Single Player bugs and crashes v36 plus (SVN) - After the 24th of October 2015

[Toffer90]

Nope. It's caused by the animation being flawed. Everything reads right up until the time the dll calls for the animation sequence to take place in the exe. All combatants are fully visible in this case. Therefore, I have basically disabled defensive combat animations until we're ready to audit the animations of these units causing issues.

Well, the brown bear is one of those units that causes the crash, and it uses vanilla BtS animations.

 

[Thunderbrd]

To be specific, it is a Sun Bear attacking that's causing a crash. It seems to work fine for the first sun bear attack, in which the bear withdraws. But in the second sun bear attack, it dies and maybe that's the difference? I don't know. It's some odd stuff and I don't know enough about the animations to check that side of it.

I agree that it's odd that it seems that unmanipulated animations are going south. I cannot answer to why this is because absolutely no clue exist in the dll to answer to that. However it did start happening after the NPC split so perhaps its a matter of an error in the exe not seeing something properly since these players are beyond the barbarian player. Maybe instead of completely disabling, we'll need to simply disable combat animations for NPCs?

 

[Toffer90]

To be specific, it is a Sun Bear attacking that's causing a crash. It seems to work fine for the first sun bear attack, in which the bear withdraws. But in the second sun bear attack, it dies and maybe that's the difference? I don't know. It's some odd stuff and I don't know enough about the animations to check that side of it.

I agree that it's odd that it seems that unmanipulated animations are going south. I cannot answer to why this is because absolutely no clue exist in the dll to answer to that. However it did start happening after the NPC split so perhaps its a matter of an error in the exe not seeing something properly since these players are beyond the barbarian player. Maybe instead of completely disabling, we'll need to simply disable combat animations for NPCs?

the sunbear is using the panther animation (no movement, only for growl sounds)
you could try changing:

			<Type>ART_DEF_UNIT_SUNBEAR</Type>
			<Button>Art/Interface/Buttons/Units/Sunbear.dds</Button>
			<fScale>15.0</fScale>
			<fInterfaceScale>1</fInterfaceScale>
			<NIF>Art/Units/Animals/Sunbear/Sunbear.nif</NIF>
			[COLOR="Blue"][B]<KFM>Art/Units/Panther/Panther.kfm</KFM>
			<SHADERNIF>Art/Units/Animals/Sunbear/Sunbear.nif</SHADERNIF>[/B][/COLOR]

the blue lines to this:
<KFM/>
<SHADERNIF/> (it isn't really a shader nif so no point telling the game it is.)

and see if it helps.
it's in zAnimals_CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml

 

[Toffer90]

Could it have something to do with NPC players having their turn simultaneously with the human player (or more specific with player 0) ?

I often experience seeing animals move after I've moved my first 1-2 units in the beginning of my turn.

 

[strategyonly]

Sounds like the Subdue_Animals_CIV4UnitClassInfos needs to be merged into CIV4UnitClassInfos. Wonder why I did not get those errors?

I am not going to get a chance to do the merge today.

Is this working now??

 

[NevFin]

I've seen a bug for a few weeks that will pop up with a notification that a herd of deer, llamas, mammoth has moved in near my city but it will actually circle an area out in the black undiscovered area. Today I got this notification which wants me to spend gold on a forest somewhere out in the black unknown.

Edit: Thanks for the fix Toffer

 

[Toffer90]

I've seen a bug for a few weeks that will pop up with a notification that a herd of deer, llamas, mammoth has moved in near my city but it will actually circle an area out in the black undiscovered area. Today I got this notification which wants me to spend gold on a forest somewhere out in the black unknown.

fixed.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I may have just accedently undone this.

editWe may have committed at near the same time with me overwritting yours some how and I did not get anywhere near enough sleep last night.

 

[salvelinus]

Sorry guys. I'm working, I'm not are connected. As I said, after the removal of the group of animals the game works perfectly. Also in further clashes with the Malaysian bear (sun bears) there have been no problems. Thank you so much for your work, very important to bring all people to the history. I'm not a programmer. I am a naturalist with a passion for history (I have a doctorate in anthropology), for the rest are an ichthyologist. In addition to my congratulations as you are working, if by chance you come in Tuscany call me. I hosts you in my B & B. A warm hug and thanks ...

 

[Toffer90]

I may have just accedently undone this.

I think I may be the one who undid your changes.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I think I may be the one who undid your changes.

OK, I think we happened to do a commit at the same time. See about redoing yours if necessary. I'll go get a shower and wake up properly then check to see if I need to redo my commit later.

 

[Toffer90]

To be specific, it is a Sun Bear attacking that's causing a crash. It seems to work fine for the first sun bear attack, in which the bear withdraws. But in the second sun bear attack, it dies and maybe that's the difference? I don't know. It's some odd stuff and I don't know enough about the animations to check that side of it.

I had a look at animal art xml and saw that a lot of animals used the tag bActAsRanged=1 which means the game is expecting a specific type of animation-set, an animation-set none of these animals defined kfm files provides. It could be the cause of the problem.

 

[NevFin]

Not all fixed.

 

[Toffer90]

Not all fixed.

heh, I might have missed more, so keep the reports coming.

Edit: Fixed.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I had a look at animal art xml and saw that a lot of animals used the tag bActAsRanged=1 which means the game is expecting a specific type of animation-set, an animation-set none of these animals defined kfm files provides. It could be the cause of the problem.

It would be absolutely wonderful if that's the fix. What you may want to do is grab the older dll from before the last dll I committed. Use that in tangent with Salvelinus's last save and stress test potential solutions with the sun bear unit. If you can find a way to lock onto something wrong in the animation then that's going to give us the keys to a true fix. It's entirely possible you are right about the bActAsRanged tag use... there's a lot going on in animation that's entirely in the exe so I cannot READ how it's running into a problem. The gamebryo graphic engine is almost entirely hidden to us (which is what made koshling's efforts towards multimaps not only absolutely genius but also the project that burned him out in frustration with the exe-dll programming space.)

So yeah, poking about at possible problem spots may find the issue. But it will need to be tested before we can be sure that's the fix. And we can test with the dll before the last one committed. (The ONLY thing that I changed was to get the dll to dodge the animation command - and it did so far too sweepingly for any sense of satisfaction because I could not find any apparent filterable cause, except perhaps to say it was an NPC maybe... which I'd like to see if your fix works before taking that approach.)

 

[colonelflag]

Hi guys,

On SVN 9176 and my Stone Thrower just got 17 XP for killing a Kookaburra that was inside its own cultural borders ! Only about 50 turns into the game. I have never seen this before. Only Modmod I am using is Toffer90's Terrainpack.

Savegame attached.

Cheers
ColonelFlag

 

[JosEPh_II]

Hi guys,

On SVN 9176 and my Stone Thrower just got 17 XP for killing a Kookaburra that was inside its own cultural borders ! Only about 50 turns into the game. I have never seen this before. Only Modmod I am using is Toffer90's Terrainpack.

Savegame attached.

Cheers
ColonelFlag

This is not a bug.

It''s because of some of the changes StrategyOnly has done to the starting Civics. One of them gives you 300% increase in XP if you have a Victory from a fight inside your borders.

There are several others that have "new" stuff in them. Like Anarchism is now Cheaper to use than Chiefdom. Which is the reverse of how it used to be.

Nope no bug just take a closer look at your Civics.

JosEPh

 

[Talin2009]

Top 5 cities/wonders screen is broken
Fresh reinstall of SVN didn't solve problem

 

[Toffer90]

It would be absolutely wonderful if that's the fix. What you may want to do is grab the older dll from before the last dll I committed. Use that in tangent with Salvelinus's last save and stress test potential solutions with the sun bear unit. If you can find a way to lock onto something wrong in the animation then that's going to give us the keys to a true fix. It's entirely possible you are right about the bActAsRanged tag use...

bActAsRanged =0 didn't work.
A cave lion attacked my Atlatl and then CTD; tried turning on quick combat and the game didn't CTD when it attacked.

The interesting thing is I also tried moving to the plot I knew the cave lion was in, this triggered a stealth defense so the cave lion was visible after the battle, my Atlatl unit survived by a lucky withdrawal. When I then hit end turn without quick combat the cave lion attacked and I got to see the whole combat animation without issues (probably because the cave lion models were visible when it attacked).

If I turn off quick combat (offense) and then move into the plot I know the cave lion is in, the game CTD during my turn, when I attack the invisible cave lion by triggering its stealth defense.

I firmly believe this crash is caused by the opponent being invisible either when the player attack it or when the opponent attack the player. Are you sure unit models are turned visible in battle before animations kick in? How are they made invisible in the first place?

Edit: I even tried removing all animations from the cave lion, but the game still CTD'ed when it attacked showing that even static un-animated units crash the game when they attack when invisible, mind, only when they attack the human player. Fights between the computer controlled teams are always quick combats.
My testing here has shown without doubt that no manner of XML or unit art/animation modding can fix this particular CTD. The only solution, if it exists, would be in the DLL.
It also shows that the problem is most likely not isolated to only NPC teams, that if an invisible babylonian unit would attack my not babylonian unit the game would CTD without having quick combat (defense) ON.

A small annoyance with Hide and Seek is that no invisible units are visible in the WorldBuilder making it very complicated trying to ascertain the number of animals on the map and how spawn modifiers should be adjusted. One has to just click on every empty plot with the unit edit to see if the unit edit window pops up. Could you make it so that invisible units are visible in the worldbuilder?

 

[Talin2009]

When war is being declared, score window (in right bottom corner) disappears, when in bug options, score tab i turn off advanced layout enabled - some npcs reappear, but not those at war with me.