Fixed Levelling: Missing Ships and Crashes on Encounter Reload from Worldmap to Sea

[Pieter Boelen]

@Pieter Boelen Look like you where right, just encountered a French merchant fleet and attacked it and then immediately a crash.

Was that on a brand new game? If so, what have you done during that game?
And do worldmap encounters work for you at the start of a new game at all? Or do merchant encounters crash every time even on a brand new game?
Any use of Reinit (F11)? Or does it happen after closing the game and then reloading the first save?
I'm hoping to figure out something consistent that breaks it all.

 

[niels]

I started a new game, fought with Malcom Hatcher, bought stuff on Barbados, sailed to Jamaica, attacked a single French merchant with heavy escort, which was batteling a Portuguese patrol or someting like that, saved game, changed flag to Portuguese, boarded a fast merchant ship, died on it reloaded my save game, boarded it again, took it and hired the surrenderd captain, placed him in command sailed fast away, was far away and saved the game, sailed to Jamaica on the world map, sold the ship, bought weapons and stuff, put it in my ship, started hunting again, found French merchant with light escort attacked it and my game crashed.. i didnt press F11 on this brand new save.
Clear enough?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Very nice!

So that means it IS possible to trigger this problem VERY early in the game. That is indeed not so nice....

Did you completely quit the game at all during that whole process?
And where did you make those saves? Ashore, on the worldmap or in 3D Sailing Mode?
Actually, if you still have all the separate saves you made since starting a new game, those might help a lot too.
Those should hopefully allow me to retrace your steps as closely as possible.

 

[niels]

Mmmmm... I always make 3 saves and when i make a new one I'll save over the third one I'll upload the whole package, so I unfortunately dont have every single one.
And yes I always press quit game/ return to windows I'll never press CTRL+ALT+DELETE unless my pc or POTC freezes but I dindt do that on this save.
Cant upload the save game says its to large.

You know what I'll start a new game and save every single one of it upload it as soon as I can if it crashes, but what about file to large?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Mmmmm... I always make 3 saves and when i make a new one I'll save over the third one I'll upload the whole package, so I unfortunately dont have every single one.

That's a bit of a shame, but as long as there is a save that is NOT affected by the problem and one that IS, it may still help.
Then I'll need to know which save goes with which part of what you did so I can retrace your steps.

And yes I always press quit game/ return to windows I'll never press CTRL+ALT+DELETE unless my pc or POTC freezes but I dindt do that on this save.

I actually mean if you kept the game running and saved/loaded without ever quitting the game at all.
Very often I'm lazy and quit the game using Alt+F4 myself (faster), but I don't think that should affect anything either way.
But exiting the engine and then loading a save may possibly be different from keeping the engine running and reloading an earlier save.

Cant upload the save game says its to large.

ZIP them up. If the ZIP is too big, make a few smaller archives.

 

[niels]

Done! saved every single one if it and it crashed indeed after attacking a French merchant fleet for the second time.
1 till 5 are the saves, took a while to zip them all up though

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Thanks!

Any chance for a full sequence of events and at which points you saved (and where), when you closed the game and for which the encounters still worked and where the first crash occurred?

It may take a longer while to actually sort this out. My brain is already fried from my day job.
I'm hoping @Levis will respond some time too because I don't look forward to dealing with all the recent mysteries by myself.
But this should certainly help tracking this one down.

 

[niels]

I dindt exit the game, I think it went wrong between the first merchant fleet and the second.
I just sold my stuff and bought some and fixed my ship and attacked the first and second merchant fleet, the first was no problem but the second crashed.
Also i saved my game every time i went into a store or did something like entering the world map or fixing my ship, so from my save games you can see what i exactly did and maybe from there you can get a better idea what caused it?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Thanks! So it is possible to reproduce this really quite quickly without closing the game at all.
Did you at any point reload a save at all or did you continue play in one go (making saves along the way) and it broke on the way?

Also, did you have ONLY merchant encounters?
I know those are the ones causing the crashes, but the other encounters I saw on your save before had no ships either, which I suspect is the underlying reason.

 

[niels]

I forgot to tell I killed my self on purpose and then reloaded the save game, I will tell you which save game once iam done eating.
yeah i was attacked by some pirates on the way but i just sailed away from them.
There was one strange thing a Spanish fleet attacked me I couldt click no so I clicked yes but there were no ships, but it dindnt crash, after 5 min I encountered the second French merchant fleet and attacked it and it crashed.

Update: Just opended POTC for the second time and there is lag terrible lag, maybe this is somehow related??
Didnt delete the .option file though.

 

[zuklegugle]

I don't know if that's normal but im playing on ironman realism, using directsail all the time and 90% of "Sail-Ho!" crashes my game. In additional info i found its connected with sea_ai.dll or something like that.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I don't know if that's normal but im playing on ironman realism, using directsail all the time and 90% of "Sail-Ho!" crashes my game. In additional info i found its connected with sea_ai.dll or something like that.

Please post all your log files.
We are having some concerning issues with recent updates; this weekend I'll see about reverting some old code to see if we can get that sorted out again.

 

[zuklegugle]

I will, next time it bugs out. I also found a "solution", which is hardly a solution.. Well, you have to load completely diffrent save (new game also works) and find encounter on a map or directsail, from the time it worked without crashes. Strange part about this, it fixes your current savefile and now encounters work properly. Restarting the game does nothing, only loading diffrent save and finding an encounter. If anybody has this problem, just keep one savefile with working encounters, and load it every time your game bugs out (it's temporary fix, game start crashing on encounters again after some time) then find an sea encounter.

Also, i noticed that game gradually starts to stutter and lag, more and more you play and then starts making "empty encounters" then crashes on them. Reloading a game or save fixes lag, diffrent save loading method fixes encounters.

 

[niels]

@Pieter Boelen Februari 11th Jamaica opensea/port raised a pirate flag near the fort they sunk my ship, all that was left was a dingy, sailed to the fort again they killed me again, reloaded the save game, entered the worldmap encountered a French merchant fleet for the second time clicked "Yes" and it crashed.
Attached the save game were i killed my self on purpose and reloaded it again.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I will, next time it bugs out. I also found a "solution", which is hardly a solution.. Well, you have to load completely diffrent save (new game also works) and find encounter on a map or directsail, from the time it worked without crashes. Strange part about this, it fixes your current savefile and now encounters work properly. Restarting the game does nothing, only loading diffrent save and finding an encounter. If anybody has this problem, just keep one savefile with working encounters, and load it every time your game bugs out (it's temporary fix, game start crashing on encounters again after some time) then find an sea encounter.

Also, i noticed that game gradually starts to stutter and lag, more and more you play and then starts making "empty encounters" then crashes on them. Reloading a game or save fixes lag, diffrent save loading method fixes encounters.

That is a REALLY interesting observation!
Pretty much confirms my suspicion that it is indeed related to saving/loading/initializing.
Thanks very much for discovering that; it may just be the clue I need to find the fix!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Pieter Boelen Februari 11th Jamaica opensea/port raised a pirate flag near the fort they sunk my ship, all that was left was a dingy, sailed to the fort again they killed me again, reloaded the save game, entered the worldmap encountered a French merchant fleet for the second time clicked "Yes" and it crashed.
Attached the save game were i killed my self on purpose and reloaded it again.

Thanks. I think you can stop testing now; you've provided us with lots of stuff to go on.
Now I just need to find the time and energy to do what needs to be done.
But at least I've got a clue now.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Also, i noticed that game gradually starts to stutter and lag, more and more you play and then starts making "empty encounters" then crashes on them. Reloading a game or save fixes lag, diffrent save loading method fixes encounters.

Might I assume the error.log/compile.log/system.log files get ridiculously big with lots of scary stuff in there when that happens?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Didn't manage to put a lot of time and effort into it yet, but I did manage to come up with the attached.
This has the "BuildingSet Collider" code, the Loading Timers and all recent changes to initialization code removed.
Initial test indicate that I CAN start a new game with this without error.log files being generated.

Beyond that, I cannot vouch for what this will do. But it's the best I can give you until the weekend.
But who knows... perhaps this actually helps. And if not, at least we'll know a bit more....

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That version actually reverts a lot of code back to 17 Oct 2015 state.
Attached one DOES have all the latest fixes and only reverts the intended code back to pre-17 Oct 2015 state.
So you've got two options to try. I'm inclined to recommend this one for now...

 

[zuklegugle]

Now i found out my method doesn't even always work looks like save corruption maby? here are the logs