Can't Get RI to load

[The_Mess]

And i'm stumped, fresh install on 64bit vista and patched, other mods load fine, but RI wont load at all, and windows fault reporting just gives cvgamecoredll.dll as the cause...

Also the install exe verifies to 100%.
[edit]unpacks with 7zip fine as well, now trying manual cut n paste install - testing now -failed
Also copying over RI folder to my games branch as an experiment - failed, gaaah -tried uninstall, redownload and reinstall = failed.
[/edit]

So, any ideas at all?

-oh yeah, BTS is installed on another drive, rather than C if that makes a difference...

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Please run down the Troubleshooting Checklist in the first post here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=411799

It lists the most common problems you could have. Drive letter should have no impact on whether it works.

 

[The_Mess]

Already done

Hence the "And I'm stumped..."

And I've installed VC++ 2010 libraries, to no effect. Will try rebooting after firefall beta's finished updating and see if that changes anything. Also tried running in admin mode, but that just decreases the time to crash.

Basically the bts exe will stop working when told to load RI, with windows event viewer details as follows:

Faulting application Civ4BeyondSword.exe, version 3.0.3.1, time stamp 0x46ba12f3, faulting module CvGameCoreDLL.dll, version 0.0.0.0, time stamp 0x4ef328e1, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0006ec50, process id 0x86c, application start time 0x01cd024303a2c7d3.

Repeated over the various crashes.

btw, loved TR for Warlords to bits, I spent many an hour conquering the Americas as the Aztecs and proceeding to then invade the old world before repeat, unresolvable MAF's wore me out.

Also I can upload windows crashes if you want.

-----------------
tried reinstalling with admin rights - no luck

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Please give me your system specs.

Also, the outright crash on loading is a sign that something is very wrong with the install. Are you quite sure that the mod is now located in your Beyond the Sword/Mods/Realism Invictus folder, and its integrity is full? BTW, unzipping the installer would likely give you a crippled mod - you should install it the normal way.

 

[The_Mess]

Please give me your system specs.

Core 2 Duo 6600@2.4GHz
4gigs DDR2 RAM
On a mid-range Gigabyte board

OS and programs stable as a rock, with no BSoD's since a clean reinstall of OS etc, just the usual slowness from avast! AV and slow seek speeds on the older hard drive.

And as I'm in Christchurch NZ it's had a fair few disk checks for bad sectors and come up fine, with the install being to 500gig HDD.

Also, the outright crash on loading is a sign that something is very wrong with the install. Are you quite sure that the mod is now located in your Beyond the Sword/Mods/Realism Invictus folder, and its integrity is full? BTW, unzipping the installer would likely give you a crippled mod - you should install it the normal way.

That it is

And properties gives the following info:
1.31 GB (1,407,530,169 bytes)
626 files in 44 folders.

If this is wrong, if I could be given the folder and file structure of the correct install I'll just unzip the installer and manually fix it.

And I'll try moving the bts folder onto C drive later on, and installing RI to it and see if that makes a difference.
[edit]same size, same number of files and folders on C:/, suspect DEP possibly to blame... -nyet, no luck[/edit]

Also, are there any other dependencies for the mod to do with stuff like .net etc?

Wait is the CvGameCoreDLL.dll meant to be version 0.0.0.0?

 

[The_Mess]

lawl, I might just have found the problem.
/facepalm

Civ wasn't patched properly, for some dumb reason the patcher didn't install the patch...

/d'oh

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

lawl, I might just have found the problem.
/facepalm

Civ wasn't patched properly, for some dumb reason the patcher didn't install the patch...

/d'oh

That's why we have that list, 95% of all cases fall there. Have a good time playing!

 

[The_Mess]

I got tricked by starting the patching process and leaving it to run, plus the installer for RI didn't twig to the BTS install not being v3.19

Might be an idea though to add it to the checklist, that failure to load with the error message I gave indicates install of BTS isn't up to date properly and may need to be reinstalled.

And I had a rather sleepless night last night, enjoying the changes from flavour barbs to minor civs, still think the lack the lack of spices (aka chilli's!) in Latin and South America is criminal though And any chance that a distillery that uses corn is going to be added? Because corn-mash based boozes were pretty common in the pre-contact Americas (and then there's pulque...)

Heh, at least this was easy to fix, the worst thus far was the Metro 2033 bug with the vc 2003 library not installing properly due to unziping to a bad sector and yet functioned as normal for everything else...

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Thanks for the chili tip, totally skipped my mind.

As far as corn-based distillery is concerned, pre-Columbian Americans didn't have the capacity for distilled alcohol, and pulque, IIRC, is also fermented, not distilled.

 

[The_Mess]

Thanks for the chili tip, totally skipped my mind.

And being a chilli head I know sort of where to put them.

Or rather google does
http://www.wildchilli.eu/index.php/wild-chilli-species

And various cultivars and species:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capsicum_cultivars

As far as corn-based distillery is concerned, pre-Columbian Americans didn't have the capacity for distilled alcohol, and pulque, IIRC, is also fermented, not distilled.

But with alchemy + glass-blowing, distilling corn-mash would be a no brainer given that ethanol was used by alchemists as a solvent, and due to the limitations of the trading system, solve the ever annoying earth-map problem for the America's of not being able to get 3 wheat without invading someone for booze production.

As for pulque, adding the cactus it's made from (+1 or 2 food +3 gold and maybe +1 with plantation) would give the Aztecs a +1 resource for pulque beer/wine that's not reliant on contact with the old world.

Anyhow, Earth map now plays a lot better, as it's harder for me to outstrip the AI on research and gain a massive tactical advantage and proceed to my historical tactic of invading-fraking-everything.

Not that it will save the Korean civ once I have decent infantry...

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

We're not adding any more new map-placed resources; we already reached the point where adding new ones will negatively impact the random map generators that just can't fit them all on a map. We have a lot ideas for new resources of our own, but unfortunately that's how it goes.

Also, human ability to make alcohol from anything is truly astonishing - if we represented everything that humanity makes alcohol from, it would at least include all non-mineral resources (not even limited to plants, but animals as well).

We chose to represent only the most major historical sources for alcohol production.

 

[The_Mess]

We're not adding any more new map-placed resources; we already reached the point where adding new ones will negatively impact the random map generators that just can't fit them all on a map. We have a lot ideas for new resources of our own, but unfortunately that's how it goes.

Damn thee engine limitations, I was hoping to see cocoa in the future...

Also, human ability to make alcohol from anything is truly astonishing - if we represented everything that humanity makes alcohol from, it would at least include all non-mineral resources (not even limited to plants, but animals as well).

Time to go check out some modding guides then I guess

And finally got a MAF, if I can reproduce it I'll upload the save file.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Damn thee engine limitations, I was hoping to see cocoa in the future...

We may yet find a good way to have more stuff in-game, but it would have to be pretty creative. I don't discard that possibility, and cocoa would surely be among the resources we'd try to implement. One idea that we were pondering is to have some resources civ-specific. Then Aztecs, for instance, would get access to cocoa - but there would be no cocoa in games that wouldn't have Aztecs.

Time to go check out some modding guides then I guess

Actually I think it's a great idea; I find modding Civ 4 is even more fun than playing it. In this particular case, you just have to make a modified copy of a building, and it's fairly simple.

And finally got a MAF, if I can reproduce it I'll upload the save file.

No need. As we wrote many times, MAFs can't and won't be helped. The only way to make them go away is by installing a 64-bit OS.

 

[The_Mess]

We may yet find a good way to have more stuff in-game, but it would have to be pretty creative. I don't discard that possibility, and cocoa would surely be among the resources we'd try to implement. One idea that we were pondering is to have some resources civ-specific. Then Aztecs, for instance, would get access to cocoa - but there would be no cocoa in games that wouldn't have Aztecs.

I'd go with the civ specific one, as you've already got that code base there for buildings which produce resources, so I assume it would be straight forward to have a UB for the Aztecs (and Mayans). Though it would probably need to use the nation wonder property to avoid cocoa spamming.

Also, if possible I'd try tying it the presence of worked jungle tiles within city borders if the code's already there for it.

Which could also work for other UB's, i.e desert tile + UB = pulque + extra food/coin, etc, etc...

However, I've only seen the tile thing done in Civ V

Actually I think it's a great idea; I find modding Civ 4 is even more fun than playing it. In this particular case, you just have to make a modified copy of a building, and it's fairly simple.

I like simple, given uni study + complex origami + new X game from Egosoft coming this year

No need. As we wrote many times, MAFs can't and won't be helped. The only way to make them go away is by installing a 64-bit OS.

It didn't repeat, I'm guessing a memory leak chewed up video memory (system was fine, not even 100% usage), as it was stable and didn't crash after loading an autosave.

And am I right in assuming a repeatable MAF on a 64bit OS might point towards a possible bug?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I'd go with the civ specific one, as you've already got that code base there for buildings which produce resources, so I assume it would be straight forward to have a UB for the Aztecs (and Mayans). Though it would probably need to use the nation wonder property to avoid cocoa spamming.

If we implement that, they will likely be placed on the map once the needed building is constructed. It will be much cooler...

It didn't repeat, I'm guessing a memory leak chewed up video memory (system was fine, not even 100% usage), as it was stable and didn't crash after loading an autosave.

And am I right in assuming a repeatable MAF on a 64bit OS might point towards a possible bug?

Yes, but most likely this would point to a bug in executable, which we wouldn't be able to do anything with, or faulty hardware (in this case a save with a reproducible MAF would indeed be helpful, as it would just run flawlessly on other PCs). It is extremely unlikely it could be caused by anything we could fix - that'd mean that we somehow influenced the process of memory allocation. A couple of users reported MAFs on 64 OSes before, but for 99% they shouldn't and don't happen.

 

[Cadde]

Yeah, i have only been running Civ IV on 64 bit OS. (both XP and Win7, not Vista because it's balls)
Never had a MAF during normal play and only got one recently as i tried making a ultra large (256x160) map using the PlanetGenerator script.

I am now playing on a 256x160 map so i know in the back of my head that if a MAF arrives i have myself to blame.

Anyways, to the real reason to my post. It is possible to make all the MAF errors go away but the amount of work and knowhow that would go into doing that means those people may just as well make their own game.
Thus, anyone wishing for the MAF errors to go away for good should stop asking and start learning programming...

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Anyways, to the real reason to my post. It is possible to make all the MAF errors go away but the amount of work and knowhow that would go into doing that means those people may just as well make their own game.
Thus, anyone wishing for the MAF errors to go away for good should stop asking and start learning programming...

Basically it isn't possible without rewriting the executable file code. So in particular case of Civ4, it is not possible at all, since the source code for .exe file was never released. Memory allocation is handled by the executable, and short of writing a new one, we have no influence over it.

 

[Cadde]

Basically it isn't possible without rewriting the executable file code. So in particular case of Civ4, it is not possible at all, since the source code for .exe file was never released. Memory allocation is handled by the executable, and short of writing a new one, we have no influence over it.

Yep, that was the point. It's possible if you either rewrite the game executable from scratch. Or you disassemble it and make the changes to ALL pointers to allow 64 bit operation.

The first option being the easier one and has real world examples of being done in the past. (Open TTD)
But then again, why would one do that when they instead could write a whole new game and call it their own and profit from it.

The last one being borderline impossible... It can be done but would take a lifetime and is not something anyone would ever want to do. Not even for a million dollars as far as i am concerned.

So yah, instead of saying it is impossible give them a reason as to why it hasn't been done and should they want to get no MAF they would need to find someone willing to rewrite the entire executable in code.
First place to look would be in the mirror!