Many Errors

[swatter555]

Coming back to DW after several months and I am highly disappointed. I don't know what the heck was done with the latest patch, but I cannot play the game anymore.

I use the Star Trek mod and thats all. Here are the problems:

I start a game and one of the first things I do is mess with ship designs. When I exit the ship design screen and click on the colony screen, I get an unhandled exception that states the application is try to access an object that isnt instanced. That would seem to be a code problem, not a problem with the Star Trek mod. When this happens, the game is corrupted.

I tried turning off the Star Trek mod and I get tons of errors starting a new game because it saved the old startup settings.

This is just silly. I am not a PC novice and everything is up to date. My patience to mess with a buggy game is incredibly minimal.

[swatter555]

I tried to start it up this morning and now various images (frames) are missing and the game won't load. I don't think the Star Trek mod was messing with the mining animations, was it? This is just freaking crazy people.

I played this game relatively problem free before, whats up with the clusterf*ck now?

[swatter555]

After finally getting the game started again, I figured out pretty much what is going on. Whenever I delete or even obsolete a variety of starting designs, it messes up colony information for some reason. It get the expection whether I directly click on a planet or I click on the colony screen. How in the universe did this make it out of testing?

[swatter555]

In case anyone cares, I have figured out the bug. If you obsolete your last colony ship design, you get the exception. For some reason the planetary shipyards needs something in the purchase construction field to work correctly.

Minor bug once you know what is going on, but it would have been nice to get some tech support about a probable known issue, which might have saved me much guessing.

[Igard]

Sorry no one seems to be on tech support forum these days, swatter555.

I don't think it's a problem with the Star Trek mod (thanks for downloading it btw [;)]), however it does use slightly more memory than vanilla. If you're using 1GB of RAM or less, I probably wouldn't recommend it.

When switching theme/mod, you must always clear your 'other empires' screen on the start up menu. Otherwise, it won't recognise all the races.

It does sound like an unusual bug. Sorry I can't help out much with these sort of things.

Have you updated your graphics and sound drivers?

Also try uploading your dxdiag. There's a sticky on the tech support forum for instructions.

[swatter555]

Like I said, I figured out the bug. Its not a problem once I understood what was going on.

Nice mod BTW

[profanicus]

I have no mods installed and I get the same exception when deleting the starting colony design.
Sounds more like a bug than a problem with drivers or PC config.

[swatter555]

Yes, it is a bug. I just wish there was some support to be found in this forum. I am very disappointed at Matrix at this point, especially when the support level is this poor ahead of an upcoming expansion.

[swatter555]

And yet another bug:

Sometimes when I am moving around the galaxy map I get an unhandled exception, this time it says that an array have been indexed out of its bounds. When this happens, the galaxy map turns white and a red X covers the whole thing.


Im done.

[IainMcNeil]

Swatter - sorry you are having probems. Have you tried open up a support ticket. The team try and monitor issues in the newest releases but its very hard to keep track of all forums. The forums tend to be watched by the dev team and as you mentioned they are trying to complete a new version so are probably a bit tied up. Let the team know your specs and if you have updated your drivers and have the latest update. Click "support" at the top menu and follow the instructions to contact support and they can pass the query to the correct person and fix any issue you have.

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Swatter555,

Sorry to hear you are having issue, but the current version of the game is actually quite stable and bug-free on the vast majority of systems. I'll ask Elliot to look at your issues - we've had our heads down working on the next update and the expansion and we only started working on that because we were sure the last official update left the game in a good state.

Feel free to e-mail me directly at erikr@matrixgames.com if you have any further concerns.

Regards,

- Erik

[elliotg]

ORIGINAL: swatter555
In case anyone cares, I have figured out the bug. If you obsolete your last colony ship design, you get the exception. For some reason the planetary shipyards needs something in the purchase construction field to work correctly.

Minor bug once you know what is going on, but it would have been nice to get some tech support about a probable known issue, which might have saved me much guessing.

Thanks for the details there swatter - we'll fix that in the next update.

Sorry we've been a bit out-to-lunch lately - the upcoming Distant Worlds expansion is soaking up all of our time.

[elliotg]

ORIGINAL: swatter555
And yet another bug:

Sometimes when I am moving around the galaxy map I get an unhandled exception, this time it says that an array have been indexed out of its bounds. When this happens, the galaxy map turns white and a red X covers the whole thing.

A screen-shot of that error message (the text of it) would be pretty helpful, if you still have that. I assume this is in 1.0.6.0?

Thanks

[swatter555]

ORIGINAL: elliotg

ORIGINAL: swatter555
And yet another bug:

Sometimes when I am moving around the galaxy map I get an unhandled exception, this time it says that an array have been indexed out of its bounds. When this happens, the galaxy map turns white and a red X covers the whole thing.

A screen-shot of that error message (the text of it) would be pretty helpful, if you still have that. I assume this is in 1.0.6.0?

Thanks

Thank you. I just want to say I respect Eric alot, but stability is not a word I would apply to this game. I love DW, but I wouldn't be doing you a favor as a player if I didn't speak up.

A screen will be embedded in the post, but here are some details:
- I am using the most current version.
- My graphics and sounds drivers are up to date, both updated since you released the patch.
- I installed the .Net software (out of redundancy) when I installed the game, just to make sure I crossed all of the Ts.

I will also pm my dxdiag to you.

This issue is one that is 100% consistent. When I engage in a battle with a pirate, the exception occurs soon after.

Seperate from this exception, I noticed a much more disturbing issue, or so it seems. After I deactivated the Star Trek mod (going into trouble-shooting mode), animations frames came up missing from the game directory. Specifically, there were four frames missing from the mining and construction directories, causing the game to exit as it was loading at startup. I had to dig into the directories and make a copy of another image and rename it the missing frame in order to get the game to load. For example (just an example I cannot recall the exact images that were missing), if mining animation 5 was missing, I simply copied animation 4 and renamed it to 5.

What in the world would cause those images to disappear?

Thanks for the help.

[swatter555]

Just to make clear, the Star Trek mod does not appear to alter or replace the images that were missing.

I went ahead and copied the exception text for the previous error:







See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
at DistantWorlds.Controls.MainView.h4iMVddcsCfXeHFs0ZV(BuiltObject , Graphics , Double )
at DistantWorlds.Controls.MainView.ezRlvZHSe7Sc0o(Graphics )
at DistantWorlds.Controls.MainView.OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.PaintWithErrorHandling(PaintEventArgs e, Int16 layer, Boolean disposeEventArgs)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmPaint(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


edit: I snipped a good part of the information from the report because it looked like it revealed system information. I can PM the rest of the report if needed.

[Erik Rutins]

Just FYI, we cannot help when it comes to modded installations - it's possible the mod or the removal of the mod broke something. Can you duplicate these issues with a fresh clean reinstall before any modding?

Regards,

- Erik

[elliotg]

ORIGINAL: swatter555

ORIGINAL: elliotg

ORIGINAL: swatter555
And yet another bug:

Sometimes when I am moving around the galaxy map I get an unhandled exception, this time it says that an array have been indexed out of its bounds. When this happens, the galaxy map turns white and a red X covers the whole thing.

A screen-shot of that error message (the text of it) would be pretty helpful, if you still have that. I assume this is in 1.0.6.0?

Thanks

Thank you. I just want to say I respect Eric alot, but stability is not a word I would apply to this game. I love DW, but I wouldn't be doing you a favor as a player if I didn't speak up.

A screen will be embedded in the post, but here are some details:
- I am using the most current version.
- My graphics and sounds drivers are up to date, both updated since you released the patch.
- I installed the .Net software (out of redundancy) when I installed the game, just to make sure I crossed all of the Ts.

I will also pm my dxdiag to you.

This issue is one that is 100% consistent. When I engage in a battle with a pirate, the exception occurs soon after.

Thanks for that info Swatter. I think there might be some images missing in your explosions folder (Distant Worlds\images\effects\explosions\). This folder should contain 20 subfolders, with each subfolder containing 20 explosion frames.

Seperate from this exception, I noticed a much more disturbing issue, or so it seems. After I deactivated the Star Trek mod (going into trouble-shooting mode), animations frames came up missing from the game directory. Specifically, there were four frames missing from the mining and construction directories, causing the game to exit as it was loading at startup. I had to dig into the directories and make a copy of another image and rename it the missing frame in order to get the game to load. For example (just an example I cannot recall the exact images that were missing), if mining animation 5 was missing, I simply copied animation 4 and renamed it to 5.

What in the world would cause those images to disappear?

Thanks for the help.

This is pretty strange. Distant Worlds never deletes image files for any reason. Maybe there's some other process on your machine that's messing with things? Anti-virus maybe?

[swatter555]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Just FYI, we cannot help when it comes to modded installations - it's possible the mod or the removal of the mod broke something. Can you duplicate these issues with a fresh clean reinstall before any modding?

Regards,

- Erik

I intend to try that, but the Star Trek mod doesn't mess with the animation frames, so this is kind of a head-scratcher. This sounds like a freak occurance, another fresh install is in order. Ill try and duplicate it with no mods.

[swatter555]

ORIGINAL: elliotg

ORIGINAL: swatter555

ORIGINAL: elliotg


A screen-shot of that error message (the text of it) would be pretty helpful, if you still have that. I assume this is in 1.0.6.0?

Thanks

Thank you. I just want to say I respect Eric alot, but stability is not a word I would apply to this game. I love DW, but I wouldn't be doing you a favor as a player if I didn't speak up.

A screen will be embedded in the post, but here are some details:
- I am using the most current version.
- My graphics and sounds drivers are up to date, both updated since you released the patch.
- I installed the .Net software (out of redundancy) when I installed the game, just to make sure I crossed all of the Ts.

I will also pm my dxdiag to you.

This issue is one that is 100% consistent. When I engage in a battle with a pirate, the exception occurs soon after.

Thanks for that info Swatter. I think there might be some images missing in your explosions folder (Distant Worlds\images\effects\explosions\). This folder should contain 20 subfolders, with each subfolder containing 20 explosion frames.

Seperate from this exception, I noticed a much more disturbing issue, or so it seems. After I deactivated the Star Trek mod (going into trouble-shooting mode), animations frames came up missing from the game directory. Specifically, there were four frames missing from the mining and construction directories, causing the game to exit as it was loading at startup. I had to dig into the directories and make a copy of another image and rename it the missing frame in order to get the game to load. For example (just an example I cannot recall the exact images that were missing), if mining animation 5 was missing, I simply copied animation 4 and renamed it to 5.

What in the world would cause those images to disappear?

Thanks for the help.

This is pretty strange. Distant Worlds never deletes image files for any reason. Maybe there's some other process on your machine that's messing with things? Anti-virus maybe?

As far as the images missing, this directly occured after I exited and restarted when I switched themes. I wasn't actively running virus scanners or doing anything else. Hopefully, this is just a freak occurance of something. I will do a fresh install and see if I can recreate the first bug without the ST mod. Then I will install the mod and switch themes a few times and see if it happens again.

Also, I checked the effects/explosions- 20 in 20.

[swatter555]

Good news, it appears the exception doesn't occur with the fresh install and no mods. I haven't tested alot, but it is not occuring where I would have expected it to occur. Next I will try it with the mod.