[Riptide572]

Hey everyone. I've been developing a campaign for a little while and I have been using FSO 3.6.10 for about a year now. I had no issues with 10 with the user made ships I've downloaded. Today I decided to download 3.6.12 and nothing works anymore! Each ship has a ton of problems that weren't there before. Here's some things ive run into:
Model's claiming bounding boxes are inverted
Errors for Hornet#weak being listed in a mission
Models that can't seem to find textures that never had issues before
Models completely crashing the game because they "Cant be loaded"
Crashes due to "Bogus shield mesh"

Is there something i'm doing wrong or an easy fix to these? I don't want to give up the goodness that is 3.6.12, but I don't want to rebuild everything from the ground up from these errors. I'd post my errors here but it'd fill a whole page. Has anyone else run into these problems?

[General Battuta]

Are you using the 3.6.12 MVPs now, as opposed to the 3.6.10 before? That may be the cause of some of the errors as 3.6.12 doesn't include all the same textures 3.6.10 did.

There is another problem. 3.6.12 is much stricter about catching model problems and flaws than 3.6.10 was - all these flaws are dangerous and were problems even under 3.6.10, but 3.6.10 wasn't as aware of them. If the models you're using have been broken or damaged all along, 3.6.12 will be much more unhappy about them than .10 was.

You should absolutely not release anything that runs under 3.6.10 as .10 was a buggy mess. Fundamental gameplay aspects like damaging turrets didn't work right.

[Nuke]

you also have issues common with old versions of pcs2. inverted bounding boxes, null moment of inertia, bogus shields, etc. its just a matter of opening the model in a more recent version of pcs2 and resaving. texture issues can be fixed by checking the texture names in the model and making sure all those textures are in your maps folder. also some mods require other mods to run. seems you also have some table related errors there too. just run a debug build and fix those one at a time. best bet is to see if you can contact the authors and see if they have newer versions available.

[The E]

Hey everyone. I've been developing a campaign for a little while and I have been using FSO 3.6.10 for about a year now. I had no issues with 10 with the user made ships I've downloaded. Today I decided to download 3.6.12 and nothing works anymore! Each ship has a ton of problems that weren't there before. Here's some things ive run into:
Model's claiming bounding boxes are inverted
Errors for Hornet#weak being listed in a mission
Models that can't seem to find textures that never had issues before
Models completely crashing the game because they "Cant be loaded"
Crashes due to "Bogus shield mesh"

Is there something i'm doing wrong or an easy fix to these? I don't want to give up the goodness that is 3.6.12, but I don't want to rebuild everything from the ground up from these errors. I'd post my errors here but it'd fill a whole page. Has anyone else run into these problems?

Actually, posting your errors, or more precisely, your fs2_open.log is exactly what you should do. Most of the errors you are getting now are due to improved error checking in 3.6.12; these problems were existant in 3.6.10, but weren't reported, causing instability. Fixing them is usually trivial.

[headdie]

Yes it is unfortunate that a lot of the user made content out there has issues, mostly these issues are down to the fact that the majority of the content out there was and is still being released by people who are still getting to grips with their chosen aspect of modding and is not a problem that will go away or can be sorted.  Most of what you have listed can be fixed with the fs2_open.log open in front of you (i recommend copy/pasting into a program like word or it's open office equivalent for ease of reading) and then opening up each problem file and fixing as required.  best practice would be to download this version of PCS2 http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~samm/pcs2.7z for the model related stuff.

Null moment of inertia - simple fix - open model in PCS2, with the header selected press the recalculate button near the bottom right of the screen and save the file

Inverted bounding box - fairly simple - open model in PCS2, select the offending item in subobjects and select data along the top row and then purge bsp cache from the drop menu ( if this is ThunderBoltNEW.pof you might need to repeat this for each entry in the subobject list ) and save

Bogus shield mesh - still easy but a few more steps - download the attached zip and extract it to somewhere you can find easy, it contains a .dae with a 4 meter diameter 144 face shield, open the model with the bad shield mesh, select shields on the left hand side of the screen then delete the shield. Next with shields still selected click the word "load" in the top right of the screen, in the new window select the shield mesh.dae and open.  you should now have a spherical mesh on screen, if the size is wrong for what you need then select transform with shield still selected and then transform (next to "load").  You should now have a new dialog box on screen, select scale from the tabs at the top and experiment with the scaling options until you get what you need.

Hornet#weak if i remember correctly is due to the player allowed fighters having Hornet#weak in their allowed sbank entry (for giving to the AI for balancing ) but Hornet#weak not having the player allowed flag.  best solution here is to load each mission in FRED2 and remove Hornet#weak from the team loadout editor.

for the other errors we need to see the fs2_open.log generated by the debug build build and saved in \freespace 2\data to advise on

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Nuke]

i know of a number of things in nukemod converted with something other than pcs2 (because many were modeled before it was around). im not 100% sure that theyve all been reconverted, only that the current ones seem to be bug free (the working mod at least).

there is archived content from way back before the scp even existed and through all stages of development of the scp. its usually those models that have the majority of the issues. its just taken us that long to identify and find solutions all the issues and make the engine inform modders when something aint right so that it can be fixed. many moders would rather focus on new models than bring their old models up to date (not an easy task when you have produced a large amount of content).

[Riptide572]

Ok, here are some of the problems I've been having.
First is with JumpGateT.pof, an Alliance Jump Gate model by Trashman. I do believe it's the same shown in Blue Planet.

Code: [Select]

Not all subsystems in model "JumpGateT.pof" have a record in ships.tbl.
This can cause game to crash.

List of subsystems not found from table is in log file.

ntdll.dll! NtWaitForSingleObject + 21 bytes
kernel32.dll! WaitForSingleObjectEx + 67 bytes
kernel32.dll! WaitForSingleObject + 18 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! SCP_DumpStack + 354 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! Warning + 430 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! do_new_subsystem + 488 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! read_model_file + 6315 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! model_load + 763 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! techroom_select_new_entry + 450 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! techroom_do_frame + 759 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! game_do_state + 333 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! gameseq_process_events + 237 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! game_main + 782 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! WinMain + 330 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! __tmainCRTStartup + 358 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! WinMainCRTStartup + 15 bytes
kernel32.dll! BaseThreadInitThunk + 18 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlInitializeExceptionChain + 99 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlInitializeExceptionChain + 54 bytes

Second, is with whitehall.pof, a large space station called GTI Whitehall that I downloaded from Freespace Mods. This one crashes the game completely, and I can't figure it out. It also now crashes the POFCS2 program, which it didn't do before.

Code: [Select]

Assert: n < pm->n_models
File: modelread.cpp
Line: 1219

ntdll.dll! NtWaitForSingleObject + 21 bytes
kernel32.dll! WaitForSingleObjectEx + 67 bytes
kernel32.dll! WaitForSingleObject + 18 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! SCP_DumpStack + 354 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! WinAssert + 208 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! read_model_file + 4864 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! model_load + 763 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! techroom_select_new_entry + 450 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! techroom_do_frame + 759 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! game_do_state + 333 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! gameseq_process_events + 237 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! game_main + 782 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! WinMain + 330 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! __tmainCRTStartup + 358 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! WinMainCRTStartup + 15 bytes
kernel32.dll! BaseThreadInitThunk + 18 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlInitializeExceptionChain + 99 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlInitializeExceptionChain + 54 bytes

These are the only ones I'm having problems with. The details everyone gave me before were extremely helpful and I was able to fix all the other issues with minimal effort. You guys are lifesavers! Thank you so much for your help so far, this is by far the best game community on the net!

[The E]

For the first error, there's a mismatch between the subsystems in the pof, and the ones mentioned in the tbl. The easiest way to fix this is to get the model and tbl entry from BP, otherwise you'll have to check the log to see which subsystems are causing problems. The most probable cause is some typo in the tbl.

As for the second error, hmm....
That one indicates a faulty pof. Try opening it in PCS2, purge the BSP cache, and resave it.

Also, that model is in dire need of a resmoothing. It's horrible.

[headdie]

Jumpgate is easy enough, just a little tedious.  open up the pof file and the table file.  all the items in special points and items in subobjects with the subsystem marker need to be mentioned at the bottom of the jump gates entry in the table.

I cant remember the issues with GTI Whitehall so could you post the FS2_open.log or FRED2_open.log so we can take a look

[Riptide572]

One more error found with a Shivan Jump Node. Crashes game even before it loads to the main pilot screen.

Code: [Select]

shivannode-shp.tbm(line 11:
Error: Required token = [#End], [$Subsystem:], [$Name], or [$Template], found [$ND 255 0 0].

ntdll.dll! NtWaitForSingleObject + 21 bytes
kernel32.dll! WaitForSingleObjectEx + 67 bytes
kernel32.dll! WaitForSingleObject + 18 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! SCP_DumpStack + 354 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! Error + 229 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! error_display + 427 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! required_string_4 + 388 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! parse_ship_values + 19123 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! parse_ship + 1013 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! parse_shiptbl + 374 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! parse_modular_table + 267 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! ship_init + 467 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! game_init + 1915 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! game_main + 519 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! WinMain + 330 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! __tmainCRTStartup + 358 bytes
fs2_open_3_6_12d.exe! WinMainCRTStartup + 15 bytes
kernel32.dll! BaseThreadInitThunk + 18 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlInitializeExceptionChain + 99 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlInitializeExceptionChain + 54 bytes


[The E]

That means that the tbl has an error in it. Refer to the ships.tbl page on the wiki for correct formatting.

[Riptide572]

Well, I got the Whitehall fixed. I redownloaded it and now it works fine. Must have been a corrupted file or something. Still having a problem with the shivan jump gate, but can't figure out what it is. The table looks like it should work.

Code: [Select]

#Ship Classes

$Name: Shivan Node Gate
$Short name: ShivNode
$Species: Shivan
+Tech Description:
XSTR("This Shivan jumpgate appears to be based on Knossos technology (or perhaps the Knossos is based upon its design). Regardless, it allows large Shivan warships to travel through unstable or weakened jump nodes.", -1)
$end_multi_text
$POF file: ShivNode1.pof
$Detail distance: (0, 2000, 6500, 18000)
$ND 255 0 0
$Show damage: NO
$Density: 1
$Damp: 0.2
$Rotdamp: 0.2
$Max Velocity: 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
$Rotation time: 200.0, 200.0, 200.0
$Rear Velocity: 0.0
$Forward accel: 0.0
$Forward decel: 0.0
$Slide accel: 0.0
$Slide decel: 0.0
$Expl inner rad: 100.0
$Expl outer rad: 2400.0
$Expl damage: 400.0
$Expl blast: 6500.0
$Expl Propagates: YES
$Shockwave Speed: 600.0
$Shockwave Count: 1
$Default PBanks: ()
$Default SBanks: ()
$SBank Capacity: ()
$Shields: 0
$Power Output: 1.0
$Max Oclk Speed: 0.0
$Max Weapon Eng: 100.0
$Hitpoints: 1000000
$Flags: ( "big damage" "knossos" )
$AI Class: Captain
$Afterburner: NO
$Countermeasures: 0
$Scan time: 3000
$EngineSnd: 190
$Closeup_pos: 0.0, 0.0, -22000
$Closeup_zoom: 0.5
$Score: 0
$Subsystem: fluxcagea, 90, 80

#End

[The E]

You forgot the colon after $ND. Replace "$ND 255 0 0" with "$ND: 255 0 0"

Or leave out the line entirely. It's not like it has an effect.

[headdie]

is there any point in maintaining $ND: ?  I am under the impression that they are only used in software and glide rendering modes?

[The E]

We have to keep parsing these things, as they're used in the retail table.

[Dragon]

I think you can safely get rid of them, they're used in retail, but you can delete them from any user made tables.

[Nuke]

I think you can safely get rid of them, they're used in retail, but you can delete them from any user made tables.

yea pretty much, there is no point to include a flag in a custom ship table that for the most part doesn't do anything anymore.