What issues can cause city-states to crash a mod?

[Rob (R8XFT)]

My mod has a crash; it always occurs when the computer is running the city-states - though I thought it may well be at the point when it's about to move to my turn, hence the problem was something in one of my cities.

Investigating this further via firetuner has not thrown any light into the situation - in fact, no cities were about to build anything, nor discover anything new. It is NOT an issue with spy names and I've been testing the mod on the settler level so that I'm always way ahead in tech (therefore if a tech/building/wonder was the cause of the crash, I would be assured of being the one to discover or build it).

So, I thought it might be the city-states. I've just been playing a game without any city states and guess what - no crashes. Using firetuner, I can't go into a city state to discover what they're building (or can I?)

Could anyone throw any light into what kind of issues the city-states can cause or tell me if there's anything different they'd do to investigate. I can't access the crash dump file as the system says I need to update Silverlight.

 

[ls612]

I have no idea why it thinks silverlight opens crash dumps. Visual Studio opens those, but they are useless unless you have the symbols for the DLL (so you need to be using a custom DLL).

I wrote a custom minidump modcomp for the DLL which will make a dump when the game crashes using a modded DLL containing the modcomp (this will incidentally prevent the firaxis dump from being written). Using this (and if the crash is repeatable attaching to the process and debugging live) will help diagnose almost any crash.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Very good - have you made that available for others to use by any chance ?

 

[ls612]

Very good - have you made that available for others to use by any chance ?

Yes, it is in the modcomps forum (and the dl database).

Also, I'm currently working on a tutorial on how to debug your custom DLL mod live (aka, using attach to proces).

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Yes, it is in the modcomps forum (and the dl database).

Also, I'm currently working on a tutorial on how to debug your custom DLL mod live (aka, using attach to proces).

Thank-you; I'll check that out. I've just prevented the city-states from being able to build a couple of buildings I've recently put in the mod for a bit more flavour (but are non-essential from a city-state point of view and require resources). Hopefully that might patch it; no problems so far from my current game, but there's time yet for it to crash .

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

I've managed to get an extension on my VS trial, but my system wouldn't let me switch to it when the crash was occurring, but kept a black screen. The only option was to close all windows, and with it the data.

However, I've played the mod through a few times; there is a different pattern emerging. The crash happens on most - but not all games; and it comes straight after someone has discovered a religion. I have added two beliefs, via Leugi's Israel mod, but have successfully used them as a choice myself. If I reload the mod and use firetuner to switch to the civ who discovered the religion and whose turn it crashed on, I get to chose the religion, the beliefs and it doesn't crash.

So that's where I'm at right now. My next course of action will be to investigate if any beliefs rely on anything I've deleted from the mod.