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View Full Version : [REQ] Buggy Barricade Ships Fix


Graf Paper
06-09-09, 10:32 PM
I write this in an appeal to all those talented modders who have blessed us all with great works and, on occasion, great advice.

In GWX 3.0 multiplayer, using barricade ships is impossible due to the fact that if anyone, be they a player or AI unit, hits one with a torpedo, bullet, shell, bomb, etc., it will immediately cause a CTD. :wah:

Certain missions, such as an historically correct Scapa Flow, just cannot be done due to the CTD issue. That the Brits did make extensive use of these half-sunken vessels to provide a barrier for protecting inlets and obstructing the paths a u-boat might take, it is rather disappointing not to have them available for multiplayer. :down:

In GWX, barricade ships are listed as submarines in the Environmental folder of the Roster, in a folder labeled 'BARR_'. I understand the necessity of classifying them as subs, since ships cannot be placed as sunken. In the cfg files, their DOD is set to 1947, nearly two years after war's end.

My thought is that, being classified as a sub, hitting a barricade ship with any ordnance might be causing it to sink further. Already being sunk, this means there is nowhere to go except below the level of the ocean bottom. Now, I have observed in multiplayer that when a player's sub collides with the bottom and even a part of it goes through, it will sometimes cause that player to CTD. I wonder if this is related to the barricade ship CTD issue?

The only idea I've come up with so far as a workaround would be to reclassify the barricade ships as a type of anti-subnet, but this introduces some other potential problems as subnets are not of fixed length.

I can only hope that someone here has some insights that may lead to an answer or might have already discovered a fix. Thank you for your time and attention, gentlemen.

Contact
06-10-09, 04:46 AM
Are the barricade ships the same units as they can be seen close to Kiel shore surrounded with buoys ?

danlisa
06-10-09, 06:17 AM
Does torpedoing or shelling a barricade ship during Single Player mode cause the same CTD? If not then surely the designation and or barricade ship can't be at fault. It must be differences between MP's setup.

As for fixing this potential MP bug, making a barricade MP mod which has the damage models removed seems to be the answer.

Dunno.....

Graf Paper
06-10-09, 12:42 PM
Contact, you are correct. Barricade are those partially sunken wrecks you'll find in several harbors.

danlisa, the only time there is a CTD to occur is in multiplayer, when there is more than one player. Hosting and playing in a multiplayer alone does not cause a CTD, only when there is at least one other player.

I did notice some values for the Barricade Ship in zones.cfg differ from their corresponding values in the BARR_.zon file, such as "crash depth". In zones.cfg, it is listed as 75, where that same value is 200 in the ZON file, under the Collisionable Object entry. Also, the zones.cfg file lists the Barricade Ship as being indestructible ( Destructible?= No ), yet it does have a ZON file, listing damage boxes and values, in the BARR_ folder.

Perhaps editing the files in the BARR_ folder to match with the numbers in zones.cfg and other CFG files might help to provide a fix, along with allowing the ships to be destructible and, perhaps, eliminating the ZON file as you suggested, danlisa. It seems much of the values in the BARR_ folder are still those of whatever AI sub was cloned to create these ships.

Time to load up S3D and Notepad++ to do some experimenting.

Madox58
06-10-09, 05:49 PM
It's a very good possibility that a missing .sim file is the problem.
Where the missing .sim does not seem to effect the single player Game?
Multi-player appears to be much less forgiveing in this area.

It may be easier to change them to a land object.
Land objects use a different type .sim file.
And all Barricade units are, infact, resting on land.
The Maunsell Sea Forts are Land Objects placed in the open Sea.
They use a .sim but don't seem to crash Multi-player.

It would require adjusting the Campaign files
along with other files.

Graf Paper
06-11-09, 02:47 AM
Thank you for that sage advice, privateer! :DL

The Barr_ folder does indeed have a missing SIM file.

Now, I wonder if borrowing a SIM file from an AI sub or converting the Barricade Ships over to a cloned sea fort would be the simplest route? I have a feeling the sea fort solution would prove to be the most stable. :hmmm:

Altering the Campaign_SCR or _LND files would not really be much of an issue since the CSP Online Mod already uses modified Campaign files anyways. It would simply mean releasing a version 2.0 to include the Barricade ships fix for multiplayer.

As a helping hand to a very novice modder, could you please provide a list of those files I should look into? :06:

I'm sure this is going to be a lot of work, especially with the cloning and model imports. I've never really done it before... but it's a great excuse to learn! :yeah:

If only I also had some AI torpedoes for those PT boats and S-Class subs in the patrols! Talk about the perfect combo for harbor maps! :D

Again, my heartfelt thanks to you, privateer, and you also, danlisa, for helping to point me in some good directions. Sharing your knowledge is the greatest treasure of all the gifts you could give to this community. :know: