[V21 Stable Candidate] Hang on soldier equip screen.

[dmholt]

This was reported before in previous builds, and still seems to be present in this build. When switching to the soldier equip screen, the games hangs and there is a CTD. Not sure if it matters what screen you were on before - generally I am going to the equip screen after the screen assigning soldiers to craft. This bug previously was intermittent and random - doesn't seem to be related to any sequence of events that I have noticed.

So as far as I can see, it's not reproducible - just happens. Sometimes.

Has happened once so far in a few hours on the stable candidate. I haven't loaded any screenshots or saves - there's nothing interesting to see on a screenshot of a frozen equip screen, and in the past just going back to a save and playing through again doesn't produce the error second time round, so probably a save is not likely to be helpful.

However if anyone is looking at this and thinks it might be useful for me to try and remember to always save before going to the soldier equip screen, I'll give it a try and see if I can reproduce the error.

[ivra]

I have encountered the bug, too. It has been there for a while. It does not happen that often, but often enough that I have started to save the game after every ground battle before I click on any of the base buttons. So far I have, just like you, only had crashes when clicking on the soldier equip screen. I tend to go there from the geoscape or after the assign soldier to craft screen. If I am to take a guess it happens after 10-20 battles. And I have never been able to reproduce it. Loading the save has always worked for me.

[Gauddlike]

When you say loading a save will make it work properly again has anything been changed between the first attempt and the second?

No new soldiers hired, no new equipment researched, no new ground missions done or promotions etc.

[ivra]

Correct. I save the game after each ground combat. In the cases where the crash happens, the only thing I did before the crash was either clicking directly on The Soldier Equipment button (which resulted in a crash), or first clicking on the Barracks button, assigned the wounded soldiers to Unassigned, and some fresh ones to Charlie-1, before I clicked on The Soldier Equipment button (which resulted in a crash).

When restarting the game and loading the save game, I never managed to get it to crash no matter what I did.

[dmholt]

For me, I don't think anything is different between first attempt and second, but I can't be certain. Generally I have saved after the end of the last combat, and go to the equip screen when there is a crash site to go to. Sometimes I will have saved when the UFO wave has appeared, but sometimes not, so if the save goes back to the last ground mission the point in time at which I go to the equip screen may be different from the first time. So there won't have been any promotions or new ground missions, but there may have been other geoscape events like research achievements etc.

I will try and remember to save immediately prior to going to the equip screen and see if I can pin it down a bit more.

[Gauddlike]

I was just curious if a specific portrait, weapon, soldier status or whatever could have been the cause.

[dmholt]

Gauddlike, can't be certain, but I don't think it's a specifc weapon - if I go back to a recent save, and the bug doesn't re-occur, the weapons are usually going to be the same. I can't change the weapons without going to the equip screen...

I'd be surprised if it was a specific portrait or status - the bug has never in my experience happened on the second play through - while on some occasions I guess things could have changed playing differently from the save point, I have had this bug in cases where the save is very recent, and I don't think much could be different. I do think (without having taken notes to prove it) that it always happens when moving from the screen for assigning soldiers to aircraft to the equip screen - but I can't be certain.

[Gauddlike]

Figured it wasn't from the original description but those are the easiest things to rule out so a good place to start.

I was considering status of the soldier, portrait, name, equipment etc mainly because if you have just altered who is on a craft then the first person shown on the equip screen (and their equipment) could be different.

For example if you have a heavy weapons soldier as first on the dropship but swap them for a rifleman.

If that first person shown was slightly injured, or you had changed a slightly injured person for a healthy one, or even if the game had automatically sent someone to the medbay and you were filling the gap it could have thrown up a bug.

If a name was causing some kind of problem then it might not show until they are first up and so on.

If none of those things are the case or it cannot be reproduced then we know to look somewhere else.

That is purely from the suggestions that it could be related to assigning soldiers before going to the equip screen.

I haven't managed to get mine to crash yet so hopefully you will manage to spot the pattern, if there is one.

[Chris]

Hmm, this one is hard to repro. It's almost certainly going to be linked to actions performed before loading that screen, otherwise a save would be able to repro it easily enough.

I may just fire up debug mode and play the game for an extended period of time if nobody is able to figure out what's going on. It's likely I'll encounter the bug eventually and the debug mode should at least tell me what line of code the game is crashing on...maybe the coders can fix it from that info alone, but we'll see.

[Caaygun]

I came across this a few times a few builds ago (including v20 stable but not since e21.5) perhaps just luck. It seemed to happen after returning from a mission (after dropship-Chinook returns home, not one instance with Shrike, no tanks, no multiple dropships), visiting the barracks, then the equip screen where the crash happens immediately after the screen renders apparently correctly for one cycle. I always take the same sequence of actions for missions and reequipment but only very rarely this bug came up. This bug was one of the reasons I asked about if there was an error log in another thread because I never managed to reproduce it or pinpoint the sequence of actions just to be sure, its just so rare. I always play windowed, winXP.

[ivra]

I think the crash has to do with saving and loading while playing the ground combat mission.

I experienced this crash twice now. Both times it was after a ground combat mission. The only thing I did after the combat was to save the game, run until the dropship returned, click on Barracks, and then click on Soldier Equipment. Then the game crashed.

In both of these ground combat missions I loaded the game (a guy died, or I did something stupid). Earlier I had played for a while without experiencing the crash. As far as I know I did not load during those ground combats.

I tried to find a way to recreate this crash and loaded a ground combat mission after I restarted the game. Then I did the same as before, but it did not crash. I'll investigate further.

[ivra]

Another similarity when the game crashed was that I took some damage in both of those ground combats. Maybe that is the reason.

[Chris]

Wounded soldiers have historically caused some issues, but if it was just being caused by them then the save game would probably still crash when the game was loaded a second time. So if that is the issue, it's only part of the issue.

[ivra]

I managed to get the game to crash again. What I did was the following:

Fought a ground combat where I saved the game in the beginning of each turn. Two of my soldiers were injured. I loaded the game at least once during the ground combat, but after my soldiers were wounded. After the ground combat I saved the game (in another file), waited until the dropship returned home, clicked on Barracks and then immediately on Soldier Equipment. The game crashed.

My guess is that it has to do with both wounded soldiers and saving and loading. The interesting thing is that restarting the game and loading the ground combat save does not produce the crash. It seems that the entire ground combat must be done in one go.

Hope this helps.

[ivra]

The save game from the ground combat mentioned above, caused another bug that I have seen reported earlier. The one where the buttons are dead. I do not know it this happens for every ground combat save or if this one is special, or if it is related to the crash somehow. Anyway follow these steps to get dead buttons:

1) Start Xenonauts

2) Load F01 and complete the battle.

3) Try to click on any of the buttons. They are all dead.

4) Press ESC (ESC works) and load a game in geoscape mode.

5) Repeat step 2. Now the game is back to normal.

[ATTACH]3020[/ATTACH]

F01.sav

F01.sav

[Chris]

Great work. That topbar dead buttons bug has been around for ages. Giovanni probably hates you right now because I've sent him all these bugs to fix, but it'll be great to have these bugs stamped out for V21 Stable.

I've not been able to reproduce the Soldier Equip crash, though. I've tested a few things - firstly, I played a mission where I had one soldier wounded but not killed where I saved after he was wounded, then saved when back on the Geoscape and waited until the dropship had returned home. No crash.

Then I did one where I had two soldiers injured and one killed, saved twice during the mission and once post-battle. No crash.

Then I did one where I had a soldier injured, saved the game, loaded the game again, completed the mission and saved again, then waited for the dropship to come back. No crash.

If you try the same as you did previously on the mission where you got a crash, do you get a crash again?

[ivra]

Unfortunately, I don't have the save before that mission any more. But I will try again to get it to appear and keep the save game from before the mission started. I can then try to rerun the same mission to see if I can get it to crash regularly.

[ivra]

I played a ground combat mission properly the first time and saved right before the end. Then I replayed it and got one wounded and one killed. I expected to get a crash after the battle was over, but I did not. I then loaded the save from the properly played mission and completed it. Immediately after the battle I clicked on Soldier Equipment and then the game crashed.

Restarting the game seems to reset everything since I have never been able to get the crash when loading a game in ground combat and then completing it. I have to play a full ground combat mission using save and load and getting some wounded soldiers. I will try to pinpoint it further, but I am beginning to see a pattern here.

[ivra]

I managed to get it to crash yet again. I think I have forgotten to tell about something I do every time I get a wounded soldier. I heal it with a med kit. Did you do that in your tests? Also with the different crash pattern mentioned above, I think I forgot to load the game in that ground combat mission. I have become fairly certain that the game can be forced to crash by doing the following:

1) Play a ground combat mission and save the game in the same file each turn.

2) Let the alien wound one of your soldiers.

3) Heal the soldier with a med kit.

4) Make sure to save the game after this.

5) Load the game after you move at least one soldier.

6) Complete the mission.

7) Save the game in another file.

8) Click on the Barracks button.

9) Click on the Soldier Equip button.

Some of these steps might not be necessary to get the game to crash, but I have included them here because I am not sure which ones can be omitted which ones are required. Using this procedure I have been able to get the game to crash all of the 3 time I have been aware of using it.

[Skitso]

I had yesterday the equipment screen crash but I didn't save while in the GC. I did have a wounded and healed soldier though. Also fought one air combat after CG before going into the equipment screen...