2.5dev questions and problems

[UFOhunter]

Hi everyone,

I played 2.3 quite a long time ago, liked the game a lot, but stopped then. Recently thought I'd try out 2.5 for the first time.

I installed this version: ufoai-2.5-dev-1351893478-Debug-pentium-m-O1-sse2-7z-small-win32.exe
(link from the "Nightly builds" thread.

I'm running a Win7 64bit system, Athlon 64 X2, 4GB RAM, Nvidia GT 610 gfx.

Since it's been quite a while since I played UFOAI could someone hels me a bit with several points/questions?

1.  Is there some "new feature list" or so I can read to see what the main differences in 2.5 are compared to previous versions?

2. What's the difference between "full" and "simple" campaigns?

3. When buying/selling, I can only click/sell one thing at a time. IIRC in earlier versions selling a lot of stuff from the same type was simply done automatically as long as I pressed the mousebutton over the specific selling point. For example now if I want to buy/sell 20 grenades in a row I have to click 20 times - is there a way to get the old method back?

4. Has there been a major change in the effect of using medpacks? Seems to be drastically reduced?

5. Smoke generated from a smoke grenade does dramatically slow down game speed during a mission for me - is there a setting that can reduce this negative impact? I looked through the options but I'm not sure what to do about this.

6. I had some crashs, got the message that upping my crashdump file would help the devs. Where should I put it?

Any help would be nice. Thanks in advance and please keep up the good work.

[H-Hour]

1.  Is there some "new feature list" or so I can read to see what the main differences in 2.5 are compared to previous versions?

Here is the clear player-oriented version for 2.5. There are also more detailed changelogs for all versions.

2. What's the difference between "full" and "simple" campaigns?

Full is the standard, sandbox campaign you probably want. Simple is still an early work in progress, but it is planned to allow more specific control over UFO appearance.

3. When buying/selling, I can only click/sell one thing at a time. IIRC in earlier versions selling a lot of stuff from the same type was simply done automatically as long as I pressed the mousebutton over the specific selling point. For example now if I want to buy/sell 20 grenades in a row I have to click 20 times - is there a way to get the old method back?

I think holding Shift and clicking will sell a bunch at once. You can also mouse up/down over the little spinner.

4. Has there been a major change in the effect of using medpacks? Seems to be drastically reduced?

Yes, we have proper wounding and healing now. Check the 2.5 thread linked above.

5. Smoke generated from a smoke grenade does dramatically slow down game speed during a mission for me - is there a setting that can reduce this negative impact? I looked through the options but I'm not sure what to do about this.

Hmm, this used to be a big problem, but the performance drag has been pretty heavily reduced (I play on a so-so laptop and can get 4-5 smoke grenades out with no slowdown). Did you install the nightly build on top of any existing installation?

6. I had some crashs, got the message that upping my crashdump file would help the devs. Where should I put it?

Making useful bug reports.

[UFOhunter]

Thank you for those answers. Selling via mousewheel works nice indeed, I just didn't think of it. The upped difficulty of 2.5 was somewhat surprising, but I got used to it. It might be a bit frustrating for new players though.

However, I'm having serious stability issues. Crashes do occur frequently in the battlescape, never so far in the geoscape or during base management. Symptoms are mostly:

- sometimes I get a "open gl driver lost connection with the display driver and is unable to continue" message after the game exited to Win
- sometimes the screen turns black completely, computer freezes and has to be rebootet
- sometimes I get some garbled sounds or gfx shortly before the crash happens like described above

I use NVidia drivers 314.22 (latest I could find). In the settings I put the "threaded" option off, since I read that's recommended. Is there any other specific setting known that has to be used (or avoided)? 

Also, re the installation question - I had briefly installed 2.4 before, but did uninstall it before installing 2.5. The install folder was completely empty, but I didn't check if all user data were removed (if that matters).

The lag with smoke grenades is still there, but for now my main concern is to get the game to run more stable during missions. I was able to finish some missions, but sooner or later it crashes.

Any help would be appreciated.


Recent crashdump entries:

======start======
Date: 2013-04-30
Windows version 6.1 (Build 7601) Service Pack 1
Win32 DEBUG build 1351893478, cpu: IA-32, version: 2.5-dev

Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll) File in wrong format
0x74629f40 : C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll : memmove
0x839db9 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h
0x83b867 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h
0x83b9fd : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h
0x83ac0e : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h
0x839f5a : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/vector.tcc
0x83a0ee : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_vector.h
0x83a286 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_vector.h
0x46f8ff : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/common/dbuffer.cpp
0x46cc39 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/common/net.cpp (715) : in function (_Z17NET_StreamEnqueueP10net_streamPKci)
0x46f43e : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/common/netpack.cpp (618) : in function (_Z17NET_WriteConstMsgP10net_streamPK7dbuffer)
0x4860ca : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/server/sv_send.cpp (138) : in function (_Z12SV_MulticastiP7dbuffer)
0x47e0bc : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/server/sv_game.cpp (335) : in function (SV_EndEvents)
0x6a60e176 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_events.cpp (638) : in function (_Z10G_EventEndv)
0x6a60ea24 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_events.cpp (340) : in function (_Z17G_EventActorWoundPK7edict_si)
0x6a61036f : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_health.cpp (163) : in function (_Z16G_SendWoundStatsP7edict_s)
0x6a615969 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_stats.cpp (41) : in function (_Z11G_SendStatsP7edict_s)
0x6a61348d : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_morale.cpp (157) : in function (_Z17G_MoraleBehaviouri)
0x6a615545 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_round.cpp (225) : in function (_Z16G_ClientEndRoundP8player_s)
0x6a605739 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_ai.cpp (1212) : in function (AI_PlayerRun)
0x6a605782 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_ai.cpp (1230) : in function (_Z6AI_Runv)
0x6a611117 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_main.cpp (452) : in function (_Z10G_RunFramev)
0x47e8f4 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/server/sv_game.cpp (648) : in function (_Z15SV_RunGameFramev)
0x47e93f : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/server/sv_game.cpp (634) : in function (_Z21SV_RunGameFrameThreadPv)
0x66b7c1 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : SDL_thread.c
0x66bc04 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : SDL_systhread.c
0x66bc5d : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : SDL_systhread.c
Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll) File in wrong format
0x74631287 : C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll : itow_s
Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll) File in wrong format
0x74631328 : C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll : endthreadex
Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\syswow64\kernel32.dll) File in wrong format
0x748633aa : C:\Windows\syswow64\kernel32.dll : BaseThreadInitThunk
Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll) File in wrong format
0x76f09ef2 : C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll : RtlInitializeExceptionChain
Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll) File in wrong format
0x76f09ec5 : C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll : RtlInitializeExceptionChain
======end========

[UFOhunter]

FWIW, the crashes were not caused by UFO-AI. They got suddenly worse and worse out of the blue, so I checked my system for everything - viruses, updates, re-installed gfx drivers from scratch, even checked cables and slots and cleaned everything from dust.

Whatever it was, it is gone now. Since then I've been able to play the game with only some of the known probs, but no crashes anymore.