V37 prehistoric age possible python problem?

[Krombacher84]

Hello,

I have the following problem.
After I start a game, it runs fine without crashes for about 100-200 turns or something and then I get every x-number of turns a crash to desktop without an error message.

I did look up the log files and thats what I got so far... and I dont know if its a problem on my side or if its coming from the mod and I dont have any idea how to solve it cause it looks like it might be something related to python and I have no experience with that.

I also have to mention, that I am playing on a gigantic map with around 20 AIs... yes I know its not recommended, but in previous versions it ran just fine till a long time into the game where I had at some point to active the view ports and then I was able to carry on there... not so in v37 sadly it happens really early in the game.

What I also have to mention is... after the crash I load the last savegame and I am able to go beyond the turn number where it crashed... till it crashes later on again at +x number of turns on top where it crashed last time... might it be that there is a memory leak in this version or something?

I attached the python error log for you.
If you need more information or files, please tell me.

oh btw, happens also on the PC on my wife... same behavior (but I copied my version over to her pc, so it might be that the version I did install is fault and so both PCs have that problem?)

Thanks for a great mod

edit: damn have the game started again... so the error log was over-written... I upload the file in a few minutes into the game when it crashed again... please stand by ^^

 

[Noriad2]

I experienced recurring CTDs a few weeks ago too. I just kept reloading the autosave and after a few times the CTDs did not come back.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Need to get into the habit of manual saving every 20 turns or so. That alone will lessen this type CTD.

Also with Gigantic map the save game file will rapidly increase in size during the game play and this too makes saving more often a necessity.

What Map is this Gigantic being used with?

JosEPh

 

[Krombacher84]

Its planet_generator_068 or similiar in name... pardon me if I dont have the name 100% right, cause I just pulled it out of my head ^^

Ok I have the logs.

Yeah I know, I save a lot... BUT... and thats what is bothering me... it ran totally fine in the versions before, even the really big versions where the animation files and graphic files were a lot bigger and where there were a lot more cultures to choose from and such... like V34-V36 those ran perfectly stable for me for a long time on such a big map (same generator) and lots of AIs, even on Hot-Seat and such... only thing I had to do back then was activating view ports at some point, when all those AIs started improving every tile and so on ^^ But I had seldom and in some version NEVER crashes like I have with V37... and thats what is puzzling me. If it keeps going at that pace I might even consider downgrading to v36... that one ran pretty good for me.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Its planet_generator_068 or similiar in name... pardon me if I dont have the name 100% right, cause I just pulled it out of my head ^^

Ok I have the logs.

Yeah I know, I save a lot... BUT... and thats what is bothering me... it ran totally fine in the versions before, even the really big versions where the animation files and graphic files were a lot bigger and where there were a lot more cultures to choose from and such... like V34-V36 those ran perfectly stable for me for a long time on such a big map (same generator) and lots of AIs, even on Hot-Seat and such... only thing I had to do back then was activating view ports at some point, when all those AIs started improving every tile and so on ^^ But I had seldom and in some version NEVER crashes like I have with V37... and thats what is puzzling me. If it keeps going at that pace I might even consider downgrading to v36... that one ran pretty good for me.

If you went from v36 to v37 you Must clear the cache folder. Also you can Not use your old v36 User Settings folder either. Use the new default one. We had save game breaking updates to the Mod inbetween those releases. They were necessary house cleaning projects but they broke all the old save games. They also then left you with outdated cached data that BtS stores And an outdated/changed User Settings Folder.

This is why we Always suggest you do a Play Now game 1st for 1 turn. While in that 1st turn, Go into BUG and reset all your favorite settings through out BUG. Then save and save again (yes twice in a row) and exit tall the way to Desktop Before you start a New v37 game.

To clear the cache folder it is in this path foe Win 10 : C:\Users\"your username here"\AppData\Local\My Games\Beyond the Sword\cache. Totally delete this caches contents. The path is similar for other win OS like 7 or 8.

Also if you are using a set of older Maps they may no longer be compatible as well. New terrain features were also added during the Save game breaking period of SVN updates between v36 and v37. Some Maps were also updated during that time.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

Its planet_generator_068 or similiar in name... pardon me if I dont have the name 100% right, cause I just pulled it out of my head ^^

Ok I have the logs.

Yeah I know, I save a lot... BUT... and thats what is bothering me... it ran totally fine in the versions before, even the really big versions where the animation files and graphic files were a lot bigger and where there were a lot more cultures to choose from and such... like V34-V36 those ran perfectly stable for me for a long time on such a big map (same generator) and lots of AIs, even on Hot-Seat and such... only thing I had to do back then was activating view ports at some point, when all those AIs started improving every tile and so on ^^ But I had seldom and in some version NEVER crashes like I have with V37... and thats what is puzzling me. If it keeps going at that pace I might even consider downgrading to v36... that one ran pretty good for me.

Others have said most of what I would have. It's possible that there are just intermittent, non-repeatable crashes that are taking place in the graphics engine inside the EXE that we cannot access. They are therefore taking place for unknown reasons but they only happen when the game is being played with Quick Combat (offense) and Quick Combat (defense) off. If you don't need to see the combats playing out, I'd advise turning those on to minimize on some random crashes we just can't seem to find the cause for. In much of v36 I'd disabled them in the dll so you couldn't see them anyhow. Later in the game air units have shown to cause crashes in the same way but Quick Combats don't turn those off so you'll need to get the latest SVN to continue at that point.

 

[Krombacher84]

Hi,

I have Quick Combat (both) off the whole time. Its not coming from that end.

I did test around a little and it seems to be something that builds up on big maps. Cause if it would be the case of something thats just too much it would not let me load the save or play some turns, or would it? (This is not sarcasm or something, I really dont know it and ask.). What I did then test was using viewports with a 50x50 area and its golden... no crash for 150 turns so far where before it did crash every 10 turns.

And another thing I did find out is... wow there are so many animals now... was the animal spawning raised from v34 to v37 somewhere inbetween? Cause in some ares I can not walk 2 tiles without falling over a bear of some kind. ^^
And I am not using raging barbarians... also I have every few turns now a neanderthal or clubman or some other random goon walking around in my area (the woods and hills around my town in a 5-10 tile strip)... so its pretty intense, a lot more than what I had in the past versions. I can remember v33 and v34 pretty good as I played those the most and really huge games, yes multiple games, and never where there so many animals on the map. As I remember correctly back then even on gigantic animals where getting pretty rare at some point as every AI was sending around their hunters and so you were lucky if you could catch that missing animal you always clubed to death and never were able to subdue before.

Long story short... it might be that those gazillions of animals respawning and killing and dieing is the problem that lets my game crash? Question is, why does it stop with viewports. As I understand viewports everything plays the same even outside the viewports BUT the graphics part is different handled... so this would mean in my logic it has nothing to do directly with many animals dieing, fighting, killing and so on... but has to do with some graphics stuff in that process? And thats what bothers me a little... if it would be just too much from the start for the game or PC to handle it would not load (MAF and such) or it would crash right away after ending my turn, I think? So it might be some effect that builds up? But where and why... no idea... did never dive into the mod structure of Caveman 2 Cosmos and I am no coder, I am usually pretty good with data file handling, data operations and xml and scripting and such... but real coding... no sir.

 

[JosEPh_II]

To help with reducing the number of animals do not check (turn on) Peace Among NPCs. With this Option Off, the barbs, neanderthals, predator animals, beastly animals, etc will prey on each other. This will make hunting for the "good" animals (ie the herd giving type and other resource types) a bit harder. And the Predators can build up to be quite strong. You may see more of them than the "prey" types. It will also buff up the barbs and neanderthals a bit too, those that survive.

We also no longer support the use of Maps bigger than Giant nor players using more than 30 AI. Reason, Civ IV BtS engine is 32 bit and has limitations.

As for Viewports, they are the 2nd line of graphical defense. The 1st is the default Graphic paging that koshling made After he made Viewports. If Graphic paging is failing you then ues you will need to use Viewports. And the size of viewports is important.

In regards to graphics, what type and how much ram does your video card have. To play the bigger maps and more AI you Really need to have at the very least 1 GB DDR3 Video Ram. It is recommended to have 2GB DDR3 or at least 1 GB DDR5. Video cards with less than 1Gb of vram should Only play the smaller maps (Standard and below) and only with the default number of AI (the allotted number of AI slots for that Maps size in the Game set up screen).

And with all versions of C2C, once the land has been scouted and settled (cities start to fill in the map) the area for new spawns decreases accordingly.

Bottom line do not use Gigantic Maps.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

I have Quick Combat (both) off the whole time. Its not coming from that end.

Turn these ON for added crash security.

But yeah, spawn buildup probably is affecting things. I've toned it down for non-peace among NPCs in my last commit, post v37's release, so I can see how it could be building up too fast with that option off.

 

[Krombacher84]

Hello guys ^^

Thanks for looking into this.

I did make a mistake yesterday, of course I have Quick Combat (both) on... I somehow made a thinking error in that moment and thought on means WITH the animations, but I have it set up so that the combat animations are not shown ^^
Thats what you get if you are not a native speaker, over the top tired and doing too many things at once... but now the stressful time is over and I can concentrate on C2C ^^

As for the graphics card, thats the same on my system and my wife's system, its 1 x Geforce GTX 750 DDR5 an got 2048MB (2GB) so we should be fine I guess?
Just out of interest, as ram usage is limited with that old 32 bit structure... is the graphics memory that can be used limited? Or in other words... would I have a little less problems on my gigantic maps with a for example Geforce GTX 1060 or upwards, as it has more vram?

btw I think Thunderbird you have a big point, it totally might be spawn build up... I was able to reduce my graphics settings down to the absolute low and enter world builder without viewports... lots and lots of animals and yes I am playing with peace among NPCs ^^ So... I would really like to stay on this setting, maybe I reduce the map size a little... but in the end I will have animal spawn heaven again... you said you toned it down in your last commit, does this mean its in the last SVN version?

If so... I might just get that, also because of the plane fix.

Thanks for all your help

 

[Thunderbrd]

As for the graphics card, thats the same on my system and my wife's system, its 1 x Geforce GTX 750 DDR5 an got 2048MB (2GB) so we should be fine I guess?
Just out of interest, as ram usage is limited with that old 32 bit structure... is the graphics memory that can be used limited? Or in other words... would I have a little less problems on my gigantic maps with a for example Geforce GTX 1060 or upwards, as it has more vram?

I don't know enough of the computer science underlying things to comment on any particular specs or cards.

you said you toned it down in your last commit, does this mean its in the last SVN version?

Yes. I could use some feedback on that too.