Game seeks files not supposed to exist?

[Fiasom]

I am getting an error message and I'm not entirely sure what it is.

At first I'm getting this error:

1

• Fiasom
• Jul 4, 2022

So I dug into the relevant file and checked each ANIMNAME entry one by one, and did not catch something like a typo. Wondering what will happen, I added this line to the doc:

2

• Fiasom
• Jul 4, 2022

At least it did something. Now I'm getting this error:

3

• Fiasom
• Jul 4, 2022

It appears like the game is now looking for a folder without a name, which to my knowledge is an impossibility. However, this does not give me enough information for me to fix the problem myself. I cannot understand which unit's animation the game is seeking, because it is not giving me the name of the files it wants. It's just blank.

Can someone offer me some guidance in how to fix this, please? I spent the better part of 3 days making some minor edits to TETurkhan's map (which previously worked without any issues), and just as I'm getting to the parts that I really wanted to get to, the game decides to crash. The edits I've made to the game are fairly minor - just switched around some cities and added 4 units to the game (see screenshot 2 above), following the steps provided on the relevant guides on CivFanatics precisely, and I've seen no issues specifically related to the edits I have made.

 

[Fiasom]

Seeing that there are views of this thread but no response yet, if you need me to provide more information for you to be able to help me, please just ask and I will provide whatever information I can.

 

[Civinator]

Fiasom, welcome at CFC!

As this is no bug of the game, but an error in your modding of a scenario, you have posted your problem in the wrong Civ 3 forum, as the Civ 3 modding forums here would have been the correct place. May be this is the reason, why you haven´t received any answer yet.

Obviously you have done one (or more) errors with the new units you want to have in that scenario. The first error message signals, that the game was not able to find the entries for at least one unit in the pediaicons text file. An entry #Animname_ is incomplete and therefore always wrong. The second message reports, that the game (of course) has not found the unit folder and the unit.Ini file inside that folder of a unit with such an incomplete entry.

May be the best is to read one or more tutorials in the Civ 3 modding forums, how to add new units to a scenario with C3C. You can find these tutorials here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ3-tutorials-reference-guides.57/

If you have remaining questions after reading those tutorials, it is the best, to post them in the Civ 3 modding forum (but not in the threads above the yellow box, create a new thread below the yellow box) - and don´t be discouraged about your starting problems with modding C3C as this is normal. The threads of my mods and scenarios are full with reports about errors I have done, but I still like modding C3C.

 

[Fiasom]

Fiasom, welcome at CFC!

As this is no bug of the game, but an error in your modding of a scenario, you have posted your problem in the wrong Civ 3 forum, as the Civ 3 modding forums here would have been the correct place. May be this is the reason, why you haven´t received any answer yet.

Obviously you have done one (or more errors) with the new units you want to have in that scenario. The first error message signals, that the game was not able to find the entries for at least one unit in the pediaicons text file. An entry #Animname_ is incomplete and therefore always wrong. The second message reports, that the game (of course) has not found the unit folder and the unit.Ini file inside that folder of a unit with such an incomplete entry.

May be the best is to read one or more tutorials in the Civ 3 modding forums, how to add new units to a scenario with C3C. You can find these tutorials here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ3-tutorials-reference-guides.57/

If you have remaining questions after reading those tutorials, it is the best, to post them in the Civ 3 modding forum - and don´t be discouraged about your starting problems with modding C3C as this is normal. The threads of my mods and scenarios are full with reports about errors I have done, but I still like modding C3C.

Thanks a lot for this!

I did use the tutorials you've linked as my guide. I'll dig through the #ANIMNAME_ lines once more, going through each line while checking each unit from the editor to see if I can spot a missing entry or a typo in the PRTO_ names. I suspected this is the issue, but I also thought the game would tell me the name of the file it is unable to find, rather than a blank thing. If I can't solve my issue then I'll try to find the relevant thread in the modding forum to get help!

 

[Civinator]

Fiasom, have a special look at the 4 units you have added to the scenario. In your screenshot only the longship can be seen (so it can be possible, that you have placed their entries other where in the list). Have also a look to the entries for these 4 units in the editor. May be in the editor you have given that unit no PRTO_(followed by the name of the unit) entry, but only PRTO_ .

 

[Quintillus]

Moderator Action: Moved to the Creation & Customization forum.

Welcome to CivFanatics! I agree with Civinator's suggestions. It might also help to spot the issue to use a tool such as WinDiff to compare the modified PediaIcons to the original, if you have a backup copy. These sorts of things often wind up being very small differences or typos that take a lot longer than it feels like it "should" take to debug.

 

[Fiasom]

Hi folks - thanks for the welcome and suggestions, thanks also for moving the thread to the right forum, Quintillus.

Unfortunately I did not save a back up of the text files. I should have. I knew something like this would happen. Might download the game again if I need to get the original txt files...

The 4 units I added to the game were Curragh, Carrack, Cruiser and Longship. (These aren't in TETurkhan's original scenario.) I suspect it the issue is probably the Cruiser (which means the Chinese must have spent only 1 turn or so to discover the tech). That one did lack a PRTO_, but I had noticed that issue and corrected it well before this error showed up. But that also doesn't make a whole lot of sense either because I had forgotten to add its prerequisite technology as well. ... ... Oh. So it was available from the beginning of the game, but oil just kicked in, didn't it? Chinese didn't discover the tech, they just connected oil and built the ship.

I'm sure it can't be anything else because last night I went through each unit on the editor and copy pasted their PRTO_'s from the editor into the pedialcons doc one by one to eliminate possible typos that wouldn't be seen by the way the text looks (sometimes letters that look the same are actually different letters), and the issue remains. And one of the King units was wrong, by the way. Since I don't play with the king units this never became an issue.

This then probably means that me forgetting to add the Cruiser's PRTO_ set a time bomb on the save file I'm currently playing, and if I start a new game I should not run into any problems. I'll test with something of a speed run later this week.

Thanks a lot for this, guys. Bouncing it with you has helped a lot.

 

[WildWeazel]

You may actually be able to resolve this with just text files and keep playing your save. The issue is that the game takes whatever pedia entry you specify in the editor, prepends ANIMNAME_ for the animation entry, and looks up that entry for the name of the directory containing the unit files. All of the editor data is bundled into the save when you start the game, but it reads the other files each time you reload so you can fix some things for a game in progress. So if the Cruiser is the only unit missing an entry, you were on the right track with your attempted fix. Just add "Cruiser" again to the line below that, and it should look up Art\Units\Cruiser\Cruiser.ini for a blank entry. You'll also need to do something similar for the UNITICON, and the pedia entry itself in civilopedia.txt. Of course, that doesn't address the tech prerequisite, but it would be playable.

 

[Fiasom]

You may actually be able to resolve this with just text files and keep playing your save. The issue is that the game takes whatever pedia entry you specify in the editor, prepends ANIMNAME_ for the animation entry, and looks up that entry for the name of the directory containing the unit files. All of the editor data is bundled into the save when you start the game, but it reads the other files each time you reload so you can fix some things for a game in progress. So if the Cruiser is the only unit missing an entry, you were on the right track with your attempted fix. Just add "Cruiser" again to the line below that, and it should look up Art\Units\Cruiser\Cruiser.ini for a blank entry. You'll also need to do something similar for the UNITICON, and the pedia entry itself in civilopedia.txt. Of course, that doesn't address the tech prerequisite, but it would be playable.

Oh right! Thanks for this. I'll give it a try!