trident down bug?

[Hoopy]

I'm part way through trident down and now whenever i jump somewhere it starts adjustign the time and then freezes. If I remove the trident down OXP then it works fine, but that sort of defeats the point of me being half way through!

What's weird is that after the last event (where I find out what my money bought me) I jumped fine. It's the jump after that that's causing the problem.

Looking at thr stderr file the only thing i can see is that it's (successfully) used the other parser to read the Trident down OXP.

I'm using 1.69.1 and it's trident down version 0.4

Any ideas?

[Commander McLane]

I'm part way through trident down and now whenever i jump somewhere it starts adjustign the time and then freezes. If I remove the trident down OXP then it works fine, but that sort of defeats the point of me being half way through!

This sounds like a lot of entities are created when you jump into a new system, which may take a considerable amount of processor-time. So the first interesting question would be: For how long does it freeze? Because it could be that the game is just very busy populating the new system, and after a minute or so will continue normally. Have you tried to endure such a freeze until its end (and if yes, how long did you have to wait?), or have you killed the program after a couple of seconds?

It would also be helpful to know where exactly you are "part way through". Please open your save-file with a text editor and find the parts with the mission_variables. What's the value of the trident down-related variables? That helps to determine where exactly you are in the script, and what's possibly going wrong there.

[Hoopy]

I left it several minutes on one attempt. Even assassins never caused pauses of more than 10 seconds or so. Also there was no disc activity (there usually is during pauses) although the processor was maxed out.

I didn't want to explain exactly where I was at in case it spoiled it for those who haven't played it yet.

My next step was going to be looking for any relevant looking variables in the save file and trying to find out what the script was doing but it was bed time... And I'd just spent all day at work debugging code. And I was sort of hoping it was a known issue which would save me the bother

I'll post the save file when I next get to my home PC. But basically I'd just found out what the blurry picture was and was on my way to the shipyards to ask them about it. First jump was OK. second jump always had the problem - I tried 3 or 4 different destinations.

[Commander McLane]

Actually I haven't played Trident Down (not even installed the OXP, although I'm reasonably sure I have it somewhere in my OXP downloads folder). So probably somebody who has played and finished it (or failed to finish it because of a bug) would be of more help?

Anyway, I'll try to have a look into the script.

EDIT: No, I actually hadn't even downloaded it (done now). The wiki page of this OXP states that a lot of other OXPs are required to run it. Probably your problem could stem from one of them missing in your AddOns folder? (Although, if the script tries to spawn a ship that isn't defined, this should leave a clear mark in your logfile.)

[Hoopy]

Don't spoil it for yourself then - if no one else knows then let me have a dig around first.

[Ramirez]

There may indeed be some OXP ships that are trying to appear, though as Cmr McLane says, this should show up on the log file. The only other thing that would crop up at that point in the mission are a few messages that pop up when you exit hyperspace, but that shouldn't cause any major issues.

If you don't have any luck feel free to PM me with the details and I'll check it out.

[Hoopy]

Cheers Ramirez - I didn't have a chance to look last night but will let you know how i get on.

One slightly odd thing is that once you arrive in the new system you get a couple of seconds of the clock adjusting before it all pauses. When I tried the same jump without Trident installed there was about 5 times as much adjusting to do. Not sure if that helps you work out what it's trying to do when things go wrong...

[Hoopy]

It's this section of the script that's causing the problem:

Code: Select all

         <dict>
            <key>conditions</key>
            <array>
               <string>galaxy_number equal 3</string>
               <string>status_string equal STATUS_EXITING_WITCHSPACE</string>
               <string>mission_trident_down equal LEISERA1</string>
               <string>mission_trident_down_jumpcount oneof 2, 3</string>
            </array>
            <key>do</key>
            <array>
               <string>addShips: ATU-leader 1</string>
               <string>addShips: ATU 4</string>
            </array>
         </dict>

looking in the shiplist I can see both of the specifed ship types. But (and I'm not familiar with how it all works) it looks like it's trying to base the ship on a viper 2 and I don't think I have the viper 2 installed?

Code: Select all

      <key>ATU-leader</key>
      <dict>
         <key>like_ship</key>
         <string>viper2</string>
         <key>ai_type</key>
         <string>ATU-leaderAI.plist</string>

Am i right on this? if so where can i get a viper2?

[Ramirez]

Those are in the Nu Vipers OXP by Aegidian - you can get them via the Wiki. Strange, I thought Oolite usually just carries on if it can't find a ship, rather than crashing.

[Hoopy]

Yup - i found the OXP (http://capnhack.com/hosting/oolite/Ooli ... vipers.zip) installed it and all was fine.

It is odd that it just sits there - I would expect either a crash or for it just to not create the ships... Is that worth filing as a bug in oolite itself?

Does the whole OXP mechanism have something that lists/checks for required OXPs?

[JensAyton]

In the current build, trying to spawn an ATU-leader gets me the following log message:

Code: Select all

[universe.getShip.badReference]: Failed to construct ship dictionary for "ATU-leader" -- like_ship reference to unknown ship type "viper2".

I think this was added as part of a bug fix due to an infinite loop in a similar context. So no, you can’t rely on old versions carrying on safely in this sort of situation.

[Hoopy]

so you'd already added a fix for this in 1.70? cool

[Hoopy]

in case anyone searches and finds this topic in the future... Trident down also needs Ramirez's Executive spaceways OXP available here:
http://www.arcadia-digital.net/steve/Oolite/Oolite.html

[Eric Walch]

you can get them via the Wiki. Strange, I thought Oolite usually just carries on if it can't find a ship, rather than crashing.

Oolite has always behaved like that. I remember that a lot of crashes with 1.65 were due to non existing ships.

Even today I had several crashes. I could not open my last save file with 1.70. (1.69.1 could however). I examined the last added OXP.

It had a graphic file with name "a01.png" but in the .dat file is was addressed as "A01.PNG". After changing the filename the problem was gone.

[Hoopy]

I've run into another problem with Trident down. I'm at reininus to kill ezra but i can't find her. I've had the briefing from the flower shop and the varibale in the save file is set to EZRAARRIVAL.

I've had a poke around and it looks like it's trying to add an ezra-shuttle. I've found that in the shipdata.plist and it looks like it's based on a moray - so no problem there. But it looks like it's trying to use liner.AI, but I can't see that in the OXP or the main resources directory. Is this a possible explanation for the ship not being added? Is there another dependency? Or I am just not looking for Ezra in the right place?

I then went to one of the other planets and the game froze when I left a rock-hermit. This feels like the problem I had before when it was missing a ship to base a new ship on. Does this sound feasible?