TemplePlus alpha testing - volunteers needed

One of our goals with TemplePlus is eliminating those mysterious ToEE startup crashes that have become more prevalent as of late. We really want a rock solid foundation before we go crazy with adding new features, because there's no point if the game just crashes.

We believe we have identified the cause of these crashes - it appears to be due to the system loading DLLs into the memory space ToEE expects to load itself. This problem may be worse on modern OSes since they load more DLLs.

We have taken some measures to safeguard against this, and greatly appreciate some help in testing on various systems and configurations. To that end, we need some volunteers!

At this point, it's mainly about starting up the game and looking out for error messages. If there are any, they should appear in the very beginning.

Instructions:

1. Download this file:
   -Edit - removed, see Alpha Round 2 thread.
2. Extract to your ToEE folder (use the latest Co8 modpack, either Standard or NC)
3. Run the executable file (TemplePlus.exe)
4. This will boot up your game directly (integration with the Front-End is still on our to-do list)
5. The most important thing to us right now - if you get any message popups at startup, write down the message and post it here.
   
   Example:
   
   
   ​
6. Exit the game and start it up again 5-10 more times, noting messages as above.
7. If everything works ok, let us know too!

Note that you should be able to play the game normally via the file, though that's not the intention, particularly as there are some placeholders right now (e.g. the expanded animal companion list).

You can check out some of the new features, however, like some of the new Python extensions:

Code:

 game.leader.pc_stay_behind()
obj.pc_add()
obj.inventory_item(#)
obj.obj_get_field_64bit(field_name)
obj.obj_get_field_objHndl(field_name)
obj.obj_get_idxfield_32bit(field_name, subidx)
obj.obj_set_idxfield_32bit(field_name, subidx, value)
obj.obj_get_idxfield_32bit(field_name, subidx)
obj.faction_has(#)
obj.faction_add(#)
obj.makewiz(#)

Thank you for testing!

 

I was able to successfully launch both standard and NC installations just fine with templeplus.exe... no crashes, no errors. Ten trials each.

I was also able to start, save, reload etc games with the NC version. The standard version did crash after character creation... though that's obviously outside the bounds of the test you requested.

Is the help.tab ok to leave or should I use the original?


edit: Official delurk

 

Welcome!

The help.tab contains a fix for a couple of missing entries that could cause some trouble at startup, so I wanted to get that out of the way.

I'll see if I can reproduce that char gen crash - anything special you did? Is that the part where you start a game?

 

Yes, right after adding characters and pressing 'begin'.

I can reproduce it by adding 5 pregen characters and starting, but I think it may just be typical video scaling failure with the opening vignettes. I managed to avoid it by setting a 4:3 resolution in toee.cfg. Still fiddling with it to be sure...

EDIT: Hmm... If I put a safe resolution (1024x768) in toee.cfg and try to run 5 pregen characters, I get a CTD with no specific error. However, if I run toee.exe instead, there's no CTD under the same conditions.

 

Can you post the log file for the case you get a crash?

It is TemplePlus.log in the main ToEE folder.

 

OK, so now it runs fine after starting the previous game through TFE-X . Can't reproduce it :roll:

If I see it again, I'll post the log.

EDIT: Tried again to reproduce by swapping modules back and forth and running through character selection... can't seem to break it again. Must have been a glitch on my end from swapping modules and launching the game through different processes (templeplus, toee and tfe-x). I do suspect it was the video scaling issue from where it occurred.

Despite that hiccup, I've managed to launch from templeplus.exe a giant pile of times with no problem.

 

I did a clean install of the game on my new computer and then started up and quit the game about 30 times, at various screen resolutions, with the intro enabled and then disabled, and the game worked flawlessly.

My computer's specifications:

software:
boxed (2 CD) version of ToEE
The Circle of Eight Modpack 8.1.0 New Content Edition
Windows 8.1 Pro (64 bit)
Norton Internet Security (I deliberately allowed Norton to perform its real-time scanning of all of the game files, and there were was no interference from Norton at any stage of the installation, activation, or running of the game (that I am aware of))

hardware:
32 GB RAM



When I started a game using TemplePlus, while my adventuring party was on the shopmap, when my party clicked on the Game Portal, my party was immediately teleported to the opening vignette map instead of receiving a message about needing to have a Player Character with a decent Search skill and then needing to find and click on the secret portal under the stairs.

I set the Co8 modpack to run in windowed mode using TFE-X, but when I started up the game using TemplePlus, the game remained in full-screen mode.

 

Gazra, are you running KotB or ToEE?

Also, if you want to run temple in windowed mode, you can use a command line switch -window
That is until we integrate it with TFE-X, which currently only recognizes toee.exe.

 

I was testing with the Co8 Modpack 8.1.0 New Content Edition. I don't have the KotB module installed on my new computer.

 

I think the search skill check in the shop map is only KotB.

At least, I don't see it either with ToEE NC 8.1 when running the game in the usual manner.

Although, I'm just getting back to the game after a long layoff and I'm not quite up to speed yet with what's been implemented.

 

Yeah I never saw such a check even in "vanilla" co8 (without TemplePlus that is).

 

Suffice to say that check is KotB specific

 

In ToEE I had created a specific workaround (Jaroo dialogue to trigger a script that reveals all secret doors), but this obviously deserves a better treatment. Opened a new TemplePlus issue:

https://github.com/CircleOf8/TemplePlus/issues/36

 

Will this affect my game files in any way?
Once I'm done testing it, can I just delete the file from my toee directory and continue playing 8.1?