v24.6 - CTD after a mission

[Solver]

Possibly related to the soldier equipment crash I reported.

On this save, kill the final alien. The game will load back to Geoscape and present the mission summary, clicking Accept there crashes the game.

user_postmissionctd-16.json

[Solver]

So per request for more info. Logs are overwritten, but trying to get a sequence of saves.

This post-mission save was likely broken already when the mission started because it's a followup to the soldier equip CTD save: 

From the equipment crash save, I went for a mission right away, so the two saves are in sequence.

Now, weirdness1 below is the earliest save I have where stuff got weird. Equipment is acting all weird in it and it can CTD. Accompanying log: weirdness1-output.zip

user_weirdness1-17.jsonweirdness1-output.zip

Unlikely to be useful, weirdness_ufo_in_air is just before weirdness1 (about to intercept the UFO in Africa) but is also broken, has the same crash.

user_weirdness_ufo_in_air-18.json

Then here we have weirdness1_earlier, the last working save. It's not long before weirdness_ufo_in_air. This save works, at least I can't make it CTD, and if you forward a few hours then the UFO which features in the other two saves will fly into Africa.

user_weirdness1_earlier-19.json

Possible hint: a short bit after loading weirdness1_earlier, self-recharge laser research will complete. That causes a lot of equipment stuff to happen automatically that could break something? On the other hand, when the research completes, I still cannot make the save CTD. Could be worth some extra testing though.

[Chris]

18 hours ago, Solver said:

So per request for more info. Logs are overwritten, but trying to get a sequence of saves.

This post-mission save was likely broken already when the mission started because it's a followup to the soldier equip CTD save: 

From the equipment crash save, I went for a mission right away, so the two saves are in sequence.

Now, weirdness1 below is the earliest save I have where stuff got weird. Equipment is acting all weird in it and it can CTD. Accompanying log: weirdness1-output.zip

user_weirdness1-17.json 1002.56 kB · 0 downloads weirdness1-output.zip 347.13 kB · 0 downloads

Unlikely to be useful, weirdness_ufo_in_air is just before weirdness1 (about to intercept the UFO in Africa) but is also broken, has the same crash.

user_weirdness_ufo_in_air-18.json 1002.14 kB · 0 downloads

Then here we have weirdness1_earlier, the last working save. It's not long before weirdness_ufo_in_air. This save works, at least I can't make it CTD, and if you forward a few hours then the UFO which features in the other two saves will fly into Africa.

user_weirdness1_earlier-19.json 994.91 kB · 0 downloads

Possible hint: a short bit after loading weirdness1_earlier, self-recharge laser research will complete. That causes a lot of equipment stuff to happen automatically that could break something? On the other hand, when the research completes, I still cannot make the save CTD. Could be worth some extra testing though.

Thanks. So looking at the earliest save of the bunch here, it looks like the broken Gemini is already present in the save game. It's fairly likely that the game is already broken at this point. Do you have any saves from before you built it?

I suspect the reason you're experiencing this issue whereas I haven't seen it (and a lot of other posters don't seem to get it) is because it only appears when people do manual air combat missions rather than autoresolve.

[Solver]

I'll have to do some digging, the Gemini had been broken for a long time before the saves here. I think I built it a while ago, did one interception with it and then it broke, but the Gemini issue seemed orthogonal to the other ones. I've done multiple ground missions (and air engagements) with the broken Gemini back at base, and things were fine.

I also reloaded from my earliest save in this thread and tried to continue the game, it worked reasonably well - I've completed one crash site and am in the middle of another. It's gotten very annoying because of the advanced laser bugs (half my soldiers don't have ammo) but neither of the two crashes (after armour change or after a mission) has reoccurred.

[Solver]

Turns out the game doesn't keep unlimited autosaves (might be a nice option for dev builds). So hard to know how useful this will be, but here's the latest save I have from this campaign where the Gemini is not present and everything is fine as far as I know.

user_day190nogemini-22.json

[Chris]

59 minutes ago, Solver said:

Turns out the game doesn't keep unlimited autosaves (might be a nice option for dev builds). So hard to know how useful this will be, but here's the latest save I have from this campaign where the Gemini is not present and everything is fine as far as I know.

user_day190nogemini-22.json 832.16 kB · 0 downloads

Thanks. Hmmm. Maybe it's the same bug reoccuring multiple times then? I'll take a look.

[Solver]

Not sure what gives you that thought? I imagine that the sequence was like this - I built the Gemini, used it in manual air combat, the bug triggered and broke the airplane, and that made the save structure fragile so it started bugging out in other places as well because of missing entities or whatever. If so, then everything should be just fine before the Gemini is built, or before it engages in the unfortunate combat.

[Chris]

2 minutes ago, Solver said:

Not sure what gives you that thought? I imagine that the sequence was like this - I built the Gemini, used it in manual air combat, the bug triggered and broke the airplane, and that made the save structure fragile so it started bugging out in other places as well because of missing entities or whatever. If so, then everything should be just fine before the Gemini is built, or before it engages in the unfortunate combat.

Well the problem manifests from entities having missing components. The Gemini must have lost a key component during one of the air combats which means the game no longer recognises it as being an aircraft, which is why it doesn't appear on the aircraft screen any more. But it doesn't seem like that's inherently causing a crash.

The other crash you posted was because a plasma torpedo has somehow not got an owner any more. The crash in this thread was because one of the armour modules (i.e. Accuracy Configuration) no longer had an owner either. The programmers know the process better than I but that sounds like the error may have happened again in both those instances, causing that item to lose a component and become orphaned, then crash the game when it tries to serialize it.

Anyway, I'll give the game a play from your day 190 save and see if I see anything funny happening.