Hello there.
As the title says, my mod crashes to Desktop when I leave the first level of my mod ("Leave Location") and want to return to the global map. I get a Windows error and that was it. No Blackbox file is created.
Are there any ideas on this? Can I post anything short of the whole mod that could give you ideas on how to help me?
Thank you so much for your help!
BiB
Crash to Dektop - No Blackbox
Moderators: jelco, bert_the_turtle
Since your crash is upon leaving the level, it's probably a problem with darwinia trying to save the mission file or update the game.txt file. You are using a profile, right? I've never seen a "none" profile cause crashes, but it might under certain circumstances.
Try this: load up the game.txt from your mods directory in a text editor and find the Buildings_StartDefinition header. Delete ALL the lines of numbers between that and the Buildings_EndDefinition line. There are very few reasons to preset any of these values. Unfortuantely the in-game editor tends to pollute the list. If you delete buildings and then add more to the same level, ghost data from the old buildings can clash with the new buildings and cause hard crashes and system hangs. Sounds a lot like what you're experiencing. It is good practice to periodically clear this list as you develop your mod. It will eliminate lots of mysterious crashes and bugs.
EDIT: in order for these changes to take effect (if you edited the mod directory files) you must delete the mission and game files from the profile directory. The profile files supercede the mod files. I usually just delete them directly, but I think you can achieve the same effect from within the game by reloading the mod and/or profile. I dunno since I never do it that way. Ask xander, he probably knows.
One of the best debug techniques is to use the comment hash "#" to comment-out recently added stuff and then uncomment them one at a time until the problem reoccurs. You can do this with your original map, mission, and game files, or if you use a redshirt decoder you can do it with the live mission and games files saved in the profile directory.
Basically you just place a "#" hash character at the begining of all the building lines you want to disable. If a crash just started recently, comment out all the recent stuff to revert to an earlier state. Then load the level, check for the problem, exit darwinia, add or remove hash marks, and repeat. It is best to remove hash marks one at a time, or at least one building type or building system group at a time. Be aware that some buildings will crash the game if their link targets aren't loaded (hanging links). I think the powerstation and the generator do.
Also, sometimes you might need to comment out some of the level entries in the game.txt file. The symptoms are: you just added a new level or expanded a level, and after you exit darwinia and restart, it hangs with a black screen and won't load. Sometimes simply reordering the level lines will do the trick (its OK for the level numbers to be out of order), but a sure-fire way to find the culprit is to comment out all the levels except one. One level will almost always load by itself, even if it causes the game to hang when the rest are added. You then remove one hash mark at a time until the game loads. Generally this problem doesn't show up unless you have lots and lots of complex test levels in a single mod.
***WARNING***: if you do the comments editing on your original files (in the mods directory), YOU MUST NOT SAVE FROM WITHIN THE DARWINIA EDITOR. The editor does NOT preserve comments, so all your commented-out lines will disappear. You can enter the editor to look at stuff -- to get building IDs -- but never save until you have removed all the comment hash marks from the lines you want to preserve.
Good Luck!
Try this: load up the game.txt from your mods directory in a text editor and find the Buildings_StartDefinition header. Delete ALL the lines of numbers between that and the Buildings_EndDefinition line. There are very few reasons to preset any of these values. Unfortuantely the in-game editor tends to pollute the list. If you delete buildings and then add more to the same level, ghost data from the old buildings can clash with the new buildings and cause hard crashes and system hangs. Sounds a lot like what you're experiencing. It is good practice to periodically clear this list as you develop your mod. It will eliminate lots of mysterious crashes and bugs.
EDIT: in order for these changes to take effect (if you edited the mod directory files) you must delete the mission and game files from the profile directory. The profile files supercede the mod files. I usually just delete them directly, but I think you can achieve the same effect from within the game by reloading the mod and/or profile. I dunno since I never do it that way. Ask xander, he probably knows.
One of the best debug techniques is to use the comment hash "#" to comment-out recently added stuff and then uncomment them one at a time until the problem reoccurs. You can do this with your original map, mission, and game files, or if you use a redshirt decoder you can do it with the live mission and games files saved in the profile directory.
Basically you just place a "#" hash character at the begining of all the building lines you want to disable. If a crash just started recently, comment out all the recent stuff to revert to an earlier state. Then load the level, check for the problem, exit darwinia, add or remove hash marks, and repeat. It is best to remove hash marks one at a time, or at least one building type or building system group at a time. Be aware that some buildings will crash the game if their link targets aren't loaded (hanging links). I think the powerstation and the generator do.
Also, sometimes you might need to comment out some of the level entries in the game.txt file. The symptoms are: you just added a new level or expanded a level, and after you exit darwinia and restart, it hangs with a black screen and won't load. Sometimes simply reordering the level lines will do the trick (its OK for the level numbers to be out of order), but a sure-fire way to find the culprit is to comment out all the levels except one. One level will almost always load by itself, even if it causes the game to hang when the rest are added. You then remove one hash mark at a time until the game loads. Generally this problem doesn't show up unless you have lots and lots of complex test levels in a single mod.
***WARNING***: if you do the comments editing on your original files (in the mods directory), YOU MUST NOT SAVE FROM WITHIN THE DARWINIA EDITOR. The editor does NOT preserve comments, so all your commented-out lines will disappear. You can enter the editor to look at stuff -- to get building IDs -- but never save until you have removed all the comment hash marks from the lines you want to preserve.
Good Luck!
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