[Beyond the Sword] Necro Cristi

[davidlallen]

Well, I do not have a smoking gun, but I have something which makes my mod ""much less likely"" to crash. In my mod, I have a super-quick mode, for testing purposes only, which almost always causes a crash within 10 turns if the AI starts on the coast. If the AI is not on the coast, there is usually a crash within 40 turns, which is usually when the AI founds a new city on the coast.

After long sessions of different experiments, which I won't bore you with the details of, I added a lighthouse and great lighthouse to my list of buildings. The crash is not "gone", but it never crashes in the first 10 turns and only seems to crash after the great lighthouse is built.

I notice your mod doesn't seem to have anything with the lighthouse effect either. Could you please try adding a lighthouse and great lighthouse to your mod. At first just copy them out of the original BTS files and set the prereq technologies to "none" or something appropriate in your tech tree. Please let me know if that makes your crash happen ""less"".

I don't have any idea why lack of lighthouse/great lighthouse is important; I guess an AI city on the coast may have some interest in building it, and maybe the AI devs forgot some kind of check in the case where there are no buildings to improve water yield.

I will keep testing; if it also improves your stability, I will put out a new thread to see if somebody with SDK knowledge can investigate why this crash would be happening.

 

[aspower]

Thank the gods! We've finally cracked into page 10 in this thread!

Glad to hear of davidallen's Mad Max style mod. Can't have too much post-apocalyptic stuff (OK, maybe I draw the line at Waterworld...hmm on second thought.). Although with Colin's NC mod, it combines Mad Max w/ zombies, two of my favorite themes. I'm hoping between the 2, some of the skilled artists out there might churn out some good custom units.

 

[King Kalmah]

Hmm maybe remove anything to do with water,like if there are work boats or ships or light houses....if no one can build anything on the ocean then maybe the AI will avoid the coast....

 

[davidlallen]

It is not yet clear why, but I started out without anything on the water and I was getting a lot of crashes. Adding workboats did not help. Adding workboats and lighthouses seemed to help a lot but not 100%. For more, see this thread.

 

[Colin]

davidlallen -

Okay, I've added in a lighthouse and great lighthouse (same as in regular BTS except with no tech prereqs or obsoletes) and run through a couple of games for a few hundred turns on water heavy maps. So far I have experienced no crashes, although obviously more test games need to be run and for longer amounts of time before the problem is 'solved'. Thankyou for your input. What I will do in the near future is upload a new version (0.15) and hopefully get more feedback on if/when these crashes now occur. An initial thought based on the increased stability is that at some point the AI makes a decision as to whether to build a water based improvement or not and conks out if it can't find any. Have you tried sticking another improvement somewhere, say right at the end of your tech tree so the AI always has something to consider building? This will be my next step if the crashes have just been delayed rather than eradicated.

aspower -

Everyone is always really down on Waterworld, but honestly I didn't think it was that bad! Okay, it was hardly Citizen Kane, and Kevin Costner has all the charisma of a plank of wood, but I thought it had an interesting premise and was pretty standard action-adventure fare. Having sat through I am Legend and the first few episodes of Jericho recently, I'm not even sure Waterworld makes it into the top 5 of crappy post-apocalyptic fluff.

 

[mike9o]

Colin, please post your update! I've had the same problem as some of the other posters: even though I play on the recommended map, the game crashes after 250+ turns. Maybe the lighthouse fix will resolve that problem. Also, after the update, could I play an old save game, or would I need to start over?

 

[davidlallen]

@colin: glad to hear the lighthouse helped a little. I still have no idea why. But, as a side effect, I wrote a checker program to find all kinds of missing references in the xml. Maybe if you run the checker, it will find some other stuff. I am still getting crashes in my small testcase, but "much less" after I fixed some missing references in my modified xml.

Take a look at the checker in this thread.

 

[davidlallen]

FWIW, the checker finds these undefined references in your published files:

UndefinedSymbol: CIVILIZATION_AMERICA
Used: necro civilizations/civ4civilizationinfos.xml at line 321
UndefinedSymbol: CIVILIZATION_GREECE
Used: necro civilizations/civ4civilizationinfos.xml at line 509
UndefinedSymbol: CIVILIZATION_PERSIA
Used: necro civilizations/civ4civilizationinfos.xml at line 417
UndefinedSymbol: DIPLO_WANGKON_EARLY
Used: necro audio/audio2dscripts.xml at line 6198
UndefinedSymbol: UNIT_EXPLORER
Used: necro units/civ4unitclassinfos.xml at line 205
UndefinedSymbol: UNIT_JEWISH_MISSIONARY
Used: necro units/civ4unitclassinfos.xml at line 133

It's possible but unlikely that your crash is occuring due to derivative civs, or religion, or contacting Wang Kon. But, it is possible your AI is trying to upgrade a scout to an explorer and crashing because there is no explorer unit. One of the big missing references I fixed to improve stability in my mod was related to unit upgrades like this.

 

[Colin]

Thanks for the heads up, and what a nifty utility (such a shame civ4 doesn't do this itself when loading a mod as it could save people a whole world of pain)!

On a completely unrelated note is there anyone who could assist on getting into the CvGameCore.DLL? Having browsed the forums it seems quite absurdly complicated just to edit the file (if you want to do it for free of course!) and I think it is an SDK change to this file I will need if I want to add something like FFH's Barbarian World mod which, as has been mentioned earlier in the thread, would be perfect for ratcheting the undead threat up a notch or two.

 

[Colin]

0.15 up at

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Z2QL6E2B

Changelog:

Spoiler :

Fixes

Added in a lighthouse and great lighthouse in an attempt to solve the water map crashes (thanks to davidlallen for this suggestion)
Removed references to explorers and jewish missionaries in the unit xml files which may have been causing crashes (thanks davidlallen again!)

Tweaks

Game now starts at o AO (after outbreak), each turn now represents one month
Moved some first level promotions up the tech tree: medic, guerilla, woodsman and sentry now have no tech requirements at initial level
Attacks across rivers now at -50% rather than -25%
Amphibious promotion removed, the no river penalty now belongs to the Commando promotion
The Undead no longer pillage improvements
Building research can now be done earlier with Field Research
Zanzibar's survivor unit is no longer south american

Additions

Added pillage promotions
Added immunisation promotions (placeholders only for now!)
Added unit: Ripper
Enabled Umbrella Corporation (although for some reason it can't be founded)
Added Stockade and Duma buildings

This release is primarily to try and curtail some of the crashes people have been having. Please test on as many maps (inlcuding water maps) and in as many different ways as possible. There are a few other miscellaneous changes but nothing particularly noteworthy.

I can't vouch for previous save games working in the new version, so best start a new game.

 

[SirTimberWolf]

I can hardly wait to play this mod. I love the idea and the leaders/civs sound very interesting.


If you need help modeling (and can import stuff into civ) I'd love to help.

Older samples.

I use maya so I can't import into civ but I can do the meshes.

Anyway. Download just finished so I'll be back later :3

 

[Colin]

I can hardly wait to play this mod. I love the idea and the leaders/civs sound very interesting.


If you need help modeling (and can import stuff into civ) I'd love to help.

Older samples.

I use maya so I can't import into civ but I can do the meshes.

Anyway. Download just finished so I'll be back later :3

I hope the mod meets your expectations! Help is always appreciated - units and buildings are always being added. I would need any models in .nif format with an accompanying .dds texture file, anything else and I just won't know how to get it in the game I'm afraid. If this fits in with what you can provide then please reply in this thread and I'll get a list up of what is currently needed (this goes for any other modellers out there kicking their heels also).

Still banging my head on a brick wall trying to implement zombie infection but on the plus side I've finally cracked the Civ4CityLSystem.xml and have started putting in some totally . .. .. .. .. .in' city art for the different factions.

EDIT: I guess female dogs are off limits as synonyms for 'excellent' then.

 

[davidlallen]

Searching the forum for "maya AND model" brought me to a thread, which told me about a maya to nif converter. Nif is the format for civ models. Here is the link, with download information nearby:

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Maya/About

If you could turn your models of the jeep plus rifle into nif files using this plugin, I have an offer from a texture expert to put on textures. Any chance you have, or you can find, a fast car model and a motorcycle model?

 

[SirTimberWolf]

Colin: I was impressed with your mod. Great job!

I like the ideas and some of the units (the junk yard dog makes a lot of sense but the War Bastard? O_o Be kindda cool as a modified bus )

Regardless; I'd love to help but one small problem remains: Exporting animations. The link David posted (thank you, that was very helpful!) says that the plugin for maya wouldn't be able to export animations, yet.

I've been looking around for some other (free) packages that might be able to do that but I've still not yet found anything useful. I'll keep looking though.

As long as you don't mind non-ANIMATED models, I can help and would love to. PM me or Email me (my profile address works)

David: Thanks for the offer. I haven't had a chance to look over the link (working a lot lately) I'd be willing to help if you can give me a list of stuff you need and any concept art relating to it. I'll read your forum post(s) as soon as I get the chance. I love the idea!

Anyway; hope to hear from you guys soon.

John

 

[Shylock]

It is a very good mod. I love the backstory you put behind it. And you included T.S Eliot not once but twice in the civilopedia!

 

[Colin]

Here's a screenshot of the new Foundationist city art (courtesy of asioasioasio) along with the basilica which replaces the default palace for the Brotherhood:



You can also see some Followers of the Word of Solomon (who have escaped from Age of Ice) prepared to defend the city against the undead hordes, and non-believers.

SirTimberWolf - I have PM'd you regarding models.

Shylock - Pleased you approve. I have tried to slip bits of poems all over the mod - maybe we could start a movement in videogames, 'More poetry, Less first person shooters' perhaps?

 

[Colin]

Breakthrough!

I've finally managed to include zombification. It's only very basic at the moment (but then so is my level of python) and doesn't model infection, disease carying, or affect cities yet, however when a unit is killed by the undead it rises again as a zombie. Should hopefully make the undead a little more threatening and it seems bug free so far, although having more people test things when 0.2 comes out may make me reconsider!

Also, I have not heard any bug reports so far from 0.15 - does this mean people aren't getting crashes any more or has everyone just lost interest?

 

[aspower]

How'd I miss the post about version .15? I'll have to check it out.

 

[mike9o]

I started up a game Tuesday night and it played fine for a while. But when I started it up again last night, it CTD'd for both auto and manual saves. It was a great plains map, epic, noble game. I played as Sergei the Halflife guy. I so want this game not to crash.

I've attached the save game file to see if it crashes on other systems.
Please check it out.

 

[Colin]

mike,

I will check out the save game when I finish work tonight. In the mean time could you just confirm the following (apologies if some of these seem too obvious, but it's best to make sure):

Is this actually 0.15 and not an earlier version? Check the readme to confirm this.

Is this a game you've started in 0.15 rather than a savegame begun in an older version?

Have you cleared your cache?

Was the old version of Necro Cristi deleted before this one was installed?

Is it a crash that happens every time the save is loaded? If so does the crash occur after you perform a certain action or when the AI is moving? What are the exact conditions prior to the CTD?

Have you tried redownloading and installing 0.15?

If you have gone through all of these, try a clean install and a new game and see if you get any crashes again. I have not had any problems so far with the latest build so want to be certain there isn't a relatively simple explanation for your crashes before I begin bughunting.