What does it mean ?

[Rman Virgil]

* Originally I posted the following as a possible answer to a problem:

* Gateing & pathing w/commands are joined at the hip.

* I suspect WZ was not designed for "star-gateing" & open-ended zoneing.

* The only way to test that supposition is to do a "standard" gateing with demarcated zones - that is gate "cliff face-to-cliff face" (or H2O) and then see if queued builders trigger the fault.

* Just a thought-suggestion.

- RV

* The post was sorta side-stepped like doggie-poop so I said, "WTF", & deleted it from the thread.... but then it ended-up in the Recycle Bin and it stood-out like a pustulant pimple for a few days which got me to thinking.....

* "Hey, maybe it's not so much irrelevant or stupid as it is incomprehensible..."

* Dunno the answer but I do find it intrigueing from a number of angles...


Cheers /V\I/R\G/I\L/ 

[lav_coyote25]

i did that - just took me a while to get it done and reply... and it wasnt that.  i have posted several mdmps and stderr.txt boxes.  from the latest nightly (s).  it is something different that is causing the problem.... it just seems as if i am triggering a crash by putting down too many hardpoints at once... last night - same map (mine experimental map)  the same map that i have used for all testing lately.  this time i used less than 10 hardpoints per laying the line of hardpoints... needed a lot to close the gap.  this time it didnt do the crash.  so as i asked prior.... what was changed/added to that part of the script/code.  having to deal with trucks laying hardpoints and other structures ....except for those items such as takes up large spaces or vtol rearm pads. 


;D

[Rman Virgil]

* Thanks for passing that on, Lav.

* It seems not many are intimate with WZ mapping - all the ins & outs, details.... which led me to re-address.

* I really am interested in this because it seems to parallel other probs i've encountered over the years that trigger CTDs.

* Stuff related to the total # of simultaneous game events and tiles being identified as "out-of-range".

* To my understanding WZ was bounded in a number areas like: Map size, # structs, etc. And while some of that was tied to PSX constraints & even PC HW circa '98 - I wonder how much is inherent to the pathing ai, the engine itself  ?

* These are just a few of the questions that come to mind.

* Your map is experimental..... in what way ?  What are it's basic specs ? Would it be 250 x 250, 8 player ? How many structs per player (& total) have you placed in EW32 ? How many Zones ?

* It sounds like everything worked fine until you ran it in a new .exe - that is you changed nothing in your map and all of a sudden with a new .exe these probs arose..... Prompting you to ask "what has changed ?"

* Still - I think something like what's happening is an opportunity for insight into how WZ works on a fundamental level & thus how can it be made more robust, perhaps.

Cheers, RV

* Edit: Long ago , circa '99, after I played the CAM through the 1st time legit I went back & played it many times trying this and that to uncover the innards (besides, it was fun to no end)  including trying to break it.

* For example - the urban mission that ended with an all-out Vtol trigger to lessen the # of units you could transport to the next mission (it also had a scav rescue side-mission).... anyway I circumevented the timer so I could build massive amounts of AA all over to deal with the waves of ai Vtols triggered from 2-3 vectors...(also built massive#s of IF weaps to deal with ai armor waves) and what happened over and over was the game slowed down to a crawl... like 1fps..became unplayable, then would crap-out....

[lav_coyote25]

ok - here!  all the information you will require to check it out.  and to top things off - i found the 32 bit map maker is saving in capital letters for the 1st letter of the file name...ie: Map.wz    if the capital latters are not changed to lower case - this also causes a crash or a non start.... 

here is the map / and some pics of the same in the editor.

[lav_coyote25]

and the show heights in map editor

[Rman Virgil]

* Holy cow ! That's a choke-point paradise...daring indeed in light of WZs pathing issues (are they at least 4 tiles wide, i wonder...)

* And making do with only 4 Zones... interesting.... from those screens it looks like the ratio of buildable to non-buildable terrain is durn close. Can you build on your ridge-tops - I'll definitely have to play with it some.

* That capital letters deal sounds familiar... like it came up before.

* Has anyone played around with the 32EW code since Qalmy last worked with it ?

* Get back to you after I've toyed with  it, heh.

l8r, RV

[lav_coyote25]

all the gates are at least 4 tiles wide.

and as i like experimenting with gateways and the pathing of A.I.  thereby the name of this map.  remember the 5 arm cross gates?? 

and now am experiencing a crash after a save - the save is good - as it can be re-used but it is still crashing.... see the mdmp attached as well as some ingame screens.

[lav_coyote25]

click on the bottom pic.... look at the kills of the ai's.  havent done anything to influence that part of the game ( ie: gave them nothing but a command center at the begining. ;D

[Rman Virgil]

click on the bottom pic.... look at the kills of the ai's.  havent done anything to influence that part of the game ( ie: gave them nothing but a command center at the begining. ;D

* Not even that little trick of opposing oil resource ID player assignments in 32EW ? heh.

* I'll get to play with it tomorro (I'm doing this all on my Treo 680 phone, left my laptop at work) - should I choose a particular Player # or does that not matter ?

l8r, RV

[lav_coyote25]

player 0 has a slight advantage ie:  1 research center-expanded and 4 pair of defensive missile towers.  other than that - they all have a command center and 6 trucks.  power is pretty much all over the map.  study the map prior to going in might be usefull

[Giel]

Extracted dump from warzone2100.mdmp.939.msg8136:

Code: Select all

  warzone2100.exe was running on #2 Intel ???-0.772 CPUs on Windows XP (2600)
Register dump:
 CS:001b SS:0023 DS:0023 ES:0023 FS:003b GS:0000
 EIP:0046560e ESP:0022f420 EBP:0022f438 EFLAGS:00210206(   - 00      - RIP1)
 EAX:02a774b8 EBX:0000023d ECX:0022f410 EDX:017026b4
 ESI:000002e6 EDI:00000391
Stack dump:
0x0022f420:  00000000 3f800000 c61e9400 442a8000
0x0022f430:  44a00000 02a774b8 0022f478 00444c01
0x0022f440:  02a774b8 00000000 00000000 005bdde0
0x0022f450:  018d0c40 006ce700 02a25950 00000000
0x0022f460:  0000054e ffffd85b 000002aa 000002e6
0x0022f470:  00000001 00000000 0022f4c8 00586892
Backtrace:
=>1 0x0046560e audio_ObjectDead+0x3e(psObj=0x2a774b8) [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/src/aud.c:68] in warzone2100 (0x0046560e)
  2 0x00444c01 audio_Update+0xdc [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/lib/sound/audio.c:524] in warzone2100 (0x00444c01)
  3 0x00586892 loadingScreenCallback+0x23c [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/src/wrappers.c:322] in warzone2100 (0x00586892)
  4 0x0041a4a4 resDoResLoadCallback+0x16 [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/lib/framework/frameresource.c:69] in warzone2100 (0x0041a4a4)
  5 0x0041a331 resLoadFile+0x2d9(pType=0x781e50, pFile=0x783e50) [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/lib/framework/frameresource.c:551] in warzone2100 (0x0041a331)
  6 0x0041793a res_parse+0x4f9 [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/lib/framework/resource_parser.y:115] in warzone2100 (0x0041793a)
  7 0x00419ab1 resLoad+0xb7(pResFile=0x65d56f, blockID=0x0, pLoadBuffer=0xb939a0, bufferSize=0x100000) [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/lib/framework/frameresource.c:130] in warzone2100 (0x00419ab1)
  8 0x004d738e frontendInitialise+0x110(ResourceFile=0x65d56f) [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/src/init.c:1137] in warzone2100 (0x004d738e)
  9 0x004f26ee startTitleLoop+0x23 [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/src/main.c:423] in warzone2100 (0x004f26ee)
  10 0x004f295c runGameLoop+0x54 [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/src/main.c:535] in warzone2100 (0x004f295c)
  11 0x004f2c8d mainLoop+0xa4 [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/src/main.c:692] in warzone2100 (0x004f2c8d)
  12 0x004f3136 SDL_main+0x48a(argc=0x5, argv=0x1644b90) [C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/C:/Documents and Settings/Giel van Schijndel/Mijn documenten/C++/warzone/wz-trunk-main/src/main.c:872] in warzone2100 (0x004f3136)
  13 0x00586faa in warzone2100 (+0x186faa) (0x00586faa)
  14 0x00587192 in warzone2100 (+0x187192) (0x00587192)
  15 0x00586bda in warzone2100 (+0x186bda) (0x00586bda)
  16 0x00401237 in warzone2100 (+0x1237) (0x00401237)
  17 0x004012a8 in warzone2100 (+0x12a8) (0x004012a8)
  18 0x7c816fd7 in kernel32 (+0x16fd7) (0x7c816fd7)
  19 0x00000000 (0x00000000)
aud.c:68              if ( psSimpleObj->type == OBJ_PROJECTILE )
WineDbg starting on pid 0x1294
Wine-dbg>p psSimpleObj
0x2a774b8

[Rman Virgil]

* Hmmm... ???

* Brings to mind a thread we had at the original Pumpkin dev bbs called: "Bugs are your friends" with the sub-heading - "Undocumented Features".....

* Course you gotta have some fluency in the lingo..

* While I can pick-out bits and pieces from the above .mdmp - I cannot decipher how it all hangs together as a causal chain of events.

* Ergo, as a coder, how do you interprept the totality ?

Cheers, /V\I/R\G/I\L/

[Giel]

* Ergo, as a coder, how do you interprept the totality ?

A quick guess would be that we're dereferencing a free()'d pointer there. Meaning we're trying to read from memory we've returned to the OS and told it that we're not using it anymore.

[Rman Virgil]

A quick guess would be that we're dereferencing a free()'d pointer there. Meaning we're trying to read from memory we've returned to the OS and told it that we're not using it anymore.

* Hmmm.... guess my next ? would be - is that disinformation triggered from playing a Save Game or within an initial launch ?

* Lav's last experience noted it was triggered from within a Save Game - which would prompt - "Can a Save Game be corrupted upon saveing ?"

* 'Course all the foregoing presumes impeccable map construction in 32EW and outputed map.wz

Cheers, /V\I/R\G/I\L/

[lav_coyote25]

actually - when i made the first saved game it did the same identical thing and every save after that... 4 in all.


;D

and if there was a problem with the map - from experience with this particular map... it wouldnt even start if it wasnt good.