BetterAI 1/25 OOS back with Avengence

[skankerm]

With this new build (w/ asserts) I am getting OOS errors faster than rabbits make bunnies. Started around 2500bc or so which i have never seen so early. We did a reconnect and it would work for 4 turns then do another reconnect. Eventually it because every other turn. I read the article about going back and checkin movements and stuff but I only keep 8 autosaves done every turn so Im afraid that they all might be screwed anyways. This was also the first time I did a tilted axis map in multiplay but I doubt that should matter. Just curious if anyone else has seen massive OOS in this new build.

Side note: The last build 1/16 I think, I had only one OOS errors and it was also when an assert went crazy so i figured they were tied together but even in that game it was fine thereafter.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

Out of curiousity, how are you using the mod? Are you loading it as an actual mod or are you putting the .dll into the Custom Assets folder?

 

[skankerm]

I have it loaded through the mods directory "mods\betterai\assets".

edit:
I've loaded it the same way since way earlier versions. The only change I did with this is the civ.ini not loading the mod automatically, though that shouldn't make any difference. I am going to later reinstall the mod and try a multiplay game again just to make sure nothing screwy happened while unzipping and copying files to the cpu's.
Oh, one more thing.. I did overclock my computer too, just today, for another game to run better. My cpu ran stable and heatwise was fine for all the programs ive done. But, who knows, OC'ing a cpu can do some crazy things sometimes so im gonna tune it back down to see if that has an effect.

 

[Iustus]

repost from what I said in the other thread:

What we need is a reproducable case of this. Ideally a simple set of instructions which will cause the problem.

There are four different sync checks, which are done in successive turns, so the cause of the out of sync problem might have been something as much as 4 turns previously, but my primary candidate, a random that is not in sync, is checked every turn.

Sit down with one friend, make as small and simple a map as possible, and start keeping track of what you do. Do autosaves work in multiplayer? If so, set it up to autosave every turn for 30 turns or more.

Once you get a sync error, go make a copy of your autosave folder, so you do not lose any of the saves.

Now go back one turn previous autosave, try that save, try to do exactly the same thing. Click the same spots, move the units in the same order, everything. Do you still get the sync error?

If so, try doing something totally different, do you get the sync error?

If so, go back one more turn, and repeat.

Try to determine what action you take that causes the sync error, and what action if you do not take, the sync error does not occur.

It could be something like (perhaps repeating one of these):
(1) turning the build governor on or off
(2) turning the citizen governor on or off
(3) building a unit
(4) putting a unit on automation (explorers, workers, etc)
(5) clicking examine city after completing a build, rather than picking one of the choices, forcing it to give you another suggestion
(6) clicking big picture rather than choosing a tech choice after finishing a previous one, forcing it to give you another tech suggestion
(7) moving a unit somewhere
(8) canceling automation of a unit, perhaps before the unit has moved yet
(9) something else entirely

The more detail you can give, the easier it will be to track this down.

Can you get it to happen with zero AI players? That would make tracking it down even easier.

Whatever is causing it, it has to do somehow with something the human player is doing, some interaction with something one person does, that another does not do.

Every time we generate a random number, we have to do it in a different way if it is being done on every machine on the network, or just on your local machine. I suspect the bug is some case where we are using the wrong function, thus using the network random when we should not, getting that machine out of sync with the others. That is why I suggested those examples above, of course, I poured through the code and could not find any cases in that code that seemed to be wrong, so it might be somewhere else that I do not expect.

-Iustus

 

[Uncle_Joe]

We were getting incessant OOS errors even trying to get a game going. There were 3 player and 4 AIs. We couldnt detect any rhyme or reason to them, but it was harder to determine with 3 players throwing in more variables.

If it helps any, most of the errors were when one player went OOS and we were able to get them to rejoin. But we started to get them where both other players were going OOS. I have a screenshot of the OOS message showing the sync numbers if that is of any help.

Unfortunately, I dont have any saves. Brainiac that I am, I duplicated my SINGLE PLAYER Autosave folder. And since we played a new game with 2.08, all of the OOS Autosaves were overwritten.

FWIW, this error was not present the last time I played MP with the mid December build so its likely something that has been added in the last month. We werent far along into the game when they started happening (maybe 30-50 turns) so its probably not anything to do with lots of units or calculations.

 

[tofof]

Heh, once again I have Uncle Joe's same issue, and have tests and savegames.

This is 2 humans, 1/25 build, less than 10 turns into the game. It just ocurred to me that in my tests, I should have gone into the ini and set the random seed to a specific constant, but oh well. The end result was that I can't find a clear pattern, and concluded that it had to be the goody huts. The game goes OOS when Rome (the city) expands, popping two huts in the process, and it seems to be influence by the result of an earlier hut 4 turns prior.

This error occurred while running my own modpack, but as before, I stripped out everything but BetterAI (except for a custom game speed in the gamespeedinfo and cultureinfo files, needed to use the savegames).

We can get past the OOS with a little luck, but then we're just getting more of them 5-6 turns later. It's unplayable.

View attachment AutoSave_BC-3720.CivWarlordsSave

View attachment AutoSave_BC-3680.CivWarlordsSave

View attachment AutoSave_BC-3760.CivWarlordsSave

View attachment AutoSave_BC-3800.CivWarlordsSave

View attachment mod.zip

The mod.zip contains the custom game speed and some further notes elaborating my tests and such. This is warlords 2.08. You'll need to add the 1/25 build to the mod in the appropriate place - there's a dummy file there for demonstration purposes since I couldn't include the actual one here due to file size limits.

 

[Iustus]

Blake and I are making some progress on this. We have definitely knocked out two of the things causing the sync issue, but there is at least one more that we are tracking.

-Iustus

 

[tofof]

If you need any saves from further back than I provided, just let me know. Four back seemed to be enough in my testing, but I've got all 9 back to the 4000bc.