SH3 Commander: "Invalid argument to date encode"

[Nopileo]

I started a new patrol using SH3 Commander recently, in Sept. 1940. Well actually I set the date to January 1940 in SH3 Commander, but when starting the game and selecting year/flotilla, it was set to September in game.

After completing one patrol and upgrading from the IID to a VIIB I exited the game and used SH3 Commander again to start the new patrol. When I select the career, I get this message:



I can still continue using SH3 Commander, but when I try to click 'Summary' I get this message:



So I don't get a career summary, but again I can still keep using SH3 Com, but now the mouse cursor has turned into an hourglass.

Also, everything seems normal when I start the game. All the right news are posted and map seems up to date etc.

Any tips? I'd really like to be able to get a career overview after this career to post in the career thread...

I'm also using RUb 1.43, a few other mods (mostly textures), and at this time I was also beta-testing Rubini's Harbour Traffic mod for RUb 1.43. Don't know if this is relevant?

By the way I also get that first error message when trying to change the number of the u-boat. The name change is successful though, so the sub is now U-83.

Regards,

Nopileo

[JScones]

Pls see your PM.

Someone else is experiencing a similar problem. I've noticed in his config files that some detail is missing, which is causing this error. I'm now trying to determine the cause. So, when you respond to my PM, can you pls provide as much detail as possible. ie, have you died during a patrol? Have you loaded an earlier save game at any stage? As you've only completed one patrol, pls let me know what you did in SH3 after you completed that patrol and prior to when you first received the error in SH3 Commander.

Curiously, do you get this error with any other of your careers?

[Nopileo]

E-mail sent. Hope we'll get this sorted out.

[JScones]

I know what the problem is- basically, your career StartMonth, StartDay and StartYear has gone missing from your Career.cfg file (you'll see they are all 0's when they should be values). SH3 has done something to cause this, I just haven't figured out what yet.

When did you *first* start this career? I know you stated you're on patrol #2, but your careers.cfg file has 25 entries in it! I'm curious whether this is an old, perhaps SH3 v1.0 career, re started?

[Nopileo]

Thanks,

I've looked through the files a few times myself, and I've also noticed that they all say start date 0. I thought this was a 'feature-bug' related to how it's never listed correct data in the save games when loading a game in SH3 (no total tonnage or correct dates etc). So you're saying that this is not normal?

Regarding the start time. I did start this career just a few days ago like I mentioned, using SH3 Commander. It is not a re-started career. I started it only to test Kiel in 1940 on request from Rubini when beta-testing Harbour traffic for RUb. But now that I've had a few patrols I was hoping to be able to continue.

And regarding all the careers, I noticed this as well, and thought this also to be some feature. :hmm: I did a complete re-install when patch 1.4b was released, as far as I can remember (could also be after patch 1.3, but I don't think so).

I currently have 4 careers listed in the career screen, including this Hans Rasch career, so I have no idea where those 25 entries come from.

But, sometimes when I start a new career, I select the flotilla and year and start the career like normal. Then I check what subs and equipment are available, and if I'm not satisfied I go back and change to another flotilla/year. I keep doing this until I find what I'm looking for... So maybe it is this that creates all those career entries?

One last thing: Like mentioned earlier, the date switched from September to November 1940 after I upgraded the boat to a VIIB. But I noticed last night while I was in patrol 2 that the date was in late October 1940. So about one month in 'gone'! I haven't returned yet (at work now), but I estimate I will be back in port about November 5th. When I get home today, I'll do some upgrades and test the date issue again.

And please, if this only happens with me because I've messed up the career file somehow by starting and restarting all those careers, don't spend more time trying to solve this. I'll simply delete all careers and start a new, fresh one.

Regards,

Nopileo

[JScones]

Originally Posted by Nopileo

I've looked through the files a few times myself, and I've also noticed that they all say start date 0. I thought this was a 'feature-bug' related to how it's never listed correct data in the save games when loading a game in SH3 (no total tonnage or correct dates etc). So you're saying that this is not normal?

I've never seen it before in Careers.cfg or Patrols.cfg. When testing, I started, trashed and edited careers and have never observed this problem.

Originally Posted by Nopileo

Regarding the start time. I did start this career just a few days ago like I mentioned, using SH3 Commander. It is not a re-started career. I started it only to test Kiel in 1940 on request from Rubini when beta-testing Harbour traffic for RUb. But now that I've had a few patrols I was hoping to be able to continue.

You can continue the career - the error message is caused because SH3 Commander can't find a valid career start date in Careers.cfg. The career start date is *only* grabbed once in SH3 Commander. It's the seed for determining all the pre-career dates (DOB, DOI, promotions etc) used in the Career Summary. Easily rectified, simply edit/replace StartMonth=0, StartDay=0 and StartYear=0 with StartMonth=9, StartDay=1 and StartYear=1940 respectively.

Problem is, when these dates are missing, other details also appear to be missing - Flotilla start dates for example. These are required by SH3 Commander for the Career Summary.

Essentially, these careers are still playable, but you won't be able to utilise the Career Summary component of SH3 Commander.

Originally Posted by Nopileo

And please, if this only happens with me because I've messed up the career file somehow by starting and restarting all those careers, don't spend more time trying to solve this. I'll simply delete all careers and start a new, fresh one.

It's not of your doing though - the same problem has been experienced by at least one other person and I'm sure others too. I'd love to know what causes it, perhaps a bug in SH3 itself? Well, it has to be some undocumented feature of SH3, because SH3 is changing the dates to zeroes. If anyone has any ideas... Of course, if it's a bug or feature of SH3 itself, there's prolly not much that I can do in SH3 Commander to fix it (apart from providing "nicer" error message!).

[Nopileo]

JScones,

Thank you very much for providing a solution for this! I'll give it a try when I return home.

By the way, I just thought of another possible cause for the error (again.. ). When I first installed this version of SH3 Commander a few weeks ago, I wanted to remove the fatigue mod, so I asked for advise here. Beery (I think) suggested that I deleted the contents of the flotilla folder in SH3 Com, so I did. This solved the fatigue 'issue', but perhaps it 'messed up' the flotilla dates as well? Anyway since then the game has only used the basic.cfg-file in RUb, even when starting it with SH3 Commander.

I had completely forgotten about this, since the fatigue mod is already in RUb 1.43 (I decided to use the fatigue mod again). Sorry for not mentioning this earlier. I'll put the folders back in the next time I start a patrol with SH3 Commander.

One final thing: I assume it is still correct to start SH3 with SH3 Commander only when in port before a patrol, right? When loading a game in mid-patrol we start SH3 with the normal game shortcut? I remember this was mentioned in earlier versions of SH3 Commander, but can't find any reference to it in this last version, so I just wanted to be sure.

Regards,

Nopileo

[Beery]

Is there any chance that the career start date was altered by text editing the start date in Flotilla.cfg? Unlikely that many players would know how to do this, but it's a possibility.

I initially thought it might be caused by the change of 2nd Flotilla's startdate, but since it's a 1st Flotilla career, I doubt whether it can be being caused by the 2nd Flotilla start date change.

Frankly, I'm stumped.

[Nopileo]

Thanks Beery,

I have not edited any of the dates, so unless any other program/mod can do this, I don't see how this could have happened. But apparently it's possible, since the dates are set to 0 here.

But back to one of the first things I mentioned:

When creating the career with SH3 Commander, I set the date to January 1940, although when starting SH3 and selecting year and flotilla I started in September 1940. Could this cause any compatibility issues? I think I selected a VIIB boat as well in SH3 Commander, but again when starting the career I had a IID.

If any of these things are causing problems, would it be possible to make it so that SH3 Commander only lists options/boats/flotillas that are available relative to the other selections, like in SH3 itself?

Regards,

Nopileo

[Beery]

Originally Posted by Nopileo

...When creating the career with SH3 Commander, I set the date to January 1940, although when starting SH3 and selecting year and flotilla I started in September 1940. Could this cause any compatibility issues? I think I selected a VIIB boat as well in SH3 Commander, but again when starting the career I had a IID.

It shouldn't cause any problems that I can think of. All I can think of that would affect it would be the Flotilla.cfg file, but like I said before, that doesn't change enough in any SH3 Commander version of the file to do that sort of damage.

If any of these things are causing problems, would it be possible to make it so that SH3 Commander only lists options/boats/flotillas that are available relative to the other selections, like in SH3 itself?

I think that's a great idea, and maybe it's the route that we should go. However, it does limit the options for single missions. I've considered it before just from a simplicity standpoint, but the single mission thing has always been a consideration that has stalled the idea. Maybe we should institute such a limitation only when players choose the career mode in SH3 Commander. Single missions should get the full range of options, but career mode should probably limit us to what's allowed for use in a career. This would be a lot of programming work - SH3 Commander would have to read values in the Flotilla.cfg and Basic.cfg files, but it's probably worth it, and it might give us the added ability to actually change the career start date (right now we're limited to one set month per year, but it's so easy to adjust that with a simple adjustment in Flotilla.cfg). Having said that, I'm not the one who would be burdened with the work, LOL.

[Nopileo]

Originally Posted by JScones

You can continue the career - the error message is caused because SH3 Commander can't find a valid career start date in Careers.cfg. The career start date is *only* grabbed once in SH3 Commander. It's the seed for determining all the pre-career dates (DOB, DOI, promotions etc) used in the Career Summary. Easily rectified, simply edit/replace StartMonth=0, StartDay=0 and StartYear=0 with StartMonth=9, StartDay=1 and StartYear=1940 respectively.

I finally finished browsing the forums now (after 4 hours!) after getting home from work, and tried editing the patrols.cfg-file. Now when starting SH3 Commander, I don't get an error message immediately, but when selecting 'Summary' I get the same error message that is mentioned in the topic. So not the 'Access violation...' message like earlier, but the other one.

Anyway, I'll fire up SH3 now and dock, and see what happens afterwards.

[Nopileo]

Ok, I've reached port now, and docked at Kiel (Nov. 4th, 1940).

I gave my crew some well earned medals and promotions, and exited the game.

Then I tried SH3 Commander again, and I get the same as posted above. No error message when choosing the Hans Rasch career anymore, but when I select 'Summary' I get the 'Invalid argument to date encode' error message.

I won't start a new patrol (or career) until tomorrow afternoon, but I'm just wondering: Should I delete all careers and start from scratch, or is there still hope for Hans? He managed 4 large cargos on this last patrol! A shame to let it go to waste... :P

Still I'd rather have a fully working career than a faulty one.

By the way, I checked the patrols.cfg-file after quitting the game, and my date change (from your tip above) is still there.

Thanks for all your help so far,

Nopileo

[Beery]

Originally Posted by Nopileo

Then I tried SH3 Commander again, and I get the same as posted above. No error message when choosing the Hans Rasch career anymore, but when I select 'Summary' I get the 'Invalid argument to date encode' error message.

What does your SH3Cmdr.ini file's listing for him look like? If it's listing a bunch of zeros that might be the cause. In which case (and I'm just guessing here) simply removing the listing might get it going again. Make a back-up of the file just in case, as you'll lose his picture and all his info, so you'll need to re-acquire it again manually in SH3 Commander.

[Nopileo]

Funny you should mention this, cause the picture of him suddenly changed after this patrol.

Couldn't find any reference to the image in the file, though. First there is a large list of first names, last names and birth places, and then there is the rest of the file listed below:

[CAREER DETAILS]
XXI=13JUL20,Beerfelde,30,01APR38,25JUN42,29DEC38,0 1FEB40,01JAN41,01JUL41,52,68,,,
BoH=28MAY14,Bremen,36,01APR36,29FEB40,27JAN37,01DE C37,01SEP38,01FEB39,53,95,,,
Henjum=17JUL15,Bremen,31,01APR38,30APR42,27JAN39,0 1OCT39,01OCT40,01FEB41,16,71,,,
Hans Rasch=01NOV17,Fürth,65,01APR35,14OCT39,05DEC35,01 OCT36,01JUN38,01DEC38,40,112,,,

[LATEST CAREER]
CAREER=Hans Rasch

[SETTINGS]
RealisticLength=0

And here is his new portrait:



Any ideas?

Edit: Also note the date, which is now actually before he started the patrol.

Was he abducted by aliens and was warped in time and received a plastic surgery, or what?

[Beery]

Originally Posted by Nopileo

Funny you should mention this, cause the picture of him suddenly changed after this patrol.

Couldn't find any reference to the image in the file, though....

Hans Rasch=01NOV17,Fürth,65,01APR35,14OCT39,05DEC35,01 OCT36,01JUN38,01DEC38,40,112,,,

I think the image may be the '65' (not completely sure though - it could be the 40, or the 112). Hmm. Those numbers look right. It's weird that it's not generating a summary when you have the numbers there. Of course I'm not anywhere near as versed in this stuff as Jaesen, and there are other variables involved.