[Beyond the Sword] Necro Cristi

[davidlallen]

@Colin: I have found that civchecker, which I mentioned a few posts back, has completely cured my crash problem in my mod. I still have an unrelated testcase which crashes occasionally, but the *mod*is 100% stable. I no longer need the lighthouse/great lighthouse. Have you cleared up any errors reported by that? Except four missing art references in BTS itself, as listed in the documentation

 

[mike9o]

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. Readme was 0.15

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

Have you cleared your cache? I don't know what this is. I re-booted the PC if that would have achieved the same thing.

Was the old version of Necro Cristi deleted before this one was installed? I'm not sure, but that is what I normally do when loading a new version of a mod. I'm 95% sure that it was.

Is it a crash that happens every time the save is loaded? Yes. If so does the crash occur after you perform a certain action or when the AI is moving? I load the game and end my turn. What are the exact conditions prior to the CTD? I load the game and end my turn. The screen turns black with the Civ4 arrowhead mouse pointer. The error message appears.

Have you tried redownloading and installing 0.15? I downloaded it again and it was the exact same file size 71,685k. I deleted the existing 0.15 and reinstalled it and it still crashed.

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'll do that. 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.

Thanks for the response, again, great mod so far!

 

[Colin]

Okay, slight delay due to internet connection problems. Anyway - I have removed the last of the xml errors using civchecker (apart from the ArtDefines_misc ones which I don't think are my doing). Mike, these may have been the cause of your savegame crash, which happens for me too but which I haven't been able to isolate.

0.2 will include these fixes and hopefully make the mod more stable.

 

[mike9o]

Great. I look forward to playing 0.2!

 

[TALLPANZER]

View attachment TALLPANZER AD-0012-February.CivBeyondSwordSave I have no Idea what is up here, I just hope it helps in some way. I love this mod

 

[Colin]

I'll try to get 0.2 up tonight or tomorrow and hopefully resolve some of these crashes. In the meantime I have redone the first two posts in the thread to be more in line with the current status of the mod. If anyone wants to help out in any capacity please look at the second post where I've detailed what I need at the moment.

 

[Dimitri12345]

I have trouble starting up the mod. "NecroCristi" (the folder) is located in my mods inside BTS. Once i open up BTS and go to advanced and then mods and load up NecroCristi the mod begins to load. When my screen changes to suit the game screen and then the secound loading screen appears with it comes an error that says "GFC error: failed to start primary control theme" or something like that. i click ok or cancel it and it appears a secound time and i have to close it again and then the mod closes. All this happens before i even open up the main menu for the mod, so what can i do?

This same problem happens when I try playing Planetfall

 

[TALLPANZER]

A Zombie control unit would be cool. Like how hunters could take over animals in FFH.

 

[Colin]

0.2 available here:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ux9uaa

Changelog:

Spoiler :

0.2

If a unit is defeated by the undead it will rise again as a zombie (Important
Python breakthrough!)
All factions now have unique city art
All factions now have unique palace art
New unit art for Headhunter
Removed prereqs for Sentry promotion and added Sentry2 promotion
Removed promotion requirements for Commando
Researching Hospitals now gives +1 Heath per city
Researching Eudemonia now gives +1 Happiness per city
Dawn of Man screen now more in character, and a few other text changes to the
interface
Undead can no longer build Warriors or Junkyard Dogs
Florentine school now founded with Humanism, and gives more culture and science
The new calender is now displaying correctly
Added a little more flavour in the civilopedia and dialogue
More xml reference cleanup - should hopefully remove crashes
Removed bears
More appropriate text for the final score/ranking screen
Misc small changes to early unit costs, strengths, and abilities

Known issues

Sometimes Zanzibar's city art doesn't have any texture
Unlikely to run properly in non-English versions

The three most important changes are the first implementation of dead units
'coming back', unique city and palace art for each faction, and the removal of
some xml errors to (fingers crossed) remove the sorts of crashes reported by
tallpanzer and mike9o. Feedback, as always, is needed please!
Unfortunately it will be a while before I can update again (which is why I have
released now). Real life has again intruded and means that I will be away and
without access to my computer until August. While I will continue to monitor this
thread when I can, I will be unable to address bugs or any other miscellaneous
concerns which may arise. All comments will be noted though, so that when I
return I can continue modding.

@Dimitri12345 - I'm afraid this is a new one for me, and think it likely the problem is at your end given that AFAIK no-one else has had this issue. Are you sure the mod is in the right place, not in mods/necrocristi/necrocristi for example? Have you patched BTS to the latest version?

@Tallpanzer - Yeah, I'm hoping to tie something like this into the 'reponses to the undead' civic category. I really like the idea of a changing dynamic regarding factions interaction with the undead; starting from basically trying to avoid them to either worshipping them, obliterating them, using them as cheap labour, or even finding a way to coexist as equals.

Colin

 

[Dimitri12345]

yes, its in the right place and i have 3.13 ver of BTS

can you tell me were you have the folder in?

about the co-existing part, what if you make it so that the zombie control unit can only be built when you have a certain civic, like enslavement.

 

[davidlallen]

When my screen changes to suit the game screen and then the secound loading screen appears with it comes an error that says "GFC error: failed to start primary control theme" or something like that. i click ok or cancel it and it appears a secound time and i have to close it again and then the mod closes. All this happens before i even open up the main menu for the mod, so what can i do?

This same problem happens when I try playing Planetfall

Please help us help you, by typing in the *exact* message. If you get the same message for each different mod you try, what we need to debug is not related to the mod itself.

EDIT: Are you able to run the mods that come with BTS itself, such as Charlemagne or Broken Star? If so, then look at the directory structure for those working mods, and then see if the directory structure for the NecroCristi or Planetfall directories is the same. It should be identical: for each modname, directory BTS/Mods/modname/Assets/XML/Art should exist, and contain files like CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml.

 

[alerum68]

Wow, I can't believe I missed this Mod! Superb! The most original Mod that's come out since FFH. Amazing Colin, Amazing!

 

[Dimitri12345]

Please help us help you, by typing in the *exact* message. If you get the same message for each different mod you try, what we need to debug is not related to the mod itself.

EDIT: Are you able to run the mods that come with BTS itself, such as Charlemagne or Broken Star? If so, then look at the directory structure for those working mods, and then see if the directory structure for the NecroCristi or Planetfall directories is the same. It should be identical: for each modname, directory BTS/Mods/modname/Assets/XML/Art should exist, and contain files like CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml.

The exact message is:
"GFC error: Failed to intialize primary control theme"

Thats the thing i can run charlemagne and all but those mods arent located in the traditional mods directory (the place were i am suppose to keep downloaded mods), i cant seem to find those (charlemagne, final frontier etc folders), but the mod "rise of mankind" works for me so i will check that.

Now, after checking both and comparing all the folders and everything is there its just rise of mankind has more in BTS/Mods/Rise of Mankind/Assets/XML/Art, this is all i have for necro cristi in Beyond the Sword\MODS\NecroCristi\Assets\XML\Art:
CIV4ArtDefines_Building
CIV4ArtDefines_Civilization
CIV4ArtDefines_Leaderhead
CIV4ArtDefines_Misc
CIV4ArtDefines_Unit
Can someone check if that the same with theirs? I am gonna check other directories, but im just checking if it matches up with others that works, also i dont think rise of mankind is a good mod to use in comparing becuase both rise of mankind and necrocristi have different directories and folders and such...

 

[alerum68]

Colin, I've made an .FPK of the art files up to your new release. This should remove any delay experienced during load up. In future releases, you can do the same thing, and just make an .FPK file with just the patched artwork, and it will allow you to have multiple .FPK's, even if older art is no longer supported. Send me a PM so I can have a way to send it to you.

Dimitri, the only time I've heard of people experiencing GFC errors is when they are running an old patched version of the game. Since this game was released after the 3.13 patch for BTS, I'm pretty sure you'll need to be running that version. Are you running the latest version? If you aren't, install it. If you are, the only solution I've heard is to reinstall BTS.

 

[davidlallen]

Searching for "gfc error" on google found one thread which might help you:

http://www.eqforge.com/showthread.php?p=6869181

There are others, I did not read them all.

When I download a mod, I put it in the same directory with charlemagne, broken star, etc. You certainly could have different instructions, but I have been able to play all the mods I find. In my install, the BTS mods like charlemagne are in ...program files ... beyond the sword\mods.

Each mod will have different files in the xml/art directory. My only point was that the beginning part of the path should be the same. I was trying to find out if you had installed it in the wrong place or had an extra level of directory in the path, but that does not seem to be the problem.

I recommend searching for "gfc error" and following some of the suggestions found in those threads.

 

[alerum68]

hmmm... Try removing the Resource directory, and running the MOD with just the assets folder. It may not look right, but it may load. That's the Resource directory from the mod, not from your game!

 

[Dimitri12345]

ok davidlallen, ill check it up, but i already did it before so i dont think ill find something new, ill check the link too.. thank you

alerum thats a good idea, so are you saying if it loads but has no pictures or no interface or something like that then it would mean theres something wrong in resources? intreasting ill try that...

Ok.... i tried it with the resource directory deleted, but the error is still happening, some things i noticed is that the error happens during the Init loading phase, it has three BTS windows open at the time, and once i load the mod it takes some time for the Init loading phase to begin, while during mods that worked the loading phase happens almost instantly after i click to load the mod.
So right now i have this in my(this is ver 0.2 of the mod) My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\MODS\NecroCristi:
A folder "assets"
Configuration settings "NecroCristi"
BAK File "NecroCristi.ini"
Text Document "readme"
Configuration settings "Copy of NecroCristi"
BAK File "Copy of NecroCristi.ini"
and
Resources (becuase it turns out the it isnt the resources directory that is causeing the errors)
So ya, someone confirm to say if thats what thye have also, becuase in the link the davidlallen gave me they said they had to delete some files to make their mod work, but, I also noticed from searching GFC errors myself that their were numerous ways of solving the GFC error but i tried all of those and it still happens

 

[alerum68]

It's in My Documents? Have you tried running it from "Program Files\Firaxis Games\Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\MODs\"? IIRC some mods, like FFH, have to be ran from that location, instead of the Documents folder.

 

[Dimitri12345]

Yea, I already tried that location

 

[marsrover21]

The screenshot links seem to be broken . . . . This looks cool and I would like to check it out.