Introversion

Small problem - if you've completed darwinia - you have access all areas, so you can go on to any level - all the coding for the levels is a complete waste, cos i can go on to any of them. Amazing mod though. like your graphics too.

scottystreet wrote:Small problem - if you've completed darwinia - you have access all areas, so you can go on to any level - all the coding for the levels is a complete waste, cos i can go on to any of them. Amazing mod though. like your graphics too.

There is a very simple solution to that. Don't use the AAA profile---create a new profile, and use that.

xander

I've tried your mod (looks very promissing) but it always crashes on the first map for me. As soon as I reprogram a building with the engineer (doesn't matter which, radar dish or trunkport) it crashes. I have the steam version and I'm running Windows 7 64bit.

Do you have a blackbox file?

xander

Sorry, no blackbox file. Atleast I've looked in the saved games folder under mods and users and it's not there. Maybe it's stored somewhere else?

saykoshey wrote:Sorry, no blackbox file. Atleast I've looked in the saved games folder under mods and users and it's not there. Maybe it's stored somewhere else?

It should be in the same directory as Darwinia. However, I have zero experience with Windows 7, so I don't really know where it should be.

xander

I've looked in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\account name\darwinia" directory, nothing there either. If you show me how I can debug darwinia I'll be happy to try and debug.

Honestly, I created this mod years ago, for an older version of Darwinia, running on an older version of Mac OS X (though I know that it also works under Windows XP). In the intervening years, new versions of both Windows and Darwinia have been released (though the mod should still work well with anything less than Darwinia 1.5.x), and I have lost interest in maintaining it. Thus you are basically on your own.

As to debugging Darwinia, one really needs a blackbox file to figure out what happened. If one is not being created, then there is not much that I can do to help. You might try checking your permissions to make sure that you have read/write access to the appropriate directories, and you might try running Darwinia in some kind of compatibility mode (Win7 has such a thing, right?), but beyond that, I'm afraid that I don't have many other ideas. Perhaps TGF can help?

xander

I'm working on it. We've replicated the issue, and are attempting to solve it.

Shwart!!

my Darwinia-crash-sense suggests that a crash when capturing a control tower in a mod known to work (ie where the control tower is linked to something) is generally due to the game being unable to save a game.txt due to eg permissions, or possibly current research values being selected that make the game get upset. As I recall, Darwinia uses the vista/w7 saved games folder in its attempts to store user data (unlike multiwinia).


I assume setting the game to run as administrator might make it start behaving if the former problem is occuring and that it is due to UAC, what with it being in program files. If you set the game executable to be in bog standard XP compatability mode, it should try and save to its local directories rather than any windows folders, although since it's in program files, you almost definately need to run it as administrator to do that.

I have had Darwinia 1.5.etc and mods working just fine without these steps, though, so I'm not sure - I never install any games etc into program files to make UAC about 10 thousand times more amienable, which may be the cause here.

edit-
Yeah ok I thought so. Problem is caused by "CurrentResearch none" I think - when the game saves after capturing a tower, it becomes something like "CurrentResearch ", and crashes as soon as it tries to allocate research points into that particular program (this used to work just fine iirc, and was done intentionally with good reason). Thankfully, the solution for users is to just press tab and pick something to put your research points in before you capture the first control tower, then it should work just fine (if this is indeed your problem). Not 100% sure, but I think I already figured this one out once already...

If this doesn't fix it for you, can you tell me if the game crashes as soon as the little light on the control tower changes colour, or as soon as it gets to nearly full yellow, cause that gives me hints as to what the problem might be.

I can't actually test it right now (or in the immediate future), but it was right when it should have 'ding'ed in completion.
If it makes a difference, all of the standard messages were passing errors [i.e. 'error (sepulveda_pressreturn_skipall_kbd)'], but xander's strings were working fine.
Additionally, a different, near-blank mod would NOT crash on control-tower capture, but it WOULD throw the string errors.

Shwart!!

...well, crap.
I found a friend with a similar system. I've attempted to replicate the problem, to no avail. This is because I can't even enter Rebellion. It crashes every time, at the exact moment Rebellion should first be entered. I've tried moving Darwinia outside 'Program Files', I've tried running it as an administrator. No Blackbox is being created, and profile data is not being saved.
But the text strings work!
EDIT: The AAA profile works fine, but with any other profile (or no profile) it crashes.
Other mods work fine.

Shwart!!

Shwart!! wrote:...well, crap.
I found a friend with a similar system. I've attempted to replicate the problem, to no avail. This is because I can't even enter Rebellion. It crashes every time, at the exact moment Rebellion should first be entered. I've tried moving Darwinia outside 'Program Files', I've tried running it as an administrator. No Blackbox is being created, and profile data is not being saved.
But the text strings work!
EDIT: The AAA profile works fine, but with any other profile (or no profile) it crashes.
Other mods work fine.

Shwart!!

Regarding missing strings, I'm fairly sure mods can't really remove strings from the game, so I'd confirm first that playing normally does feature the strings in question on your PC, and you don't have a missing/out of date + overiding english.txt or something, since what you're saying doesn't seem to necessarily have anything to do with xander's mod specifically.

Regarding the instant crashing, let me think about that (after failing to read what you wrote!).

OK, Since it must be related to something different in game.txt, as both mission files are the same, try first changing the "CurrentResearch none" to officer or darwinian in the mod's game.txt and try again with the none profile. After that, I guess try gutting the events. Failing that, I'm not sure.

Yes, the missing strings were specific to Insurrection. Both a normal game and another mod had all the strings enabled. Insurrection did not. I am uncertain why that is. It might be an artifact of having an unpacked english.txt, but I made sure it was the current one.
Yes, having research fixes the crash. In addition, I'm working on making a hacked-up version that fixes this issue altogether...
EDIT: Well, nevermind on the new version. I tried setting 'CurrentResearch' to 'Officer' earlier, and it crashed... but that fix works now. I must have broken it elsewhere earlier.
So that's easy enough - just set 'CurrentResearch' to 'Officer' and it should work fine.
Since I thought it couldn't start with a completed research, I set it to have CurrentResearch: Officer, and set the Officer research to level 3 with 250 points. Then I changed the 'Officer v4' research string to Greenbrae's 'What the? This is odd' string, removed that string from the Intro script, and everything worked perfectly. Surprisingly. But it's easier to simply set CurrentResearch to Officer in the first place... > . <

Shwart!!

Confirmed, if you select a research item before reprogramming it doesn't crash. tnx.