multiple CTD's for new Expanded scenario

[mussey]

I have updated Bob Cross' The Next War 1979 scenario, resulting in multiple crash-to-desktops. Several players have experienced this while playing the Next War 1979 - Expanded Beta including Larry, Hellen, and myself on three different computers. Mine have occurred at different times: when moving an air unit, when ending a turn, etc. Here are the related logs. I must have broken something? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

[mussey]

As of yet, I did not create a separate equipment file for this scenario (soon to be rectified). The changes I have made are embedded in the actual scenario file. Could this be a possible culprit?

[sPzAbt653]

I have updated Bob Cross' The Next War 1979 scenario

What did you update [what changes were made] ?

[mussey]

What did you update [what changes were made] ?

More details are in the Beta thread tm.asp?m=4601852, but in short the map was doubled, number of units doubled, tweaked few Events. But getting to my last comment, I created more Equipment, especially modern naval but did not create a separate .eqp file. I notice that many scenarios have created their own. I wonder if this has an effect?

I am now adding an eqp. file as we speak...

[sPzAbt653]

More details are in the Beta thread

There may not be time to read a thread, but please provide a link so we know where it is.
There is a lot involved in your updates, and how you have done them could make a difference, so someone who understands the logs might be the only hope for help, but if you can provide a save file with a repeatable crash, maybe someone can figure it out.

[mussey]

Thanks sPzAbt653, I edited the above to include a link.

[cathar1244]

There is a huge amount of these messages in the TOAW log file.

General :Bitmap alphaBlendBitBlt Y failed:C:\Users\Mussey\Documents\My Games\The Operational Art of War IV\Graphics Override\CounterBackgroundShadow.png 34,34/35,34.

Just curious if these are significant or more an informational message.

Cheers

[mussey]

ORIGINAL: cathar1244

There is a huge amount of these messages in the TOAW log file.

General :Bitmap alphaBlendBitBlt Y failed:C:\Users\Mussey\Documents\My Games\The Operational Art of War IV\Graphics Override\CounterBackgroundShadow.png 34,34/35,34.

Just curious if these are significant or more an informational message.

Cheers

I'm not sure what those second group of numbers represent, but here's what it looks like:

[Lobster]

Maybe the shadow offset?

[mussey]

ORIGINAL: Lobster

Maybe the shadow offset?

I can't remember if this was part of Cabido's graphics mod, or vanilla. Maybe there is something more sinister to this?

[Shadrach]

Yeah definitely it's THE SHADOW crashing the game (MUHAHAHA!), fighting the good fight for justice sometimes causes CTD's as is well known [:D]

Or - could it be that since the default CounterBackgroundShadow png is 35x35 while Cabido's for some reason is 34x34? If you delete the file, does the messages and/or the CTD's go away?

It would be weird for it to cause a CTD though. I think the game is forgiving for such things, at the most you would expect graphic glitches with the wrong size of files... but worth a try and simple enough to verify.

[mussey]

ince the default CounterBackgroundShadow png is 35x35 while Cabido's for some reason is 34x34?

I pasted the original file back into the Graphics. We'll see what happens... The Shadow knows...

[Hellen_slith]

Would it help if I turned back on my TOAWLOG and SITREP logs (i turned them off a long time ago) and then made it CTD? Would that generate the files that might show what happened? I don't know about that tech stuff anymore. But,

I think I know how to do it and recreate it (cause it to crash, that is) ... that is, if I move enough aircraft and naval units, I *know* it gonna crash, so I save it after every move like that.

On critical moves (like when I hopped US SF into Grolitz w/ a double AH helo rescue attack in my game w/ Larry), I had a feeling ... the little cursor finger winked a few times ... my knee started hurting, started to feel a shim sham, and I knew....

Managed to saved it. It would have crashed right then.

Anyway, I am willing to burn a move, to recreate the crash, if you tell me what I need to turn on the computer thing to record the TOAW log

[larryfulkerson]

Anyway, I am willing to burn a move, to recreate the crash, if you tell me what I need to turn on the computer thing to record the TOAW log

On the menu the Player Options, second page, you can turn on whatever log you think you might need. Toaw_log for sure should be "on".

[Hellen_slith]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

Anyway, I am willing to burn a move, to recreate the crash, if you tell me what I need to turn on the computer thing to record the TOAW log

On the menu the Player Options, second page, you can turn on whatever log you think you might need. Toaw_log for sure should be "on".

Ah, ok, Thanks Larry!! I will turn that on and see what I can make it do.

Thanks again!!

[golden delicious]

Had this same bug. It may be relevant that I loaded a new map (from XML since the "save map" button doesn't work any more) into an existing scenario.

Did anyone get anywhere with this? I'll try replacing the file to see if that does anything.

[golden delicious]

Perhaps predictably, that didn't prevent the bug.

You know, I really couldn't care less about any of the planned enhancements to TOAW. Couldn't we just get a stable scenario editor? You know, like we used to have before the game was "upgraded"?

[golden delicious]

Urgh, I was able to trace the problem to one hex, and the one specific unit. For some reason this air unit was causing the game to render multiple copies of the unit in the hex and that was causing a failure of the shadow graphic which indicates there's another unit under the top one. The game would crash whenever navigating to the location using the minimap or jump map, but I could scroll there. Clicking the hex also crashes- but after I deleted and recreated the unit I was able to scroll and then undeploy and redeploy the units from the bugged hex.

Save the scenario, close TOAW, open TOAW, open scenario, navigate to the hex- works fine.

I'm sure this won't be the last crashbug I get building this scenario but at least that's done with. Took about two hours of repeatedly losing work to get there. Doesn't help that simply opening the editor (something I've had to do about twenty or thirty times this evening) takes forever because the game insists on loading a 700x700 map every time. Couldn't the default parameters be set to 20x20? If you really want to make a big map then by all means do so- but most of us will go into the editor and then immediately open an existing scenario.

[cathar1244]

GD,

How were you able to identify the problem unit?

Sounds like this may be what was dogging the expanded Next War scenario.

Cheers

[golden delicious]

GD,

How were you able to identify the problem unit?

Sounds like this may be what was dogging the expanded Next War scenario.

Cheers

Although this unit wasn't showing up in the toawlog for the crashes I was experiencing, I was "lucky" in that I had another version of the scenario which wouldn't load at all. In that one, the final entry in the toawlog was relating to this one specific unit.

One thing you can try is to dump the scenario out to XML and then load it in again. That might trip the errors in the toawlog and you can check for the unit names. I did this (because I was getting so many crashes) and it flagged some errors as soon as I entered the deployment mode.