ruff_hi
Live 4ever! Or die trying
ahh - that is your problem. Your computer is way too powerful (compared to my Dell junker) and civ knows that everyone else is seriously jealous.
BAT Feedback Thread
- Thread starter Lemon Merchant
- Start date
hungry1987
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2009
- Messages
- 7
No my problem is, that it randomly crashes
If you want to make fun out of it, your problem. Mine is just the crashes.
Could they be relatet to SLI?
Or what else is causing them?
That is what interests me, not your jealousy!
At the moment i cant even finish a single game to the end and that is annoying.
ruff_hi
Live 4ever! Or die trying
hungry1987 - I feel your pain and I wasn't making fun of you ... well, maybe a very little bit. It is called sarcasm and often is hard to pick up in a new language and almost impossible in text.No my problem is, that it randomly crashes
If you want to make fun out of it, your problem. Mine is just the crashes <and what is causing it> That is what interests me, not your jealousy!
Sorry - I have nothing to add to what EF suggested. Maybe play a smaller game that doesn't strain your system as much and see if the game still crashes. If it does, then it isn't memory ... if it doesn't, then it could be memory.
It is like a joke ...
Patient: Doctor! It hurts when I do this.
Doctor: Don't do that.
klaidonis
Chieftain
My 2 cents:No my problem is, that it randomly crashes
1. A user friendly, developer unfriendly way: rollback to BAT 2.1 with 2.1.1a patch. See what would happen.
2. A user unfriendly, developer friendly way: get a list of mods which are the parts of the BAT. Remove those mods from you installed instance one by one, beginning from the most graphic intense ones. When the error disappears, you'll know the most suspicious part of the BAT. Then write a bug report.
Or add the mods one by one to the vanilla BtS installation, until you have the error again.
In the end, extremely developer unfriendly peace of advice: if you see an announcement of a mod update and a download link in the announcement is incorrect, it's better to wait for one or two weeks before installing the update. Something will come up.
EmperorFool
Deity
Hmm, I have one of those but haven't made the jump to SLI mode yet since the second card won't fit in my rig.
But I cannot compare because I don't play huge games like that. Maybe I'll give it a shot and see if I get smoke. 
No. If I understand SLI correctly, each card processes half of the scene. This means that both cards must contain all of the models and textures. But I have not done any research on SLI; I'm just going off what I know about graphics pipelines (only a little) and parallel processing (also only a little). I do know that the bus between them (PCI) would not allow fast RAM access from the GPU on one card to the RAM on the other--that would slow it down considerably. And they are connected only by a cable, again not good for that type of processing. Given this, I'd bet it works as I suspect.
Some generally friendly BAT tips:
This is actually fairly common of graphics intensive mods on huge maps. Rise of Mankind and others experience (or possibly don't anymore, I haven't tried RoM on a huge map lately) this problem in the late game on a huge or larger maps. The problem is largely one of memory allocation, the number of units and textures used, and Civ's notorious memory leak. BTS is /3GB switch aware, meaning that it can use more than the standard 2 GB maximum address space usually allocated to 32 bit programs by Windows, but it has to be told to use that extra space by tweaking the .exe file. (Search for "fixing the MAF error" or "MAF error" here on CFC.) This has been a problem for years, and is not unique to BAT, and it doesn't care how sexy your hardware is. I have an i975 in my flat with two dual Radeon cards in it. In effect, it's a quad Crossfire arrangement, and yes, it also chokes on huge maps. The solution is to tweak your .exe file, play smaller maps, or else save, exit, and reload more often in the late game to keep the memory leak under control. This issue has existed since vanilla, and it won't go away without an overhaul of the game core (as I understand it). I hope that Civ 5 doesn't have this issue.
This is more or less how Crossfire works, and I'm assuming that SLI works the same way. Each card is the same, and the amount of memory is not cumulative (from what I have been told). It's the graphics chips that are being shared to render a portion of the whole, sharing the load and yielding better performance than a single card can give alone. I can't say for sure, as I've never owned an SLI setup, but maybe an Nvidia expert can put their two cents in and clarify this.
I'd like to point out a couple of things in response to this, and some other grumbling about this "announcement issue" that I've noticed:
1. The link was only incorrect for about six hours, and its inaccuracy was not intentional. I was unable to activate the download on SourceForge due to some sort of privilege issue. EmperorFool was gracious enough to get the link working as soon as he was able to make the time to do so. I didn't take the announcement down as I simply did not have the available time that day to get back on CFC later and put it back up. I had spent a total of six hours trying to get the file working, and simply ran out of time.
2. BAT 2.2 has been completely stable for about a month, and has been fully tested on the five machines that my partner and myself own. I have played in excess of twenty complete games to test it, and I would say that about 98% of the bugs have been fixed. That is the purpose of the bug reporting threads. To help us to catch the ones that we miss. We can't test for everything.
3. I chose to release BAT 2.2 the day that I did because a) it was ready, and b) you fellows would have had to wait another two to three weeks before I was able to upload again. I pushed hard to get it out before that deadline, so that those of you who enjoy this mod didn't have to wait for the fixed version any longer than necessary. I apologize again for the download problem, but sometimes things happen and real life gets in the way. To those of you horribly inconvenienced by a six hour wait, I can only offer a refund on what you paid for BAT - which, as you might remember, is nothing whatsoever. We do our best, but not one member of the BUG team is on the Firaxis payroll. We do this for free, as a service to the Civ community, and we have jobs, and lives, and loved ones to care for.
4. Finally, if you notice an issue that we've missed, or if you're having a problem with BAT (or BUG and BULL), then by all means, please tell us and we'll try to solve it as best we can. But please be a little understanding and patient? If you'd like to be harsh, critical, and full of scorn, then show me your 100%, guaranteed to be error free mod, and I might not get so cranky about the criticism. I genuinely feel bad about the fact that some of you are having issues. I honestly, and sincerely do. I understand the frustration, but I (and probably EF and ruff, as well) would appreciate a little less unpleasant rhetoric about it. You're not only disrespecting our hard work and effort, but the efforts of the other modders whose excellent content makes BAT what it is.
And that's my 2 cents...
-------------------------------------
Now, back to a more user friendly tone:
EF and myself cannot reproduce a couple of the errors that some of you have mentioned. Specifically the CTD issue when returning to the main menu. There have been a couple of suggestions to help, but I would also like to remind users to make sure that they run the game as administrator at all times. Especially if you are using BAT somewhere other than the "\Documents\My Games\BTS" location with Vista or Win 7. The standard install location for BTS in Vista and Seven requires write access to the folder when BAT (and some other mods) are used, and it can't do that without admin privileges. It isn't enough to have the Admin account. You must right click when launching, and select "Run as Administrator", or find the BTS.exe file, select "Properties" and set the game to run as admin that way.
"Lemon's Civ/Vista guide" in the tech forum has screenies and everything on how to do this. It works for Win 7 as well. I invite you to look in on that thread for better examples and spiffy visuals.
Thank you for your time. Now, please go back to your game and beat the living daylights out of someone.
Corrected EDIT:
This is actually fairly common of graphics intensive mods on huge maps. Rise of Mankind and others experience (or possibly don't anymore, I haven't tried RoM on a huge map lately) this problem in the late game on a huge or larger maps. The problem is largely one of memory allocation, the number of units and textures used, and Civ's notorious memory leak. BTS is /3GB switch aware, meaning that it can use more than the standard 2 GB maximum address space usually allocated to 32 bit programs by Windows, but it has to be told to use that extra space by tweaking the .exe file. (Search for "fixing the MAF error" or "MAF error" here on CFC.) This has been a problem for years, and is not unique to BAT, and it doesn't care how sexy your hardware is. I have an i975 in my flat with two dual Radeon cards in it. In effect, it's a quad Crossfire arrangement, and yes, it also chokes on huge maps. The solution is to tweak your .exe file, play smaller maps, or else save, exit, and reload more often in the late game to keep the memory leak under control. This issue has existed since vanilla, and it won't go away without an overhaul of the game core (as I understand it). I hope that Civ 5 doesn't have this issue.
This is more or less how Crossfire works, and I'm assuming that SLI works the same way. Each card is the same, and the amount of memory is not cumulative (from what I have been told). It's the graphics chips that are being shared to render a portion of the whole, sharing the load and yielding better performance than a single card can give alone. I can't say for sure, as I've never owned an SLI setup, but maybe an Nvidia expert can put their two cents in and clarify this.
I'd like to point out a couple of things in response to this, and some other grumbling about this "announcement issue" that I've noticed:
1. The link was only incorrect for about six hours, and its inaccuracy was not intentional. I was unable to activate the download on SourceForge due to some sort of privilege issue. EmperorFool was gracious enough to get the link working as soon as he was able to make the time to do so. I didn't take the announcement down as I simply did not have the available time that day to get back on CFC later and put it back up. I had spent a total of six hours trying to get the file working, and simply ran out of time.
2. BAT 2.2 has been completely stable for about a month, and has been fully tested on the five machines that my partner and myself own. I have played in excess of twenty complete games to test it, and I would say that about 98% of the bugs have been fixed. That is the purpose of the bug reporting threads. To help us to catch the ones that we miss. We can't test for everything.
3. I chose to release BAT 2.2 the day that I did because a) it was ready, and b) you fellows would have had to wait another two to three weeks before I was able to upload again. I pushed hard to get it out before that deadline, so that those of you who enjoy this mod didn't have to wait for the fixed version any longer than necessary. I apologize again for the download problem, but sometimes things happen and real life gets in the way. To those of you horribly inconvenienced by a six hour wait, I can only offer a refund on what you paid for BAT - which, as you might remember, is nothing whatsoever. We do our best, but not one member of the BUG team is on the Firaxis payroll. We do this for free, as a service to the Civ community, and we have jobs, and lives, and loved ones to care for.
4. Finally, if you notice an issue that we've missed, or if you're having a problem with BAT (or BUG and BULL), then by all means, please tell us and we'll try to solve it as best we can. But please be a little understanding and patient? If you'd like to be harsh, critical, and full of scorn, then show me your 100%, guaranteed to be error free mod, and I might not get so cranky about the criticism. I genuinely feel bad about the fact that some of you are having issues. I honestly, and sincerely do. I understand the frustration, but I (and probably EF and ruff, as well) would appreciate a little less unpleasant rhetoric about it. You're not only disrespecting our hard work and effort, but the efforts of the other modders whose excellent content makes BAT what it is.
And that's my 2 cents...
-------------------------------------
Now, back to a more user friendly tone:
EF and myself cannot reproduce a couple of the errors that some of you have mentioned. Specifically the CTD issue when returning to the main menu. There have been a couple of suggestions to help, but I would also like to remind users to make sure that they run the game as administrator at all times. Especially if you are using BAT somewhere other than the "\Documents\My Games\BTS" location with Vista or Win 7. The standard install location for BTS in Vista and Seven requires write access to the folder when BAT (and some other mods) are used, and it can't do that without admin privileges. It isn't enough to have the Admin account. You must right click when launching, and select "Run as Administrator", or find the BTS.exe file, select "Properties" and set the game to run as admin that way.
"Lemon's Civ/Vista guide" in the tech forum has screenies and everything on how to do this. It works for Win 7 as well. I invite you to look in on that thread for better examples and spiffy visuals.
Thank you for your time. Now, please go back to your game and beat the living daylights out of someone.
Corrected EDIT:
The blood effects are on by default. You need to disable them to make them disappear. The details are in the readme files in your BAT 2.2 folder, and in the file "No Blood.zip." Your install should have the blood effects activated automatically when you installed, unless you unzipped the No Blood.zip file and did what it said.
ruff_hi
Live 4ever! Or die trying
You missed a word there ... and beat the living daylights out of someone else.
Sorry. My bad. I misunderstand or misread in my haste to see all the changes in the mod.
I thought that they were on default and had to be specifically disabled. I'm off to turn that blood on right now! 
Ok, now I'm confused and realize I wasn't hallucinating. This is what the file 'No Blood.txt' states:
This gives the impression that you don't have to manually enable the effects.
And Special Note 2 in the readme file states that
Am I confused again?
This gives the impression that you don't have to manually enable the effects.
And Special Note 2 in the readme file states that
Am I confused again?
Oh jeez. It appears that I'm a moron after all. I'll check it out and have my partner upload the fixed file tomorrow night if necessary. For those of you who are brave, it requires an edit in the Civ4EffectInfos.xml file. There's a section that is commented out, just remove the <!-- and --> parts, not the stuff in between. Voila, blood effects enabled.
EDIT:
I just checked my copy and blood effects are enabled by default, rather than what I said earlier. I'll correct that shortly. My copy of Civ4EffectInfos.xml is activated thus:
Code:
<EffectInfo>
<Type>EFFECT_BLOOD_THRUST</Type>
<Description>Blood splatter effect</Description>
<fScale>5.0</fScale>
<fUpdateRate>1.0</fUpdateRate>
<Path>Art/Effects/fx_sword_hit_thrust.nif</Path>
<bIsProjectile>0</bIsProjectile>
</EffectInfo>
<EffectInfo>
<Type>EFFECT_BLOOD_SLASH</Type>
<Description>Blood spray effect</Description>
<fScale>4.5</fScale>
<fUpdateRate>1.0</fUpdateRate>
<Path>Art/Effects/fx_sword_hit_slash.nif</Path>
<bIsProjectile>0</bIsProjectile>
</EffectInfo>That means that they are enabled by default. To disable them, copy the contents of the No Blood.zip file to Assets\XML\Misc and over write like the readme says.
I misspoke. It's rather late where I am right now, sorry.
I hate to be a nuisance but I'm trying to go ahead and make the change for the blood. Is this the part of the file that is being referred to? None of it seems to be commented out in my copy in \My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\MODS\BAT Mod 2.2\Assets\XML\Misc
<EffectInfo>
<Type>EFFECT_BLOOD_THRUST</Type>
<Description>Blood splatter effect</Description>
<fScale>5.0</fScale>
<fUpdateRate>1.0</fUpdateRate>
<Path>Art/Effects/fx_sword_hit_thrust.nif</Path>
<bIsProjectile>0</bIsProjectile>
</EffectInfo>
<EffectInfo>
<Type>EFFECT_BLOOD_SLASH</Type>
<Description>Blood spray effect</Description>
<fScale>4.5</fScale>
<fUpdateRate>1.0</fUpdateRate>
<Path>Art/Effects/fx_sword_hit_slash.nif</Path>
<bIsProjectile>0</bIsProjectile>
</EffectInfo>
[EDIT] We must've been typing at the same time. It looks like our sections are the same yet I still have no blood. I must seem very bloodthirsty!
<EffectInfo>
<Type>EFFECT_BLOOD_THRUST</Type>
<Description>Blood splatter effect</Description>
<fScale>5.0</fScale>
<fUpdateRate>1.0</fUpdateRate>
<Path>Art/Effects/fx_sword_hit_thrust.nif</Path>
<bIsProjectile>0</bIsProjectile>
</EffectInfo>
<EffectInfo>
<Type>EFFECT_BLOOD_SLASH</Type>
<Description>Blood spray effect</Description>
<fScale>4.5</fScale>
<fUpdateRate>1.0</fUpdateRate>
<Path>Art/Effects/fx_sword_hit_slash.nif</Path>
<bIsProjectile>0</bIsProjectile>
</EffectInfo>
[EDIT] We must've been typing at the same time. It looks like our sections are the same yet I still have no blood. I must seem very bloodthirsty!
If it isn't commented out, it should work. I'll check the art files tomorrow as it's quite late here and I'm sleepy. You aren't using quick combat are you? There is no blood that way at all...
Take your time. And, no, I'm not using quick combat. I did have the effects in BAT 2.1.1a but for some reason no longer have them. If any one just wants to pipe in and state that they see them in 2.2 I'll just accept that it's something on my end.
And, no, I'm not using quick combat. I did have the effects in BAT 2.1.1a but for some reason no longer have them. If any one just wants to pipe in and state that they see them in 2.2 I'll just accept that it's something on my end.
EmperorFool
Deity
Whenever I've had a hard or boring day at work, I know I can always count on coming in here for a good laugh! 
Thank you, Lemon Merchant, for what I consider a very even-tempered reality check.
I personally hope to provide the best gaming experience through BUG and BULL, and if I could devote my full time to it I would. But sadly, I must buy my own food and pay my rent on time.
Please be patient with us and respect our efforts. I think we all deserve it. Plus a happy coder writes better software.
I also have exactly one computer. Yes, that's very strange. I used to maintain multiple computers, but now I just have one rig. When I can reproduce a problem, I can work on fixing it. If I cannot, I depend on the users to provide detailed accounts of what's going wrong. And even then it may not be enough.
@hungry1987 - You could try disabling one of the cards so you're not using SLI. Then play a game and see if it crashes. I suspect it's simply Civ4 not able to handle that much graphic bliss.
Thank you, Lemon Merchant, for what I consider a very even-tempered reality check.I personally hope to provide the best gaming experience through BUG and BULL, and if I could devote my full time to it I would. But sadly, I must buy my own food and pay my rent on time.
Please be patient with us and respect our efforts. I think we all deserve it. Plus a happy coder writes better software. I also have exactly one computer. Yes, that's very strange. I used to maintain multiple computers, but now I just have one rig. When I can reproduce a problem, I can work on fixing it. If I cannot, I depend on the users to provide detailed accounts of what's going wrong. And even then it may not be enough.
@hungry1987 - You could try disabling one of the cards so you're not using SLI. Then play a game and see if it crashes. I suspect it's simply Civ4 not able to handle that much graphic bliss.
hungry1987
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2009
- Messages
- 7
I'm sry as you pointed out, i'm no native speaker and didn't read that as sarcasm
Got another one for you, hopefully you dont know that already:
Female Patient: Doctor! I got a lump in my breast.
Doctor: Who does something like that?
Hi Emporor,
thank you for all your time and good advice.
I will try disabling SLI through the driver and report back if it runs better.
klaidonis
Chieftain
OK, now I will wait for a month. Thanks for clarification.
ruff_hi
Live 4ever! Or die trying
Warning - I know next to nothing about BAT ... actually, just make that nothing. Now, with that out there ...
... isn't there a better way to enable / disable effects? Isn't there a BAT page in the BUG options that the using can check a box under and bingo - no more effect?
