[OM] A victim of the "Turmumbau-desaster"

[skidman]

<firstpost>

Hi there,
I've been lurking around subsim for a couple of months, mosty playing 1.5 stock and TMO. A few weeks ago I decided to give OM a shot and really liked it a lot. But now I'm stuck. My career as a Kaleun has turned into a three act tragedy:

Act 1:

Mods used:
OM705, Update720, Patch5
OMEGU300, Patch7
OM-OMEGU deutsch
OM Nav Map Makeover
DBSM_SH4, Speech Fix

Joined the 1. Flotille in Kiel, got a IIb, became the menace of the Thames estuary, IIc and IId followed, sneaked into Scapa Flow and sank some big ones. In 1941 we moved to Brest and I got a shiny VIIb and later that year a VIIc to patrol the "western approaches".

Act 2:

In spring 1942 I returned to Brest after a fruitful patrol and got a message saying my boat would get a new conning tower, and the upgrade was successful. Two AA platforms, but my boat would not move forward, or backwards, instead a "cannot comply" message was displayed no matter what speed I ordered. This "bug" has been described by TLAM Strike in post #2904 of the OM-thread but no solution or workaround has been posted there (yes, I have read the whole thread, all 3141 posts). A similar problem described by othr (see Post #1687 in the OM-thread for reference) has been addressed by lurker by the release of Hotfix1 for OM V715 (post #1704). Though this hotfix should be included in OM V720 it apparently does not eliminate all flavours of the "lack of propulsion" issue.

Act 3:

I desperately wanted to continue my career, and the only fix I could find on subsim was a very rough workaround proposed by othr (in post #1693):

"Instead I made a new campaign starting in Aug 1943, copied the ActiveUserPlayerUnits.cfg from there to my save directory. Cost me my crew but at least it lets me play while you figure it out."

At first glance this method seemed quite suitable: My medals, rank, tons sunk etc. were kept, my well trained crew was gone. OK. I spent a enjoyable week in the Irish Sea and got me some fat tankers, returned to Brest. Got a new objective, left the base and saved the game. But now

- none of the saved games of the present patrol can be opened (ctd)

- none of the saved games of the previous patrol can be opened (ctd, BUMMER)

I restored the saved games from backup to exclude file corruption, deactivated all mods except the basic OM-files, reinstalled SH4 from scratch - no joy. It seems that a promising Fregattenkapitän has been put out of business, not by depth charges, shells or hedgehogs, but by a nasty bug in SH4 or OM.

Two questions:

Is there another workaround or fix to circumvent or avoid the Turmumbau-desaster?

Has anybody managed to play a continuous career from 39 to 45 in OM? If the answer is no there is no point in playing OM for me.

</firstpost>

[Sailor Steve]

WELCOME ABOARD!

Sorry I can't help, but I've never played beyond the end of 1939. You would think after six years I would have, but it just sort of never seems to happen.

[R3dakted]

The save system in SH4 is pretty buggy. I've found that if I do new saves for each mission with no overwrites then the save-related CTDs are kept to a minimum. I've had to purge all savegames before to fix CTD issues .. but I keep the purged files so that there's a chance I can hack together a fix - as happened recently when crew injuries from a patrol were causing the next patrol to CTD when launching.

If I'm ever offered a new conning tower, I hope I get the option to keep my old one ..

*edit* The furthest I've played through to in OM is to the end of 1941. I tend to get sunk by bugs.

[skidman]

Originally Posted by R3dakted

The save system in SH4 is pretty buggy. I've found that if I do new saves for each mission with no overwrites then the save-related CTDs are kept to a minimum.

Agreed, but I never overwrite my saved games. Another thing to look at is file size. Saved games above 8 megs are guaranteed show-stoppers. A corrupted file every now and then is acceptable. I have formed a habit of saving very very often. In case of a corrupt save I go back in time till I find a good one. My experience: A "proven" good save never fails to load. A save that has caused a ctd once will do so consistently.

The post-Turmumbau-dirty-workaround-issue is different: After combining the new ActiveUserPlayerUnits.cfg with the remaining files of the original save everything is fine until the boat reaches the harbor: After starting a new patrol all saves fail to load, even those that used to be good saves. I can reproduce this problem.

I can understand that the combination of data in the (new) ActiveUserPlayerUnits.cfg and data in the remaining files (old) that come from different saves can cause problems when new information is written to the files on leaving the base. What I cannot understand is how this could affect data in files from the previous patrol, but that's what's happening: Saves that used to load fine won't open anymore.

Originally Posted by R3dakted

I've had to purge all savegames before to fix CTD issues .. but I keep the purged files so that there's a chance I can hack together a fix - as happened recently when crew injuries from a patrol were causing the next patrol to CTD when launching.

Maybe You could describe these hacking procedures in detail and I could put together a working save from my backup files

Originally Posted by R3dakted

If I'm ever offered a new conning tower, I hope I get the option to keep my old one ..

You can't: The new conning tower is mandatory. There is not even a choice of ending the career before the upgrade.

Originally Posted by R3dakted

*edit* The furthest I've played through to in OM is to the end of 1941. I tend to get sunk by bugs.

This seems weird. OM is out for a couple of years. There must be a handful of subsimmers that have made it to 45 or at least survived the three new conning towers (2 for Typ VII, one for Typ IX)

[NEXUS_6]

If you change the file configurations just a little, even just one word, especially in such as "cfg-named" files, library-related files, you should save new files to restart the new situation. If you changed conning towers as System presents, older saved files are not usable. Some kinds of internal caches are also involved during saved-file loading.

Frequently save your prey in the files.

[GlobalExplorer]

From what I can tell the SH4 engine will crash whenever a reference is not resolved. Or in programmer terms, they never put try / catch blocks around the referencing code.

Now, with thousands of items all with their own id's and references between them. Once you start editing files it's going to become problematic for your savegames.

Or in plain words, it's really easy to **** up your installation if you mess around with cfg files. Just make 1 mistake and the game will BSOD at some point.

From my experience with this engine, unless you're 1000% sure what you're doing, it's perhaps better not to change anything in the game while you're playing. Or in a way, not even the "install in port" mentality is always safe.

Excluded are of course textures, sounds etc, which are always loaded on the fly, and can be installed even while the game is running.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by GlobalExplorer

From what I can tell the SH4 engine will crash whenever a reference is not resolved. Or in programmer terms, they never put try / catch blocks around the referencing code.

You mean they could have fixed all these things?

Ughhh.....sometimes I just want to .

[GlobalExplorer]

No, that's not what I meant. Omitting exception handlers is normal practice. That way whenever an error creeps into the data, it will be instantly observed.

If you put exception handlers everywhere the program may go on after an error, but with more problems down the road. The difference is only that it looks nicer to the user, whereas Sh4 will just BSOD or CTD. Unless you manage every error, which is quite impossible.

What I am saying is that there are thousands of ids to keep track of, and each mstake can make the game crash. This can happen even in port, because a surprising amount of data is still loaded by the officers desk (like submarine data etc). I've seen by changing just a few small things how quickly I can make the officers desk crash.

[GlobalExplorer]

No I think there is nothing wrong with the game crashing per se when it encounters a dangling reference (dangling as in: use type7b.tower2 ; but there is no such object).

I think the real problem is the way in which the cfg files were designed, almost nothing uses the exact same format, they seem to have started to read in simple ini-files and then by demand added more and more, until they had database-like functionality. What results is quite a mess imo, but at least it does the job. It still should have been in XML or even better, a database.

Everyone who starts working with this stuff should prepare for very tedious editing of text, with many pitfalls if everything is not 100% correct. The engine does not tolerate spelling mistakes / typos or general sloppy work..

That's why I suggested a validator which tests all references in the cfg data. Such a tool would be absolutely feasible, but it'd be a lot of work with so many different formats. It's a pity no one ever wanted to do the work, I am sure the game would be extremely stable that way.

[skidman]

Just to give You an update on the Turmumbau-desaster:

It has happened again. I finally reinstalled SH4 (again) with the mods listed in the first post, found a saved game that could be used as a donor for rank, tonnage, medals and crew. A saved game from a new career (same flotilla, almost same date) was used as transplant host and I could continue my career. In May 1944 I was "awarded" the conning tower III for Typ VIIc and the result was: Crew slots missing, no propulsion, end of career again. I repeated transplantation of saved game components into a new dummy and continued patrolling until July 1944.

Now I`m stuck in the Rade de Brest, the allies have already landed in the Normandy, and I would happily move to Bergen if the game would let me:

Patrol No. 25, July 11th 1944: Heading for home base which is under heavy attack from allied aircraft -> SH4 crashes, luckily I had saved when approaching pointe St Mathieu (Before the game had crashed!!!).

The saved game loads fine, I happily enter the base (make changes to crew, make changes to equipment, accept/decline the crippled Typ XXIII the BdU is offering, change flotilla/home base), start a new mission and

ALL GAMES SAVED AFTER LEAVING THE BASE FAIL TO LOAD ->ctd

Two possible reasons: 1) The crash has rendered files, that were created before, useless (Don't laugh, it has happened before, see first post for reference). 2) Another very nasty bug in OM/OMEGU

So I reckon I have to fiddle about with the last valid save and a new dummy (11th flotilla, December 44, Bergen seems suitable) again. This is ridiculous. It's a pity I enjoy playing OM so much.

[in_vino_vomitus]

I'm having a similar problem. Strangely enough I was fine playing a Type II, but when I tried a Type IX I've had huge problems with saved games crashing - If there's a fix for this I can't wait to learn it.....

[in_vino_vomitus]

Reading through the documentation it says OM should be installed last, then the OMEGU readme says that OMEGU should be installed after OM - Plus it seems there's a lot of optional stuff in OMEGU that needs to be installed separately - anyway I'm in the process of reinstalling the whole package. If it works I'll post details here in case anyone else is having similar issues. I assume that although these mods are compatible with TMO etc. there's no problem adding them to a clean game?

Also any hints and tips would be greatly appreciated. I really, really really like this mod - I want to make it work......

[skidman]

Originally Posted by in_vino_vomitus

Reading through the documentation it says OM should be installed last, then the OMEGU readme says that OMEGU should be installed after OM

Yes, that's the right order: OM -> OM Update -> OM patch -> OMEGU -> OMEGU patch -> everything else

Originally Posted by in_vino_vomitus

- Plus it seems there's a lot of optional stuff in OMEGU that needs to be installed separately - anyway I'm in the process of reinstalling the whole package.

I have deactivated OMEGU by now and not a single crash ever since. The eye candy that comes with OMEGU is nice, but not worth the trouble it causes. YMMV.

Originally Posted by in_vino_vomitus

If it works I'll post details here in case anyone else is having similar issues. I assume that although these mods are compatible with TMO etc. there's no problem adding them to a clean game?

No problem at all. But it's a good idea to have separate installs of SH4 for different mega mods anyway. Use Multi SH4:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...=1110&act=down

Originally Posted by in_vino_vomitus

Also any hints and tips would be greatly appreciated. I really, really really like this mod - I want to make it work......

A saved file that fails to load can be rescued by transplanting a valid ActivePlayerUnit file into the saved games folder of the faulty save. You can even keep your crew with all special abilities by editing the APU (copy the old crew entries into the new file, use wordpad).

Maybe you fancy playing a Typ IX career start to finish (= end of war)? Cause each new conning tower (for Typ VII) has cause hick ups for me and I'd like to know if the conning tower upgrade for Typ IX brings about the same side effects.

[in_vino_vomitus]

You know I'm ashamed to say this, but I completely messed up the original install. OM and OMEGU come in packaged folders, which I completely failed to unpack into the mods folder. I did the RTFM thing and this became painfully obvious, so now I have the game properly installed. It has crashed a couple of times but so far the last saved position has loaded fine and I'm saving pretty frequently now. I've got multiple installs and I've started keeping each versions saved games in its own folder, which I rename before changing games. So far doing it this way has given me zero hassle. If I make it as far as a conning tower upgrade, I'll let you know how it goes

[GlobalExplorer]

Wouldn't a solution be to keep the same Turm for the whole game?

The changes to the dates at which conning towers appear can be made quite easily. For example, for type VIIC this would be in:

submarine/NSS_Uboat7c/NSS_Uboat7c.upcge

IDLinkUnitPartIntervalDefault1=NULL, 1941-06-15, Turm_VIIC_1
IDLinkUnitPartIntervalDefault2=1941-06-16, 1941-12-10, Turm_VIIC_2
IDLinkUnitPartIntervalDefault3=1941-12-11, NULL, Turm_VIIC_3

Here I set the dates so that VIIC boats either:
a) keep Turm 1 for the whole game
or
b) get Turm 3 at the earliest date (for type VIIC that's Feb/1941).
with option b) I think you also receive a radar warning receiver automaticallly, and this could be a gameplay breaker.

I also:

make corresponding changes in
UPCDataGE/UPCUnitsData/UnitParts6VIIC.upc
but I don't think it's necessary.

and delete my MyFiles/SH4 directory, so that the game must create a new one. The reason I think this may be necessary is because the game creates copies of the relevant files, so there may be conflicts with copies made before the changes.

Could this solve the problem? Everything works without problem, but I have never played more than 2,3 patrols.