[We the People] Bug reporting

[Jimboman]

That's the first I have heard about such an issue. I know there are reports of weird stuff happening on 32 bit systems when using pkg files so we have intentionally avoided using those.

I would like to see screenshots. Based on what you have written, you have a problem with city billboards and you have problems with text in the colony screen. The first is 3D while the latter is 2D and as such should be completely independent of each other.

You could try using smaller maps to reduce the memory usage to see if that affects anything. Also I hope you installed the mod in Mods in the game install dir rather than in My Documents because the latter can result in weird graphics where some graphic files aren't read and it messes up the display randomly, possibly like this.

Other than that I can't think of anything right now. Maybe if I see screenshots I can figure out if there is a pattern to which graphics have broken, which in turn could give a hint to how fix this. Since it's a 32 bit application, it should be possible to get working on a 32 bit computer, at least in theory. I will admit I haven't tried 32 bit windows in quite a while.

That's the first I have heard about such an issue. I know there are reports of weird stuff happening on 32 bit systems when using pkg files so we have intentionally avoided using those.

I would like to see screenshots. Based on what you have written, you have a problem with city billboards and you have problems with text in the colony screen. The first is 3D while the latter is 2D and as such should be completely independent of each other.

You could try using smaller maps to reduce the memory usage to see if that affects anything. Also I hope you installed the mod in Mods in the game install dir rather than in My Documents because the latter can result in weird graphics where some graphic files aren't read and it messes up the display randomly, possibly like this.

Other than that I can't think of anything right now. Maybe if I see screenshots I can figure out if there is a pattern to which graphics have broken, which in turn could give a hint to how fix this. Since it's a 32 bit application, it should be possible to get working on a 32 bit computer, at least in theory. I will admit I haven't tried 32 bit windows in quite a while.

Here you are. It does look weird, and as I said in my previous post everything is installed in the correct place. I was using a huge map, so maybe I'll try a large or standard to see if that helps. It wouldn't explian why the menu background is blank instead of the WTP one though.

 

[Nightinggale]

(I'm using Windows 10 btw, sorry I didn't mention this before.) Go to Control Panel, Clock and Region, Region, the Administrative tab, Change system locale, and uncheck Beta: use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support.

You managed to get the game to display UTF-8???
I need to play around with this. With a bit of luck I can make the game to support all languages at once, not just western Europe. We do have the text files in UTF-8, but I wrote a converter to get codepage 1252, which the game is designed to work with. Maybe this can be as simple as just skipping the conversion step, enable UTF-8 in this setting and then see what happens.


The main problem with relying on UTF-8 is that people would need to enable it to get the text to display correctly. That's not ideal. Still worth investigating.

Here you are. It does look weird, and as I said in my previous post everything is installed in the correct place.

First image. GameFont.tga isn't loaded. Second image is some resource file not loaded (can't remember offhand which one). You can do a test. Copy Assets\Res\Fonts\GameFont.tga from 3.0.1 to 4.0.1. Graphics will display incorrectly as it's the wrong file, but if the city name text shows up, then it's a strong hint towards what is wrong.
The black resources in the colony screen is something I have seen before. As I recall it is related to the resolution of a specific file and 32 bit systems are more picky about it than 64 bit systems (nobody knows why).
Last image.... no idea. At least that one seems less important as the menu is fully functional and as such isn't game breaking.

 

[raystuttgart]

@Jimboman
Which version of the game do you have?
(Just because the screenshots extremely remind me about issues from 10 years ago related to missing patch.)

Steam? --> already patched
Gog? --> already patched
DVD? --> already patched
Old CD? --> In this case you need Patch 1.1f !!! (All Civ4Col mods require it.)

EDIT:
I attached it in a ZIP just in case you have the old CD version.
(Otherwise do NOT use it.)

 

[raystuttgart]

Version 3.0.1 worked great,

Ok, that is strange then.
Because that elminiates the "missing patch" assumption I had.

But looking e.g. at the Water:
It is NOT the way that water is normally shown for Civ4Col.
(It looks like Water from e.g. Civ4BTS but not like Water of Civ4Col.)

 

[Culthrasa]

First off, love WtP4!
I however do experience sudden CTD's. The latest was after a manual save/reload the next day. It loads the game, then CTD. Tried twice, and both times it CTD after loading. It's too bad, cause i can't continue now
save attached. Steam, original version. been playing for over 20 hours with 4.0 (and got about 4 ctd, this is the first repeatable one for me)

 

[raystuttgart]

20 hours with 4.0

WTP 4.0 or WTP 4.01 ?
Because you saw that we had a bugfix release, right?
Did you already install WTP 4.0.1 and try if the bug is still there?

 

[Nightinggale]

WTP 4.0 or WTP 4.0.1 ?
Because you saw that we had a bugfix release, right?
Did you already install WTP 4.0.1 and try if the bug is still there?

Savegame says 4.0 so yeah update.

 

[Jimboman]

Ok, that is strange then.
Because that elminiates the "missing patch" assumption I had.

But looking e.g. at the Water:
It is NOT the way that water is normally shown for Civ4Col.
(It looks like Water from e.g. Civ4BTS but not like Water of Civ4Col.)

I had graphics turned to 'low' to make the game run faster (on a 1.60 ghz processor, 4gb ram) which is why the water looks that way. Turning it to high made no difference to the font problem.

It is patched to 1.1f. I'll try moving the files from 3.0.1 as nightinggale recommends.

 

[Jimboman]

First image. GameFont.tga isn't loaded. Second image is some resource file not loaded (can't remember offhand which one). You can do a test. Copy Assets\Res\Fonts\GameFont.tga from 3.0.1 to 4.0.1. Graphics will display incorrectly as it's the wrong file, but if the city name text shows up, then it's a strong hint towards what is wrong.
The black resources in the colony screen is something I have seen before. As I recall it is related to the resolution of a specific file and 32 bit systems are more picky about it than 64 bit systems (nobody knows why).
Last image.... no idea. At least that one seems less important as the menu is fully functional and as such isn't game breaking.

Changing the font file worked ok (see attached). I know I need to put the original 4.0.1 file back of course! I put the savegame up as well.

Any idea how I could fix this, and the black resources thing? I changed res to 1024 x whatever from 1280x800 and it didn't help that.

None of these problems are 'game-breaking' as it DOES work and is playable, it's just annoying!

 

[Nightinggale]

Changing the font file worked ok (see attached). I know I need to put the original 4.0.1 file back of course! I put the savegame up as well.

In that case try this one. It's a modified version of the 4.0.1, but it has extra space added to make the width 3840, or precisely twice as wide as the 3.0.1 one. I seem to recall odd behavior where files did not load unless they were the same size or precisely double the one of the old one. No, it will never be displayed ingame as the full 3840x320 pixels. It is full of icons and it will only display a single icon at the time.

 

[raystuttgart]

@Schmiddie
The Slave Overseer is bugged in Colopedia currently. (Talking about "develop".)
Please check what happened but I think it is related to the changes to its graphic recently.

 

[Jimboman]

In that case try this one. It's a modified version of the 4.0.1, but it has extra space added to make the width 3840, or precisely twice as wide as the 3.0.1 one. I seem to recall odd behavior where files did not load unless they were the same size or precisely double the one of the old one. No, it will never be displayed ingame as the full 3840x320 pixels. It is full of icons and it will only display a single icon at the time.

Unfortunately that didn't help, but it is that file that's causing the problem with city billboards. I experimented by leaving it out and only having the gamefont_75 file and the white-bars went away but that resulted in some other icon mess-ups in the city screen though (cloth-pic for lumber-pic when you click on the lumberjack working a forest for example) so I put your gamefont.tga back in, which fixed the city-screen icons but the white-bars came back!

I'll just have to live with it until the next bug-fix I suppose.

 

[raystuttgart]

I'll just have to live with it until the next bug-fix I suppose.

Sorry to disappoint you but most likely this mod will not support 32bit OS anymore for our new relases.
It is just technically and considering effort not feasible for us as private modders to keep supporting such old OS anymore if they are not compatible.

Summary:
In such a case there will be no "bugfix" - simply because of the overhead effort.
(Not even a professional company would do that. Neither Microsoft, nor Steam, nor ...)

 

[Jimboman]

Sorry to disappoint you but most likely this mod will not support 32bit OS anymore for our new relases.
It is just technically and considering effort not feasible for us as private modders to keep supporting such old OS anymore.

Summary:
If the new versionf of our mod do not work anymore on old 32bit OS that is a pitty.
But in such a case there will be no "bugfix" - not even a professional company would do that.

Well, I've been needing a new laptop for ages anyway (the present one is about 10 years old) so this gives me yet another incentive to invest in one!

 

[Nightinggale]

I'll just have to live with it until the next bug-fix I suppose.

There is nothing we can do about that because nobody knows what to do about this problem. If that file didn't fix it, then I have nothing else to try. Sorry.

Summary:
In such a case there will be no "bugfix" - simply because of the overhead effort.
(Not even a professional company would do that. Neither Microsoft, nor Steam, nor ...)

Not just overhead, it's also a question of if it's even possible. Maybe the mod has become too big to handle for a system where other programs has to share the memory with it. Running a 32 bit application on a 32 bit windows means the entire system can't use more than 4 GB in total (6 GB if extended memory is supported). 64 bit windows (or linux or whatever) have no such restriction so even through the 32 bit application still resides in 32 bit memory size, other applications will not steal memory from it.

 

[Raubwuerger]

I don't know if this is a bug or if it is intentional. In any case, I could no longer unload goods in my city. Neither from ships nor from wagons.
My king proposed to declare war on another nation, which I gratefully accepted. So the troop limit of the city was exceeded ...
When I withdrew the troops from the city, everything worked as usual.

 

[Martin Peralta]

First off, love WtP4!
I however do experience sudden CTD's. The latest was after a manual save/reload the next day. It loads the game, then CTD. Tried twice, and both times it CTD after loading. It's too bad, cause i can't continue now
save attached. Steam, original version. been playing for over 20 hours with 4.0 (and got about 4 ctd, this is the first repeatable one for me)

Same with me - once every hour i have a random CTD.. I just auto-save every 2 turns and load the game back again.

 

[Nightinggale]

First off, love WtP4!
I however do experience sudden CTD's. The latest was after a manual save/reload the next day. It loads the game, then CTD. Tried twice, and both times it CTD after loading. It's too bad, cause i can't continue now
save attached. Steam, original version. been playing for over 20 hours with 4.0 (and got about 4 ctd, this is the first repeatable one for me)

I can't reproduce this crash with the development version.

Same with me - once every hour i have a random CTD.. I just auto-save every 2 turns and load the game back again.

Looks like the super rare crash I fixed isn't as rare as I thought. Strange that nobody reported it prior to release considering that I can tell from the code that it's not new. The solution is indeed to reload and try again as the bug is caused by the birds flying out of trees when you move around, or rather when the game tries to activate this feature on terrain features other than trees, such as storms. This is completely random if they show up meaning loading after a crash and then doing the very same thing might not crash.

I don't know if this is a bug or if it is intentional. In any case, I could no longer unload goods in my city. Neither from ships nor from wagons.
My king proposed to declare war on another nation, which I gratefully accepted. So the troop limit of the city was exceeded ...
When I withdrew the troops from the city, everything worked as usual.

Known bug, which has been fixed in development.

 

[Nightinggale]

First off, love WtP4!
I however do experience sudden CTD's. The latest was after a manual save/reload the next day. It loads the game, then CTD. Tried twice, and both times it CTD after loading. It's too bad, cause i can't continue now
save attached. Steam, original version. been playing for over 20 hours with 4.0 (and got about 4 ctd, this is the first repeatable one for me)

I don't know if this is a bug or if it is intentional. In any case, I could no longer unload goods in my city. Neither from ships nor from wagons.
My king proposed to declare war on another nation, which I gratefully accepted. So the troop limit of the city was exceeded ...
When I withdrew the troops from the city, everything worked as usual.

Same with me - once every hour i have a random CTD.. I just auto-save every 2 turns and load the game back again.

Download We The People 4.0.2 hotfix and all this should be fixed.

 

[Schmiddie]

@Schmiddie
The Slave Overseer is bugged in Colopedia currently. (Talking about "develop".)
Please check what happened but I think it is related to the changes to its graphic recently.

Fixed. I will upload the fixed files soon.