• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


    Visit our website www.piratehorizons.com to quickly find download links for the newest versions of our New Horizons mods Beyond New Horizons and Maelstrom New Horizons!

Error with DirectSail + Real Weather

E

Elsilhe

Powder Monkey
Storm Modder
I was having a lot of CTDs before I discovered DirectSail mod. Boy, that mod is the final touch to the game, just the thing I needed! Above all, I didn't have those "World map to Open sea" crashes any more.

Then I was getting tired of those too random weather changes, and installed Maturin's weather mod. I understood that this mod is still unfinished, but I took a risk. Now, I don't know which mod this specific error is related to, but I didn't notice it before I installed the realistic weather mod. When sailing in DirectSail mode, after the "Sail Ho" screen, the game crashed to desktop. In the error.log file, there are a number of lines saying:

RUNTIME ERROR - file: seadogs.c; line: 893
invalid index "n" [size:132]

.."n" meaning numbers between 132-225.

Has any of you have an idea of what is happening here? Could it be related to the unfinished weather mod?

Another thing I noticed after installing the DirectSail mod was sometimes terrible lag, especially when there are ships or a fort within sight. It's not my graphics card, as it sometimes - for no apparent reason - runs the game very smoothly (and when at a colony, there is no lag at all). Anyone else noticed this?

My version of the Build is 13 Final.

Thanks!

-Elsilhe
 
Build 14 has changes to the part of the code that was throwing the index errors in your error.log and should work better. I've never seen that particular problem but I didn't play Build 13 final that much.

Crash to desktop after a sail-ho screen is almost always related to a surrendered ship in the area. Sometimes they're given tasks to run away or move to, and the game engine crashes in this case. Fixes in Build 14.

I've noticed a lot of lag when a lot of ships are firing at once. It's not so bad with smaller ships with not so many guns, or forts with fewer guns, but when a 100 gun ship and a fort with over 60 guns are all firing at it at the same time, everything slows down. The game has to track each individual cannonball, including their trajectories and intersections with ships or sea. I remember lag when firing a 74 gun broadside in build 13-9.

Hook
 
Thank you Hook, your answer was really helpful! I've been ignoring the Build 14 so far as I've been afraid of even more crashes, but it sounds like I should give it a try.

I'd understand the lag when big ships fire, but I've been experiencing the lag also when a) there are only neutral ships or a fort near; b) even when I'm sailing alone!

I've now downloaded the latest Alpha, we'll see how it turns out!

-Elsilhe
 
Alpha 8 is not very stable though. Better wait until a newer update is released.
Hook made a lot of fixes that greatly improves stability, but they're not yet in Alpha 8.
 
I've also suffered from lag when sailing near an island where they might be having a battle somewhere on the other side of the island. Oxbay is bad about this. There's a 74 gun French ship near Oxbay, part of the French fleet. When it fires you get lag, even if you can't see it at the time.

Hook
 
Build 13 didn't have this, did it? At least not to the extent that Build 14 Alpha 8 does, right?
It's been a long time ago since I tried Build 13. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mybad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":facepalm" border="0" alt="mybad.gif" />
 
I tried the latest Build Alpha, but there was such an enormous lag throughout the game that I couldn't take it and went back to the "safe" Build 13.

As I re-installed the Build 13, I realized something embarrassing. The crash/lag which I originally referred to was caused by my own sound mod, the "Prepare for Battle" (at least Pieter did try it out, if I recall correctly). It worked fine when I made it, as I didn't use DirectSail back then. But for some reason, it won't work with DirectSail, and crashes to desktop whenever the enemy comes within range. The lag, I suppose, had something to do with the range check. Pity, that was a fine mod, if I may say so myself <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" /> Maybe I have energy to re-check the code some day...

Unfortunately the crashes did not stop altogether, there are still some random crashes after Sail/Land Ho. But I guess that's what it is and ain't gonna change.

-Elsilhe
 
Ah! I remember that. There was indeed one of your sounds that caused a CTD for me too which I for that reason didn't add into the modpack. I haven't got a clue how to fix that, but usually such a crash is caused by the soundfile itself.

BTW: Be sure to install <a href="http://www.piratesahoy.net/build/midnight_fullcargohold_ctdfix_b13.zip" target="_blank">this</a> fix on top of Build 13.
 
The prepare for battle sound file is enormous. Much bigger than other files in the folder. Would it be possible to make it a bit smaller? I tried messing with editing it, but I don't have any decent sound editing software. It's likely that the size of the file is what's causing the crash.

Hook
 
There used to be and probably still are problems with sound editing for the game. Even if you make the settings on the saved sound file exactly the same as the ones of the sounds already in the game, sometimes the newly added file still causes a crash. It seems that certain programs create files that the game can't accept but other programs create files that the game does accept. Quite weird and confusing. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wacko.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":wacko:" border="0" alt="wacko.gif" />
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top