Stainless Steel 5.1 CRASH TO DESKTOP? Read this..post CTD stories.

[wolfslayer]

Vanilla data folder unpacked is around 9 GB; it does make a difference.

I analyzed a CTD that kept happening in a siege battle in SS campaign.

CTD when I was placing units before battle; I changed a few vidcard settings etc.

"Medieval II has encountered an unspecified error and will now exit"

Then it would CTD when I was placing stakes near gate; ran battle again.

Then battle would start okay but when I went to send a small suicide commando group of 6 mercenary spearman outside the gate to attack the catapult..CTD

Then I started Filemonitor and ran it again.. CTD when I went to move trebuchet closer to wall as enemy catapult approached.

I analyzed my filemonitor log and my HD was frantically looking in my SS folder for the castle wall texture that has the gate opening , right before the CTD.


(I took this screen right before one of the CTDs)

Did it need to reload it into memory for the open/close gate function? It was displaying properly.

Point is:

I checked my SS data/blockset folder to make sure nothing would be overwritten that shouldn't be ( it won't), and COPIED my entire vanilla dat/blockset folder over to SS.

Ran battle again..no CTD; entire siege battle ran fine all the way to finish.

I just traced another repeated CTD to data/battlefield. This was after I had entered the battlemap and was moving the camera around.

158153 6:13:56 PM kingdoms.exe:3864 OPEN H:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\Stainless_Steel\data\battlefield\roads\alpine\winter\winter\stone_macro.texture PATH NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: Read

My filemonitor log repeated this about 20 times before CTD.. solution, I copied data/battlefield from vanilla to SS51.

It takes more space but no more CTDs so far, I havent had one through about 6 very large battles and 4-5 turns.

If you have a repeated CTD problem, save your game every chance you get, before and after every battle, and after doing several moves and new construction, recruiting, etc..

The closer you have a saved game to a crash point, the better a chance of fixing it.

And be very specific as to when and how the game is crashing.

HAPPY NEW YEAR :tooth:

[uk_john]

Well, I just wish I could get 5.1b to load as it gives me an unexplained error and CTD's before it even gets to the first menu!

[wolfslayer]

Well, I just wish I could get 5.1b to load as it gives me an unexplained error and CTD's before it even gets to the first menu!

Get Debugview http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...DebugView.mspx

Have it running on your desktop when you start SS; I've had times where game wouldn't start at all; I got message in Debugview "cannot process game options". I had goofed something up in SS.cfg like "vegetation=3" or something. It might help you find the problem.

Get File Monitor too, it generates a huge amount of info; but I've used it to track down the exact millisecond I had a crash and what was going on at the time.. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb896642.aspx

I keep shortcuts to these on my desktop next to my MTW2 and SS51 shortcuts..

It can eat up a lot of memory too. If I have a reocurring crash and a save game right before that crash; I will tab out to my desktop while I'm runnng SS51, then start FileMonitor and resume my game; If it soon crashes where it did before, I immediately note the time and save the Filemonitor log.

Then open and look look toward the end of the log (in Notepad, wordpad etc)

Whenever the game CTDs you will always see references to your video drivers, where your monitor resolution changes back to Windows desktop.

In my case Nvidia "nv_disp.dll" and such. Right before those driver references is where you want to start looking for the cause of your crash.

It can be a chore at first, but as a result of spending awhile doing this and finding out what was wrong, I haven't had a single CTD in a long time.

[wolfslayer]

UPDATE:

I was going to try installing most of the vanilla data folder in SS when I reinstalled all of MTW2 / Kingdoms but decided not to..

I do have the entire /BLOCKSET folder and the entire /BATTLEFIELD folder from vanilla copied over to SS51.

I've found out the game can crash when loading large texture sets; so the more texture files you have in SS51, the better.

[Haqiq]

Try reinstall whole of it. It work for me. If it does not occur many times, than ur fine..

[uk_john]

Tried that already Haqiq. Oh well, I have other mods so they'll do for the mo.

[uk_john]

Wolfslayer, thanks for all that - finally a MTW2/Kingdoms reinstall di the job - but why I needed to do the reinstall twice in a row to get SS working, when both reinstalls had the vanilla game working fine, I don't know. Can you also remind KK that in SS your General (playing the English) does not give the full speech about your army the enemy army and the likely strategy, etc. SS only has the General saying one generic sentence and that's it! Can we get the full General's battle speech in SS please?!

[wolfslayer]

Wolfslayer, thanks for all that - finally a MTW2/Kingdoms reinstall di the job - but why I needed to do the reinstall twice in a row to get SS working, when both reinstalls had the vanilla game working fine, I don't know. Can you also remind KK that in SS your General (playing the English) does not give the full speech about your army the enemy army and the likely strategy, etc. SS only has the General saying one generic sentence and that's it! Can we get the full General's battle speech in SS please?!

Did you doublecheck your SS51*.cfg..

[audio]
speech_enable = 1
speech_vol = 99
sub_faction_accents = 1


Voice3.dat/idx have the prebattle speeches

You can copy those 2 files from vanilla /sound folder over to SS /sound too, if you want.

[uk_john]

Did you doublecheck your SS51*.cfg..

[audio]
speech_enable = 1
speech_vol = 99
sub_faction_accents = 1


Voice3.dat/idx have the prebattle speeches

You can copy those 2 files from vanilla /sound folder over to SS /sound too, if you want.

Did exactly what you said and still the same thing. 'Let's go to battle' sort of thing, and that's it!

Or to clarify, the vanilla medieval2.cfg already had the [Audio] section in it, and in the Stainless_Steel_Kingdoms. cfg did not have it and I added it, along with the voices3.dat and idx to the SS*/Sounds folder.

[uk_john]

@wolfslayer

All I have in my Stainless_Steel_Kingdoms.cfg file is the following - seems a little short to me!


[features]
mod = mods/Stainless_Steel

[io]
file_first = true

[misc]
## display date and season on campaign hud
show_hud_date = true

[log]
## log potentially critical errors for debugging
# to = logs/system.log.txt
# level = * trace

[game]
## allow an unlimited number of men on the battlefield for campaign battles
unlimited_men_on_battlefield = true

[multiplayer]
## comment/uncomment following line to disable/enable hotseat campaign
# playable = true
## faction mask for setting default starting factions in hotseat campaign
# factions = 1 # = england, 2 = france, 4 = hre, 3 = england+france, etc

[hotseat]
## disable start turn scroll in hotseat campaign
# scroll = false
## disable forced separate human faction turns (including diplomacy) in hotseat campaign
# turns = false
## enable cheat console in hotseat campaign.
# disable_console = false
## specify password for administrator access to the dev console when console disabled. Change 'password' to a suitable password
# admin_password = password
## enable camera updates during ai turn in hotseat campaign
# update_ai_camera = true
## enable voting in papal elections in hotseat campaign (only first valid human faction votes)
# disable_papal_elections = false
## disable forced autoresolve all battles in hotseat campaign
# autoresolve_battles = false
## disable diplomacy validation for incoming propositions
# validate_diplomacy = false
## disable forced relevant hotseat options to be saved with game.
# save_prefs = false
## autosave hotseat game at start of players turn
# autosave = true
## save config file in save dir containing information about next players turn
# save_config = true
## close medieval II directly after a hotseat autosave
# close_after_save = true
## sub directory name for hotseat save games
# gamename = hotseat_gamename
## ensure game data files used in previous save match current campaign data files.
# validate_data = true
## prevent game to load if savegame or data validations fail
# allow_validation_failures = false

[wolfslayer]

Check your vanilla.cfg for the [audio] section, change the entry there, or you can if you want, copy over to ss.cfg..

When you run SS, the game reads both .cfgs, SS first, then vanilla.

[wolfslayer]

Hmmm I have mine off, but now curious as to why it doesn't work; this will need some checking, make sure you search through the forums for the fix..
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=104636

[uk_john]

Hmmm I have mine off, but now curious as to why it doesn't work; this will need some checking, make sure you search through the forums for the fix..
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=104636

Well, something is going on in SS, because I get the full speeches in the vanilla game, and the audio section was in the vanilla CFG but not in the SS CFG.

[wolfslayer]

Well, something is going on in SS, because I get the full speeches in the vanilla game, and the audio section was in the vanilla CFG but not in the SS CFG.

I already had all the prebattle mp3s in my sound SS folder, and export_descr_sounds_prebattle looks fine; I enabled speech in both cfg and even repacked my Voice.dat..I loaded a saved campaign game battle w English vs Moors and I'm not hearing any speeches either in the predeployment screens.

My repacked Voice.idx has all the speech mp3 references in it too.

Open your different voice idx's in notepad and do a find for Pre_Battle_Speech/English

[custa]

I had problems with crashing to desktop during battles. I uninstalled everything and reinstalled medieval total war, then kingdoms, then stainless steel 5.0, 5.1 patch, and the hotfix. It took a long time but it works beautifully now.

[uk_john]

I already had all the prebattle mp3s in my sound SS folder, and export_descr_sounds_prebattle looks fine; I enabled speech in both cfg and even repacked my Voice.dat..I loaded a saved campaign game battle w English vs Moors and I'm not hearing any speeches either in the predeployment screens.

My repacked Voice.idx has all the speech mp3 references in it too.

Open your different voice idx's in notepad and do a find for Pre_Battle_Speech/English

And do what? I have a 1k voice.dat and a 1k voice.idx in my SS/mods/sound folder. the voice.idx and voice.dat only have the words 'snd.pack' in them. If I change the voice3.dat and idx that I copied to the SS sounds folder, as you recommended, that has the Pre-Battle_Speech/English data to voice.dat and voice.idx, I do get a different line of speech, but it's still only one line of speech - not the full speech that I get in vanilla.

[wolfslayer]

Vanilla comes with Voice 1, 2,and 3.dat, so speeches should work from those 3 vanilla files even if they aren't in SS folder. I wanted you to search in those 3 idx's for the speech mp3s.

You might need those 3 in SS folder plus the events.dat/idx from vanilla..I would rename the regular events.dat/idx in SS folder to be safe.

If your voice.dat is only 1k it has no data so it is disposable. That won't repack unless you have sounds extracted into SS data/sound folders.

I just had to reformat a brand new drive I had reinstalled MTW2 and SS on; so I have to reinstall everything from scratch..again.

Once I get back up and running we can figure out how to get the speeches working; or hopefully someone can help.

[uk_john]

@Wolfslayer - will do as you say - but that is a gig of data that would now have to be duplicated, that makes SS a big mod! I don't see why it is not working when the vanilla game works. What is in SS that is not pointing correctly, I wonder?

EDIT: You can copy all the voice.dat and voice.idx and it makes no difference, because there is still no pointing to them in my opinion. If, for example, you change voice1.dat and voice1.idx to voice.dat and voice.idx you get one line from that data and that data only. Change voice2 and you get one line from there, because all that's being pointed to is voice.dat and voice.idx, and that is what SS expects to point to the vanilla sounds folder to call in the speech, except it doesn't do that. Any amount of copying will make no difference if voices.idx/dat is not pointing to the correct voice.dat/idx files in the vanilla sounds folder.

By the way, if you try to use the vanilla events.dat/idx in the SS sounds folder the game crashes.

[wolfslayer]

I would wait if diskspace is a problem..I can't test anything till I get reinstalled.

[wolfslayer]

This is for NVIDIA users; my experience with Radeon drivers is limited.

I can get very decent image quality for the smallest performance hit by using

2xQuincunx anitalising; and then offsetting the 2xQ blur by using increasing image sharpening from the Nvidia control panel desktop settings.


(2xq with desktop sharpening)

The results are like the screenshots, not bad for 1024 x 768; I usually save game and turn down my battlemap resolution if I'm facing a huge battle with many stacks..



Notice how "unjaggy" these spears are (2xQ without sharpening).

You can enable 2xQ in MTW2 by using nHAncer for your vidcard settings.

http://www.nhancer.com/

Turn off the "application controlled" AA settings in the regular NVIDA control panel and then you can use nHancer to override the MTW2 AA settings.