[MOD][WARLORDS] ViSa Modpack

[Alondin]

Confirming that turning off the Extended City Radius seems to fix CTD.

I'm on turn 200 of 320 on a standard map, lots of problems with Thailand
(beating up on me, not in the programming! but no CTD's! Last time I played on fast speed got my first CTD at turn 40. However, I'm going to bed.

Alondin, Master of Breaking Stuff

 

[Forsaken]

you guys are great i still say this should be considered an expantion and not a mod

 

[mrgenie]

Very few other mods are anywhere near the size and scope of this (TR and FfH not included) ViSa Modpack and while we are always making improvements, we are always adding things too.

My comp plays plain Warlords horribly slow with 18 civs and Huge map....so I either adjust my settings or wait 60+ seconds/turn and I am afraid that is about the best advice I can give at this point (until mrgenie makes this code fly along).

I Second firehawk on this totally, i normally play visa with 16-18civs, large map, and at 200turns(1200 end turn) the game is getting pretty slow already, waiting 5-10seconds a turn...im now playing with 8civs at turn 313(will stop at 400, just testing to be 100% sure the CTD is gone) and the end turns are like 1-2seconds(besides animated fightings take some time)so, i conclude also, maybe your system might be fast, warlords is just power consuming, it's a modern game on itself, eating alot of resources, memory and cpu, and visa just add's mabe 4times the original objects to the game(didnt count everything though) so, visa will eat memory, and visa will consume CPU...I'd say, can't drive a 6800kg big truck without a V12 8liter engine

 

[seady]

you mean playing radius 2 improves performance or means = no CTD?

sorry was all day offline and not working on the code..i know how hard you guys want this to be fixed...but taking off all the codes one after the other untill i got to the bug isn't an easy thing

When i play radius 2 i don't seem to get CTD, but i haven't had time to play all the way through .

 

[Axil]

I think the extended time inbetween turns mayne to do with just one routine or calculations with one building/era/unit as on my games it tends to slow slow about the age of early flight and grenadiers/riflemen but nearly always speeds back up when in the modern age.

 

[mrgenie]

I found NEW firaxian code in the SDK, they used an array there, initialized as [NUM_CITY_PLOTS] now this is defined as 21, when you use extended, you have 37city plots, secondly, it'll loop over the extended 37plots, although the array only has 21entries...so the moment eBuild is requested by the getImprovement or getYield, it works pretty good untill entry 21, after that, no programmer in the world knows what will happen, the result depends from computer to computer, same as in c++ float a = 8/9, this can result in
0.888888888888888888888888888888888 on one computer
or
0.888888888888888888888888888888889 on the other computer
or
0.88888888888888888888888 on a third computer where the accuracy is lower...so if you use this code as in
if ( a == 0.88888888888) it'll work on all 3 computers(if you round a to the same length)
write
if ( a == 0.888888888888888888888888888888888), 2nd and 3rd will say it isn't true, the first will say it is true, the code is the same, but the result varies on all 3computers..the array thing is different of course, but I'll hope above example makes at least clear, the same code on 3different computers doesn't mean the result is the same..depends on alot of things...that's what made this CTD so random..every comp looks at some point in the memory, and whatever it gets from there, will be used, and if it's not that what the following code needs, it can produce anything, hence CTD

add, the 3rd....if ( a == 0.888888888888888888888888888888888), might actually say it is or isn't true, depends if your code "Cuts" the 8888 after the accuracy or if it rounds..there's again a difference...depends on compiler, computer, etc..some codes are just thigns you shouldn't do...generally, noone uses a float in an "if" and even firaxis doesn't do so...but i just want to point out, results for the same code on several machines are not the same, every machine can have it's own result, so random CTD

 

[V. Soma]

As for Blake's AI:

Isn't it enough to put it, as he describes, into the
My Games/Warlords/Custom Assets/ folder
and then play Visa to run both?

Or does Visa call its own dll file only?

 

[mrgenie]

I think the extended time inbetween turns mayne to do with just one routine or calculations with one building/era/unit as on my games it tends to slow slow about the age of early flight and grenadiers/riflemen but nearly always speeds back up when in the modern age.

I'll be pleased if you could narrow this down very presizely, then i know which part of the code i have to look for....going over 50.000python lines and 1.000.000 SDK lines is nearly impossible if i don't know where to look for...but if you can narrow it down to a particular building, unit, i can trace all the codes considering this unit/units building/buildings, or civics, alot can be a prereq for a code to be executed...if I know where to look for, im pretty sure the fix will be in the next patch after you tell me the presize cause

 

[V. Soma]

Heh, to me that looks funnily annoying!

On the practical side: what's the solution?
To cut it down to a commonly accepted 0.9?

 

[mrgenie]

As for Blake's AI:

Isn't it enough to put it, as he describes, into the
My Games/Warlords/Custom Assets/ folder
and then play Visa to run both?

Or does Visa call its own dll file only?

if civ would use 2different dll's, you definatly would get alot of CTD's i'd say maybe civ has some build in routine in the SDK checking for such things, but the programmer who would be able to check 2different DLL's and just merge the codes in them, would be the best programmer in the world, and i doubt firaxis did that, it would mean, you just take 10mods, and copy everything in your mod dir, and 10dll, and the game would work..im pretty sure this is not going to work

 

[V. Soma]

I think the extended time inbetween turns mayne to do with just one routine or calculations with one building/era/unit as on my games it tends to slow slow about the age of early flight and grenadiers/riflemen but nearly always speeds back up when in the modern age.

I have found the same phenomenon with Rhye's civ...

I made once a curve graph of waiting times inbetween turns.
It showed that it rises until ca. 4/5 of the game, then in modern times it lessens...

EDIT: I will put up the graph soon

 

[mrgenie]

Heh, to me that looks funnily annoying!

On the practical side: what's the solution?
To cut it down to a commonly accepted 0.9?

yeah, you must just manually round it but to be honest, i like to convert it to a longint first, and then do the IF...im just not feeling well with using floats in an if statement

 

[mrgenie]

I have found the same phenomenon with Rhye's civ...

I made once a curve graph of waiting times inbetween turns.
It showed that it rises until ca. 4/5 of the game, then in modern times it lessens...

did you ever made such a graph on warlords? maybe something in the original codes is causing this if it's also in other mods...

 

[V. Soma]

did you ever made such a graph on warlords? maybe something in the original codes is causing this if it's also in other mods...

I will make such a graph for you, this week, OK?

I am playing a normal Warlords game now. Standard map, 10 civs.
I am in ca. BC 1500.
From now on I will keep record of waiting times every 20 turns,
and also at start of a new era.

I have a strong suggest that the curve will be similar...

 

[V. Soma]

here is the Rhye's Civ graph: ehh, next post pls

side note to the graph in next post: the x-axises are confusing, I kno but the curve is still there

EDIT 2:
For the Warlords graph, x-axis will show number of turns...

 

[V. Soma]

Here is the Rhye's Civ graph, intention was to demonstrate the power of more RAM memory:

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Hi, I have read back a few pages but can't figure out what CTD stands for

I am getting 6 angry citizen specialists in every city even when I only have one resident. They do not appear to have any effect on the game.

A minor query - why is the Great General the only one who cant build his special building until you have researched a tech? In this case Education.

 

[V. Soma]

Hi, I have read back a few pages but can't figure out what CTD stands for

Crash To Desktop...

 

[mrgenie]

wow soma, your graph hsows 25% performance boost by just going from 1 to 2gigs ram=50dollar investment...i guess other apps on the PC using alot of ram will also experience this kind of performance boost...i knew back in the days of 128megs->256megs had a huge impact on performance, didnt think the impact would still be so huge these days...but obviously it's still a huge impact

CTD=Crash To Desktop, when you read the main website of our mod:
http://keldath.family-veldman.com you'll find yourself having a nice troubleshoot section also, explaining things nicely formatted into categories

the 6angry citizen when only 1 citzen in a city is new to me, im loading 100times a game to test codes im doing, so i play alot with 1 citzen, becuase i dont have the time to play more then 10turns normally, rarely 40turns...but i never saw that happen on my games!

the great general is done by firaxis, your question about this belongs to Alexman in the patch thread..he's the one who thinks this should be as it is..

personally, i don't care that much bout it anyway...it makes sence not to build this building in early games, we've tweaked this building a lot and you get special units(4) when you build it the first time..if you happen to be lucky, geat a GG in the early turns, you are way overpowering your opponents, which is very unbalancing to the game...building this building later balances the game alot!!! ...so you better keep it that way

 

[dawe1313]

As for Blake's AI:

Isn't it enough to put it, as he describes, into the
My Games/Warlords/Custom Assets/ folder
and then play Visa to run both?

Or does Visa call its own dll file only?

if i was reading alexman's post correctly, firaxis basically incorporated Blake's AI into the WL 2.08 patch, so now it's always there in WL or any mod