Hosting Crash on AAR Game

[Sir Garnet]

After pausing last year at a critical moment, I'm trying to continue my China AAR (and then figure out how to move posts over here) but turn execution crashed out in the Hosting phase when processing France (based on the screen) and after a battle report for Ufa. The CRITICAL line is below and bolded. What does it mean?


...05:54:08 (Reporting) Starting Hosting Phase Turn 239
05:54:08 (Reporting) 1850 - Grand Campaign 1859, Late Dec. (T: 2640) loaded
05:54:08 (Reporting) All gamesim data loaded in: 23184 ms
05:54:08 (Reporting) Host: Starting AIs.
05:54:08 [Critical ] TAIAgent.GetDefinition Erroneous DefUID HostUID 100702


This was run without the latest update 1.04 since the PBEM is still on the last version, as well as I want to make sure I know how to make the save files go where most convenient (Dropbox would be nice).

Thanks

[Jonathan Pollard]

I tried to load your files to see if it would also crash on my system, but your files are password-protected.

[Sir Garnet]

Will send the password. It can load and all, then crashes in execution.

[Jonathan Pollard]

It crashed with me too. I got a critical error message early in the processing, clicked OK and it appeared to continue processing despite the critical error. Then over 5 minutes later the program completely disappeared.

[Sir Garnet]

Thanks for checking. Pretty much the same with me. Saved games can be rescued with some technical wizardry thanks to the error logs. It looks like an unexpected DefUID reference is related to the critical error, but how to take that further I don't know. I'd really like to continue under 1.04 with the benefit of the improvements made.

Even using an older PON version is problematic since the base downloads are now all 1.03. I don't recall what the last version was that supported this. 1.02?

[ajnatalo]

Started getting the same error.

10:45:37 PM [Critical ] TAIAgent.GetDefinition Erroneous DefUID HostUID 100702
10:45:37 PM [Critical ] TAIAgent.GetDefinition Erroneous DefUID HostUID 100702
10:45:37 PM [Error ] TAIAgents.CalcAllHosts Exception caught: Violation d'accès à l'adresse 0082B07C dans le module 'PON.exe'. Lecture de l'adresse 0000000C
10:45:37 PM [Critical ] TAIAgent.GetDefinition Erroneous DefUID HostUID 100601
10:45:37 PM [Error ] TAIEngine.ProcessAgents Exception caught: Violation d'accès à l'adresse 007C2532 dans le module 'PON.exe'. Lecture de l'adresse 00000008 Step: <>

Also Running 1.04RC2. Hope this gets fixed.

UPDATE: I've tried clean installs and going back to 1.03e full. Problem persists. Beginning to think my save is corrupted in with my Italian Campaign. Whats worse, there are not backups because i saved under a different name, then deleted the old file so i didn't get confused at a later date. The error began occurring the immediately following turn, so yay for that.

[Sir Garnet]

At least it is a consistent error. Thanks for checking the beta patch as well to confirm whatever it is has not been fixed.

[Kensai]

Load the previous turn. Uncheck the password protection (zipping). Process with the same orders so to reproduce the problem in the current turn. Do a backup of your files in case you do something wrong. Now you will be able to open the .HST file with a simple text editor. Do a find on the file with the number 100702 and 100601 and delete the line(s) between two ||s that have something called #AiFg#. Try to reprocess the turn.

PS. I had a similar problem, Pocus told me it is a result of an old version of the executable creating garbage code on the HST file. Hopefully it should NOT happen often.
PPS. If you don't have the previous functional turn to reprocess unzipped you need to submit the current turn to Pocus, as he's the only who can see "through the Matrix"...

[Sir Garnet]

Thanks, Kensai! As it hinges on the prior turn's files - I will have to search to see if indeed I have that one saved somewhere.

[Sir Garnet]

Thanks again - did as you said. There was a line end at line 86356 with #AiFg# and garbage with the end being

|SIC Passage*|#Aifg##AiA#0&100942&0&500&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0|&NULL&NULL&NULL&#AiA#0&100601&0&300&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0|&NULL&NULL&NULL&#AiA#0&100702&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0&0|&NULL&NULL&NULL&#AiA##Aifg#


100702 and 100601 seems to be repeated often as leading digits of a bit of unit element data. And there are a total of 2268 instances of #AiFg# in the hst file. Sometimes be at the end of a line, sometimes in the middle before or after some number, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs with text in between. Usually &NULL repeated but other things as well..

With that one edit I ran multiple turns in series with no crash until the 5th turn (just a few move orders for activity) and it crashed, but it was because it could not access the Backup 1 file path. I think it was my moving files to open and look at the AIFGs, and maybe leaving one open.



Is there value in taking all those AIFG pieces out? Or does the code ignore the usual AiFg-related text as it seemed to do by not crashing? In which case if no new trash is created it should be fine, logically speaking.

So the game seems promising, although rolling back one turn leads to slightly different results on execution so i may run it until approx the same.

[Kensai]

I haven't experimented in deleting all the #Aifg# instances, only those near the numbers that were giving the error and strictly between two ||s or and | and the end of the line (if it was in the end). I have no idea why it is so important to make the engine stall: hopefully, in a future patch, Pocus might be able to kill this bug. Or at least let it give a warning instead of a fatal error.

[ajnatalo]

The fix worked for me as well. Thanks for the assist Kensai.