"Access Violation"
 

Dear MBT Community,

I am having a problem loading the data for a few of my own scenarios in ScenHack. The scenarios in question are using edited units - from my mods of OOBS 44, 35 and 42. Other scenarios using these don't fail to load up, however.

Now most of them were just "junk scenarios" to test out this or that unit in combat but one of them is actually a pretty good one and one I'd like to release so although it is playable in spite of this mysterious error it would be better if a solution could be found.

I get the following errors: "Access violation at address: 657A696C..." or "...417A5028".

Does anyone know what all of this means?

At first I thought it might have something to do with faulty encyclopaedia entries (dreaded "ü, ö or ä", I missed the first few times when cleaning them up), but I went through the likely candidates, eliminated them and then checked again only to find that this was not the problem.

Then I thought it might be an OOB error. Took a look around and found nothing to suggest that this was the case.

Could it be an lbm problem, an icon problem or perhaps a problem with infantry loadouts or maybe even a problem with the maps or something like that?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Monty

Re: "Access Violation"
 

That sounds like a PC memory issue to me.

Re: "Access Violation"
 

If the supplied scenarios etc all load fine, with the supplied stock OOBs then there maybe a problem with your custom stuff.

Have you tried clearing any scenario introductions (those may have illegal characters in there, not just unit OOB text files), in fact ensure any of your new scenarios text files of any description dont have non standard ASCII.

Also, focus on any Icons you have made yourself. If scenarios (or a generated battle using them) that try to use your new stuff cause a crash then you may have a bad Icon in there.

However if they were working before - then go back to whatever you last did for customisation - a new text file, new OOB, or new icons you added lately.

I would firstly run the windows disk checking utility to see if you had errors, though. Perhaps run a bad sector check as well, overnight since the surface test takes forever. (One way to check that would be to copy the entire game over to a new folder elsewhere, and see if it starts to work in the new location, sometimes that will recover from a disk error, if the files themselves weren't too damaged).

Re: "Access Violation"
 

Hmmm. Interesting, Scenhack using a DB application, I recall Borland (maybe.) So, I would suspect the db is issuing the error as an Open issue.

Try to open the scenarios after applying a filter.

If you like, send them to me, I'll poke around with them on my setup.

=====

Re: "Access Violation"
 

Thanks for the suggestions and offers of help, guys! :)

Some of the .lbms I have don't quite fill the display stuff, for instance - limited to very few by now. Would that cause an error of this sort?

Not all of the scenarios had an introduction. So it can't just be that. Only the one I mentioned specifically. I'll check and see if there is something wrong with the intro. to it. Maybe there is a character knocking about that isn't ASCII - although that would crash the game, right? That hasn't happened.

In the OOBs themselves there is nothing wrong with the characters I have used for names etc.. Although some of the icons don't necessarily display perfectly in the shp file. The gunboats, for instance, have a yellow line through them in MOBHACK but not in the game and in the shp file also no yellow line.

Hmm... . maybe it's the infantry icons. They are not my work. But then all the German infantry would be pfutsch and that isn't the case either.

I'll tinker about a bit myself for a while and if I don't have any luck I'll take Shahadi up on his very generous offer of tech support.

Here is a funny one, what about spaces in the text files? What if, say I have the following entry: "Icon: AMM Picture: AMM*"

Does the extra space after picture cause problems?

Wish me luck! :D

Re: "Access Violation"
 

As far as I recollect Scenhack does not read scenario info text, display lbms or shps etc.

When exactly does it crash e.g. "Scenario loads OK but when I go to screen X and select unit Y .. kaboom!". In order to debug something, one needs to know exactly what path is taken to get to the fault. That is far more helpful than a vague and woolly statement of "it has an access violation error!" with no specifics.

For instance - is everything OK until you go to open the formation detail screen. (Which would point you to something being wrong formations wise with the OOB in question I'd infer!).

Then what is special about the scenario that causes the crash?. Do other scenarios using that hacked OOB load OK?. If they work OK, then what's the difference - uses some particular unit or formation or weapon the others don't, perhaps?. Or uses something that's no longer there since it got edited out of that OOB...

Re: "Access Violation"
 

It is purely a problem with ScenHack. In-game everything is fine. No crashes whatsoever. Just one or two scenarios in ScenHack fail to register properly when I click on the "make tables" function under the SQL tab - specifically six of mine all of which use modified OOBs (units from 35, 44, and 42).

Other Scenarios I've made have, however been processed by ScenHack without any problems and have produced tables in SQL without incident. These also used the same OOBs and even the same units in some cases.

I hope that clarifies things.

The game runs fine. It is just ScenHack that isn't happy and only in the case of those six scenarios. It loads incomplete tables for those scenarios and I get those two error messages each time (one for one half and one for the other).

It is not the Borland problem. I downloaded the fix for that and everything runs great now.

I have a disk version of the game so I've got full functionality.

Incidentally, I did a "Broken Link" check in the vanilla OOBs recently - USA and found a whole bunch of units with Nationality set to "0". Is this a bug?

Re: "Access Violation"
 

Scenhack was designed to find errors based on the GAME STANDARD OOBs.......not custom OOB's

Re: "Access Violation"
 

NO it's not a "bug"...........it's a way to build a company sized formation with sub formations that ONLY show up in the company but not on their own.

Re: "Access Violation"
 

Gotcha.

Re: "Access Violation"
 

Neat Trick! I had never realised this must immediately incorporate into my own custom OoBs.

Re: "Access Violation"
 

In which case then its probably something you have done in the barfing scenarios themselves that has caused a problem with the database table-building for some reason.

for example - have you done say, cross-attaching in the suspect ones but not in the ones that pass? Or put new leader names in and/or renamed units (but not in the ones that pass)?

Whatever it is that you did differently is the likely problem. It would be handy to know that, if you can isolate whatever that was.

If you could zip up a problem (and an OK) scenario (and any altered OOBs it needs too, any altered SHP and leader names etc as well) I'll be able to run that through the debugger and see what the thing is falling over trying to read in.

cheers
Andy

Re: "Access Violation"
 

OK. Thanks for the offer! :) That is a pretty big zip file though. I'll see what I can do. Will get on it by Friday - weekend at the latest.

It can't be cross-attaching or leader names as in both cases I've done that liberally. Same goes for loadouts, leader names and unit designations.

Re: "Access Violation"
 

Dear Andy,

I've given it a thought and I think the best thing I can do is recommend you download the mod itself - since all of the scenarios I'm having trouble with use most of the mod files anyway.

Then I'll send you a dropbox link by PM to the broken scenarios, which you can then download separately and check over.

That is, if you still fancy taking a peak.

I'll provide the links to the relevant posts in the mod section below:

Version 1.1P (the full mod compatible with v10 minus the recent updates):

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showp...&postcount=368

Version 1.1.5P (a mini update to 1.1P, which should be installed in case I missed anything from it in the latest version of the mod):

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showp...&postcount=396


Latest version (incl. nine scenarios, which are problem free vis-a-vis ScenHack and one which isn't - Scen. 413):

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showp...&postcount=400

Re: "Access Violation"
 

It's Andys call to make but I can assure you he is more than busy enough with the two official games without a new puzzle to deal with so really.......don't expect any action on this until after the updates are released.

Re: "Access Violation"
 

Yes, really not interested in having to download a huge mod file and try to figure out what itty little bit of wrong data or whatever it is that's causing the tool to hiccup. If it was just a scenario and an OOB, maybe - but not a virtual rewrite of the entire game in 3 parts, sorry!.

Maybe remind me again in the summer - right now, I have a patch to get sorted.

Re: "Access Violation"
 

Fair enough :).

Re: "Access Violation"
 

Indeed. It is not a bad idea. Would fix some of the clutter in my OOBs too.

Re: "Access Violation"
 

Clutter in the purchase screens and also useful to keep unusual and powerful subformations from being purchased by players that don't understand, or care, about the reason only one squad in a platoon has say an ATGM or sniper and would purchase three (four) per platoon if they could.

Re: "Access Violation"
 

This is the way we build AI only formations way back in the beginning to balance the picks being made. But in that case the WHOLE formation was renationalized so it didn't show up as a purchase option in the game for human players but the AI picked it happily and if we felt it needed a bit more of this or that we could add. Once we got the code that all started to change and those AI formations went the way of the Dodo but at the time it allowed us to build better formations for the AI to use so this is not a "new" trick by any measure. Some OOB's have more sub formations set up that way than others for all the reasons Suhiir mentioned

Don

Re: "Access Violation"
 

Thanks to Mobhack's suggestion via PM I've narrowed the problem units down and, would you believe it, solved the problem. It was as easy as removing a "." from the end of a unit name.

Fantastic.