v4.9 Bugs Thread (no longer current)

[Vargius]

Yes, it seems like a few people are experiencing this particular problem. I haven't figured out what is causing it yet unfortunately. Please could you send me your database file so I can take a look?

Steve

Hi! I'd love to help. Tell me the names of the files you wish for and where to send them and I'll do it ASAP!

[metalax]

Class design, removing the last component from a design causes;

Error in Update Design
Error 6 was generated by Aurora
Overflow

[Greiger]

In my first combat this game and fired off all kinds of missiles.  Missiles get to their target and it seems the PD code is screwed up someplace.

Missiles hit and I get "Error in PointBlankPDFire: Error 5 was generated by Aurora, Invalid procedure call or argument" 4 or 5 times and the enemy ship doesn't fire it's point defense weapons(if they have them, I don't know) when the missiles hit.

[sloanjh]

Drone engines don't have prerequisites. I.E. You can research ion drone engines and nuclear pulse drone engines at the same time.

It turns out they do have have prerequisites - just the wrong ones

I cut and pasted the drone tech from the missile tech and forgot to change some of the prerequisites. It means that each drone tech has a prerequisite of the matching engine type, which is fine, but also a prerequisite of the previous missile engine rather than the previous drone engine. I don't think this will be a significant issue so although I have changed the master database I won't be putting out a new DB patch just to fix this problem. It will get sorted when the next DB patch is eventually released.

Steve

Can you put an "update DB from 4.90" command into 4.91 to fix the entries in the DB, or is it a layout change?  That technique seemed to work well in 4.7....

John

[sluissa]

I'm doing some testing of the earth-mars freighter bug.

To start off with I created a fresh game and let the computer design ships for me. I took its freighters, which are pretty standard. 5 cargo holds, 2 cargo handlers and 1331 km/s speed.

I set them up on a Earth to mars Automated mine run with the cycle moves box checked. There seemed to be some problem with clicking the 5 day advance button. Their orders would be cancelled with them ending up at mars. Unsure, but this might have been something to do with 1 day subpulses being set. This occurred when earth and mars were about 30-45 degrees apart in their orbits. A test of the 30 day advance button caused a decent length freeze, about 10 minutes, but enough time allowed things to work itself out and no problems were seen afterwards.
As mars and earth approach at their closest, I'm unable to force any problems to occur short of advancing another 30 days.

At about 10 degree seperation in orbits, the cancelling orders problem occurs again, only with subpulses set to 1 day.
At this point, switched to mines, since automated mines had run out on earth.
At about 20 degree seperation in orbits the deleting orders problem started occuring even at 6 hour subpulses. Seems to occur every two clicks of the 5 day advance button whether set at 1 day subpulses or 6 hour.
Tested it at 1 hour subpulses. Seems to do the same thing.
Every time an event comes up that says unable to load or unload the cargo at the place.

Haven't gotten the 22k+ orders problem yet. Will do further testing later and edit it into this post.

TBC

[Vanigo]

I get an overflow bug when trying to access my Cargo task group set on repeat orders after a reload. I suspect it's the same thing happening which I reported in the 4.77 bugs thread (follows bellow).

Code: [Select]

Re: Official v4.7 Bugs Thread

by Vargius » 17 Jan 2010, 00:45
Hi!

I've experienced an overflow bug with orders and I am wondering if anyone else have experienced this type of behavior. If I set a task groups orders on "cycle moves", typically a Freighter Convoy hauling installations to my colonies, and then exit the game I get an overflow bug when trying to view the task group in the Task Group window after I've loaded. I have experienced this in both of the versions of the game I have tried so far, v4.75 and v4.77.
It seems like the game, instead of actually cycling the moves, when saving the game it creates a vast amount of orders. I suspect this because I typically only have a few orders, e.g. "load infrastructure on Earth" and "unload infrastructure on Mars". When I load the game after I've created one such order for one of my task groups, the order list is filled to the brim and I get the overflow bug when trying to view it in the Task Group window.

Yes, it seems like a few people are experiencing this particular problem. I haven't figured out what is causing it yet unfortunately. Please could you send me your database file so I can take a look?

Steve

I ran into this today, if you'd like another database for comparison. Mine doesn't actually crash; it just freezes up for a while while the move list fills up with bajillions of copies of the same three orders. (The database is Stevefire.mdb, right?)

[sloanjh]

I think I've figured out the problem with promotions not happening at startup.  I just started a new game with 10 academies, and on Jan 6 2201 (i.e. just after end of 1st year) I got a slew of promotions.  I suspect that the "new officer" flag is being set for officers present at startup, even if their commision dates are old.

The one weird thing is that I did have an econ update 1 minute after midnight on Jan 1.  I would have thought the promotions would have gone through them.

John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The errors 3061, followed by 91 (4 times), sometimes a couple of times in a row, are still there (I had reported them for 4.82). All I did was selecting the default tutorial game, pressing F2 and F3, then the 1-day button on the system map window repeatedly.  3 times was ok (ships were moving), then the 3061 error appeared. I pressed ok, which produced the 91 error, ok again, another 91 error, etc. After 91 had appeared 4 times, 3061 returned once, followed by 4 91's again, then 3061 for the third time, followed by another 4 91 messages. Then the messages disappeared, the ships moved, nothing unusual. Progressed time again (in 1 day steps). Like before three times nothing unusual, the the 3061 message popped up ...
I could live with these messages if I knew the underlying errors didn't corrupt the game, but it's definitely not motivating, so I decided to continue playing 4.77.

Am I the only one encountering this problem? If it matters: My PC is AMD, Vista, 4 GB RAM, ATI graphics, plenty of disk space left. Although it looks like a software/database problem to me, as the message clearly says that the program expects parameters which are not provided.

There are usually two reasons for these messages. The first is having PC regional settings set to a country that uses the comma for the decimal separator. If v4.77 is working fine that seems unlikely. The second is a mismatch between database and program caused by an installation problem. Make sure when you upgrade to v4.9 you confirm the overwrites of the two files.

Steve

[sloanjh]

Problem with the new "SM Mode" button on the Class Design (F5) screen.

I just did an experiment.  I made a design and locked it, and the lock button changed to "Unlock" and greyed out - working as intended.

I think tried to unlock it.  I hit the "SM Mode" button, typed in the SM pw, and Aurora showed as being in SM mode with the button not greyed out, and I unlocked the design.  Again - working as intended.

I then tried to leave SM mode.  I first tried ctrl-o, which (as in previous versions from F5) didn't do anything.  I then followed my recollection of the instructructions, which was to hit the "SM mode" button and type in no pw or the wrong pw.  This did indeed drop me out of SM mode (after a popup I needed to click upon), but it also deactivated (greyed out) the "Lock Design" button - that's the bug.  So now the F5 window is in a state where I've got an unlocked class and the "lock" button is greyed out.

This is not a big deal - it's only in the state of the open window.  Anything that refreshes the window state (like switching to another class and back) puts the lock button into the correct state.

John

[DFNewb]

I am also getting error 5, like Greiger. I am not fighting anyone so I am guessing its the Aliens. Whenever I try to go 30 days I get this error several times and the time only advances 5 seconds.

[Commodore_Areyar]

I've been experimenting with the systemgeneration settings and there seems to  be a slight display or refresh problem with the system generation screen.
half of the times that a new system is explored, jumppointssurveyed or just systemviewed changed, the screen whites out while processing and seems to minimize itself. clicking on it in the tray twice brings it back up again.
This is still in v4.82 though and obviously in SM and just annoying not a showstopper.

-Arnoud

[sloanjh]

Random Commander Names don't seem to be very (random).

In past games, every now and then I've noticed the same highly unusual first name show up multiple times - as if Aurora was getting stuck on the same name.  I didn't say anything, however, since it could have just been the vagaries of random numbers.  I just had "Tyler Watkins" show up twice as a scientist in my current game, though, which I think is beginning to stretch the odds.

I'm aware of the "Same two birthdays in the same room" effect, that says if you've got N names (or birth dates) from which to chose, then the odds are pretty good that in any group of sqrt(N) choices there will be at least one duplication.  The problem is that I think that first and last names are chosen separately, which puts the odds back to 1 part in sqrt(NFirstNames)*sqrt(NLastNames) which is approximately 1 part in N.  So I suspect, but am not sure, that something else is going on.

John

[sloanjh]

I think I've figured out the problem with promotions not happening at startup.  I just started a new game with 10 academies, and on Jan 6 2201 (i.e. just after end of 1st year) I got a slew of promotions.  I suspect that the "new officer" flag is being set for officers present at startup, even if their commision dates are old.

The one weird thing is that I did have an econ update 1 minute after midnight on Jan 1.  I would have thought the promotions would have gone through them.

John

Something else weird that might be related:  I just discovered that my GeoSurvey team (that I created right at the start) had all its members unassigned during that Jan 1 econ update.

John

[Vanigo]

I'm doing some testing of the earth-mars freighter bug.

To start off with I created a fresh game and let the computer design ships for me. I took its freighters, which are pretty standard. 5 cargo holds, 2 cargo handlers and 1331 km/s speed.

I set them up on a Earth to mars Automated mine run with the cycle moves box checked. There seemed to be some problem with clicking the 5 day advance button. Their orders would be cancelled with them ending up at mars. Unsure, but this might have been something to do with 1 day subpulses being set. This occurred when earth and mars were about 30-45 degrees apart in their orbits. A test of the 30 day advance button caused a decent length freeze, about 10 minutes, but enough time allowed things to work itself out and no problems were seen afterwards.
As mars and earth approach at their closest, I'm unable to force any problems to occur short of advancing another 30 days.

At about 10 degree seperation in orbits, the cancelling orders problem occurs again, only with subpulses set to 1 day.
At this point, switched to mines, since automated mines had run out on earth.
At about 20 degree seperation in orbits the deleting orders problem started occuring even at 6 hour subpulses. Seems to occur every two clicks of the 5 day advance button whether set at 1 day subpulses or 6 hour.
Tested it at 1 hour subpulses. Seems to do the same thing.
Every time an event comes up that says unable to load or unload the cargo at the place.

Haven't gotten the 22k+ orders problem yet. Will do further testing later and edit it into this post.

TBC

I've been looking at the same issue moving mines from Earth to a comet and back. I suspect what's going on is the freighter is fast enough to make two complete trips, and the program is choking when it tries to pick up a mine, unload it, then pick up another mine and unload that one, all in the same time increment.

[sloanjh]

There's still something fishy going on with officer assignments.  I just got an event "Commander Isaac Walker has been assigned to Beagle 001".  When I click on the event it takes me to the leader screen with Isaac highlighted, claiming that he's the commander of Beagle 001.  But when I select "Military ships - no fighters" from the pulldown, Beagle 001 is dark - it claims to have no commander.  If I click on it, the "Current Commander's Bonuses" panel goes blank (i.e. Beagle 001 thinks it has no commander).  I've tried closing and opening the screen - no joy.

If I explicitly assign the command it's fine.

John