Game Crash on Worker order

[DonnChadh]

Got this bug, or something, causing the game to crash out whenever I order a worker to build an improvement on a tile

Specifically, it happens when I order a worker to build a Camp on some Deer on Tundra and also when I order them to build a road to a tile of ice.


I've attached a save game in which this happened. The worker in question will be currently building a road near Teotihuacan, but will become available if you advance the game a turn. The Deer are just to the west of Teotihuacan and the road i was going to build would head over the ice to Tlatelolco in the north (there's only one route to go to get there)


System:
Windows XP SP1
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz
1 Gig DDR RAM
NVidia GeForce 6800 GT


And now I'm going to go back to that game and see if I can avoid it crashing on me again.

[seebs]

FWIW, I have had a few games that did things like this. Curiously, one of them got spontaneously better a few days later; I reloaded it and tried the operation that triggered the crash, and Nothing Happened.

[seebs]

Hey, there's an idea.

Turn on all the logging, and see whether the last thing in LSystem.log is a warning about being unable to place something.

[DonnChadh]

Yeah, it does seem to be an intermittant thing.

I just advanced a few turns, had the workers doing other tasks like a farm and a mine, then tried to start the road again, this time moving the worker to the tile and using the 'build road' command rather than the 'road to' command. Game crashed again.

However, when I've reloaded, I've been able to start on the camp without it crashing.

Lets see what happens once I'm done with that...

[seebs]

I have finally just started saving often, and when I can't give a worker an order, I just skip turn for four turns and make the improvement in WorldBuilder. Which works fine.

I am suspicious that this has to do with worker animations or something, except that it happens when they're off. Or it could have to do with map-rendering.

What's weird, to me, is that my old busted save where a missionary couldn't spread Buddhism is now working fine, even though no turns have passed.

Man, am I looking forward to a patch.

[DonnChadh]

I've been saving just before giving a worker an order, but I've had no more repeats of the problem.

I'll turn logging on tho and go back to that save, see I can replicate the crash again.

[seebs]

I have a game where I can't build pastures. Oddly, automated workers seem to be able to!

[popewiz]

I have the exact same issue, every so often I'll click to tell a worker to build something, and boom, right back at the desktop. There's really no extra cpu usage or hard drive usage during the crash, so I have no idea what's going on. I have a feeling this is a purely programming error.

[DonnChadh]

Most likely it's something in whatever section of the code deals directly with the player interacting and issuing commands.

Obviously I have no idea what the code for that looks like, but I would think theres some sort of procedure call that handles a command click before it moves on to moving the unit and making it do stuff.

Since the unit does stuff on automate (which I would presume uses part of the same code) you can infer that the bug occurs before the worker receives any instructions on building improvements.

So a solution to this for now, might be to put all your workers on automate if this problem occurs a lot for you


But anyway, I've got logging set on now, so if I get any more crashes like that, I should be able to post more physical evidence, rather than just empirical stuff

[seebs]

FWIW, the logs are mostly empty, although they do show that the last event is a worker being given an order.

[seebs]

Oh, #!@$$.

I now have a worker unit that crashes to desktop on "build trade network". That's just mean.

[Snuis]

I'm getting this crash more and more. I have been playing for over a week without any problems at all and suddenly after issueing a worker order or sometimes even selecting the worker, it's boom.
Hmm, just thinking now, maybe it's got something to do with playing with tilted axis. That's about the only thing i've changed lately.

[seebs]

Ooh, interesting point. I'm on a torus map in my most-crashy game.

[seebs]

I started a new game with no wrap, and I have no crashes on worker orders. I think there must be some very odd bug involving wrapping.

[seebs]

Okay, a hundred turns later, I have formed a theory:

There is a UI bug that can be triggered in some way by a wrapping world; it might, for instance, involve the AI trying to figure something out about your proposed course of action.

If you play on worlds with neither X nor Y wrapping, this goes away.