[V16 Ground combat] CTD during alien turn + Minor portrait cosmetic bug basic armour

[Blaster]

I'm currently on a ground combat mission securing a crash site. The game crashes to desktop during the opponent's turn anywhere between 1-4 turns in. Repeats every time I've tried (4-5 tries). It usually happens after the sound of (alien) gun fire... I think? Is possibly connected to aliens dying from fire (scrolling over to the left, I can see that there is already fire from the crash site).

Edit: Oh, this is also on the farm map.

Save:

http://www.filedropper.com/autosaveim2012-10-14215843

Also, I have a teeny, mearly cosmetic error on soldier loadout screen, either in the geoscape or inventory during combat, with the collars of soldiers wearing the basic armour. Only occurs on male soldiers.

http://imageshack.us/a/img163/8493/collarf.jpg

Edited October 14, 2012 by Blaster

[Williham]

I'm also getting this on the farm map; without fire too.

I'm not 100 % positive, but it seems to affect ceasans, primarily?

Edit: After a couple more Ground Combat CTDs I'm almost certain this is Caeasan-related.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Williham

[Buzzles]

I'm also getting this on the farm map; without fire too.

I'm not 100 % positive, but it seems to affect ceasans, primarily?

Edit: After a couple more Ground Combat CTDs I'm almost certain this is Caeasan-related.

I might have found out why if it's Caesan sprite related.

Seems Assets/Caesan/Noncombatant is missing it's Weapon.AlienPlasmaPistol entry completely. Testing now with a bodge.

Edit: While I've not had another Caesan map yet, there's still some other CTD's going on.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Buzzles

[Giovanni]

Buzzles, I think we'll have to give you a "king of the missing sprites" crown anytime before release!

[Buzzles]

Buzzles, I think we'll have to give you a "king of the missing sprites" crown anytime before release!

Well, it would be much easier to see what's missing if there happened to be a list as to what sprites should be present in the alpha builds, or if the game handled the missing ones better

On that note, Sebillian missions on the Farm tileset seem to be fairly stable. There's quite a few missing map textures and civilian sprites, but it's not too bad.

Although I have also spotted Sebillian/Warrior/Weapon.AlienPlasmaPistol is also empty.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Buzzles

[Williham]

Well, it would be much easier to see what's missing if there happened to be a list as to what sprites should be present in the alpha builds, or if the game handled the missing ones better

Having, say, a fallback sprite that was just a big, obvious blue rectangle or something, maybe?

Sure, it's ugly, but much preferable to CTD, n'est pas?

[Giovanni]

Well, it would be much easier to see what's missing if there happened to be a list as to what sprites should be present in the alpha builds, or if the game handled the missing ones better

About this. As many of you ask for the missing sprites to be listed, and think we do lose hours searching missing sprites, it's better that I explain that we do have a missing sprites report when the game fails to load them, but it's disabled in the public build.

Maybe because it would be annoying (would you like to have some dialogs spawning here and there during ground combat?), i don't know for sure why it's not part of the public build. But we do have this functionality , and we do use it.

Oh, maybe you did wanted to say that missing sprites should be handled differently (trying to load default ones)? In this case I can't answer with certainty, as I'm running out of scope. Obiouvsly the game doesn't crash on purpose, that's a thing

Edited October 14, 2012 by Giovanni
quote added

[Buzzles]

Both technically, Giovanni

I was on about just having a straight up list, either published on the forums or just in the assets folder somewhere, saying what sprite folders should be included, but if you've got a reporter already in the game, that could be handy if there's a way to enable it by choice for us people who are hunting down bugs.

On the second point, I feel the game should handle missing sprites differently, especially if the public build doesn't the reporting function that you guys do. Probably loading some default single frame image (perferable saying "missing sprite") is better than nothing and just having invisible actors in the Ground Combat.

I remember the HL1 engined games (aka, Quake Engine/ID Tech 2) used to load up a lurid purple texture if a map texture was missing, made it very obvious when you were making maps and testing things out that something was missing.

Edit: Further testing:

There's definitely something up with Caesans, don't know if it's AI related or sprites yet, but those missions I've had with them are quite prone to CTD's.

Edit 2:

Yeap, Caesan/Noncombatant/Weapon.AlienPlasmaPistol being missing is certainly the cause of some CTD's, as it's definitely missing from the build when it shouldn't be.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Buzzles

[Buzzles]

Double post, cus I'm cool like that.

Edit3:

Huh. Caesan/Guard/Weapon.AlienPlasmaPistol sprites are not correct. They're they're, but it's not pistol sprites. Not related to the crashing though.

But more interesting is actually the friendlyai sprites. Friendlyaitroops/Farm/weapon.shotgun/ is pointing towards friendlyaitroops/Farm/None/ for the most part in the soldier spectre, however, all the sprite images for single shoot and crouchshoot are missing from both.

I wonder if it's those that are causing the other part of the crash.

[Gijs-Jan]

Giovanni; As for the missing sprite, I would suggest a fallback sprite and a text overlay over the unit which lists the missing sprite.

(We could make it a hotkey enabled debug option)

[Chris]

This missing sprites shouldn't affect anything. They're not there because the default "missing alien sprites" sprite is the Caesan non-combatant with the plasma pistol.

The alien assets folder in this build is exactly the same as in the previous build, plus the missing support / plasma cannon sprites you reported last time. I doubt the issues are caused by missing alien sprites.

Perhaps by civilian sprites, though (though that's also unlikely). Try deleting the weapon.shotgun folder for the friendly AI folder for the farm tileset and see if that helps.

[IceVamp]

Just crashed as well. First two missions were Sebillians and worked fine, a farm and a desert. (Old grass texture issues, and ufo facing E when the crash marks faced S. Able to walk through edges of desert rocks. Ufo on concrete) Crashed on city map, middle of Africa, first enemy turn there were shots and then game hang. Alt+tab reveals stopped working message.

Also, a LOT of invisible civilians running around, just seeing the shadows.

[Buzzles]

This missing sprites shouldn't affect anything. They're not there because the default "missing alien sprites" sprite is the Caesan non-combatant with the plasma pistol.

Which Caesan non combatant sprites? The ones under Alien/None or the ones under Caesan/Noncombatant, as the latter doesn't have a weapons.alienplasmapistol.

I'll try testing with the weapon.shotgun folder and see what happens.

Also, I do think there's an issue with how the game deals with missing sprites, as although you're right that they shouldn't affect the game those ones I reported last time were causing a 100% rate for CTD's on the Landing Ship crashsite, and my bodge did allow the site to be consistantly completed afterwards.

Edit: Hmm. CTD right after hearing a shotgun being fired and a Caesan making an injury sound.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Buzzles

[Quartermaster]

I'm going to assume what I saw is related to this. One of the civilian shadows on the farm map (which is missing roads by the way) went to hurtle a fence and that was when it CTD'ed. Maybe that is what is occuring for folks. Since there are so many fences on walls on the farm it may just be occuring more often there.

[Buzzles]

Maybe, but it seems as if pretty much everything but the Xenonaut soldier sprites are lacking the pointers to their respective vaulting sprites in their soldier spectres, including aliens. So I doubt it's a sprite issue causing that as they should do what aliens do and just slide through.

[Blaster]

Yeah, it wasn't related to fire as I originally thought, as I've encountered this CTD on the same farm map but with a less damaged crash & no fire.

RE: Caesan. It's hard to tell which race alien I'm fighting when this happens, as I don't know the sound effects by heart and don't actually get to see all of the enemy before the crash. In the original save I uploaded there is a sebillian quite close to the dropcraft. (can both sebillians and caesans man a single scout craft? can't remember what size it was...)

EDIT: Deleting the weapon.shotgun folder doesn't appear to have solved it. Crash can happen with just movement sound effects occuring before it (as far as I can tell), so it is a mystery to me.

Here is another save where crash occurs reliably upon clicking endturn, if it helps:

http://www.filedropper.com/autosave3

Edited October 14, 2012 by Blaster

[Quartermaster]

Maybe, but it seems as if pretty much everything but the Xenonaut soldier sprites are lacking the pointers to their respective vaulting sprites in their soldier spectres, including aliens. So I doubt it's a sprite issue causing that as they should do what aliens do and just slide through.

I'm not saying it is a sprite issue. The alien turn was going fine until a shadow ran up to a wall and then the game crashed. I suppose there are two alternative interpretations besides my original vaulting hypothesis. The first is that the shadow could have crouched next to the wall and that caused the crash. The second is that whatever unit followed the shadow crashed it.

[Blaster]

Ok, with some more testing I can agree that the caesan are the ones causing the main problem. Battles with sebillians almost always play out without hitch, but battles involving caesan (namely on the farm map, but also in the city during terror mission) usually end after a turn or 2.

[Buzzles]

I'm not saying it is a sprite issue. The alien turn was going fine until a shadow ran up to a wall and then the game crashed. I suppose there are two alternative interpretations besides my original vaulting hypothesis. The first is that the shadow could have crouched next to the wall and that caused the crash. The second is that whatever unit followed the shadow crashed it.

Oh I wasn't doubting you, I was just pointing out that it probably wasn't the sprites in case anyone thought it was caused by the invisible civvies.