Ages of Man: the BUG REPORTS thread

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Spatzaimus, please give me a vritual slap on the face.. I'm SUCH a FOOL.

The reason I kept crashing is because I had EVERYTHING Installed.. Incluind Mythology AND Ancesion! Oh, I'm so stupid! That's why I kept crashing!

Well, now that I've finally narrowed it down, I'm off to play.

 

[flame1280]

Im not sure if this is a bug or if its just not complete yet but a lot of my units dont have new skins and none of the new era units have animations when attacking or defending?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Im not sure if this is a bug or if its just not complete yet but a lot of my units dont have new skins and none of the new era units have animations when attacking or defending?

The lack of new skins is just something I'm working on... slowly. I'll get back to that once the main bugs are out of the Mythology mod.

The lack of combat animations, however, is something that apparently can't be fixed; there's an internal hard-coding involving combat classes. So any unit that falls into one of my new combat classes (Energy, Orbital, Psi, Titan, Myth, or Multirole) can never have combat animations. Or at least, not until we get DLL access.

 

[Elderon]

Alright, update on the 11 turns and Transcendence victory problem.

I cleared my cache and updated to the newest ascension mod today. Again, on turn 11 I lost the game because someone won a Transcendence victory. I decided to run file verification on my vanilla game and discovered that one of my patches somehow was faulty (despite the game claiming to be updated to 1.0.1.511 there was apparently 5mb left to update). I tried a new Base+Empires+Ascension game and it actually let me play past turn 11 without any problems. I was completely confused as to how a vanilla game patch would affect your modifications, however, so I exited and started a new game. Again, this one ended on turn 11 due to an transcendence victory by the AI.

So now my problem has become even more bizarre. Apparently whatever is triggering the transcendence victory isn't the anarchy timer and apparently doesn't trigger in every game but only in most of them? I can't explain why I would have one fluke game where it wouldn't end on turn 11 when all the rest have been. Perhaps that would help to explain why you haven't been able to get the problem to occur for you however?

 

[Elderon]

Alright, I did a little more testing with some interesting results.

I started another game and made it past turn 11. I then tried starting another 9 games, all of which ended on turn 11. I then closed out to my desktop, restarted civ, started another game, and this one made it past turn 11 without any problems. I repeated this exiting to the desktop and starting a new game twice more and both games successfully made it past the 11th turn. After my third straight success I exited to the main menu and tried starting another two games, both of which ended on turn 11.

In other words, it seems every game I start upon first loading Civ no longer has a problem while every subsequent game I start without exiting to the desktop does. In total I have 4 games which successfully made it past the 11th turn without ending, all of which I entered into immediately after loading Civ. I have another 11 games, all of which ended on turn 11, and all of which were started after another game without exiting out of civilization.

As to what is causing this pattern....I'm not even going to try to fathom a guess.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Perhaps that would help to explain why you haven't been able to get the problem to occur for you however?

It's kind of hard to explain how something DOESN'T happen. It just didn't, in any of the test games I've played.

Here's the entire logic the mod uses, inside Ascension_Wonders.lua:
> Inside a start-of-turn Serial Event (meaning it only executes on your turn), loop over players.
> If the player structure is valid, and the player is alive, and the player is NOT (a city-state or barbarian) then do the following:
> Get that player's team project count for the Ascent to Transcendence project. (This is the one that should completely prevent anyone from winning on turn 11.)
> If the project count is 0 then do nothing. It should only do ANY of the custom logic if the count is greater than 1.
> If the project count is 1, set everyone into a permanent war with you.
> If the project count exceeds 20, declare a winner and end the permanent war. Otherwise, increment the number of instances of the project by 1.
> Each turn, decrease the population of all your cities by 1, to a minimum of 1.

That's all it is. Now, there are two debug print statements that I enabled in the latest version I posted. Each turn you'll get a bunch of these. The first should say

"Transcend A B C D"
where A is the ID code of the transcendence project, B is "Ascent to Transcendence" (the name of the project), C is the ID for the transcendence victory condition, and D is the number of turns it's supposed to count down (should be 20). You should get this one no matter what.

The second, within the player loop, should say "transcend check E F G"
where E is the player's name, F is the counter for the transcendence project (starts at 0 and goes up), and G is the transcendence project's ID again, just to be sure it hasn't changed. This one will only show up once someone starts the transcendence process.

Now, just to be clear: when you say you're getting the notification of the win, are you only getting the game's base notification, or are you getting my custom ones as well? The final notification on the right-hand side when someone else finishes theirs should say

<Text>[COLOR_NEGATIVE_TEXT]{1_CivName:textkey} has finished the Transcendence process.[ENDCOLOR][NEWLINE]They have won a [COLOR_NEGATIVE_TEXT]Science Victory[ENDCOLOR]. You lose.</Text>

If you're getting that, then somehow it's getting into my resolution code without the correct triggers. But if you're just getting the generic "X is #1 in Science" and the usual science victory popup in the middle of the screen, then something completely outside of my code is awarding the win. And for that, I just don't know what could and could not be happening; it could be something as simple as which victory conditions are enabled. My version of the Advanced Setup screen should be turning the Science victory off automatically, for instance, so if you didn't go into that screen, then it'd screw everything up.

 

[Elderon]

Well, I'm not getting your text. All that I am getting is the generic end of game summary pop up in the middle of my screen and the little spinning trophy on the right side saying "[Name] has won the game through a Transcendence Victory!"

I'm not getting any of your custom notifications nor am I getting your exact text on the right-hand side. At the same time, I'm also not getting the "X is #1 in Science" notification.

While it's all a little bit strange, since you cannot reproduce it perhaps my computer is just messing it up in its memory? As I said, the game works perfectly if it is the first one I start upon booting Civ and it's only subsequent games that are problematic. Because it works with the initial game I can still get a fully stable and functional game (I assume, I haven't tested it) my problem, realistically, is probably not that big of a deal.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, I've managed to see the error for myself now. Here's what I've got so far:

1> It only crashed in a few of my test cases. 3 out of 10, by my count, but this might be specifically related to the number of civs on the map, since all of my test games were on Small (6-man) maps.
2> It doesn't matter whether you went through the Advanced Setup screen or not.
3> It's definitely not triggering any of my own code. The game is awarding the win through some other mechanism.
4> It's an actual Transcendence win, not a Science one. So the fact that the science victory was disabled doesn't help.
5> It's not consistently one civ over another. I managed to trigger it three times; the first two were both Napoleon, so I thought it might be something specific to France, and I started a game with France as one of my opponents, but this time it was Egypt who won. It might be linked to the player ID number, though; long ago, I noticed that the arguments on the SetWinner function were reversed on the Wiki. So if victory ID #4 (Transcendence) is being somehow linked to player ID #4... obviously this shouldn't happen, but we're well past the point of arguing how things SHOULD work.

------------------------------

So here's what I'm going to do. Right now, the Transcendence Victory is in the database with no prerequisites; it's purely awarded through Lua, which is why it shouldn't have been possible for this error to happen. So it's possible that the game is thinking that in the absence of an actual victory prerequisite, a random civ has met some sort of unset requirement. What I'm going to try, tonight, is explicitly setting the project prerequisite count to 20. It'll still award through Lua, but I'm hoping that this'll prevent it from being completed any OTHER way. The downside is that it'll be like SS Boosters, where you can build it in multiple cities, with each counting towards the final total (but the transcendence process only starting after the first is created).

Actually, that's kind of a nice idea: I could bump the number needed up to, say, 50, and cut the cost of each way down. The counter would still increment by itself, at 1 per turn, but you could hurry the process a bit by using more of your cities for building ascendance projects instead of building units to defend yourself (since the perma-war part will stay in). This does fix one conceptual problem that I'd had, which was that if someone beat you to the project by 1 turn, you'd never be able to catch up to them and could only try to eliminate them entirely within the 20 turns. This way, it'd still be possible to overtake someone if you had an advantage in number of cities and/or destroyed some of THEIR core cities. (I will NOT, however, make you have to shuffle units around like the SS parts.) Of course, this is generally academic, because I've never had a game where it was still competitive even into the Nanotech Era, but the concept is sound.

Anyway, I'll try that tonight and see if it fixes the problem.

 

[Spatzimaus]

All right. I'm waiting to tonight to post the new version, but it looks like the Turn 11 transcendence issue is now fixed. Or at least, it hasn't reoccurred in any of the dozen or so test games I've run in the last 24 hours; once I post the new files tonight, I'll wait to see if anyone still runs into this problem.

The new design is like I mentioned in a previous post. Previously, the Ascent to Transcendence project cost 5000 hammers to build, was limited to 1 instance per player, and started a 20-turn counter. Now, the project costs 1000 hammers and can be built in as many cities as you want; once you've completed at least one instance of it, you'll be given +1 copy each turn for free, and the game ends when you get to 50 copies. (Projects aren't tied to the city that created them, so there's no stacking issue there.) So you can either just sit back and wait 50 turns, or have your cities keep building the ascendance project instead of combat units, to finish the process in a much shorter amount of time.

In the long term, I want to do more with this. My original concept had involved sacrificing Great People to speed up the process, and once we get the DLL I might still do exactly that, but it'd require a significant AI overhaul. I could make it considerably more intricate, although I'm not sure there's much point in doing so before finding a way to make the game remain competitive into the Nanotech Era.

---------------------

So, tonight's new version will have the Ascension fix, as well as adding a bunch of new icons and events for the Mythology mod. I'm trying to wrap the major balance/bug fix changes up in Mythology so that I can get back to converting unit models, because it'd be nice to finish up the Ascension content once and for all.

----------------------
(EDIT) Update: I got stuck at work later than I'd hoped last night, and didn't have enough time to add in the last few things I needed before my sleeping pills kicked in. So the new version will be out tonight (2/15) instead.

 

[dinobot386]

Been getting crashes every time a farm is removed from a tile. This pretty much makes the game unplayable once the nukes start flying. I remember this being a problem in one of the older versions of your mods.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Been getting crashes every time a farm is removed from a tile.

Wow, that one takes me back. That only used to happen when I had the Reload Landmark System flag turned on, which hasn't happened since about a year ago. I'm going to be very upset if one of the recent patches is now overriding that setting... I know some folks over in the main forum have found a use for that flag, but nothing in my mod needs it. (Yet.)

One question: are you using the DX9 executable, or the 10/11? I've been trying to track down the invisible units issue, and I'm wondering whether some of the graphical instability could be tied to the textures I'm using for various things.

Also, did this just start happening in the most recent versions? Nothing in the Ascension mod related to terrains, improvements, etc. has changed in several months, so it'd be strange if this is just now popping up again.

And finally, does this happen if you clear your cache between games? I've experienced some strange instabilities that in the end were tracked back to having an uncleared cache when I'd started the game initially. (As in, the cache wasn't cleared, I started a new game, saved the game after a few turns, and then when I tried to load it again the next day it would act screwy because it'd no longer have those extra bits in memory.)

 

[dinobot386]

Im using Dx 10/11, It's only been happening since the most recent version. Been getting it on Ascension, need to check for AoM.

I haven't tried clearing the cache, doing that now.


Update: Just checked, still crashing

 

[Spatzimaus]

That's really strange, given how little I changed in that last version. I suppose it's possible that a file got corrupted during the upload, or during your download. I just can't see anything that could explain that problem suddenly reappearing... except that the devs seem to have updated the SDK recently with a few new flags, so there might be a problem now. I'll look into it.

 

[dinobot386]

Ok, weird bug ive been having with this recent game

For some reason the game crashes every time i destroy a particular unit (archer) It's just that one archer and the crash occurs whenever my horseman moves off of the archers tile after killing it.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Wow, between that and your earlier problem, it really just sounds like a corrupted file in the mod somewhere. I'll be posting the new version tomorrow night (fingers crossed) and you can see if the problems persist at that point.

 

[texdionis]

I'm posting this on the fly, so I'm not sure if it's a double, but when Argos' event triggers, you can't select any of the options and the pop-up screen freezes.

 

[esvath]

Hi, I am a newbie for CiV; just installed yesterday

I download this mod (Base and Mythology) and put it in MODS folder. I can see them installed when entering MOD menu, but can not start a new game with them active. I got pop-up errors, saying the game can not load various files in assets.

When the game began, I can enter the world map, but each unit that I selected did not have its order list (the one on the left screen). I tried both with D9 and D10/11. Did I do something wrong?

Thank you for the reply

 

[^Renegade]

Got the latest version of Aom/empires/ascension and i'm getting ctd's whenever I try and start a new game tried using default settings as well as custom ones but it happens everytime.

Not played this mod since January been busy with uni work and stuff but it didnt have this problem before

 

[Spatzimaus]

Not played this mod since January been busy with uni work and stuff but it didnt have this problem before

I can think of a few possible explanations:

1> This might be a cache issue; make sure you removed the old version from your game's directory AND remove the contents of the Cache directory whenever you switch to a new version, especially if it's been a while since your last download.

2> Are you trying to use any other mods with this? It's possible that there's a conflict with something else you're using; as time goes on my mods get more extensive, which increases the chance of an issue.

3> What DLC are you using? I don't use DLCs, so it's possible that one of my changes is interacting poorly, but no one else has reported that sort of problem. And I've tried to write my code as flexibly as possible to avoid this issue.

4> The only change that I've made since January that could explain this (outside the Mythology mod, that is) is the merging of Blitz and Logistics; the change is in the Base mod, but it modifies all the others, and the promotions table is particularly unforgiving to the issues this sort of change can cause. So if you're using an out-of-date version of the Base mod with the latest Ascension mod (or vice versa), it could easily get stuck in a crash cycle like that. The mods in the Files thread are all up-to-date, but I've noticed some strange trends with download numbers, where on occasion I see fewer people downloading the Base mod than download a content mod posted at the same time; ONLY the currently posted files are checked for internal compatibility. (And at present, the Mythology and Ascension mods aren't compatible with each other, either.)

Depending on how exact your "since January" statement was, this last one could be worse; mid-December was the big alteration to promotions, merging the Accuracy and Barrage lines with Shock and Drill. So if you hadn't updated since then, there could be a variety of issues.

 

[^Renegade]

I can think of a few possible explanations:

1> This might be a cache issue; make sure you removed the old version from your game's directory AND remove the contents of the Cache directory whenever you switch to a new version, especially if it's been a while since your last download.

I removed the old versions of the mod before I installed the news ones, just tried wiping the cache but it still crashes

2> Are you trying to use any other mods with this? It's possible that there's a conflict with something else you're using; as time goes on my mods get more extensive, which increases the chance of an issue.

No other mods but those three including in the mod folder.

3> What DLC are you using? I don't use DLCs, so it's possible that one of my changes is interacting poorly, but no one else has reported that sort of problem. And I've tried to write my code as flexibly as possible to avoid this issue.

Only dlc I have is the civ one for the Mongols and cradle of civilization - americas both which I have had since the release of the game.

4> The only change that I've made since January that could explain this (outside the Mythology mod, that is) is the merging of Blitz and Logistics; the change is in the Base mod, but it modifies all the others, and the promotions table is particularly unforgiving to the issues this sort of change can cause. So if you're using an out-of-date version of the Base mod with the latest Ascension mod (or vice versa), it could easily get stuck in a crash cycle like that. The mods in the Files thread are all up-to-date, but I've noticed some strange trends with download numbers, where on occasion I see fewer people downloading the Base mod than download a content mod posted at the same time; ONLY the currently posted files are checked for internal compatibility. (And at present, the Mythology and Ascension mods aren't compatible with each other, either.)

Depending on how exact your "since January" statement was, this last one could be worse; mid-December was the big alteration to promotions, merging the Accuracy and Barrage lines with Shock and Drill. So if you hadn't updated since then, there could be a variety of issues.

I've been using the latest versions of Aom/empires/ascension which I downloaded yesterday.