1.35 Cradle game repots request...

[Kull]

In case Hex is still interested in Cradle 1.35 Bugs, here's a "new" one. I'm playing v1.35 with Pedrunn's City Expansion (but not the aggressive AI add-on). It's an ultragig map, 20 players, maxplayer at 24. The game crashes consistently at the end of turn 283 (1755 BC), either at the end of the Light Blue AI player's turn or the start of the Maroon AI player's turn. I changed the maxplayer settings to 0 and 27 without effect, BUT the "reload slic" command enabled the turn to complete.

(Click HERE to get a copy of the game file which will crash as described above)

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

this sounds like a problem i (and iirc correctly others as well) had in older versions of cradle. go into the cheat mode, change to the civ which is after the lightblue ones and check trough the units. presumably there is one stack/unit that can't be moved because it doesn't exist anymore. give those poor lost souls their peace by disbanding the undead army.

[Kull]

"Reload Slic" worked for quite a while, and the game progressed onward to the end of turn 373 (770 BC). Now it's crashing just after the end of the Light Green (Han) AI player's turn, just moments after it switches to the Dark Brown (Byzantine) AI player. This time the "reload slic" command DOES NOT enable the turn to complete - so I'm dead in the water.

Zaphod: What specific steps must I take in order to use the Scenario Editor to change the human player to the Byzantine Civ (so I can see what they are doing that's crashing the game)? I went into the editor, but the exact process of doing this is very unclear, and none of the various modder guides discuss using the editor as a troubleshooter (probably a helpful addition to the FAQ - Hint, Hint!).

(Click HERE to get a copy of the game file which will crash as described above)

[Kull]

To quote Ms. Rosanna-Danna, "Never Mind"!

Here's the step-by-step method for using the Editor to switch Civs:

1) After starting your game, go to the top menubar, click "Options".
2) From the resulting drop-down list, select "Cheat Mode".
3) When activating cheat mode for the first time, you'll get a warning that your game score won't be saved (click "OK") and a Disclaimer Statement (click "I agree to Terms").
4) The scenario Editor Screen will now appear.
5) Click the "EMPIRE" button (top right corner).
6) On the top left is number selection box titled "Player". Use the arrow buttons to cycle forward (or back) until you get the number of the Civ you want to play (in my case it's 16, the Byzantines).
7) Click the "Exit" button (bottom right corner).
8) Voila! You are now able to play Civ#16.

I used this method to review the game, and sure enough, Zaphod is correct - there is a fortified Byzantine Chariot unit sitting on "Beach" terrain (i.e. water), and it can't be moved. Unfortunately it can't be selected either, and thus it can't be disbanded. When I tried to select the Unit Manager (F8), the game crashed. Any idea on how to eliminate it? And out of curiosity - what causes something like this to occur? The file is available for review in the link posted above ("Egypt2.zip").

[Kull]

Ms. Rosanna-Danna is getting quite a workout today!

Here's the step-by-step method for using the Editor to delete "un-dead" AI units:

1) First open the scenario Editor Screen (as described above).
2) The default view is that obtained from the "WORLD" button (middle top). Since it's already selected, don't change it.
3) About halfway down the screen on the left side is a button that looks like a Pencil Eraser. Click it (button will depress). NOTE: The cursor balloon over this button says it will "remove any unit or city", but be careful cause it will also delete improvements.
4) To delete a "living" unit, city, or improvement, click it once and it'll disappear. "Dead" units are trickier. To remove the Byzantine Chariot mentioned above, I had to click it and DRAG it onto a land tile. Only then did it "die".

************************************

On with the troubleshooting. I deleted the Chariot as noted above, returned the game to Egyptian control, saved, and then continued. Unfortunately, this didn't help because the game crashed at exactly the same place! I reopened the file and while searching around, noticed that there's ALSO an "un-dead" Barbarian Slinger sitting on a Beach tile, just SE of the Byzantine city of Sinope. I tried to delete this unit too, but the method described above doesn't work for some reason. Odder still, I have a save game from 780 BC - and BOTH these "un-dead" units appear on the map - and yet the game doesn't crash!?!? So I'm real confused right now! If anyone's interested in checking this out, the link to the 770 BC game is in one of the posts above, and the 780 BC game can be downloaded HERE.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

my favourite method to get rid of undead units like those was always changing to a neighbouring civ cheating in some much to modern units for that time bomb then out and afterwards disband those units used for it.
sometimes war is a solution ;-)

[stankarp]

Kull,

I had problems with cadle, ultra gig, 12-14 civs, version 133a, near turn 400 too. I went through a period where it crashed whenever I saved, but I had one game that crashed repeatedly during the execution phase, the same ai civ each time even down to the same enemy unit moving. I reloaded slic every time I ended turn and I kept going for a while but eventually abandoned the game.

The original game was shipped with a bug that corrupted save files made about the same time in the game as the cradle crashes mentioned, ie, about the time you get cavalry and canon (at least for me)

[Kull]

Crash Solved!!

Oh....My......God!!!!!

I know WHAT is making the game crash, but I don't know WHY. It is somehow related to the "Dye" Good:

1) The "undead" Byzantine Chariot fortified in Beach (water) terrain is sitting adjacent to a Dye Good.

2) The "undead" Barbarian Slinger doesn't exist at all (which is why I couldn't destroy or erase it), but rather appears to be some kind of visual "artifact" sticking out of a Dye Good adjacent to the Byzantine town of Sinope.

3) Thinking this to be a rather odd coincidence, I noticed there was a Barbarian Bireme sitting on top of a Dye Good adjacent to the Byzantine town of Trapezus. Keep in mind that the game was definitely crashing during the Byzantine "turn". So to test the theory, I destroyed the Bireme, returned the game back to to the human player (Egypt), ended the turn......and it played through without a Crash!

So here's my theory - there's definitely a problem with the "Goods Slic", and it seems to be cumulative. That's why games tend not to crash until 400 turns or so have passed, because that's how long it takes for enough cities and units to be created such that the error tips over into a crash. It's worth noting that Hex got reports of this happening around 600 AD in other games, but I suspect they started off with far fewer than my 20 Civs - so again, it took longer to reach that "critical mass".

What's the solution? I guess we need to hear from the Slic guys now - that's definitely not my province!

[hexagonian]

Martin, are you reading this?????

He did provide me with an updated Goods.slc file last August - this would be a part of 1.34-1.35, but not earlier versions. Based on the reports of needing to do a /reloadslic, this does fall in line with what may be causing this, especially in light of his post with the same kind of problem on his GoodMod setup on his system.

The easy fix is to pick up the Goods.slc from 1.3 and replace the newer one (at least for 1.34 - the 1.3 Goods.slc 1.35 might cause problems with the Visible Wonders SLIC), but I would like to hear from him to see if this is what is causing it, and if he can locate a possible bug in his current SLIC.

I had planned on posting a possible solution - disabling many of the SLICs that were added after 1.3. They were all minor and would not take away from gameplay, but in light of this, it may not have solved the problem.

One of the SLICs in that group was his BetterAI.slc, and the other was a Locutus' Pirate.slc. I was wondering if either of them was causing the ghost units to appear. I was guessing that it may have been the Better AI, because he reported the problem on his setup. The Dye good may be a coincidence.

So I will wait for his input...

[Kull]

v1.35 Bugs & Misc:

(NOTE: At least some of these problems appear to have been "solved" (based on commentary in the 1.33 and 1.34 threads), but they are still present in the v1.35 download files)

1) Max Barbarians: Probably not a bug, but man the Barbs are nasty now! When playing Hard and above with Barbs set to Max, it's basically a suicide mission. Not once in ten games did I make it past turn 50. They form into huge stacks and just destroy your cities. There's no stopping them!

2) Barb Nomads: I can't recall ever seeing this before, but in one game (Hard, Barbs one level down from Max) the Barbs captured one of my neighbor's largest cities. By the time I arrived on the scene, a strange new city called "Vandals" had appeared near the Barb "Capital", and to my surprise a Barb Nomad marched past my troops heading for open terrain. Curious, I followed him and witnessed the founding of "Ostrogoths".

3) City Expansion 1: For some reason, building a Nomad causes the "suburb" tiles to burn. A known "bug, supposedly fixed.

4) City Expansion 2: In the early part of the game, after "X" number of turns, all burned "suburbs" return to plains terrain (even if they were originally something else). But at some point this stops happening and the useless charred remains hang on forever. Very annoying.

5) City Expansion 3: Whether burned or "whole", suburbs have an unfortunate side effect - any damaged troops that spend a turn on that tile are completely healed. This "feature" should be removed, if possible.

6) Earthquake Message: There's some shaky features to this message as Ahenobarb pointed out in the 1.34a thread ("variables need to be global"), and I'm pretty sure a fix was created. If so, it's not present in the 1.35 download.

7) Embassy "Rebuild": If you have an embassy with a civ and then lose it when war breaks out, I was pretty sure there was Slic to recreate it after the war is over. If so, this feature doesn't seem to be part of 1.35.

8) Caravan Description: Not a huge deal, but when you select "Caravan" in the Build Manager, it doesn't provide any of the usual information such as Cost or Features. Instead, all that's displayed is this: UNIT_CARAVAN_SUMMARY

[Pedrunn]

3) City Expansion 1: For some reason, building a Nomad causes the "suburb" tiles to burn. A known "bug, supposedly fixed.

4) City Expansion 2: In the early part of the game, after "X" number of turns, all burned "suburbs" return to plains terrain (even if they were originally something else). But at some point this stops happening and the useless charred remains hang on forever. Very annoying.

5) City Expansion 3: Whether burned or "whole", suburbs have an unfortunate side effect - any damaged troops that spend a turn on that tile are completely healed. This "feature" should be removed, if possible.

You just named three features of the city expansion.

3 - You do loose pop dont you. So wait 20 turns that the abadoned city heals back.

4 - if it was a forest or jungle it will grow back to grassland since the trees where killed. Else it gets back to the original terrain. It is a claim of nature feature. Dead suburbs disappears in 20 turns. The known bug about this is that if you reloadslic the existing dead suburbs dont heal anymore. I was suppose to have this fixed already but the AI code kind of kept me busy. Still the fix is on its way

5 - city expansion as the name means are expansion of the cities. So if a unit is over one of it. It is in the city. But this I guess it doesnt make much sense whe we talk about dead cities.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Kull
1) Max Barbarians: Probably not a bug, but man the Barbs are nasty now! When playing Hard and above with Barbs set to Max, it's basically a suicide mission. Not once in ten games did I make it past turn 50. They form into huge stacks and just destroy your cities. There's no stopping them!

Unusual...Are you using the 1.35 AI Aggressive files? Barbarian settings have stayed constant since pre-1.3, but the Aggressive files will greatly ramp up the power of Barbarians. It's an add-on, not an official part of Cradle, but some players wanted the files posted because they prefer the game that way. Stankarp and I are currently playing a 1.35 Succession game with Barbs set to max without anything like that.

Originally posted by Kull
2) Barb Nomads: I can't recall ever seeing this before, but in one game (Hard, Barbs one level down from Max) the Barbs captured one of my neighbor's largest cities. By the time I arrived on the scene, a strange new city called "Vandals" had appeared near the Barb "Capital", and to my surprise a Barb Nomad marched past my troops heading for open terrain. Curious, I followed him and witnessed the founding of "Ostrogoths".

This is not out of the ordinary, especially if you left the MaxPlayer setting to 0. Barbarian, once they get a city will act as a (semi) normal civ and will settle cities.

Originally posted by Kull
City Expansion...

Responded by Pedrunn - also an add-on

Originally posted by Kull
6) Earthquake Message: There's some shaky features to this message as Ahenobarb pointed out in the 1.34a thread ("variables need to be global"), and I'm pretty sure a fix was created. If so, it's not present in the 1.35 download.

This is one of those bugs that I have yet to get rid of...
Ben????

Originally posted by Kull
7) Embassy "Rebuild": If you have an embassy with a civ and then lose it when war breaks out, I was pretty sure there was Slic to recreate it after the war is over. If so, this feature doesn't seem to be part of 1.35.

The AI gets to automatically rebuild the embassy, the human has never been able to in any versions of Cradle - something I would like though...

Originally posted by Kull
8) Caravan Description: Not a huge deal, but when you select "Caravan" in the Build Manager, it doesn't provide any of the usual information such as Cost or Features. Instead, all that's displayed is this: UNIT_CARAVAN_SUMMARY.

Because of the possibility of tracking down the in-game crashing issue, I will see if I can track this down and post it as part of the update.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Originally posted by hexagonian

...post it as part of the update.

a new update for cradle? arty:

[hexagonian]

Re: Crash Solved!!

Originally posted by Kull
3) Thinking this to be a rather odd coincidence, I noticed there was a Barbarian Bireme sitting on top of a Dye Good adjacent to the Byzantine town of Trapezus. Keep in mind that the game was definitely crashing during the Byzantine "turn". So to test the theory, I destroyed the Bireme, returned the game back to to the human player (Egypt), ended the turn......and it played through without a Crash!

After rereading...the possible key to this is the word 'Barbarian', because barbarians cannot be spawned as ships without the use of the Pirate code. (unless they are building them, but I'm under the assumption that this is the game that has splinter civs)

If you still have the game Kull, go into the (CRA..._)script.slc file for your setup, disable the line of text

#include "CRA_pirate.slc"

by changing it to

// #include "CRA_pirate.slc"

scan the map and see if you see any Barb ships and delete them (this may not make a difference), and finally, do a

/reloadslic in chat box.

This may or may not work, but I'm taking a stab in the dark hoping to hit some flesh.

Some other theories may be that there is a bug related to the Dye good if it is pillaged. This may be the trigger that causes the crash, though the game should be crashing on the Barbarian turn instead of the Byzantine turn if that was the case.

[hexagonian]

I think I got it...

The problem (I think...) is in the Pirate code. In looking at the code, the parameters for the terrain type were out of whack. The bottom line was that the current coding allowed for ships to be created on land tiles, which may be causing the game to crash. The file had been revised, though I do not remember how or why.

The key was Kull's post regarding the Barbarian ship. I am are running into the same problem in a Succession Game I'm playing. The game is mostly continental land, so the oceans are very small. When I saw a ghost unit on the turn that was crashing - on a beach tile, I loaded up the last turn I ran last night - sure enough, there was a barbarian ship in the waters and no Barbarian city, so it was spawned by the code. After disabling the code and removing the ship, I ran through about 25 turns and checked via cheat to see if the ghost unit was there - it was not. Granted, I did not do any movement, so it may have changed things, but I think that the problem is with this particular coding because this was not a problem in 1.32.

To be on the safe side, I have disabled the code. Attached below is revised scriptfiles that deactivate the Pirate code, as well as a fixed Pirate code. For new game try using these files - if you still have the crashes, then this is not the fix, but I'm almost sure that it is. (knock on wood)

These files are for 1.35 and are not set up for Pedrunn's City Expansion code. But all you need to do is go into all your (CRA..._)script.slc files and change

#include "CRA_pirate.slc"
to
// #include "CRA_pirate.slc"

This will do the same thing as the attached files.

You may not be able to salvage current games without a lot of work in cheat mode.

I hope this does it...Please report back