Hello everyone.
I could need some advice. My otherwise very stable game started to crash (freeze) now and then. After I lost quite some time (since I'm used to not frequently save my game any more, when playing. Thx simmaster07/SC4fix!)
I started to systematically search for the problem, and found a custom station to be the source of the problem. Everytime I hover the mouse over the icon of this station in the build menue, the game freezes. This issue might be connected to me, enjoying the DAT-packer for the first time. I was maybe a little overeager and DAT-packed all subfolders in my plugin folder without thinking too much about it. Not long after that, my issue started.
Is someone able to point me to the actual problem here or can give me some advice on solving the problem? I can think of some work arounds, like removing the station completly from my plugins, but I rather want to understand my problem before working around it...
Most likely, the lot in question is using illegal characters in the menu description, such as accents, umlauts and the like. For working properly, these must be either in an LTEXT file or encoded as unicode in the "Item Name" or "Item Description" property.
You need to open the original lot in a modding tool like the Reader and check if there are any instances of such non-ASCII characters in anything else but an LTEXT file. Ideally, remove those and use a proper LTEXT file (you can make them via PIM-X/Right-click in the exemplar file's property list) and then dat-pack again.
The game crashes down or freezes? It isn't the same and means two different problems I think ;)
He said ,,freezes", so ,,crashing" was just the general term for having problems. What he describes, however, is absolutely typical for the problem that I explained.
@ Andreas: I wrote about doubts because it never happened to me, I tried a lot of stations in the game, also from web sites that are gone.
@ Seamen: what are the stations? I'd like to check it out in my game.
Thx a lot for the help!
Sorry, it took me a while to single out the station in question.
Yes, Andreas is absolutely correct. I used "crashed" as a general term and specified it with "freezing", since I had the feeling that this could help to find the problem.
The station in question is BriPizzas "='Ò"ðü,Ì, ,é[,‰Ë"S"¹],Æ,̘A—‰w= (https://www.bripizza.net/sc4/staPlus/ensta.html)"-station (the second one with the overpass). And it's likely the dat-packing, that brings out the problem since it's working perfectly fine when non-dat-packed (disclaimer).
I opend the exemplar file in question, Right-clicked in the exemplar file's property list, and both options (convert Item name/Exemplar or Description to LTEXT) throw and error at me:
(https://i.imgur.com/uYz4Mm4.jpg)
Perhaps it would help to edit the Item Name and Item Description fields to something PIM-X could handle, before converting those to LTexts? In case PIM-X can't handle that, I'd switch to Reader to make the edit.
Otherwise the error suggests perhaps the app doesn't have permission to edit the file, but I think that's a red herring.
I guess it would be best to check the lot with the Reader, maybe copy the text of those properties (if it works), delete the properties completely, and then add some LTEXTs via PIM-X. Then dat-pack again and check if the process worked. It might be possible that the DATPacker encounters some troubles with the original properties and garbles them up somehow due to foreign characters.
I thank you all for the help. Andreas, your guess was right. I did exactly as you suggested and it worked.
mgb204, I'm embarrassed to say that, but you reminded me to check something... (and yes, the error message was caused by me having the game open in the background) :-[
Quote from: Seaman on January 13, 2019, 10:11:24 AM
mgb204, I'm embarrassed to say that, but you reminded me to check something... (and yes, the error message was caused by me having the game open in the background) :-[
Ah well, sometimes, it happens to the best... ;)