Ages of Man: the BUG REPORTS thread

[PAVLOS_GR300]

i havent moved anything i just asked if i have to do

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, then it shouldn't be breaking like that. I wonder if it's a graphics card issue or something, then. In theory it COULD also be a corrupted file issue; if you re-download the files and reinstall them, then it might fix it. Also, you can sometimes get bugs like this if you were using an older version of the mod and didn't completely delete the directories before updating to a newer version, but that's not very likely in this particular case.

This sort of thing is nearly impossible for me to debug myself, because it works just fine on my machine and it's not like I can mimic your computer's settings. So let me ask a simple question: even if you don't use any other mods, CAN you use any other mods? Do any other mods adding new units work correctly on your computer?

 

[PAVLOS_GR300]

i played a different era and some of the units worked like the leviathan , the unit after laser infarty,the robot worker...i dont think it is the graphic card because it is fully updated and very powerfull.i have played mods like wars of bronze age,red ww2,greco persian wars and everything worked fine.i will redownload and try it again

 

[Spatzimaus]

When I say it might be the graphics card, I'm not referring to how powerful the card is. The important part is whether you have a good DirectX driver installed; sometimes, the newest drivers actually cause things to break more often than older ones do. I'm not saying that this is a LIKELY problem, but it does happen.

 

[PAVLOS_GR300]

redownloaded but no change

 

[jacktannery]

Age of Mythology (AoM 1.0; AoMy 0.0; AoE 1.0) - Just those three mods installed.

Started game as Egypt. Had select deity popup on about turn fifteen, same turn as meeting Askia (the diplomacy screen came up at the same time as the deity selection screen).

I selected Ra and pressed select, then it took me to the mandala popup, but the CLOSE button in that window did not work. Had to abandon the game.

EDIT:

Tried again as Greece, got the deity popup at turn 25 as I met India (I presume this is triggered to pop as soon as the first diplomacy screen comes up?). This time I selected Zeus and confirmed, but again I could not close the mandala screen, so had to close down the game.

 

[PAVLOS_GR300]

i did.i just asked if i have too

sorry wrong post

 

[Spatzimaus]

Started game as Egypt. Had select deity popup on about turn fifteen, same turn as meeting Askia (the diplomacy screen came up at the same time as the deity selection screen).

When you say the deity selection came up on turn 15, had you selected a deity on turn 1? When you start a game, you should be able to immediately go into the Mandala screen through the menu in the upper-right, and it'll ask you which god to follow. As I mentioned before, I haven't found a way to FORCE the popup, but you really need to be picking a god on the first turn.

I selected Ra and pressed select, then it took me to the mandala popup, but the CLOSE button in that window did not work. Had to abandon the game.

FireTuner is pretty much essential for tracking these things down, or at least the Lua logfile. Had it given any error messages up until then? (If the Close button didn't work, then I can guarantee there was an error message in the Tuner window.)

(I presume this is triggered to pop as soon as the first diplomacy screen comes up?)

Actually, no. It's not triggered to pop up at any point; it IS possible that because I've enabled it as a DiploCorner input that it's conflicting with the usual diplomacy stuff, but it shouldn't be doing what you've described. I tried to model the trigger on InfoAddict, which obviously doesn't break the diplomacy.

It may be an artifact of having not selected a god previously. I'll look into that.

 

[Scrambles]

I had the same experience with the selection process. The screen appears 'over' the diplomacy screen. If you don't select a pantheon/god you can still proceed with the game (only the mandala is a trap). You can also get back to the selection screen at any point later by opening a diplomacy window, I can post a screenshot of how it looks if helpful. Clicking on 'Favor' at the top panel did nothing at any point unfortunately. No visible error messages appear. Can you tell me the path for the logfile and I'll take a look & post anything relevant?

 

[Spatzimaus]

I had the same experience with the selection process. The screen appears 'over' the diplomacy screen.

Yes, I confirmed that this morning. I think the problem is just that my SetHides aren't quite in the right place, but I won't be able to try to fix that until tonight. It shouldn't be affecting diplomacy, but it clearly is; I think I know how to fix it, but it might take some trial-and-error. Again, it all goes back to the popup issue; if I can trigger (or even trap) the spawn of the window, then I can keep the pantheon selection disabled permanently once you've chosen a god and hide the mandala during diplomacy events. Without that, I have a real problem.

If you don't select a pantheon/god you can still proceed with the game (only the mandala is a trap).

Correct, although I don't WANT you to be able to proceed without picking; that trap is supposed to catch you ASAP. You should be picking a god on turn 1, although I haven't figured out how to force that yet. (Well, I could have the game just pick one for you if you don't do it on turn 1, but I'll hold off on that sort of thing for now.) My latest temporary plan is just to have the game give you a notification of "Hey, you haven't picked a god yet. Go do that!" every turn until you actually do it.

Quite a few things will probably break if you refuse to select a god, because some of the data structures don't get initialized until you do. The mod is just not structured around that possibility, so I don't know for sure where all the conflicts would be, although they'd be easy enough for me to track down if people really wanted this to be a possibility. Now, maybe I could change things so that you can choose to stay agnostic, but the balance on that would be REALLY tough given my other changes. (And seriously, why would you load a Mythology mod and then not use its content?)

Clicking on 'Favor' at the top panel did nothing at any point unfortunately. No visible error messages appear.

At the moment I haven't enabled that button to do anything, because of my inability to force a popup as I'd mentioned previously. Eventually it'll either take you to the Mandala or to a data table screen showing more detail about your religious buildings. But at the moment, it does nothing and gives no errors, and that's deliberate.

(Also, TopPanel is actually in the Base mod, not the Mythology mod, which makes passing information back and forth a bit of a headache.)

Can you tell me the path for the logfile and I'll take a look & post anything relevant?

All of the game's log files are placed in your user area (in Win7, that's My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization V/) inside a "Logs" subdirectory that's right next to the MODS directory you placed the mod files in.

The only three that really matter are Database.log, xml.log, and Lua.log, all of which are stored as plain text. Database and xml should be basically empty, since I check that stuff on my end before publishing the mod, although if you're mixing my stuff with some other mod (or you didn't clear the cache) these files will alert you to any database conflicts.
Lua.log is just a direct copy of the FireTuner readouts. Now, you might have to go into your config.ini file and turn on the tuner and various forms of logging, first; I don't know which output bits go to which flag in the .ini file.

-------------------------------------
Current plan is to release v.0.02 on Friday, along with the new Ascension mod. Note that the Mythology and Ascension mods are NOT compatible with each other; using both breaks the promotion limit, which has all sorts of nasty side-effects. I'm trying to fix that, but in the short term you shouldn't try to use those two together (which generally isn't a problem, since they really don't go well together conceptually anyway). The reason I'm publishing the Ascension is so that I can mothball the old two-mod style once and for all to avoid confusion.

v0.02 of Mythology will fix the diplomacy thing above (*fingers crossed*), add informative help text to the pantheon and minor god selection processes, and fix a couple balance bits. If you can find any other bugs within the next day or so, I'll try my best to get them solved in that version.

 

[jacktannery]

On my third attempt I managed to pick a god on turn 1 by clicking on the 'Mandala' option in the scroll icon menu. I selected the god and was able to exit the mandala screen successfully.

The 'pick a god' screen still comes up every time the diplomacy screen appears, but I simply ignore it and although it blocks the diplomacy portraits it has no other visible effects.

Anyway, I'm on turn 34 now and doing great! I'll keep you posted.

 

[Spatzimaus]

On my third attempt I managed to pick a god on turn 1 by clicking on the 'Mandala' option in the scroll icon menu. I selected the god and was able to exit the mandala screen successfully.

Good, that's what's supposed to happen. I know, that Mandala screen's a little out-of-the-way for something so important, but for now that's supposed to be the only way to pick a pantheon, since I haven't got a popup working yet. So on turn 1, just remember to click "Mandala" in that menu.

The 'pick a god' screen still comes up every time the diplomacy screen appears,

That's a problem, but I'll try to fix it tonight. Ideally, that screen should never come up again, once you've selected a god, but it seems to be ignoring the flags I set for that. Probably just a variable being treated as a global instead of a local.

 

[CivOasis]

Ok, selecting Texcatlipoca, and with the Alpha Centauri mod disabled, I resulted in Jaguars and Zombies with the "Orbital drop" promotion (no paradrop option, just promotion). Didn't think to check whether or not it happened before or after selecting my god.

Also, for the diploscreen issue above, might it have to do with infoaddict being linked into the diplomacy screen?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Ok, selecting Texcatlipoca, and with the Alpha Centauri mod disabled, I resulted in Jaguars and Zombies with the "Orbital drop" promotion (no paradrop option, just promotion). Didn't think to check whether or not it happened before or after selecting my god.

Is it only that one promotion, or are your units getting a dozen or so extra promotions? The reason I ask is that's symptomatic of the promotion cap being exceeded, and that can happen if the cache wasn't cleared before you started the game (meaning that even if you didn't select the AC mod, it still might have bits of it in memory). Zombies should only be getting two promotions (Spawn and Teamwork), and the Jaguars should only be getting their usual ones plus Death.

If you can, clear your cache and try it again. If it's still happening, I'll look into that tonight.

Also, for the diploscreen issue above, might it have to do with infoaddict being linked into the diplomacy screen?

I'm sure it is, but it's still strange that it's behaving the way that it is since I thought I'd disabled the link to the actual diplomacy screen. I can rework this a bit if need be, but that'll introduce a compatibility issue wtih InfoAddict. (But if I can figure out how to force a popup, I could just ditch that entirely and have the user click on the Favor indicator in the top panel to trigger the screen.)

 

[CivOasis]

Well, it is several other promotions. Death, rookie, the standard ones (I think 7 total, with the weird ones).
And, I'm sorry to say this, but how do I clear my cache?

 

[Spatzimaus]

And, I'm sorry to say this, but how do I clear my cache?

Over in your user directory ( My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization V/ or its equivalent on your machine ) is the MODS directory where you placed the files from my mod. Within that same area are a whole lot of subdirectories/files, including the Logs directory, your config.ini file, and most important to this particular issue, the Cache directory.

Just go into that cache directory and delete everything inside. Within Cache, there'll usually be two directories and four or five cache files. Just trash the whole lot, then start up Civ5; you'll see those files immediately get re-created. The cache stores any temporary bits used by mods and such, so if you don't clear it out then there's a chance that you'll get "leakage" from whatever mod you'd used previously. If you're only ever using the same mods (like I have been for the last year or so), then cache isn't generally an issue, but this week is obviously an exception.

 

[Scrambles]

City build issue can be replicated by NOT selecting a pantheon at all and playing on. I didn't realise how to get to the Mandala initially. I've found it now so will run through another game *with* gods selected.

 

[Melchizedek]

Hi Spatz! Your mod is easily my favorite; it's like a whole new game, with some Alpha Centauri nostalgia thrown in for good measure! Recently, I was using DirectX 11 with only the Alpha Centauri mod enabled, and everything went fine until I upgraded a modern armor to a gravitic tank. Suddenly, vaguely triangular gray flashes started dancing across the screen. They were centered on the unit, and moved with the unit. I noticed that if I went to another part of the world, everything was fine, and the closer I got to the just-upgraded unit, the worse the disruption. I tried attacking with the gravitic tank, and it worked except that there were no graphics and the flashes didn't go away.

I did notice that some of the other advanced units were using a UU placeholder for graphics, but that doesn't bother me. But do you have any idea what happened to my gravitic tank? I'm going to try DirectX 9 and see if that helps. Thanks for the mod!

UPDATE: I switched to DirectX 9 and it worked for awhile. However, late in the game I've noticed a lot of strange behavior with city states; I would suddenly be friends with them for no reason, or have -38 influence even when at war (it should be locked at -60). I kept playing, and was just about to start the last leg of the tech tree (threshold of transcendence) when the game crashed for no reason I can identify.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Suddenly, vaguely triangular gray flashes started dancing across the screen. They were centered on the unit, and moved with the unit.

What's happening is that the 3D model isn't acting as a coherent polygon. Those "flashes" are the tiny texture polygons that normally go on the surface of the model, being placed somewhere far away. I saw the same thing when I was creating the models if one of them failed the translation process; the Golem, especially, was just this cloud of brown shards floating around the center. (I was tempted at one point to just leave it that way and call it the model for the Chiron Locusts, but I do have an actual model for those.)

I did notice that some of the other advanced units were using a UU placeholder for graphics, but that doesn't bother me.

Any models that I haven't converted yet still use those UUs as placeholders. It's pretty much any humanoid unit; all I've converted so far are the mechanized units (because if a tank has no animations, it doesn't look as bad).

UPDATE: I switched to DirectX 9 and it worked for awhile. However, late in the game I've noticed a lot of strange behavior with city states; I would suddenly be friends with them for no reason, or have -38 influence even when at war (it should be locked at -60). I kept playing, and was just about to start the last leg of the tech tree (threshold of transcendence) when the game crashed for no reason I can identify.

Generally, this sounds like a cache issue and not anything DX9-related. If your cache wasn't cleared by the game before you created the initial save file, and you exited the game (which you did to switch to DX9), it's possible that when you reloaded your previous save, the mod would be off in addressing thanks to a difference in what the game thought was loaded.

Playing one game straight through is generally no problem, but if you intend to save and reload, the cache can screw you up. So it's best if you clear it before starting a game. Whether you need to do this really depends on which other mods you were running most recently. If you use the same mods every time then it's no big deal, but if you'd been using someone else's mods right before mine, then this happens pretty often.

-------------------------
So it sounds like pretty much everyone has problems with the custom models in DX11, including the models that I had nothing to do with. I don't know why this could be, but things SHOULD work in DX9 at least, and once I figure out what's wrong between the two executables I'll go back and redo the old units.

 

[Melchizedek]

Thanks for the quick reply. As of now, after making sure the cache is cleared and using directX 9 instead of 11, everything is working except:

1. When you use a planet buster, it takes about 10-20 seconds to load the image, and the game scrolls to another part of the world--wherever you have another unit to give orders to--just before the explosion. This doesn't feel like "normal" lag to me, but then I have no idea what goes into generating the image.

2. Much more importantly, the Ascent To Transcendence wonder seems to be missing!! Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I just can't find it after researching all techs. Hence I started using planet busters, having nothing better to do than stomp the world.

Incidentally, the mod is loads of fun to play, and I've never seen cities in any civ variant like the ones you can build by, say, 2010 AD. I had Seoul up to 100 population, 3000 beakers, 1000 hammers, and some gawdawful amount of gold...all the specialist bonuses make late-game growth a whole new world. At the time I noticed ATT was missing, I had a population over a billion in eight cities, playing on king level. No doubt it helps that I left off the balance mod for my first run through.