Demo 7 Download and Comments

[GabrielGL]

One possibility is that you invested enough production resources to build the warriors' weapons, but there wasn't enough population to complete the build. There needs to

This is possible.. I don't have data to confirm nor refute. I have seen this condition occur (inadequate population)

. I do have a note to look into the econ bug, but it may take a while if RL prevents me from getting to it today.

Not a problem.. as time allows, it will be done..

I dont' know if u saw, but I have seen "settler teleportation" as well.. a remote warrior inherits the population you had a different warrior pick up. This may be completely across the screen..

Try to never leave the econ orders windows open between turns. Just close them every time you're done issuing orders.

Well normally I leave the main econ (and on rare occasions perhaps a provincial window as well) windows "minimized" at all times to avoid the rebuild of the screens and to dodge the apparent "memory munchiing" that some have reported. I have never seen this in Win95 but it's a habit (perhaps a bad one) I do this because I am frequently adjusting the economy as I go.. certainly every few turns.. Though I will also say that I am consistent in this.. the window is almost 100% open but minimized, yet failures are very erratic sometimes lasting hundreds of turns and at other times failing as soon as the second move.. I'll continue to post error reports as I get them.. I can put in a specific place if u dont' want it cluttering up this thread.. hehe..

[LDiCesare]

I wonder whether the hangups are due to thread problems. There is one military and several economics hangups, all due to concurrent modifications of iterators (sorry for the programmer-ese here). Looking at the mil code, it looks like it cannot happen inside one thread, but it is possible that the main thread is doing something to the military (assigning a unit to a new task force for instance, or creating a new unit-which is economics-related by the way-) while the GUI wants to access the same data (drawing the task force panel or refreshing the econ window, even though it may be minimized).
If such is the case, it is a nasty bug, as thread problems always are, but it'd explain both the stacks and why this happens often but is not easy to reproduce. It would also fit in with Mark's comments about closing the econ windows. Putting a pair of synchronized keywords might help in that case, the problem being to know where to put them...

[GabrielGL]

Looking at the mil code, it looks like it cannot happen inside one thread, but it is possible that the main thread is doing something to the military (assigning a unit to a new task force for instance, or creating a new unit-which is economics-related by the way-) while the GUI wants to access the same data (drawing the task force panel or refreshing the econ window, even though it may be minimized).

I can give u some data that may play a part.. there was no military action at all.. NONE.. no new warriors being generated.. just econ going on making roads and doing techs and education.. i was basically in idle mode.. at most moving some population, but i dont' think even that.. the only other message appeared in the econ thread and is always the same as shown above some messages back (not in my quote string) .. something about resource not found i think..

Here is the relevant part:

ERROR InfrastructureInfo: InfraType for Specials kapital not found in canBeCompleted

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gabriel:

Originally posted by GabrielGL
I dont' know if u saw, but I have seen "settler teleportation" as well.. a remote warrior inherits the population you had a different warrior pick up. This may be completely across the screen..

I think this is related to the focus problems that Martin had that were fixed by ensuring that he always selected the square in question on the main map before doing an operation like moving units in a TF. In your case this would be before trying to load or unload settlers. Still a bug, but I have some hope that this workaround will do it.

Well normally I leave the main econ (and on rare occasions perhaps a provincial window as well) windows "minimized" at all times to avoid the rebuild of the screens and to dodge the apparent "memory munchiing" that some have reported. (snip)

Can you try Always dismissing the econ windows when you are done with them? I feel that this will be a workaround for the crashes until I can get it fixed. I realize that this is not the way you would prefer to play, but it will help me in diagnosing the problem. It is the way I play, and I have never seen that error in D7.1 to the best of my recollection.

ERROR InfrastructureInfo: InfraType for Specials kapital not found in canBeCompleted

This error may be misleading. It relates to a part of the econ code that has basically been shut off temporarily. It might produce the stack trace (below) that you showed, but maybe not. Do you always see it with that bomb? Do you ever see it without the crash?

java.util.ConcurrentModificationException
at java.util.HashMap$Ha****erator.next(Unknown Source)
at game.economics.PublicSector.iterateThroughOrders(P ublicSector.java:169)
at game.economics.PublicSector.executeCivGovtEconOrde rs(PublicSector.java:157)

With luck I'll be able to fix it soon.

Re your comments to Laurent, the error he is talking about is this one (below). It is clearly in the military code. It could be a 'time bomb' in that it might not show up immediately after the military activity that causes it.

Exception occurred during event dispatching:
java.util.ConcurrentModificationException
at java.util.AbstractList$Itr.checkForComodification( Unknown Source)
at java.util.AbstractList$Itr.next(Unknown Source)
at game.military.command.ArmyCommand.addTaskForceToLi st(ArmyCommand.java:165)

Hey Laurent:

At least the last time I fixed the Comodification error it was due to nested calls to the iterator within the same thread. But as you say, in this case it may be calls from two different threads. I am not sure putting in a synchronized keyword will fix it. However if I clone one of the iterators when calling it one way but not the other, so I don't get the iterator collision, it should fix it. Is there a better way? Essentially a lot of the econ code runs over all orders in the economy. Because of the complex interactions within the model sometimes the iterator can be called again before the first call is complete, resulting in a CoMod error.

[LDiCesare]

The threads problem I was talking about were for the military stack. They could be for the econ too, but who knows?
Putting synchronized statements at random will probably hurt more than help, thus I am not doing anything right now. I must understand first how comods can happen, and it is very hard to be sure of that as it remains very random. If you know the econ will do some checks of the same list in nested calls, that can be a problem if one list modifies itself in the inner loop for instance. I will try to think about it (if I don't forget...) but I don't have a solution except saying that the design should avoid these situations, which is not very helpful.

[GabrielGL]

Can you try Always dismissing the econ windows when you are done with them?

Sure.. if i can remember.. usually i remember stuff like that after it crashes ...

Do you always see it with that bomb? Do you ever see it without the crash?

I have no clue.. I only look at those files if there is something wrong and since they make little sense to me I dont' read em much even if i post em.. sorry..
If I play again I'll try to remember to look..

[Mark_Everson]

Demo 7.2 Proposal

Hi All:

We're looking for feedback on our Demo 7.2 Proposal. So far its been pretty much just me and Laurent commenting. Please give it a look, and tell us what you think is most important from your perspective! We won't always do what you tell us is important, but at least its weighted into our decisions.

Cya,

Mark

[w-h-t-y-c]

Stumbled upon it ...

Just some comments from a Mac OS X user who stumbled upon this little project :

1 - Mac OS 9 users will not be able to run it. At all. Ever. No matter who is CEO of Apple. Or Sun. Or in Head Office at the Whitehouse.
Ever.
Apple has ceased all development of Mac OS 9 'stuff'. In the past, Apple created any JREs for the Mac, and it is still the case.
Since no one at Apple is working on Mac OS 9 anymore, no one is making a J2RE. Simply enough, it's time to update.

...moving right along ...

2 - Easy to launch on Mac OS X. Cool.

3 - I like that it's broken up in to separate windows (within the main game (java) window). It's generally considered that this is a flaw in general GUI design - but it's hardly serious and I can't see any better way of going about it without it getting unwieldy.

4 - For Macs at least, right-click seems to produce no response. This didn't phase me that much at first -- however ...

5 - General rule of GUIs is : always provide more than one way to do something. Right-clicks should be the 'secondary' method, not the 'primary' as in this scenario.


Still - it's a demo (read: alpha preview or 'first playable')

Looks pretty good to begin with - despite the limitations I had, which I am aware are the fault of the platform, not necessarily the source.

Regards

w-h-t-y-c

[Mark_Everson]

Re: Stumbled upon it ...

Originally posted by w-h-t-y-c
4 - For Macs at least, right-click seems to produce no response. This didn't phase me that much at first -- however ...

5 - General rule of GUIs is : always provide more than one way to do something. Right-clicks should be the 'secondary' method, not the 'primary' as in this scenario.

HI w-h-t-y-c, thanks for checking it out. On the right-click there is an alternative, something called an "apple-click" IIRC. If you search this forum for "mac" you'll find the clash/mac thread that describes some details. Other info are in this thread, I think in the previous few pages.

On your 5, there are plans for alternates for most GUI actions, but since this is early-alpha they aren't implemented in many areas.

Please let us know what you think when you get further into it.

-Mark

[Mark_Everson]

I've been looking into the bug that Gabriel posted with the long stack trace. First it has a military comodification error, then an econ one. After looking at the related code for quite a while, I can't figure Anything that could give the bug. I am hoping that its a weird side effect of the military comodification error that comes first.

Gabriel, does that stack trace always look like the one you posted? Always starting out with the military bit:

Exception occurred during event dispatching:
java.util.ConcurrentModificationException
at java.util.AbstractList$Itr.checkForComodification( Unknown Source)
at java.util.AbstractList$Itr.next(Unknown Source)
at game.military.command.ArmyCommand.addTaskForceToLi st(ArmyCommand.java:165)

Anyway I have made some modification that might, if I'm Reeeely lucky fix it, though its just a stab in the dark. I have eliminated some possibilities also. . .

ERROR InfrastructureInfo: InfraType for Specials kapital not found in canBeCompleted

This error is misleading. It relates to a part of the econ code that has been shut off temporarily. It always shows up in the econ file, so please ignore it for now. There are some other ones involving food and gold purchases. Ignore those too.

I am trying now to run with the econ frames minimized to see if I ever reproduce it. Sorry, Gabriel, but that's the best I feel I can do at this point.

Laurent and I are getting fairly close to a release for Demo 7.2. I will do a bit more in the way of tweaking, and then concentrate on bug fixing for a bit. I don't know when we'll have it out, but hopefully within two weeks.

[Mark_Everson]

Bug and Feature lists updated

I have posted new versions of the Bug and Feature requests lists. They are the second and third posts in this thread.

We will take a look at the bugs and features prior to releasing D7.2 and see if we can't fix easy or important things. The important ones will only get fixes if they aren't too hard, since we don't want to slow up D7.2 too much.

Laurent has already fixed (we think) the teleporting units bug and settler teleport bugs, so those are not on the list. Laurent, please let me know if there are other things you've fixed that I haven't crossed off.

I have now been able to reproduce the econ crash from leaving the econ screens open, so I will take another stab at that. At least now I know for sure it comes from leaving the econ screens up.

[LDiCesare]

I think bug 158 is linked to teleporting units, so it may be fixed.
Feature requests 62 and 167 I have implemented this morning and will be sending to Mark as soon as my mailer gets working.

[Martin the Dane]

Happy new year

I was just looking at the bugs and features lists, and noticed bug 157 (Delenda: not being able to build in iberia) Could this be linked to the black squares isue?

[LDiCesare]

I don't think it has to do with black squares. I would rather think it may be linked to limited population in the square where the unit should be created. In Iberia there is no black square in particular.

[Martin the Dane]

Just started the game and you are right (naturally), there are no black squares in Iberia, only in Africa.