When destroying enemy ship games freezes up. Help

[rstaats10]

When destroying a new ship, I have added to starfury, I get a game freeze up about 50% of the time. The enemy ship will explode normally sometimes and cause no error but then half the time before exploding it will just freeze the game before explosion.

I am playing in windowed mode and have tried reg mode but still occurs. Also have tried both safe mode and auto mode.

The error report I get is this:

szApp name Starfury.exe szApp Ver 1.0.17.0 szMod name:hangapp szMod Ver 0.0.0.0 offset 00000000

the technical info reads as:

C:\Document1\RickSt~1\Locals~1\Temp\WERGefa.dir00\ starfury.exe.mdmp

C:\Docume~1\RickSt~1\Locals~1\Temp\WERGefa.dir00\a ppcompat.txt


I am using a geforce 7600 graphics card

Any help in getting this problem worked out please let me know. Thanks

[Campeador]

Is this a new ship you created?

[rstaats10]

No I did not create it. I took the arackterra battleship from SEV and used the Slot modder to make new slots for it and added to starfury. The ship works great when I use it as a starting player ship. It also works as an enemy ship when I add it to enemies,main comp config enemies, and main purchase ship enemies. The problem is about half the time when I destroy it the game locks up. The other half of the time the ship is destroyed normally and the the ring explosion appears and the cargo is there. I added 12 light weps and 6 heavy weps to the battleship. I tried taking the Comps Carried Grouping Name out in the enemies file but did not have an effect. The Xfile size of 244kb is no bigger than the stock ships. I have never had this happen with a ship I have added before. I have run the debug files to see but I am not sure if it locks up when a soundfile is to be excuted or not. All my files I have checked and checked. If you have any ideas I would appreciate it.

[Suicide Junkie]

Use the ~LRS~ cheat code, and inspect the ships before you attack them.

The common cause of such an issue would be a custom component in common to the crashing ships that is causing trouble when dropped into space. (Not all components get dropped of course, so it won't happen every time)

A variant on the idea is to buy an instance of all your new components and then jettison them.

[Baron Munchausen]

There was a problem in at least one mod (Starblazers, I think) with a battleship having so many weapons it overwhelmed the 3D engine and locked up the game. You may just have to reduce the number of weapons on the ship.

[rstaats10]

I used the LRS but I didn't see where to inspect them at for custom components. LRS shows up in the enemy shieldLayout box but where do you see the components at? I also tried putting config slots in at main purchase ships enemies to reduce the weps to 4 and control all the armor shields, etc., no change, but maybe not as many freezes. I would destroy a few ships then I would get one that caused the screen to freeze. Maybe something wrong with that ships xfiles. Let me you what you guys think about a fix. If I can't get it I may have to try adding in a different ship.

[Campeador]

Yes, the Star Blazers mod was a learning experience. The Yamato had like 20 weapons and the xfile was huge (2,389kb). But being the star of the game, and just one, it was able to run. The consistent crash was with the BS Conqueror that has 22 weapons, and even thought the xfile was not that big (619kb). There were 8 other ships with bigger xfile size like the �Gas Clod� (5,271kb), the carriers, and even the �Cosmo Zero Fighter� (652kb) was a bigger xfile than the Conqueror, yet it was the Conqueror freezing the game.
So I tend to believe that the problem was excessive number of weapons. By version 1.4 I think that I reduced the amount of weapons on the Conqueror in order to prevent the crash.
On the new mod Multiverse the Yamato will have only 10 weapons, yet it will look like it has 20 weapons. For example I am using a bitmap that will show 3-barrel battery (tree times the damage amount also) but when fire you will see three simultaneous beams. That was accomplish by messing with the BitmapEffects file. So the meanest ship will not have more than 12, and so far no crashes of this nature.
I am also trying to have a ton of fighters on the screen, but now even though I resolved the crash due to weapons, a new crash happens due to Xfile size at once on the screen. To solve this new problem I went back and redid most of the ships, especially the fighters since they are so small that details are hardly seen. Still there is a limit before one really cool crash happens: The ships will still move but the fired missile will be frozen static on the screen, and the laser beams are frozen lines, and the coolest one, damage smoke follows a long none ending line or curve as the ship moves! So there are limits on how many you can put on the screen at once.
Also the amount of stellar objects like clowds and asteroids can slow dow the game.
At least a distinction can be made from the two crashes:
Too many weapons an the game just freezes while ships explode, too many ships and the game slow down and bitmap effects acts really weird!

I am still learning and experimenting, but I hope this insight helps.

[rstaats10]

Thanks for all the info. That will help me figure things out. Since I reduced my weps to 4 and still locked up ( destoyed enemy ship with long beam frozen on destroyed ship), I am guessing there is an x-files problem. The funny thing with mine is I will test out the ship in the terran map and set the enemy ship repeats to 6 and 100% probability. All the ships will appear and sometimes I can destroy 3 or 4 ships before the lockup occurs. Then I will set ship repeats to 1 and sometimes locks up on first ship kill. The x-files are only 244kb for the xfile. I am guessing now something must be corrupted in the space obj x-files or xfiles for this ship. But I will bear in mind for future ships to keep the weps and xfiles sizes low. Do you have any idea what capacity for xfile size the game has? Would be good to know since I am working on a new mod. I am trying to create a new story with adding some ships from SE5, never seen in starfury, but may have to reduce the new ships added if it causes too many problems so I can have more time for a decent story. I really enjoy modding the files and done some decent things so far.

I have added the Ackterra Dreadnought with 23 weps total and I have had 12 kills of this enemy ship and no lockups. I will re-load the Xfiles for the Ackterra Battleship and try 1 more time if it doesn't work then I will just keep the Dreadnought and delete the Battleship.

[Suicide Junkie]

rstaats10 said:
I used the LRS but I didn't see where to inspect them at for custom components. LRS shows up in the enemy shieldLayout box but where do you see the components at? I also tried putting config slots in at main purchase ships enemies to reduce the weps to 4 and control all the armor shields, etc., no change, but maybe not as many freezes. I would destroy a few ships then I would get one that caused the screen to freeze. Maybe something wrong with that ships xfiles. Let me you what you guys think about a fix. If I can't get it I may have to try adding in a different ship.

Click that LRS button you saw appear.
That gets you a view that looks much like your own shipyard/editing view.

[rstaats10]

Ah yes thanks SJ. That helped me solve this problem. I noticed 3 slots touching the left rectangular box next to my slot portrait. Seems 3 slots were at 0 xpos and crossing barely into rectangular box. I did a quick move of those 3 to xpos 10 and this has fixed the problem. Ovelaping slots can be fixed later if I offer this as a player purchase ship to clean it up a bit. Main take-away for me is: I need to be more careful when using slot modder to keep everything in position away from the rectangular box. I had 12 kills of the Ackterra Battleship with no lockups. Hooray!! I will definately not repeat this mistake again. Thanks SJ again and to everyone. I will keep you guys posted as I am working on my Mod.