The bug-hunt, part 1: empty battle report

[Pocus]

I'm so far unable to reproduce the following problems:


1. old save game showing an empty battle report at new turn & crashing.
2. any game showing an empty battle report, any time.


If you stumble on this problem, then please forward me the whole savegame (in zip for consistency check) at [email="support@ageod.com"]support@ageod.com[/email]


note: all your savegames should play on 1.03b. Dont delete them and wait for the fix.

note 2: dont enable battle report while hosting if you want to finish a game and you happen to have the bug.

[Pocus]

note 3: I need the whole save directory (of the save game where you have the problem), not just the last turn, so I can relaunch the hosting process.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[pthomas]

pocus.....i've been able to replicate this pretty consistently in 1.03, at least as far as the empty battle screen is concerned......i don't get the crash bug when i exit the screen, but i do get the empty battle screen whenever i complete a turn in which there were no battles.

[Pocus]

with a game started in 1.03?

I'm clueless, I never get this one. I will try with the installed version, not mine then, perhaps there is something slightly different ??

ok, so if you run the game where you have the battle report, then restore the backup and re-run, you still have it? send me the save please, so I check if it pop up for me too.

[seminole]

Email with error file and save sent.

Game was started with the 1.03 patch. I had successfully resumed from a save with that version.

This crash happened after installing 1.03b and playing that campaign. The crash happened several turns into the game. After the crash I reloaded the save and received this error:

3:28:38 PM [Error ] TRegionCmns.Fetch RegionCmn Fetch failure, please verify.
3:28:38 PM [Error ] TRegionCmns.Fetch RegionCmn Fetch oddity, please verify.
3:28:38 PM [Critical ] TRegionCmns.IsContested Region common infos not found for region UID: 219
3:33:01 PM [Error ] THost.CheckBattle Exception caught: Indice de liste hors limites (219)
3:33:01 PM (Reporting) Renderer unexpected exception Violation d'accès à l'adresse 0041994D dans le module ' BoA.exe'. Lecture de l'adresse 0000000B try: -892
3:33:01 PM [Error ] TRegionCmns.Fetch RegionCmn Fetch failure, please verify.
3:33:01 PM [Error ] TRegionCmns.Fetch RegionCmn Fetch oddity, please verify.
3:33:01 PM [Critical ] TRegionCmns.IsContested Region common infos not found for region UID: 318
3:33:01 PM [Error ] THost.CheckBattle Exception caught: Indice de liste hors limites (318)
3:33:01 PM (Reporting) Renderer unexpected exception Violation d'accès à l'adresse 0041994D dans le module 'BoA.exe'. Lecture de l'adresse 0000000B try: -891

[Dgold]

Playing the 1756 scenario as the Brits. Got a bluescreen crash in the last turn of the game - Aug 1758. Version 1.03b.

When I reload my last saved game, I get the Saratoga 1776 campaign setup!! When I go to the menu and reload a second time, I get the correct saved game. I did get my victory score eventually.

If I continue the game, I got the blank victory screen box.

I attach saved game file directory for last turn only. When I attempted to upload the entire saved game directory - zipped 1.7 MB, it refused to upload (3 times).

[Pocus]

Gerry, Wayne & DGold:

I got all three of your saves, and replayed it on my developer version and on the player version (1.03b) each, without the bug showing. It start to be annoying

1 - A possible cause would be that some important files are not exactly as they should be... I would like some confirmations if you can take some minutes:

Open Birth of America\Boa directory

open FrontEnd directory.
use ALT-A to select all files (28), right click, then properties. The total size (real size, not on-disk size) should be: 32756 bytes.

up a level, then open Aliases directory, same procedure:
18 files, 32904 bytes

up a level (to BoA directory), down to GameData, then again to regions:
876 *.rgn files, total size: 2.425.724

Tell me if something differs.

2 - reinstalling the game:

Put aside your saves directory (on your desktop for example). You can cut&paste.
Uninstall BoA.
Re-install BoA, then patch it to 1.03b
put back the saves directory
activate the Battle Report show in hosting option.

If you still get the bug then I'm in trouble

[Dgold]

Hi Pocus,

All directories in my current install are sized as specified by you. I uninstalled the game.

I reinstalled the game, patched to 1.03c - all file sizes are correct.

I reloaded saved game - no empty battle report this time, nor crash.

[Pocus]

Hi, and thanks!

I have taken some measures in 1.04 to fix this evasive bug, as I have now stumbled on it, once, whereas I reprocessed 10 times the same turn...

1. 3 tests has been added to close an erroneous battle report.
2. The patches, starting in 1.04, will clean your installed boa game of any game data files which are deprecated. More precisions on that, but your save games wont be touched, rest assured, and it will only target the files which were used by BoA in-game but are not longer needed.

With that done, I hope that 1.04 will be as stable as 1.00 ...

[[FS] Feltan]

Pocus,

Question, is your testing machine the same as your development machine?

You may have a difficult time replicating the error if so.

Regards,
Feltan

[Pocus]

I tried on my laptop too.

I got the error once with the player version of my dev machine (making a regular install), but have not caught it in my developer HD partition.

[waynef]

#1 all my files matched the same size in the directory
#2 saved my save directory, unistalled game, reinstalled game, patched to 1.03b, put back save directory

No BUG so far > Havent seen an Empty Battle Report

Gerry, Wayne & DGold:

I got all three of your saves, and replayed it on my developer version and on the player version (1.03b) each, without the bug showing. It start to be annoying

1 - A possible cause would be that some important files are not exactly as they should be... I would like some confirmations if you can take some minutes:

Open Birth of America\Boa directory

open FrontEnd directory.
use ALT-A to select all files (28), right click, then properties. The total size (real size, not on-disk size) should be: 32756 bytes.

up a level, then open Aliases directory, same procedure:
18 files, 32904 bytes

up a level (to BoA directory), down to GameData, then again to regions:
876 *.rgn files, total size: 2.425.724

Tell me if something differs.

2 - reinstalling the game:

Put aside your saves directory (on your desktop for example). You can cut&paste.
Uninstall BoA.
Re-install BoA, then patch it to 1.03b
put back the saves directory
activate the Battle Report show in hosting option.

If you still get the bug then I'm in trouble

[Pocus]

The next patch will have several things to prevent the blank screen appearing anyway.

Thanks for the report.

[MarkShot]

I don't have the specific sequence of events which cause blank battle screens to happen. However, I have seen quite a few and it seems to most commonly occur when playing beyond the defined number of turns.

[Pocus]

just to keep you informed, the betas have not stumbled on the blank screen, for now, in 1.04.

[MarkShot]

By the way, I saw one blank battle screen in 1.04 today. However, I do not have the sequence of events that caused it. After popping-up, it cleared itself and the game went on.

It looked almost to me (back in 1.03 too) that some flag gets set like HaveBattle=True. Then, someone retreats prior to the battle and it never happens. However, since the flag was set, the battle results windows pops-up anyway. Just a guess ...

[Pocus]

I still have it too, from time to time, but the auto-clear make the problem less important, although it's not satisfying from a programming standpoint

I checked what is causing a battle report too, and a retreat before battle don't trigger it. A unit has to fire onto another to enable the flag. Believe me, it's tricky!