HoF Map Finder/Generator Utility 2016-10-05

[Moonsinger]

Still no go

Now, I remember something. It has been a long time since someone told me about this problem with the ancient tech. Sorry, I should have remembered about it eariler, but since I rarely run into anyone using ancient technology, I sometimes forget about it. Basically, MapFinder doesn't run on a compressed file system. Yes, that must be it!!! Please turn off disk compression or folder compression on the MapFinder folder to see if it works. If not, please give me your system spec.

 

[Tzar Sasha]

I just ran a short test with 6.4
It works great! I like how it shows which rule sets the map meets.

However, there is only one thing that I don't like and I'm not sure how it changed. On the versions 5 the data could be sorted by descending when clicking the title bar once or ascending if clicked a second time. Currently, it only descends. Also, it maybe an issue with the sort script, but I had a grassland of 10 which after being sorted found itself between 1 and 0 a far cry from 9.

Other than that. It is the best working version I've seen yet...

 

[Jachyra]

Now, I remember something. It has been a long time since someone told me about this problem with the ancient tech. Sorry, I should have remembered about it eariler, but since I rarely run into anyone using ancient technology, I sometimes forget about it. Basically, MapFinder doesn't run on a compressed file system. Yes, that must be it!!! Please turn off disk compression or folder compression on the MapFinder folder to see if it works. If not, please give me your system spec.

I don't know what you mean by ancient tech, but my system specs are:

WinXP pro SP2
C3C 1.22
AMD Athlon 3200
1 Gig of RAM

No folders or disk is compressed and the partition is NTFS...

Btw, thx for your help

 

[Moonsinger]

I don't know what you mean by ancient tech, but my system specs are:

WinXP pro SP2
C3C 1.22
AMD Athlon 3200
1 Gig of RAM

No folders or disk is compressed and the partition is NTFS...

Btw, thx for your help

I'm running out of idea. I don't really know why it doesn't work on your system. I just check the code...even if something is wrong with the rule file, it would still run (it won't find any map but it would still run). The fact that it couldn't even locate the rule folder does sound exactly the problem we encountered a few months ago (also it was also WinXP pro SP2 too). Denniz figured that problem out on page #31 of this thread.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=75992&page=31&pp=20

Post related to that matter:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2618961&postcount=611
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2619400&postcount=615

Btw, have you try the older version (6.3) of MapFinder? It doesn't care about the rule directory at all; therefore, it was totally different than version 6.4. If that one does work, then we can go back to figure out why the new one won't recognize the rule directory on your system. There must be something special about that folder in your system. May be Microsoft just introduced another brand new "future tech" that we aren't aware of. Please note that I have stopped using the term "ancient tech", from now on, I will refer to it as "future tech". Anyway, may be you could try to move that folder out in "c:\mapfinder" or something out in the root directory to see if it makes any different. It it works out on root but not else where, it could be file permission problem....another space age tech from Microsoft to help protect your system.

The bottom line, I just don't know much about all these new feature in WinXP. I'm currently using WinXP Pro-sp2 too, but I haven't yet run into any problem.

 

[Moonsinger]

I just ran a short test with 6.4
It works great! I like how it shows which rule sets the map meets.

However, there is only one thing that I don't like and I'm not sure how it changed. On the versions 5 the data could be sorted by descending when clicking the title bar once or ascending if clicked a second time. Currently, it only descends. Also, it maybe an issue with the sort script, but I had a grassland of 10 which after being sorted found itself between 1 and 0 a far cry from 9.

Other than that. It is the best working version I've seen yet...

There is no issue with the sort script! I just thought that most of us would like to see things in the descending order with the best maps listed at the top; therefore, I skipped the implementation of the ascending sort (since I have to code everything from scratch, it's a lot of coding and I'm getting lazy). If it's important to you, I will add that to the next version.

 

[MOTH]

There is no issue with the sort script! I just thought that most of us would like to see things in the descending order with the best maps listed at the top; therefore, I skipped the implementation of the ascending sort (since I have to code everything from scratch, it's a lot of coding and I'm getting lazy). If it's important to you, I will add that to the next version.

I use the ascending sort primarily on the domination limit column when looking for fastest finish maps. Its no big deal for me as I just jump to the bottom and scroll up.

 

[Mistfit]

I'd like to mention that I really like the new format. I have now had a chance to try it out and it is working splendidly (I think that is a word)

I've been running:
Any map > 1 Ccow with fresh water
Any map >2 Cows
Any map < 700 Domination Limit

I love it! Keep up the Great work!

 

[Salamandre]

Moonsinger, is there a way to disable the "restart C3C after x iterations"?

I just want it to run without stop, as it has a big problem restarting, it shut down after 80 tries, and never starts again. I tried to improve the delay, it worked for a while, and now it waits forever again

 

[Gyathaar]

I usually have it set to restart after 15 iterations.. while it will sometimes hang for me if I set it at 25 iterations no matter how long delay I set.
At 15 iterations it never hangs for me (this is on huge maps thou.. on smaller maps I seem to have no problems with a lot more iterations between restarts)

 

[Moonsinger]

Moonsinger, is there a way to disable the "restart C3C after x iterations"?

It will run infinitely with PTW or vanilla Civ3. The reason for the "restart" is because C3C was not as stable as PTW and vanilla Civ3. Basically, if you start and quit the game for so many times, C3C will crack (may be there is a memory leak in C3C). The bottom line C3C won't run for a long period of time! Since Firaxis doesn't fix their program, I have to work around that by restarting it. If you want it to run infinitely like PTW and vanilla Civ3, please ask Firaxis to fix their program because there is nothing I can do about that.

I just want it to run without stop, as it has a big problem restarting, it shut down after 80 tries, and never starts again. I tried to improve the delay, it worked for a while, and now it waits forever again

Like I said, C3C wasn't built for endurance run. Just set your "Restart C3C" counter in MapFinder to about 30 or lower, and it will work. Also increase the time delay for restarting C3C as well.

 

[Moonsinger]

I usually have it set to restart after 15 iterations.. while it will sometimes hang for me if I set it at 25 iterations no matter how long delay I set.
At 15 iterations it never hangs for me (this is on huge maps thou.. on smaller maps I seem to have no problems with a lot more iterations between restarts)

I'm glad 15 work out good for you. Just curious, how much RAM do you have on your system? I set my C3C to restart at each 30 iterations and it run like forever without any problem. I also have 1 Gig of RAM in my system....I believe that the more memory you have in your system, the longer C3C will run, but that's my guess.

Since you are also a software developer, what do you think is wrong with C3C? Does that sound like a memory leak to you? My feeling is that they failed to release all the memory when you quit and start a new the game.

 

[Salamandre]

Thank you for your answer.

I dont have a clue about code, but it seems to me it would be more proper to have a path to c3c.exe in the mapfinder.ini. How does mapfinderf restarts C3C by himself?


I am sure it must be a easy way to make mapfinder restart C3C without problems. It must be a easier problem for you than coding all those features, isnt it?

"Time delay before restartingC3C" - you say to lower it to 30 but I have in setup only to chose from 5000! and up. What would be a reasonable number for me? 512 ram here

In my windows task features I can start C3C just by adding it as a task at x.xx time of day or night. Woudnt be possible to integrate such thing to mapfinder? (if failes to start, then start 5 min later or such) Sorry if is dumb but I dont know about coding again, just a thought.

 

[Gyathaar]

I have 1GB memory on all my systems, so that isnt the problem...
All 3 machines have Athlon64 cpus, so perhaps that cause problems, dunno.. 2 runs XP Pro and one runs Server 2003, so the OS isnt common... thou I mainly run mapfinder on a laptop with XP.

Did a test now to see what happens.. it appears that c3c actually used most memory at the menu screens.. each one adds about 5 MB extra memory usage when you go to them.. so when you use quick start game consumed about 5MB more memory at the screen where you clock quick start than when you have a finished generated map.. but.. this memory isnt freed untill 5-10 secs after you can start moving your units.

After every restart the game used about 0.5 MB more memory, so that was not the problem.

I tried to see how far I could go.. and after 115 interactions, the game was still only using 150MB memory vs the 92MB it used when I started...

At iteration 116 C3C crashed.. all the menuoptions was NIL (the new game, quick start and so on)...

I am guessing here, since I didnt check properly, that the problem isnt the memory leak, but instead that the game isnt closing some filehandlers properly, and eventually runs out, and this would eventually make it fail to open some game files and cause the crash.

I also noticed that all memory from the memory leak was swapped out, so was not in the physical memory at all (thou this would cause the game the take longer to clean up memory at a restart if you have more iterations)

 

[Moonsinger]

I dont have a clue about code, but it seems to me it would be more proper to have a path to c3c.exe in the mapfinder.ini. How does mapfinderf restarts C3C by himself?


I am sure it must be a easy way to make mapfinder restart C3C without problems. It must be a easier problem for you than coding all those features, isnt it?

You guessed wrong! I can pretty much restart any other program on the world, but restarting C3C isn't easy!

"Time delay before restartingC3C" - you say to lower it to 30 but I have in setup only to chose from 5000! and up. What would be a reasonable number for me? 512 ram here

No! That wasn't what I was saying. I'm saying that you should reduce the number of iteration down to 30 or even 15 as Gyathaar had suggested. And the Time delay before restarting C3C should be at least 25000 mili seconds or more.

In my windows task features I can start C3C just by adding it as a task at x.xx time of day or night. Woudnt be possible to integrate such thing to mapfinder? (if failes to start, then start 5 min later or such) Sorry if is dumb but I dont know about coding again, just a thought.

Like I said before, restarting C3C isn't as easy as you think. Sure you can restart it without any problem with a fresh reboot or whatever, but when C3C goes down hard, it won't restart no matter what...until you reboot your system. Therefore, the trick is to quit it before it crack, then restart it. Just turn that number of iterations down to 15 or 30 to see what happen.

 

[Moonsinger]

I have 1GB memory on all my systems, so that isnt the problem...
All 3 machines have Athlon64 cpus, so perhaps that cause problems, dunno.. 2 runs XP Pro and one runs Server 2003, so the OS isnt common... thou I mainly run mapfinder on a laptop with XP.

Did a test now to see what happens.. it appears that c3c actually used most memory at the menu screens.. each one adds about 5 MB extra memory usage when you go to them.. so when you use quick start game consumed about 5MB more memory at the screen where you clock quick start than when you have a finished generated map.. but.. this memory isnt freed untill 5-10 secs after you can start moving your units.

After every restart the game used about 0.5 MB more memory, so that was not the problem.

I tried to see how far I could go.. and after 115 interactions, the game was still only using 150MB memory vs the 92MB it used when I started...

At iteration 116 C3C crashed.. all the menuoptions was NIL (the new game, quick start and so on)...

I am guessing here, since I didnt check properly, that the problem isnt the memory leak, but instead that the game isnt closing some filehandlers properly, and eventually runs out, and this would eventually make it fail to open some game files and cause the crash.

I also noticed that all memory from the memory leak was swapped out, so was not in the physical memory at all (thou this would cause the game the take longer to clean up memory at a restart if you have more iterations)

Wow, you are good! I think you are right...C3C probably didn't close some filehandlers.

 

[EMan]

...The bottom line C3C won't run for a long period of time!...

Just wanted to let you know that I've returned home to Miami and one of my dedicated MF notebook computers is still running after 16 days straight..........on Conquests too!! (Is that a Record? )

I have it going at a pretty slow speed but it has generated 52600 maps so far and accepted 222. (Funnily enough the number of Accepted + Rejected maps doesn't equal the number of maps Generated!...it's about 1000 off!? )

But Oh Boy!, what a pleasant homecoming surprise!

 

[Jachyra]

I'm running out of idea. I don't really know why it doesn't work on your system. I just check the code...even if something is wrong with the rule file, it would still run (it won't find any map but it would still run). The fact that it couldn't even locate the rule folder does sound exactly the problem we encountered a few months ago (also it was also WinXP pro SP2 too). Denniz figured that problem out on page #31 of this thread.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=75992&page=31&pp=20

Post related to that matter:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2618961&postcount=611
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2619400&postcount=615

Btw, have you try the older version (6.3) of MapFinder? It doesn't care about the rule directory at all; therefore, it was totally different than version 6.4. If that one does work, then we can go back to figure out why the new one won't recognize the rule directory on your system. There must be something special about that folder in your system. May be Microsoft just introduced another brand new "future tech" that we aren't aware of. Please note that I have stopped using the term "ancient tech", from now on, I will refer to it as "future tech". Anyway, may be you could try to move that folder out in "c:\mapfinder" or something out in the root directory to see if it makes any different. It it works out on root but not else where, it could be file permission problem....another space age tech from Microsoft to help protect your system.

The bottom line, I just don't know much about all these new feature in WinXP. I'm currently using WinXP Pro-sp2 too, but I haven't yet run into any problem.

thx for the info

Edit: I just installed the version 6.3 and it works!!
The "generate report" thingie comes up empty, but I don't mind.

Since 6.3 works, any idea now on 6.4?

 

[Moonsinger]

I have it going at a pretty slow speed but it has generated 52600 maps so far and accepted 222. (Funnily enough the number of Accepted + Rejected maps doesn't equal the number of maps Generated!...it's about 1000 off!? )

I believe that everytime MapFinder restart C3C, you get a freebie...well, since the Restart subroutine isn't part of the normal process, it forget to increase the counter of the first map or something like that. I could update the counter in the next version. Anyway, since it's 1000 off, you could say that it had restarted C3C successfully 1000 times...isn't that an extra bonus counter or what?

 

[Moonsinger]

thx for the info

Edit: I just installed the version 6.3 and it works!!
The "generate report" thingie comes up empty, but I don't mind.

Since 6.3 works, any idea now on 6.4?

Since 6.3 works and the report is empty, it has proven that your file system atributes aren't normal. Would you check the property of the Map output folder as follows:

1. Select folder property
2. Select Advance
3. What does your "Advance Atrributes" say? Here is what it said on my WinXP Pro with SP2 system (see attachment). Does it says "compress" or "secure" on your system?

 

[Moonsinger]

@Jachyra: I just remember something...when you use Window Explorer to browse the MapFinder folder or the Map Output folder, what color does it display in? If it's blue, it is compressed. If it's green, it's secured. If it's pink, it's whatever. Basically, if the color of your file system color isn't in black and white, it either compressed or secured or whatever.