Assorted game crashes and use of the Editor

[Snowpeople1]

Alright, in another post a couple of us were discussing potential game crashing bugs and what may be causing them.

thread - tm.asp?m=2630905

Some of the more common errors but not limited to are the dreaded GxBO , GxHab and a few other generic "out of range" messages.

So a small trouble shooting/bug hunting foray began, this may, or may not help some of you trying to figure out what might be causing some headaches.

Here is some of the information that was gathered, hope this might help some of you.

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Alright, just because I am one of those people that get highly annoyed when I can't solve problems when I know the problems can be logically worked out in some rudimentary form or another, I have continued messing around with this game and its editor.

While I certainly cant decipher the actual game errors, there are limitations as to what info can be gleaned through basic trial and error testing...

First I needed a solid baseline in which to test, so I did a fresh re-install of the game and its patch, yes folders and save game folders all ferreted out and deleted.
Then i rechecked that I had all the pertinent updates on my computer, .net, video card drivers, sound card drivers, WMP 11/12, ect.

Ok so with all of that out of the way knowing full well that my machine was beefy enough and up to date with current standards I began my testing in earnst.
Oh and for testing purposes no mods of any kind.

So my first game was a very generic 250 system game fully automated that I let run until midish game, zero problems, not a one, well other than some slow downs and some ships just sorta vanishing into a nether world of the galactic triangle...lol

I then decided to run a second game, same settings to ensure the data was similar, in which it was.

This much I suspected...the vanilla game is pretty stable with only minor irritants to deal with.

Now I decided to "tweak" a few things in the editor for the next game, some of the editing I did was adding a handful of various planets, 2 of each type to randomly chosen star systems, also added a few independent colonies, some basic ships , a few gas clouds and some ruins. I also added moons to a few planets both created planets and already existing planets and adjusted various sizes.

I again let the game run until mid game and once again the game remained quite stable giving me no game stopping anomalies.

Ok, new game again, only this time lets just delete some objects.
I removed a couple of stars. I made sure the stars contained no planets so I wouldn't have more than one thing to trouble shoot.

Lo and behold...a crash error...
Ok reload to before I removed anything, ran the same game, no errors, ran well.

Ok reload and delete some other stuff, this time I removed a couple of planets, empty planets, and guess what? Yep, another hard crash.

hmmm

Ok what if I added some star systems?
Crash.

So while I could definitely do more testing to validate some of the different crash environments, I was satisfied with my very primitive results and I have other stuff I like to do besides chase down bugs in a video game.

All in all, what I found in my simplistic form of bug hunting was that the editor is indeed buggy as hell but only seemingly in certain regards.
I could add a variety of things via the editor, planets, colonies, ships, moons, ruins, ect and everything played nicely with one another.

If I added a star or star system, the game would eventually implode.
If I deleted a star, same result.

Now the interesting thing is that I could add and delete my own created planets to my hearts content, didn't like that no resource desert planet you just placed? no problem, delete it!
Removing a computer generated planet though seemed to be hit and miss, sometimes it would cause me an error sometimes it would run just fine (though that is not to say that it might not be a root cause of a crash later down the line)

I think people reading this will get the idea on the direction of what would cause errors and what wouldn't.

I will, however, do a brief summary though...keeping in mind this was not by any means a "professional" bug hunting trip.

OK to add with editor -

Planets
Ships
Colonies
Independent colonies
Gas clouds
Ruins
Moons
Asteroids
Pirates
Space creatures
Asteroids

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Things I am unsure about -
New Empires
Black Holes/ novas (though I suspect they will crash your game )

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Things that WILL crash your game -

Adding/deleting Stars/star systems
Deleting a computer generated planet (though more testing seems needed here)
Deleting a computer generated empire or independent colony
Deleting a pirate base/pirates
Deleting monsters
Deleting any of the anomolies (the various space junkyards and what not)
Basically do not delete any of the computer generated items that get created with your galaxy.

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I certainly hope this helps a few people and also helps the developers in future patches as to what may be causing the editor to not function properly.

In closing I will say that the game is a great game and is still moderately "tweakable" if one follows those guidelines listed above, even if it does limit how much one can tailor there galaxy to there own likings.
Your own mileage may vary with further testing but I think it atleast gives people a baseline to work from and a bit of an understanding of what is causing the issues.

If one really wants a game with as little risk of corruption as possible I recommend not using the editor at all as the games I experimented with that had no editor use what so ever were by far the most stable.

Happy hunting gentlemen/and ladies!

~Snowman