Diplomacy Crash - Only One Civ, Crash when Clicking "Offer a Deal..."

[Meteor Man]

So this is a strange one. I usually don't have problems with crashes in this game, I can usually figure out what is causing them (usually stupid text errors or a picture is not indexed correctly, etc). But this time I can't for the life of me figure out what is wrong.

No error message, crashes to the desktop whenever I click "Would Like to Offer a Deal..." in the diplomacy screen, but only for Player 1. Every other civ works fine. (This is a mod I am working on.)

The fact that I make it to the diplomacy screen and it only crashes when clicking "Offer a Deal" tells me that it's not a problem with the .flc file. It's a static flag leaderhead, anyway. My first guess was that it was a problem with the reverse file path (assuming the reverse flc file plays when you click "Offer a Deal." Unsure if this is actually the case.) But that isn't the problem. Both forward and reverse file names are the same.

The diplo music has not been changed, so it can't be that. Diplo text also has not been altered.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Driving me crazy. Luckily this .biq is a "Play as Player 1 Only" mod, so this is not a huge loss and I can still move forward with mod development but this will cause problems down the line if anyone ever wants to play as anyone other than Player 1.

 

[Meteor Man]

Bumping the thread because I figured it out. This bug has been with me years and of course, it turns out it was a simple fix.

It was the .flc flag leaderhead animation file for Germany was causing the crash. Leaderheads need to have more than 1 frame or I guess the reverse file can't play. I added 9 extra identical frames to make it a 10 frame .flc file, and the problem disappeared.

 

[Mithadan]

Glad to hear it, man! I've got a bug (not a crash) that freezes the game and I haven't been able to figure it out for years. Sigh. I miss modding!

 

[Meteor Man]

Glad to hear it, man! I've got a bug (not a crash) that freezes the game and I haven't been able to figure it out for years. Sigh. I miss modding!

Freezes are the worst, for sure. This one was actually also a freeze. Best diagnostic procedure I've found is to try to think of what elements the program is trying to render when the crash occurs. Luckily, Civ3 is a pretty stable game and crashes and freezes are usually the result of something simple that the modder screwed up.

Moral to the story is to mod in small chunks and playtest changes often

 

[Mithadan]

Freezes are the worst, for sure. This one was actually also a freeze. Best diagnostic procedure I've found is to try to think of what elements the program is trying to render when the crash occurs. Luckily, Civ3 is a pretty stable game and crashes and freezes are usually the result of something simple that the modder screwed up.

Moral to the story is to mod in small chunks and playtest changes often

Word up! I'm hopeful that reinstalling Civ3Complete (GOG version, which I just bought) plus Flintlock's Patch will allow me to either find the flaw, or get it fixed outright. We'll see, I'm backing up my files right now!

 

[Civinator]

I agree, freezes are the worst problems when modding Civ 3. Freezes delayed the release of my CCM mod for a very long time. In that case they were mostly triggered by AI pathfinding errors. One very bad freeze I can remember, so it was many years ago, was caused by a shrinked unit in the development of SOE. Another very bad freeze that I had mentioned in another post was the houseboat bug, now fixed by the Flintlock patch.

A good way to find out the cause of a freeze can be to start a save file before the freeze with the multiplayer tool and to check the single civs one by one in their actions.

 

[Mithadan]

I agree, freezes are the worst problems when modding Civ 3. Freezes delayed the release of my CCM mod for a very long time. In that case they were mostly triggered by AI pathfinding errors. One very bad freeze I can remember, so it was many years ago, was caused by a shrinked unit in the development of SOE. Another very bad freeze that I had mentioned in another post was the houseboat bug, now fixed by the Flintlock patch.

A good way to find out the cause of a freeze can be to start a save file before the freeze with the multiplayer tool and to check the single civs one by one in their actions.

Can you tell me more about AI pathfinding errors? I have a feeling my freeze happened in that slight pause that usually happens at the end of the AI turn (maybe when barbarians move?) right before the next turn starts for the human player.

I have started a new debug game and am hoping to find out that Flintlock's patch fixes whatever it was, but it'll be a while until I hit the middle ages where it's likely to happen again (I think)!

 

[Civinator]

Mithadan, here you can read all about the freezes that happened during the test of CCM1:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/sear...post&o=date&c[user][0]=58536&c[thread]=291104

A real help for detecting the roots of the freezes is Sima Qian’s multiplayer tool. Unfortunately it was not available when doing CCM1. I gave an instruction how to use it for detecting errors in the CCM 2.50 mod, that can be found here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ccm2-epic-mod.625812/#post-14957615

 

[Mithadan]

Mithadan, here you can read all about the freezes that happened during the test of CCM1:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/sear...post&o=date&c[user][0]=58536&c[thread]=291104

Awesome, thanks! I'm gonna do some reading now for sure!