[mod] Warlords: Total Realism 2.3a

[Walter Hawkwood]

All right, guys, for the first time in a long while I come bearing stuff!

I'm announcing the start of Warlords 2.4 version open beta!

From now on I'll likely be posting dll updates on a regular basis, and I need you to find out if they actually fix stuff and not add new bugs. Our first treat for today is meant to fix the infamous "production reset" bug (as well as speed up the game somewhat). Should likely be savegame compatible, but since we haven't tackled any particular CTD save scenarios, I'd recommend starting a new game. I also recommend smaller maps and quicker gamespeeds to get as further possible along the tech tree without MAFs as possible.

Now listen - the future of TR hinges on you, guys - the team is currently mostly unavailable, and I'm still recovering from a diesase, and can't do much testing myself - I didn't even try to run the game with the new dll. So whatever you notice is weird in game that wasn't there before - don't hesitate to post it, or it might make it to final release.

 

[nudden]

Some good news today
I am glad that I can help you to find bugs in the new version. Is there an installer of the new version (2.4) out there? On you TR page you said something about SVN. Sorry dont know what that is. Do I find the new version there?

NuDDen

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

New version doesn't add any new features - so new dll I posted can perfectly work with 2.3a installations, and the bugs we're really interested in are caused by dll - so it would actually be more convenient for us if you used 2.3a. But yes, anyone can check out the current working version, which is very close content-wise to what 2.4 will become from our SVN server. But I'm not really ready to provide the tutorial help on how to use it - since what you get through it is not an officially supported version, it is incomplete by definition. Here's our SVN link in case you still want to use it, though (and I recommend TortoiseSVN client to handle all your SVN needs): http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=163217

 

[Harrier]

Great news.

I'll start a new game using PerfectWorld and will keep you posted. I will also try an old game to see if the shortages have dissappeared.


Edit: The old game gave the shortages messages when I declared war on another civ.

Just declare war on Cyrus.

I noticed that the old and new dll are exactly the same size 5228KB. (5,414,912 bytes - when looking at properties.) Is that correct?

 

[Trojan Sheep]

I noticed that the old and new dll are exactly the same size 5228KB. (5,414,912 bytes - when looking at properties.) Is that correct?

Yes, the DLL hasn't been changed significantly so the size wouldn't likely change as a result. Thanks for the save, that should help me track down what is going on with the bug I didn't have an example of it for my first pass at a fix

 

[Trojan Sheep]

Ok cool, just loaded up the save and gave it a try. One thing Walter mentioned was that you weren't just getting shortage messages, but were also having production canceled on units that required resources of any type (which I assumed was the more annoying of the two). The latter was what I was aiming to fix for this pass, and looking at Antium it looks like it worked (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm still very new to TR )

I'll aim to get rid of those annoying messages for next pass, when Walter said shortage messages for some reason I thought he meant messages about the production of those units being halted my bad

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

But please bear in mind that the messages should be there when converter buildings suffer real shortages. So don't just kill them - only fix their inappropriate behaviour.

 

[Trojan Sheep]

But please bear in mind that the messages should be there when converter buildings suffer real shortages. So don't just kill them - only fix their inappropriate behaviour.

Not intending to kill them, as tempting as it may be

As we discussed regarding the performance issue, and now this, I think I'm going to trim down the amount of checking it does significantly. So it will only check the status of converters at key points and at the beginning of the turn right before it checks the ability to continue production. This *may* have some unintended side effects though, but I hope most of them will be largely cosmetic/minorly exploitable at worst.

In other news my CTD saves aren't crashing, which either means the minor fix I did fixed them, or the crashes themselves aren't quite as reproducible as I hoped. I'm going to move forward with the above fixes for the moment, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the CTDs are happening because of the strain all the redundant converter checking puts on the system (my system is pretty high end, so it might be muscling through those points right now).

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Did these saves crash at your system with original dll before you modified it?

 

[Trojan Sheep]

Did these saves crash at your system with original dll before you modified it?

I didn't check all of them with the original DLL, but the one that I did, did not crash. I may do further testing later to see if that was an isolated case, but for right now I'd rather move forward with the changes to the converter checks.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Of course, I was just curious. Some of the saves I've provided might even have been of a previous version, CTDs with which have already been fixed (although most others shouldn't have been).

 

[Ron Manders]

For a long time I waited for the BTS version of Total Realism, until around Christmas I started the 2.3a version, tired of waiting. I really like Total Realism, but as many others, I ran into a CTD I couldn't get passed
I didn't have MAF's as I am running under Vista64, with the > 2 GB exe change applied for Warlords. But the CTD was killing the game, it was consistent 100%.
I tried to find the trigger but couldn't, finally gave up and went to another game.
However, when this new dll was posted, I couldn't resist trying it with my old savegame, although Walter advised to start a fresh game
And it works great
Great work guys!
So far I am happily resuming my game, no CTD so far. I did have one lockup though, but I also was right-clicking when a pop-up was coming up. After being a bit more patient with the interface, no such troubles so far.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Great to hear it!

All of you must thank our mr. miracle worker Trojan Sheep here, who has kindly agreed to fix our stuff - and it looks like he's been quite successful so far. Stay tuned for more updates!

 

[xazi84]

where, exactly, is it, you should unpack the dll-fix?
tried to search the forum, but no luck on my account :-(

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Warlords/Mods/Total Realism/Assets

There should already be a dll there, just overwrite it.

 

[Trojan Sheep]

Heya folks, time for take two. Unlike last time this is a significant departure from the previous DLL. I've removed all checking for converters currently in the code (it was incredibly redundant) and replaced it with a single check at the start of the turn. I've only tested this enough to know it doesn't crash existing save games, and it does remove all those annoying shortage messages as well as significantly speed up the saves I tried it on.

I need you guys to look out for more subtle stuff, there probably will be a turn delay on any changes in the status of converters even the really obvious ones, and this is by intent, but if converters appear to be not producing the right amount of resources for more than one turn, or produce too many that's important to look out for.

Please save under a different game if you use this with an existing save in case it does something game breaking that you may not immediately notice! I don't want to kill anyone's games in my attempt to make them better, that would make me a sad coder

 

[Houman]

@Trojan Sheep,

Walter told me a lot about you. Thanks for giving us a hand here. And welcome to the team.

 

[Trojan Sheep]

Thanks Houman, I'm happy to be helping out

So far I am happily resuming my game, no CTD so far. I did have one lockup though, but I also was right-clicking when a pop-up was coming up. After being a bit more patient with the interface, no such troubles so far.

Ron or anyone else here with a similar situation, could one of you provide a save of the turn before you get one of these lock ups? Walter was mentioning this bug as well and it would help me track it down if I had an example to go off of.

 

[Ron Manders]

Thanks Houman, I'm happy to be helping out



Ron or anyone else here with a similar situation, could one of you provide a save of the turn before you get one of these lock ups? Walter was mentioning this bug as well and it would help me track it down if I had an example to go off of.

Hi Trojan Sheep!

I did have 1 more lockup game, but it is totally random: had to end task civilization to get out (alt-tab didn't work, only ctrl-alt-del), but after restarting the game, and reloading the save, it continued without problems lot's of turns. So I think a savegame wouldn't help any...
Anyway, this doesn't happen that often, and i am glad that i can continue the game

The only problem i have is not dll related: It is that the maximum number of turns expired in my game, and now i got this time victory message on screen when i continue. I can continue, but this message in the center of the screen is annoying.
I searched forums and internet how to get rid of this, but i can't find it. Only by starting a new game and unchecking the time victory condition, but that doesn't help in a game in progress
This is not related to the new dll, but if anyone knows how to change the turn limit or victory condition in a running game, please enligthen me

I have now copied the new dll (beta 2 i guess?) and haven't seen the shortage messages so far, for the rest all seems to be running wel with it. I will play some more with this latest version and I'll let you know how that goes. Thanks for all your efforts!

 

[Trojan Sheep]

I did have 1 more lockup game, but it is totally random

Random question on that... were AI Assassins potentially in use in the game when it occurred? (ie. one or more of the AIs had the tech that unlocked them)

The only problem i have is not dll related: It is that the maximum number of turns expired in my game, and now i got this time victory message on screen when i continue. I can continue, but this message in the center of the screen is annoying.

In Assets\Python\CvEventManager.py you could try changing:

CvUtil.pyPrint("Victory!  Team %d achieves a %s victory"
%(iTeam, victoryInfo.getDescription()))

to

#CvUtil.pyPrint("Victory!  Team %d achieves a %s victory"
#%(iTeam, victoryInfo.getDescription()))

I'd make a backup of the file first though, and I make no promises of it working as I've never tried to tinker with the victory stuff (that might be the wrong spot).

Even if it works that would only get rid of the message, I don't believe you can actually win a second victory (like shuttle launch or what not) after one has already occurred, but I could of course be wrong.