The Conquest of Greece DCG crash

[simovitch]

I got a lockup after I received my award from my first battle as Germans. Then restarted and it would sometimes (maybe 1/4 of the time) hang at "Generating Campaign Organization Please wait"

Then I tried again several times to get an idea of how often it would hang, and suddenly got this error:

[simovitch]

I know what your saying... "simovitch wrote the book on editing DCG's AND he designed The Conquest of Greece so what's he asking us for?"
Well, I hoped Berto or someone would have some insights to help me root out the problem.[:)] I already dug into the OOB's quite a bit to see what might be happening, but I'll dig some more. But not much more.[;)]

[berto]

As pointed out here (and elsewhere):

ORIGINAL: Crossroads

With that, there's a few changes to how things played out before. Going forward, as described in the Coder Diaries, and in preparation of the coming Modern Wars titles, the error handling and logging in general is being tightened. Common code base, remember. Happened here too.

For an example, with engagement Sizes, there's been a few questions around already.

In 2.00 and before, there was code in place to fish around for different levels if the game data doesn't support the requested level. There we identified problems where the code might go into an endless loop (effectively a freeze), or crash, or create mismatches: pitting a regiment vs. a brigade or even higher.

Now, there's logic in code now for a level playing ground. No more Regiments vs Bridgades. Or whatever the game engine picked from the selected countries' unit data.

On the other hand, the data in OOBs should now allow for level engagement sizes as well.

Therefore, one can't randomly generate any battle, any combatants, any size, with a perfect chance of success where there was success with earlier versions.

Some sets of choices will fail to work now. But others will do. Try try again.

There's a commitment for continuous improvement on unit data, this will take time.

For an example; the tricky thing with the Russians in that in 1943, there weren't a lot of division organizations. For armoured forces, they were mostly Corps, which you'll be given a notification (not an error) for in DCG's, but not in the Battle generator. So if someone picks regiment and tries to generate an armoured fight with regiments, it automatically will fail because Russian forces are organized into Brigades.

The decision to level the playing field was not arbitrary, and unprompted. It was in response to crashes and lock-ups that, in our testing, we encountered in DCGs, and in random battle generation.

I think the appropriate response here is to fix the game data (filling out the OOBs and ORGs at all levels), not having the code revert back to setting up unequal contests (e.g., regiment vs. brigade). That implies that some DCGs might need revision.

So, yes, sorry, please "dig some more". [;)]

[simovitch]

roger that, thanks berto![:)]

[simovitch]

ORIGINAL: berto

I think the appropriate response here is to fix the game data (filling out the OOBs and ORGs at all levels), not having the code revert back to setting up unequal contests (e.g., regiment vs. brigade). That implies that some DCGs might need revision.

So I have a theory that the smaller Armies from limited time spans (like the Greece Campaign) may need to filled out more to allow more selection choices for the DCG force building routines. Does that make sense?

[Jason Petho]

That makes perfect sense... and is on the to-do list for the 2.10 UPDATE.

Jason Petho