Discussion about the ents, spiders and wolves crashes.

[jurcek1987]

I could try doing others too. Yes it makes sense that mumakils are the most stable because they're basically M2 elephants so their bounding sphere should be very similar to them.

Only models were modified, nothing else. So just replace the old files with these and you're good to go. Unless other mods made changes to these models, they can use them as well. To check if the files are the same, just compare the dates and sizes of these original files with other mods. If anyone made changes to these models and has the same issues, they can send them to me.

I just checked MOS 1.7, ents are dated July 31st 2009, wolves 18th August 2011 and spiders 19th June 2011

[Veteraan]

I had a short test with the Ents files being replaced by yours.

Three Ents troops slaughtered 4 units of Hobbits and I watched them do this for about ten minutes, when the 'battle' was won. No crash, which is hopeful.

Time to have some dinner now, but this evening I will test more adventurous battles and check on wolves and spiders as well. In fact I might have the terrible threesome fight each other for maximum impact!

If this all works out, I would like you very much to have a look at the DCI:LA creatures at some time as well. That would be a great help and deserving much credit.

[King Athelstan]

That would indeed be awesome, great initiative Jurcek, +rep

[jurcek1987]

I'll keep my fingers crossed . Sure I'd be happy to help anyone. Are you having the same issues in your mod?

[Vifarc]

the black_spiderA_lod0 to unit_models/mounts/creature

With the "unoficial patch" submod, I launch the battle, move the camera and it crashes :/
I see there are 2 others spider files in this mod, but brown not black.

[Veteraan]

I'll keep my fingers crossed . Sure I'd be happy to help anyone. Are you having the same issues in your mod?

Yes, very much so but only for those that are affected of course. I am still amazed that this not seems to be caused by a particular hardware/software configuration. To me it doesn't make sense that fixing some values might very well be the answer for those who experience crashes, while a big part of the players can play the game just fine without anything having to be fixed.

Oh well I better get back to testing. Hopefully some other folks will join. But first I will rep you, regardless of the outcome of my tests.

[jurcek1987]

With the "unoficial patch" submod, I launch the battle, move the camera and it crashes :/
I see there are 2 others spider files in this mod, but brown not black.

Do they have more or different spiders in that mod? I checked, there are 3 different spider models and 3 entries in descr_mount but only one is used in MOS - Great Spiders (coded name Black Spiders)

[Veteraan]

Test results are in, mod played was MOS 1.7:

Ents and Spiders don't do well together, but in more normal circumstances as my rather extreme test scenarios, it looks like it is playable.
Further testing by other people would be good, as this crash problem is notoriously sneaky and easily can get you to believe that all is well, just to crush your hopes again.
Having said that, I can't remember playing any creature battle with so much of them present without (instant) crashing.

Edit1: My test results with 20 Ent units present in battle seem to confirm what jurcek1987 noticed in his tests. Playing with 19 seems far less problematic. Anyway, I doubt much people play with more than four Ent Units present in any given battle.

Edit2: Just realized that jurcek1987 mentioned problems with 20 spiders being present instead of Ents. This shows once more how difficult it is to get the same results from different testers with this problem.



And just for fun, some images made during the testing. Not my usual setting, hadn't played MOS for years now.....

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[jurcek1987]

I made a few more tests and my experiences were similar to yours, spiders and ents don't mix well together. 19 vs 19 always produced a crash. Then I tried 4 battles with half a stack each and 3 were successful. So there are still some other errors in these units, someone mentioned skeletons and animations but that is sadly beyond my skill to fix. But all in all, despite not producing a definite fix, I'd say the outcome of all this has been positive, at least the campaign battles should now be playable. As you said, these are all extreme tests which will never be encountered in campaigns. Battles with low number of these units seem to be stable. I've never encountered more than 1 unit of spiders apart from that island in the northwest which has 3 I think. Previously in my games even 1 unit of spiders caused a crash everytime. I remember years ago I had the same persistent problem and the only solution for me then was to autoresolve the battle with auto_win cheat.

[Vifarc]

Do they have more or different spiders in that mod?

From very old memory, I think yes, when spiders appeared they was several different units. From memory too, I think MOS used only one to lower the chances of crash.

[jurcek1987]

Try these:
https://mega.nz/file/okxDnJrb#3MfHH8...L2kk3Hq-l7REKo

Forrest and brown spiders go into the same folder as black spiders (data/unit_models/mounts/creature)
mount_elephant_cannon (this is the Mumakil model) to mounts/elephant
And Balrog and Sauron to unit_models/_units/en_lmail_hmail

[leo.civil.uefs]

My submod only uses black_spiderA_lod0.mesh.

I used the black_spiderA_lod0.mesh file you provided in the first link, and the only thing that changed is that before the game crashed while loading the battle, and now it crashes right after the battlefield is shown.

The invisible rider of the spiders is ents_crew_lod0.mesh, and using your version of it doesnt fix the problem either.

[jurcek1987]

Sorry to hear that. Did you try replaying the battle? Do you use 4gb patch?

[Veteraan]

For me it's a bit of a mixed bag. I replaced two original files for the edited ones in my DCI:LA wip version. Going by the size and date of the Ents and Black SpidersA in my DCI install, they are the same as the MOS1.7/Original TATW version. For wolves it was different.

The result of my testing was a lot less positive than what happened with MOS 1.7. Many crashes, only completed one battle when I lowered the amount of Ents to 3. I never used spiders and Ents in one battle, by the way. As it happened before that I could play battles with Ents/spiders/wolves for a while, with only the occasional crash, I did a quick battle to check if I it would also crash in MOS 1.7 again. A battle with 10 Ents went flawlessly though. I will continue to test this. I also need to test this on an unmodded TATW version, before I can even think of releasing a patch, using jurcek1987's files.

It would be good if a few interested people would also do some testing. You can download the files HERE. Those are the edited Ent, Black SpidersA and Wolf files. As those are the most prone to crashes, it would be good to concentrate on those three for now. I hope to see some results from other players too. Try different numbers of units in battle, but particularly test with lower numbers, say three Ents/Wolves/Spiders present as that is about the limit you would encounter in game. Usually it will be even less.

[jurcek1987]

Curious. Apparently they did some changes in MOS. Too bad none of the creators are still around, they could shed some more light. I giess I'll have to try and discover the changes myself. Btw the battles in base TA 3.2 are completely unplayable in my game. I had a quick glance and compared the files and entries in MOS 1.7 to those in unmodded TATW 3.2. The EDU entry has been changed, some changes to stats and attributes but those won't have an effect. If there were any wrong entries in EDU the game wouldn't start. Just to be sure I copied to MOS entry to TA but it made no difference. Entries in battle_models.modeldb, descr_mount and descr_skeleton are unchanged so I suspect the changes were made to the files themselves. When I have more time, I'll extract and compare the skeleton and animation files from both mods. In the mean time, the uploaded files should only be used by MOS users

[Vifarc]

I used the black_spiderA_lod0.mesh file you provided in the first link, and the only thing that changed is that before the game crashed while loading the battle, and now it crashes right after the battlefield is shown.

Exactly the same, it gives one second of playing, that's already better

[Veteraan]

The above I can confirm from my own testing which led me to the same conclusion. All done with custom battles

I had made a patch for TATW, applied it and tried some Ent battles. the results were about the same as before the changes. Only one battle completed, which was only featured one Ent. I already knew things did not work for DCI:LA also. So I turned back to MOS 1.7 testing. Two battles with 20 and 19 Ents that I started with, crashed. I then started testing battles with 10 Ents, seven of them to be precise and a few on high speed. Anyway, the all passed. Then I did the same with 10 spiders, 5 battles, 2 at high speed, all passed. I think we have the wrong wolf fixed in MOS by the way. The game selects the grey wolf.

I am one of the creators of MOS by the way, version 1.7. However, it has been 5 years since we worked on it and I can't remember much of the particulars. Besides that, I had little to do with the changes in units, other then that I 'assembled' every new (devolopment) version and the final result of course.

[jurcek1987]

The changes in animation and skeleton files in MOS were already done by then. They are dated 2012. The original files were made one year earlier.

[Veteraan]

So the question is if that is in fact what makes the difference. And if it is, how to get the same results for other mods. I have no idea what it is you do with the Zarathos tool, but does it somehow also involve info from the mod your working with, other than the lod0.mesh files themselves?

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

There's a series of custom units in a few rather high end mods I wouldn't mind having a chat about, if you want a DM that offers a change of pace from Third Age.