Solved Problems with installing latest WIP version

[Pieter Boelen]

This could be because of the addresspace > 2g change we did a while back ....

That is indeed what I was referring to.

 

[Black Bart]

Ahhhh, that old chestnut It's all Greek to me, but at least you now have an idea of why it was doing this, which can help with any longer term fix maybe

For now it all seems to be running fine (i've had a corrupt save issue in the Speightstown tavern, but i seem to remember this could happen on the older builds too sometimes), and i'm liking what i'm seeing so far, many little things have been polished up nicely, so well done to you all

I'll carry running through the main questline 'Tales of a Sea hawk' as that was the one i was most familiar with.

 

[Black Bart]

ok well here are a few screenshots to better show some of the issues i've been having in this Build 14 Beta 4 WIP version:

the first is that missing ships icon issue i had reported and Pieter did not have in the save game i gave him, but it looks like that.....with a square grey tile in place of the icon. I get a lot of those when in the shipyards looking at all the ships!

The second is a new issue i just got yesterday (or the day before...!) and is now a constant issue in my Build 14 Beta 4 WIP install. I've tried a number of things including deleting all saves and starting over, pressing F11, copying the seaTile.tga.tx file from my older Build 14 version (Beta 1 Patch 7) etc. Which brings me to the last screenshot which shows how the sea looks in my older working Build 14, so i run two installs side by side (about to be three as i think i need to try out Beta 3.4!).

So hmmm......oh yes running memtest shows my system is all working good, no memory errors reported.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

We already found out that those missing ship interface pictures are because the new engine.exe doesn't work well either with your old Windows version or your hardware.
Using an older version of that file solved that, didn't it?
Problem is that those texture files are VERY BIG and there are four of them that might all need to be loaded at the same time.
So probably a memory issue.

As for that sea being strange, I really haven't a clue.

 

[Black Bart]

The older exe you gave me did stop the constant CTD on loading a town location, but that was about it. I still had the graphics issues using it and as these graphics issues only happen in the Beta 4 so far (been running Beta 3.5 for a few hours and that seems fine, if a little jerky and unresponisve (but still playable!)), and both my GPU and main Ram are not being taxed by the Build Mod (roughly i'm using about 10% of each) and are fine running all previous builds, well sadly i've run about as far as i can in Beta 4. That last nasty looking sea change was the final straw

So i'm hoping i can get 3.5 running as smooth as Beta 1 does, and introduce some of the beta 4 features that work well etc. We shall see

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I suspect those ship interface textures missing must be a memory issue then.
Maybe your computer cannot spare the required amount of RAM?

 

[Black Bart]

Yeah memory usage seems to be the big change in this latest ENGINE.exe

But just to repeat, my whole system (RAM and GPU RAM) is only using about 10-15% of the available resources at any time. I always have plenty of spare when running ENGINE.exe, but those changes seem to mean on pre Windows 7 (i assume) OS it is not able to access them as it used too. That is the only conclusion i can come up with having wrestled with the latest Build this last week.

Build 14 Beta 1 (and all earlier builds) never had this same issue for me (of tiny icon graphics not displaying, or 'out of memory errors' in the log files etc) and so far Beta 3.5 seems to be working as the earlier builds for me, if with the performance issues due to too high fps (it seems).

In a way this is a good thing i was here to test this out, because you can now warn people in advance that the game requires Windows 7 and upwards now, and the old original specs of the game no longer apply for the Build mod going forward. It will save some people some time and trouble trying to work out what is wrong etc, and that is why we test stuff

Levi is correct when he says PotC should not be using your GPU (as in GPU Load), other than it's RAM and the basic functionality to display stuff on screen, my 'old' GPU never shows any usage % readout for anything other than power usage or memory usage (and that peaks at about 150MB).

I will slowly work to polish of Beta 3.5 to include the nicer stuff from Beta 4 (where it can work), but the Build Mod has been 'close' to being just right for me for a good long while now (I enjoyed Build 12 a lot!) and really getting a working Direct Sail method was the BIG feature for me that has kept me playing all these years. I will run out those icons now (and introduce them into my Beta 3.5 as well!) for Beta 4 and keep an eye on that version progress, even if i can't put much playtime/testing into it sadly.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Do the ship interface screenshots show reliably for you in the Beta 3.5 WIP?
That would be interesting to know. While those are indeed four very large files, they haven't changed in size.
So if they work in Beta 3.5, then they should work in Beta 4.
And if they don't, that proves something else is going on.

That is indeed a good thing to know and we may need to reconsider the current modpack state.
I'd want it to work for as many people as possible and not to have people excluded due to hardware issues.
It wasn't for nothing that I did some notable work to IMPROVE modpack performance for Beta 4.
I wouldn't want that all to go to waste.

 

[Black Bart]

Indeed not, and as per my post in Hylies thread about Windows 10 performance issues, i would not do anything drastic to the build just for XP compatibility, as not many people will be running XP with the latest Build Mod. But we can learn some handy stuff re the ENGINE.exe in general and the biggest reveal is the lack of FPS limiter in game hurts performance of the Build mod, fast new spec PC or medium slow old spec PC.

Edit: And yes all the ship icons and sea textures show fine in beta 3.5.