

[Deliverator]

Well it makes no sense to me right now. I've changed the paths in the XML for Bonus, Feature, Improvement, Terrain and Unit to be a non-existant directory so that everything shows the default red blobs and pink terrain. Still the savegame crashes when the whole map is revealed. Weird.

 

[Ahriman]

devastator, missile launcher, swordmaster, sardaukar legionary

I have built the missile launcher, swordmaster and Sardaukar without any problems, and there wouldn't be any devastators in the game yet.

Do you have an autosave from earlier in the same game, which might not crash when displaying there?

I have the turn0 autosave (attached).

If its a resource, could it be a resource that was only revealed through some tech?
The ctrl-z just removes fog of war, whereas entering worldbuilder also reveals all the resources.

I thought the only resources revealed through tech were stradvium (which I shouldn't be able to see yet from moving the thopter) and crystals (which work fine).
And besides, revealed resources should show up even under fog of war, so I guess it can't be that.

Could it be one of the city buildings? Maybe there is a city there with some weird building. Is there any variation in building art across factions?

 

[Deliverator]

Maybe it is a building - that is one thing I haven't tried yet.

 

[Ahriman]

It can't be a resource; the turn0 autosave opens fine in world builder.

It must be a building.

*edit*
I just placed every building in the game in my size 1 capital in the autosave in worldbuilder and none of them crashed worldbuilder.

Is there an interaction between geography and buildings? Or population size and buildings?

 

[Deliverator]

Doesn't look like it is a building. I removed them all and I still get a CTD using ctrl-z or worldbuilder. Is it the windtrap 2 tiles of east of the Corrino thopter that triggers the crash? That doesn't seem to cause a problem for me, but I still get a CTD using ctrl-z.

I also removed the heightmap and the terrain so it doesn't look like anything to do with that.

 

[Ahriman]

Is it the windtrap 2 tiles of east of the Corrino thopter that triggers the crash?

I don't think so: you can see the windtrap through the fog, and trading maps with other players (or adopting permanent alliance which gives you LoS) also crashes the game. So there are multiple locations on the map that cause the crash.

Could it be part of city art that isn't related to a particular building?
Or some combination like a coastal building trying to display inland or something?

 

[Deliverator]

Are the instances you've seen generally at a similar stage in the game?

 

[Ahriman]

Well, I first noticed it from the save in post 58, which was the first time I tried trading maps. I forget what turn that save is. From then on I never tried trading maps, but didn't really explore my allies territory; all the exploration was done with a couple of scout thopters at the start of the game.

This was the first 1.5.2 game I played.

 

[Deliverator]

I have been having a problem recently myself which I was blaming on MAF, but I guess yours is the same as mine. I often set a game on autoplay and then minimize it, and come back in half an hour to look at what happened. It happens very often that the game is sitting there waiting for me, but as soon as I alt-tab to reactivate it, then the game gives a CTD. I guess it is trying to display whatever art that was, and failing the same way your save fails on displaying that territory.

I've been having the same issue and it definitely existed in 1.5.1 too. I'm running some more autoplays to see if it happened in 1.5.

 

[davidlallen]

FWIW, I am sure there is a city in the blank spot in Ahriman's game. You can drive the thopter along the north edge of the map, so the bad spot has to be in between the two windtraps there. That is along a single width spur of land which goes ENE. If you "retire" and carefully examine the replay map at the upper left, you can see that BT founds its second city there.

I don't know how this helps, but at least maybe we can tell it is some kind of city art.

 

[Deliverator]

I can explore all of the Tleilaxu territory without any hassle as you can see from the screenshot. However, the game still crashes when ctrl-Z-ing or opening the WB.

I've really got no idea what's wrong. If it is art related then why does the crash still happen when you redirect all the Art Defines? Something doesn't stack up. Everything points to art, but when you remove all the art changes the crash still happens. So perhaps it is some incredibly weird XML thing. Not sure.

The only weird thing I've spotted from the initial savegame is that there are some tiles that my changes in Dunipelago somehow still aren't converting to the correct type - namely the Sink/Rugged tiles and weirdly Sink/Mesa. I don't see how this can be responsible for the issue though.

I'm not going to be able to look into this much more in the next 24 hours I'm afraid. Perhaps someone else can pick up the investigation as I'm pretty stuck.

 

[The_J]

Well it makes no sense to me right now. I've changed the paths in the XML for Bonus, Feature, Improvement, Terrain and Unit to be a non-existant directory so that everything shows the default red blobs and pink terrain. Still the savegame crashes when the whole map is revealed. Weird.

To a non-existant directory?
My experience is, that, when you type in a non-existant directory, civ (okay, not only civ), will crash.
There's a difference between non-existant directory, and existing directory without an existing file.

 

[Deliverator]

In 1.5.2 I didn't do that much art-wise:

1) I added amended resources. If you remove the resources dir so that it uses the ones in the PAK file again you still get a CTD on CTRL-Z.

2) Unit Art - I added art for three new units. If you redirect these units to unit the soldier art you still get a CTD.

3) Amended harvester. If you redirect the harvester to use some other improvement the CTD still happens.

4) Added rock arch. This should not be placed, but to be thorough - redirected it to use Oasis art still gives a CTD.

If it was buildings, then we would have seen problems in 1.5 and 1.5.1 since nothing has changed since then. It could be that this crash is itermittantly occurs in 1.5/1.5.1 as well.

This is a very difficult CTD to diagnose, since it is not freely recreatable although it generally seems to take ~300 turns to show up. Process of elimination hasn't worked on the art side - since you can effectively remove everything that was introduced in 1.5.2 and still get the issue.

If I backout the XML changes and one by one reapply them to 1.5.1 (which *seems* stable AFAIK) then that will break the savegame and I won't be able to recreate the CTD. All I can think is if we can carefully rebuild 1.5.2 from 1.5.1, adding only what's necessary to get the savegame working and not using any new art.

However, I think the autoplay crashes both David and I experienced are caused by the same issue. I relatively sure these were happening in 1.5.1 as well. It might be a case of running autoplays with CTRL-Z at the start of game to reveal everything and the window open to try and narrow things down. It would be useful if someone can corroborate whether this crash occurs in 1.5.1 - otherwise looking at the 1.5.2 stuff is not going to help.

(To run autoplays use CTRL-SHIFT-X, and type in the number of turns you want the AI to play for. Frequency of autosaves can be set in Civilization4.ini)