Circle of Eight Modpack v7 / v7 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Re: 7.9 Known Issues

IMPORTANT UPDATE: For those of you experiencing game crashes upon loading the game or while loading the game with the Co8 modpack v7.9.0, we're working on an official fix which is currently undergoing internal testing and which should reach the public testing stage within 24 hours if everything goes according to plan. An update will be posted over at the TFE-X discussion thread. We have localized the modeswitch crash issue to Aji'Tae's windowed mode reshack. Unfortunately, the reshack appears to introduce indirect, difficult to trace problems which, in addition to everything else, somehow introduce a lasting effect on the operating system until reboot (which causes the game to keep crashing even if the windowed mode reshack is completely removed from the DLL). Coincidentally, the effect manifests itself in fullscreen mode and not in the windowed mode the reshack was meant to alter. Simply turning off the reshack and thus removing its components from the DLL is not enough to ensure that the issues (and, thus, reports of something wrong with the game / the front-end) stop due to the previously mentioned caching. Due to the nature of the issue (different experience on different systems, complex dependencies on video mode because of the peculiar interaction with the driver video mode switching, etc.), the currently proposed solution that will be released for testing soon will include the following:

- An experimental update for TFE-X that completely eliminates the introduction of any bits of code into the DLL related to the windowed mode reshack according to patterns suggested by Aji'Tae. As you understand, this will mean that unfortunately, we'll have to revert the windowed mode game behavior to the old 800x600 only setting. As sad as it may be for those of you who liked this new functionality, it seems we don't have any other option right now. Experimental builds containing modifications of the reshack code that do not make the game crash will be considered later when the game is stabilized.
- A reworked Co8 v7.9.0 temple.dll library that is free of any possible Aji'Tae's alterations from the previous editions of his reshack that might have inadvertently made their way into the library during the v7.9.0 development period.

We thank you for your patience and we hope that your experience with this experimental testing build will be crash-free. Your testing reports are highly welcome as soon as the experimental build is released. If it proves to solve the problem for the testers, it will become a part of the next stable builds of both TFE-X and the Co8 Modpack.

- Agetian

 

Re: 7.9 Known Issues

@ Sitra Achara: Yes, pretty much, though there are several caveats that are probably a bit too technical to discuss here... :\ At any rate, the package is ready, it will be uploaded soon to the server (it's a bit large for an attachment) - as soon as I figure out how to upload files to the ftp server using the new credentials or when Gaear helps with the upload. So, hopefully these issues will be remedied shortly.

- Agetian

 

Re: 7.9 Known Issues

A new experimental build of TFE-X + temple.dll is available over at the ToEE Front-End X discussion thread. This build is aimed at trying to fix the video mode switch crashes at the game startup. Your testing is welcome - it solves the problem for me and for Gaear, but we don't know yet how your game will react to it. Please note that this is a proposed solution for the startup intro crash *only*. It will not fix other possible CTDs, so please do not report those in the ToEE Front-End X discussion thread. Instead, post them in the threads for the general Co8 Modpack v7.9.0 bug reports.

- Agetian

 

Re: 7.9 Known Issues

I'd like to add that as far as movie-related CTDs go, this will not automatically fix all of them. Basically, if with earlier versions of the modpack you had issues (for example, sirchet had to either enable or disable intros once after activating a module before everything worked), those issues won't be resolved by this. This should (hopefully) resolve the new issues of frequent CTDs at movies/switching at startup, etc. You should essentially expect that your game will behave like it did with v7.8, however that may have been.

 

Yeah, that's been fixed for v8. Sorry.

 

Re: 7.9 Known Issues

Alrighty, we have another contender for a fix to the movie/modeswitch-related CTD bug that's been plaguing 7.9. I'm posting this here because the fix, and by extension the bug itself, if it's found to be the bug, has nothing to do with TFE-X.

First, a brief explanation: whle doing a rather meticulous rebuild of the 7.9 modpack overtop of the last known stable build, 7.8, complete with file comparison, I found a rather glaring error in help.tab, the file that controls the entire hotlinked Help system in ToEE. The short explanation is that two line entries had been joined into one somehow, which, given the way tab files work, could and likely would cause some serious issues with parsing, etc. This bugged file is in every one of your 7.9 downloads. I'll leave it to Agetian to explain exactly how that could translate into mode-switching crashes if he cares to, but suffice it to say, fixing the bug fixed the crashes for me.

Specifically, when I added the bugged help.tab back into the experimental build, ToEE would start crashing. When I fixed it, ToEE would stop crashing. Most significantly, with the file still bugged, enabling movies would somehow allow the game to launch successfully. Why and how these two things could be related is frankly beyond my understanding, but the results speak for themselves.

The bottom line is that while it remains unclear if this is the beginning and the end of the problem, it is, nonetheless, a serious problem that should be fixed regardless. So, for the purposes of troubleshooting the CTD problem specifically, those of you who are plagued by it and willing to put forth some effort to help fix it should download the attached file and follow the instructions below, exactly, to test it.

1. Download the file.
2. Launch TFE-X and activate the vanilla module.
3. Quit TFE-X.
4. Reboot your computer.
5. Launch TFE-X and activate Co8 7.9.
6. Extract the contents of the download to your ToEE/data/mes folder and overwrite help.tab.
7. Launch ToEE/Co8 7.9 via TFE-X. You can have intro movies disabled or not.
8. If you get past the intro movies (assuming they are enabled) start a new game. Do not load an old save.
9. Play around. Go to various worldmap locations and see if anything funny happens.
10. Go specifically to the ToEE, where a movie plays upon your first arrival, and see if it plays without issue. To do this via console, open it and enter 'game.areas[4] = 1' without the quotation marks. That will mark the ToEE as known on your worldmap. Then travel there via worldmap and see if the movie plays and doesn't crash, etc.

Please report your findings here. Also note that it's important that you follow the above instructions. Blowing off the reactivation or new game parts will not help us at all, so please follow through with everything. Also note that this is not, again, a miracle cure for all ToEE movie problems. e.g. if you had movie issues with 7.8 wherein you had to enable or disable movies once before the game would work properly, you will likely still have to do that. What we're interested in finding out though is if this resolves the repeated movie crash problems and general instability that arrived with 7.9.

Thanks, and good luck.