39 replies to this topic

[Fregge]

Hi Folks,

sorry to hear, this bug is plaguing PR as well.
Since I first ran into it, I've been investigating it and trying to find a way to avoid its occurrence. My guess is, that every unit, no matter if it is a single unit or part of a squad/squadron and no matter how it enters a tactical battle gets stored in a table, which cummulates with every battle and when a certain amount is reached, a threshold overflows. With the mentioned results. That applies not only to mods but the vanilla games, too. EaW (as I've been told) and FoC (as I have been provided with evidential savegames from our community).

After trying countless things (I even went into the savegames with a hex-editor for investigation), I came to the conclusion, that it cannot be solved by our modders means.
So I turned to Petroglyph, told them my findings, my assumptions and sent them some corrupted savegames. The fact is, the issue is known to them.
The good news is, they would be willing to take another look into it and if an easy fix is possible, they would bring out another (small) patch.
Well, regrettably when there're good news, there always have to be bad ones. Petroglyph claims, they cannot act by themselves. They have to coordinate they efforts with LucasArts (probably, at first they need their permission). Petro warned me, that working with LucasArts might be a slow process at the moment...
Therefore, the next logical step was to write to LucasArts. Well, I know now, what was meant with "slow process". I can tell you, it wasn't just slow, it was painful. Very painful. I was even close of giving it a rest, but after 10 mails or so, they told me, they could not promise me anything but they would give my request a review.

At every opportunity, I encourage people to write to them, show them, that there still is the desire to get at least that bug fixed. And now that I see, you're also troubled by that issue, I'd like you to come aboard. Let us pestering Petroglyph and especially LucasArts with even more voices!

Petroglyph: community@petroglyphgames.com
LucasArts: support@lucasarts.com

I don't know if it's any good, at LucasArts, a certain "Leon P." was of most help to me and the number of my case (although, with every mail, I got a new case and number) is 264338.

Well, I could say, thank you for you support, but as we all are on the same boat together, writing to them would be of mutual benefit...
Great Mod, by the way.

Cheers,
Fregge

Edited by Phoenix Rising, 01 May 2012 - 05:06 PM.
Split and linked.

[Aizen Teppa]

Exactly my thoughts. There is no hope in hell to see source code released (unless someone doing somewhere reverse engineering *shhh...*)

We (EaW/Foc players) should spam LA with suggestions for official patch to take advantage of modern CPUs and 64-b systems. Not expecting x64 support, just patching all files so game won't go AWOL because it can't see over 32b limit of RAM, patching engine so it will map memory properly, patching interface so it will be dynamic and expand accordingly on big screen (more visible icons!), patching map files so they won't clog CPU performance with non-standard maps. Preferably it would be nice to see multi core/HT support - but that = serious patch work. Pure perversion!

I have a dream....

[1871]

I like your dream very much.... oh but wait, if they actualy did this... we might actually go out and spend some of our damn $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ on their sight in appreciation.....

Maybe they are only semi greedy creatures and can't see that fixing this problem for the computers out now would be good for their damn "bottom-line" lol

[Phoenix Rising]

I have to agree: as long as they're selling copies of EaW, they need to open to the idea of patching it to fix problems inherent to the engine. Aside from the bureaucratic process, it doesn't hurt to write. The only catch is that they can't support mods, so you're going to need to make this happen in vanilla. Good luck playing that for 120 weeks!

Fregge, you may be wrong about this being unaffected by modding. GameScoring.lua maintains a multi-dimensional table that is constantly updated. It appears to grow in size for each object type killed/lost by a faction.

To date, I haven't made any real changes to this LUA, since I don't yet fully understand it, but I suspect it could be gutted if necessary. You'd maybe lose some droid advisor graphs and the stats on the win screen. I'll definitely look into it for v1.3, although don't expect results quickly - this is a very important (and delicate) script.

Edited by Phoenix Rising, 01 May 2012 - 05:39 PM.

[Fregge]

Fregge, you may be wrong about this being unaffected by modding. GameScoring.lua maintains a multi-dimensional table that is constantly updated. It appears to grow in size for each object type killed/lost by a faction.

To date, I haven't made any real changes to this LUA, since I don't yet fully understand it, but I suspect it could be gutted if necessary. You'd maybe lose some droid advisor graphs and the stats on the win screen. I'll definitely look into it for v1.3, although don't expect results quickly - this is a very important (and delicate) script.

Hey Phoenix!

Well, in my attempts to solve the bug, of course I also turned my attention to the GameScoring.lua and applied many changes to that file, removing function after function (including the counting of built units, destroyed units etc), and when it didn't work, rewriting functions to keep the unit tables constant in size and in the end, removing the functionality almost completely. At first, the problem was, that tests with a changed .Lua, required a new game to be started, as functions (including those of the GameConstants.lua) are stored in the savegame to some extent. Later, I found a way to implement the changes in a running game only to see, that none of the changes affected the occurrence of the bug.
Before I figured that out, I had released 2 versions of an altered GameScoring.lua (after recognizing, the 1st alterations were of no effect, I stripped it even more and released a 2nd one) so that our community can assist me by testing the script. People were very supportive but in the end, the GameScoring.lua idea turned out to be another dead end. Regrettably...

BR, Fregge

Edited by Fregge, 01 May 2012 - 06:55 PM.

[Phoenix Rising]

Did you try compiling it? Eh, it shouldn't matter... you really did seem to try everything. Unrelated to this issue, it's good to know that chopping GameScoring doesn't introduce any new exceptions at least. I kind of suspected that wouldn't be the answer... it seems virtually impossible to overflow a LUA table, and there isn't much game object variety in vanilla to begin with. Looks like writing LA is our only recourse.

[P.O._210877]

Well, it seems I'm not the only loony head in the community that thinks going directly to the companies is a good idea! We should compile a list of what we (the community at large) think should be addressed in this game. Like PR said, while they're still selling the damn thing they should patch it!

[1871]

I have to agree with P.O., but let's keep the list as short as possible... say no more than 5 things that occur in win xp sp3 and in win7 home and pro 32 and 64 versions.

I would think if we gave them only 5 issues to work on those OS's.... we would definately call it a win. Hell even if they fixed the largest fault... which i have to think would be that the game can't utilize the newer computers we have now. hell even if they could just fix it to the AMD phenon II 3.0 gig cpu's that would be a hugh leap forward. yes?

SO can one of you infinitely smarter guys thread a top problems thread and then we can widdle it down and then get the letter written and we all can sign it and get it sent to them asap

[P.O._210877]

Anyone interested? I can yap a lot but, I'm not so good at getting technical.

[w13510n]

just wrote lucasart and petroglyph as cc:

Good day,

it might not be proper etiquette, but i have first to point out that i'm not only a paying customer, i also bought the game for friends as a gift via Steam, if i recall correctly i bought 5 copies each 25€ and intend to buy more as well recommend it to more friends. (My Steam ID is 'XXXXX' if it's of any use to you). Personally i think you are probably underestimating the market possibilities for this game, despite its age of 5 years.

The game itself is shortsaid a masterpiece, but it contains some bugs that need to get solved. There are some lag issues when the CPU opponent has to calculate its power and dispatchment of units, but that is a performance issue one can live with. The very serious one is: During a galactic conquest, once the total of units has reached a certain number, either the game crashes completely with a pointer exception, or from that point on i'm unable to select any unit at all during a battle; as well the battle intro animation does not appear anymore, the vessels jump out from hyperspace in the default view.

This bug is even more intense with some Mods (Phoenix Rising being my preferred Mod) that are made for EaW/FoC, and as the modders pointed out, there's no way they can fix that bug via mod, it needs Petroglyph as well LucasArts to get rid of it, thus the reason i am writing you.

In the Phoenix Rising Forums another user mentioned that he already contacted LucasArts; his original Ticket Number was #264338 and he said that your staff member "Leon P." was of great help to him.

Of course this game was made 2007 so it's hard to expect full compatibility with 64bit systems, but given you are selling it actively i presume you are bound to provide support of this kind.


Kind regards and thanks in advance
XXXXX

Edited by w13510n, 09 December 2012 - 10:41 PM.

[w13510n]

Things got complicated. They tried to redirect me to my country's supporter, which is Activision. Activision doesn't even list Empire at War as a supported product, nor can you find a single trace of EaW on their page or store. I'm trying to explain the support that i bought the game via Steam and that it's not a location-based service, and i play the game only in english language, so it's not even an issue with content. But i'm afraid this will all take a loooooooooooooooooong time. To Vader with all of them.

[Phoenix Rising]

Ugh, the art of tech support. Yeah, it's not a localization issue, there's no reason why they should redirect you. Keep at it.

[P.O._210877]

Yeah keep at it, I'm just grateful someone who can talk tech decided to go forward with this idea.

May the Force be with you w13510n.

[Fregge]

It seems, nothing has changed so far at LucasArts "Support". Sounds all familiar...

From time to time, I still write to Mathew Anderson from Petroglyph Support. In fact, it's almost time to write another mail, as on the last few occasions he told me, the boys and girls have all their hands full with End of Nations but haven't forgotten about EaW/FoC and as soon as End of Nations is beyond beta stage (which is scheduled to be at the end of the year), they will take another look into it.
So a reminder would still be advisable...

BR, Fregge

Edited by Fregge, 11 December 2012 - 12:41 PM.

[evilbobthebob]

Well Petro have plenty of time on their hands now. End of Nations has been taken off them and is now being developed by Trion Worlds.

[johnchm.10]

well, i have a belated christmas present for you gents
http://www.moddb.com...ary-2013-update
ill spare you the details by giving the important line

quote "Although nothing has been set in stone, Petroglyph is currently looking into developing an official game patch..."

[R-TEAM]

Hi,

 

this would be wounderfull ... this damn bug stoped me to play this game anymore ... and this is sad, as the mod team have maked an masterpice of work ....

 

Regards

R-TEAM

[onlylogic]

Help us Petroglyph, you're our only hope!!!

[evilbobthebob]

Well if you look at the recent problems at the studio, I wouldn't have much hope. They were kicked off End of Nations by Trion Worlds because they weren't doing a good enough job, and their F2P DOTA-clone is being shut down at the end of the month, due to lack of revenue I assume. Their latest game is now "Coin a Phrase" and their frontpage has the Universe at War trailer, which is a good 5 years old...

[onlylogic]

This is why licensing and intellectual property is a bs money grabbing scheme that has no real basis in reality. You can't own a byte on my computer...I'm sorry but you can't and you won't if I have anything to say about it. Anyway, licensing rarely works to produce a better product. In fact, I can't think of a case where it has at all, can you? LA is gone because of it, and in all likelihood Disney won't do much better. EA? REALLY?!...E....AAAA???!!!!

 

If they gave the games to the PEOPLE to make or at least flesh out and complete and gave enough headroom for it to grow as we have seen with this mod and others for various other games it would massively increase the quality and thus popularity of games. Skyrim comes to mind, I only played it because I could mod it. Developers are just not incentivised to put out a quality product (one exception I've noticed is Cryengine3, from what I heard, it's extremely robust which is why Star Citizen is using it. But even then they had to heavily modify it.) Most developers should be ashamed of the messes they put out, especially with what can be accomplished with today's hardware. I understand, it takes FOREVER to make a game currently. Lots of hours go into coding, art design, etc. Which ends up equaling lots of money. But not that much, especially when unnecessary bonuses and parachutes go out to even more unnecessary CEOs and top managers. It's the Empire all over again I tell you!!! Blasted Sithspit...

 

Developers need to learn their lesson. I get it, when they were developing for older games, single core was all there was. But that has changed and the trend needs to be anticipated from now on. Same with 32 bit to 64 bit operating systems. (I tried to switch back to the retail versions of EAW and FOC for PR and I am once again ready to break something) Anyway  I'll finish with this point, they need to code to allow for upgraded hardware to run their applications in a scale-able manner. I'm sure there's a solution out their waiting for someone to invent it.