39 replies to this topic

[Fregge]

There's news and a suggested solution.

 

 

Maybe you want to look at

http://www.everythin...45&postcount=21

 

and for the whole topic

http://www.everythin...hread.php?t=745

 

 

BR, Fregge

[evilbobthebob]

That's very interesting, thank you. It seems ridiculous that there would be an integer counter for everything that can possibly happen in the game that eventually breaks it. If you can work out a way to build an appropriate trainer program that would be awesome. Good luck!

[Fregge]

If you can work out a way to build an appropriate trainer program that would be awesome. Good luck!

I had hoped to lure someone out with better programming skills than my own.

[Kitkun]

Interesting. If every entity, even identical ones, gets it's own unique identifier, then that blows away unit variety being a cause and likely is the reason for late game saving issues, too.

 

And as rediculous as it seems, well, the Alamo engine is definitely not a well-built engine.

 

It's been a while since I played, but I don't recall ever quitting a campaign because of this. IIRC, if ever I encountered a problem with selecting units, I just held down the scroll wheel and moved it slightly until it showed the green arrow, and afterwards it would work properly again...

Edited by Kitkun, 22 January 2014 - 02:36 AM.

[Phoenix Rising]

Thanks much for the update.  This is some brilliant fact-finding.  I find it hard to believe PG would release what amounts to a memory overflow waiting to happen, but there it is.  It also seems to explain why we've always been so susceptible: we've never skimped on projectiles.

 

Mike.nl would be the obvious one to contact for programming help.  He's been out of the game for a while, but nobody knows the engine better.

 

To corroborate, I've cleared out GameScoring myself and that didn't help with the freeze (although I imagine it must help with general optimization).  I have a bunch of saved exception logs if they'd be any use to you.  And on the generic commander case that you thought inconsequential, all four of their team names are hardcoded in the engine, which may be something.

 

One other thing comes to mind regarding the save file format, which is the Q/A chat PG had years ago.  It was asked if there was a faction limit and I believe the answer given was that the limit is 27.  Judging from your save info, I would assert that the real answer is 32, not including Rebel, Empire, Pirates, Neutral, and Hostile.

[a.fake.name]

Honestly as old as the game is I'm surprised that some devs (or former devs) that made the game haven't made and released their own fixes thru unofficial channels.

But then, at least Lucas Arts is dead, we have a chance of official action now at least.

[Fregge]

But then, at least Lucas Arts is dead, we have a chance of official action now at least.

I wouldn't count on that!

When I told them, what lets the game freeze and how easy it should be fixable for them, they told me the same sith as always, claiming to need LucasArts permission to do anything about it and how hard it would be, to even reach someone there. They weren't willing to consider to program a trainer or a savegame resetter either. If you can count on something, than this:

We have nothing to expect from Petroglyph...

 

BR, Fregge

Edited by Fregge, 01 February 2014 - 06:56 PM.

[evilbobthebob]

That sounds about right unfortunately. I doubt many of the people who worked on EaW are even there any more. Even if they are, Petroglyph are in a mess after the failure of End of Nations development.

[Phoenix Rising]

Help me, Fregge.  You're my only hope.

[Fregge]

I doubt many of the people who worked on EaW are even there any more. 

That's exactly what they told me. The guy I talked to (overall, it must be about 50 or more mails now) claimed, he had forwarded my findings to the lead programmer of EaW, who is still there. After that, I had to write several mails to get an answer and what that answer was saying, I mentioned above...

 

Help me, Fregge.  You're my only hope.

Don't give up that hope!

Although a fix seems "a bit" more difficult than I first thought, I'm confident, that we can fix it ourselves. At the moment, my part in this procedure is reduced to testing since other people have better programming skills than me, but I'm very confident that finally a solution can be presented.

 

BR, Fregge

[Phoenix Rising]

You've proven it in theory; now you just have to find the best way to implement it.  I'm confident that can be done.

 

I've been curious about the legal status of the Alamo source since Disney dissolved LucasArts.  Judging from your correspondence, it would seem that Petroglyph doesn't have any more control of it now than before, and Disney is completely indifferent towards EaW.

[P.O._210877]

In essence we have to find the "plans" that will enable us to find the weak-spot and free the EaW/FoC community from the totalitarianism of the "evil" corporate empires? Interesting irony...

[Fregge]

Without too many words, maybe you want to have a look at

 

 http://www.moddb.com...e-fixer-utility

 

[evilbobthebob]

Incredible! That's great to see.This should be very useful for PR.

[Aizen Teppa]

Without too many words, maybe you want to have a look at

 

 http://www.moddb.com...e-fixer-utility

 

Wow! Splendid, splendid development indeed. Time to test that in practice.  Onwards...

 

Have some happy dancing kittens    

 

Ugh... Moddb server exploded. Probably 100M people try to download same file. Patience. Starting new campaign and will try tomorrow. 

 

Obtained. He, he...

Edited by Aizen Teppa, 28 April 2014 - 07:15 PM.

[a.fake.name]

NAISE

[DoctorWho]

Cool, that thing works!

 

So on Sunday I defroze the savegames and continued the game I started in January, Galaxy Far, Far Away. I played for about 5 hours an after that saved the game. today I wanted to continue, but after I loaded the game, in about 2 minutes everything froze (while in Galactic View) and I can't even acces the game menu, I had to kill it from the Task Manager. The music still plays and I can move the mouse, but everything else is not working. I looked in Taskman and the game uses 25% of the processor constantly, but even if I let it 15-20 min to load (or whatever it is doing) it remains the same, frozen. :( I defroze the savegame again today, but it did not do anything.

 

 

Has anyone encountered this problem before? Thanks!

 

 

PS: Sorry for my bad english!

[Aizen Teppa]

Unfortunately unresponsive units issue is a multi-layered problem.

 

I was probably the first who discovered (or at least alerted on forum). Without  illegal reverse engineering exe and few crucial parts of engine there is no certain way of establishing what really is responsible for this whole mess. It can be any combination of plethora of possibilities:

 

- general performance issue

- game engine issue - swfoc is famous for bugging it's own saves

- faulty memory mapping (if you think Windows is bad at this think again). While swfoc.exe is capable of accessing memory over 4GB (exe workaround), technically it can't use more than 32bit limitation - and realistically it crapping out after hitting 2GB.

- driver issue

- hardware issue

- emulation and translating of instructions on x64 to run basically buggy 32bit software - it is no secret that XP 32b (or Vista 32b without Aero rubbish) is most preferable OS for EaW.

 

Problem you encountered that game freezes after load is well known, but I must admit (sadly) it is primarily PR scale&detail issue. Playing now ICW mod with solid big map (IIRC 91 planets) and I have no problems (well except reborn-Emperor running amok with his Dark schemes;) ). PR sooner or later always run into the wall.

 

On a side note I did experiment with RAM Disk and PR. Unfortunately I couldn't put whole game easily. Had to chop and change a bit (only 12GB RAM, but after next upgrade in a year or two it will be easier with many 64 or whooping 128GB kits on the market for newer quad memory boards). Because it involved far too many complications after few tests I stopped permanently. What I noticed however was serious improvements in performance - loading of GFFA was at least halved, Skyhook was more responsive. The downside was that saving was bugged and game never allowed me to save a game - few people hit that bug too even with vanilla EaW.

[DoctorWho]

Problem you encountered that game freezes after load is well known, but I must admit (sadly) it is primarily PR scale&detail issue. Playing now ICW mod with solid big map (IIRC 91 planets) and I have no problems (well except reborn-Emperor running amok with his Dark schemes;) ). PR sooner or later always run into the wall.
 

 

 

Thanks for the aswer! Oh, man, just when I really got to conquer some planets.... :(

[Fregge]

There's a new version out! It runs faster and fixes some shortcomings of the old one.

 

https://mega.co.nz/#...mLojbSceYcs_4Bc

 

Cheers,

Fregge