So how do you find what makes a CTD 20 turns into a new mod?

[Publius Clodius]

I'm play testing my new mod. So far all i've done is get a working 1.3 map with about 100 settlements. Haven't changed units or factions yet. So I am testing the game (pretty much just hitting end turn over and over) and I get a CTD about 20 or so turns in. What do all you modders do when this happens to you?

[Kscott]

Well you obvoisly need to say more than that.. Explain ther circumastances etc..

[Publius Clodius]

i just mean in general ... mods are always reporting various CTD's at random times ... its happend in the best of em, (RTR, SPQR, PAX BRITANNIA, etc ... ) and i just wanted to know what developers do to track them down (since we really werent given very much for debugging) ?

[HorseArcher]

What do all you modders do when this happens to you?

Obviously it didn't happen for the play-tester. This can come from so many reasons, that it is impossible to list of all. It's like "explain, why does it rain today, when the weather channel said it suppose to be sunny?"

Remember, these are mods, made by players. There are no huge development and playtestings like companies do. Did you every realize, how many ways you can actually play the game during 20 turns? What unit, what land, what moves, how much money, who to conquer etc? It is impossible to playtest all scenarios for all units all factions and all moves.

So you report it to the appropriate mod section if you got a crash. You need to tell what exactly happened, when, with who.
If you are lucky, the modder will check what causes the crash and track it down. Mods release fixes all the time if they find problems. And usually problems found by players, because everyone plays the game differently and it's a good way to test many scenarios.

How do they find the bugs? With the info of where/when/who, they can look at the files and see if maybe a unit, event or some other setting is causing the crash.

[Sidmen]

Actually, it is his mod and hes asking how modders track down whats wrong..

The only help I can offer is to add "-show_err" after the command line in the shortcut to your game... Think you have a space..

[Atheist Peace]

Actually, it is his mod and hes asking how modders track down whats wrong..

The only help I can offer is to add "-show_err" after the command line in the shortcut to your game... Think you have a space..

Show_err does absolutely nothing for a mid-campaign CTD, unfortunately.

[Peter]

I have been in the situation that my mod crashes to desktop a few turns into the campaign. But it is nearly impossible to find all causes. And i have scrapped several of my mods because of mysterious ctd and such even when using the famous show_err. It can be the smallest thing to a wrong typo in some text file or something that you think is impossible to be the cause. But what i do is backup everything, even the whole data folder. And try to keep things simple in the beggining not just "give faction this, move that character there, make a new province there, go watch some tv, forget what you where doing, change some unit stats etc.) but stick to something so it will be easier to find corrupt data.


Im started a new mod 2 ago and the first thing i get is a instant "you lost screen" it turned out that a little wooden wall that i dident want in a settlement caused that. So you see the most innocent thing can make your day a hell.


heres my tips though

1. backup everything
2. work with one thing at a time
3. use the show_err command in the rtw shortcut



btw the delayed crashed is due to settlement swapping with other factions i beleive. Atleast in my experience could be a million other things aswell.

[HorseArcher]

If you didn't change the factions, did you give the extra settlements to the rebels? There might be something wrong with the rebels or the settlement itself. There can be also a conflict some of the historic events.Did you use a map editor, or did you hand-drawn in the settlements?
I can think of a 100 reasons why would a game crash in mid-campaign. You need to record what happens when you hit the 20th turn, as I assume some faction attacks a settlement or a historic event or a family member born etc.

[waitcu]

i am working on the new map in BI , but it seems that would ctd without any informations .
anyone had such experience ?
i hope we can start a project to research on adding factions in new map under BI or 1.3 .

[Publius Clodius]

well, basically from what I'm getting, the answer is ... you're screwed, and there's really not much that can be done. which is what i thought it would be. i've been running AI campaigns with my mod. it is a 1.3 mod, so the load/siege bug is fixed, so you would think if it CTD's because of settlement swap that it would always CTD on re-load ... but anyway here are some weird occurences:
- in a seleucid campaign, i get a CTD at 363, re-load and then again in 362
- in a scipii campaign, i get a CTD at 350, re-load and no CTD till scipii get's wiped out in around 340
- in a german campaign, i get a CTD ar around 355, re-load and then agagin about 350

it is very hard to make sense of all this ... but one thing i might have to do (which i dont want to do) is to convert it over to v1.2, which seems to be less strict changes being made causing CTD's

@Peter - do you actually change one thing at a time and play test over and over? that is awesome if you can do that, but i dont think i have the partience for it.

[Publius Clodius]

i track down in one play test that the game will CTD whenever Larissa (which is a rebel province) gets captured by the Julii. This happens repeatedly. All the files appear to be in order. So if someone had experience with a similar situation, what did you do?

[GiantMonkeyMan]

have you tried the 'show_err' thingy yet?

it might have something to do with cultures in descr_regions?

[Publius Clodius]

show_err doesn't give an error in a mid-campaign CTD ... but i do use it.

you might be right about the cultures ... right now all my cultures in descr_regions are set to greek_cities, and all the faction_creators in the settlements in descr_strat are romans_julii

should they be the same?

[GiantMonkeyMan]

depending on what faction you have to begin with you should have the same 'culture' for example any greek faction should have a greek culture tag to begin with and barbarian provinces a barbarian tag to begin with.. or that is how i thought it works...
i am not actually sure because i have never been botherd enough to make a provincial campaign but that is what i thought had to happen

[alpaca]

Hmm well, you have to check every file that's connected to Larissa.
It might be a hardcoded thing (like a senate mission) that causes the ctd when Larissa is captured.
It probably isn't a trigger if it happens every time Larissa is conquered.
Try playing around a little with the values, consider changing the internal name of the province and city, etc.

[Publius Clodius]

the larissa bug was only in one game. i now changed all the cultures and factoin creator's to what was in the vanilla 1.3, and it CTD's more often now. i cant go 5 years.

- one CTD was when the scipii were just moving a character on the map, no battles or anything like that

- another one (that's happend 3 times that i've tested) is when i (germans) make an alliance with Thrace, it is immediate CTD. other diplomacy works with Thrace though. me and thrace were both only at war with the rebels as well

I am seriously puzzled, and am about to mod back over to 1.2 instead of 1.3. i dont want to give up just yet, but it seems everyone working with 1.3 has had problems.

[alpaca]

The first one probably has to do with the map, but don't ask me with what part of it.

The second one could be about a missing message (alliance announced).

[rayzzz]

i had random crashes like that when i was removing units. have you removed any units?

[Publius Clodius]

i haven't done anything with units, removed or added.

i did a test after i got the diplomat crash where i removed all diplomats and prevented them from getting built, then removed all alliances, but i still got a CTD.

[Publius Clodius]

would it cause a CTD if i still have spain listed in export_descr_units.txt or export_descr_buildings.txt?? i mean it's still listed as a faction with units under barracks and other things even though its not listed in descr_strat.txt .. but i dont think this would cause issues would it???


EDIT: I added in barracks into every settlement and removed diplomats from the game. i was then able to run campaign's without CTD's. This seems to have fixed the problem. I am going to keep posting in this thread any other errors and fixes I have/find and other people should do the same. It can be a very useful thread for creating and modding in 1.3.