New Histories Bug

This is very frustrating but I have to report a bug with the new Histories System. So far I've written 45 new Histories and may even write more for variety. The problem I'm running into is that after viewing your 6th History, regardless of clan or sex, the game crashes. I know this has been a known bug for Bloodlines since the beginning and might have even been the reason why Troika took it out of the game before release, but it's essential for these new Histories to be a part of TFN 1.3.

I contacted Wesp yesterday because he and AJ supposedly "partially" fixed this in UP 8.9. It turns out, what we understand is that each History you view creates a "character" and after viewing too many, it overloads client.dll and crashes the game. They removed the starting items (except for unarmed) and that helped quite a bit however it still crashes even for 8.9 on occasion. I tried this same fix for TFN 1.3 but it didn't help whatsoever.

I'm narrowing the issue down to the amount of trait effect changes passed out to each History. If I removed the trait effect changes, I can freely view as many Histories as I want without the game crashing, but obviously Histories are worthless if they don't make changes to the character, what's the point.

I'm not sure how I'm going to handle this bug. The History System is critical and the backbone for TFN 1.3, and the Histories work fantastic and I love them, but having it crash every 6th History viewed is going to make character creation frustrating and will flood us with bug reports and complaints.

I dunno what to do, I may just have to release 1.3 with this bug and cross my fingers. I can announce that this is a known issue that can't be fixed, kind of like the higher level disciplines on the mouse wheel.

Any thoughts from anyone?

Ah well... It happens to me even in unmodded Bloodlines. Hardly a surprise.
I guess write a warning and release the mod.

Would it be possible to make the game save only the last character (or two) it creates with a history?
Or make a script to flush client.dll? Loose ideas, ignore them if they are worthless...

Well I decompiled client.dll with a DLL editor and honestly, it's just a bunch of crazy binary stuff and ASCII characters, nothing that I can manipulate. Those are both good ideas but I just don't understand the coding. I guess if Troika, Wesp, and AJ couldn't figure it out, there's little hope for me too.

I think your right about slapping a warning on it and releasing it as is. I just know we're going to get a ton of complaints and bug reports from it.

Any other thoughts from anyone?

no idea, but if you do publish just the warning, I request that you also include a text document with all the backgrounds. Simply their descriptions would do for me, though most people would probably also want the dot effects.

malak wrote:

no idea, but if you do publish just the warning, I request that you also include a text document with all the backgrounds. Simply their descriptions would do for me, though most people would probably also want the dot effects.

I thought about doing that but figured nobody would look at it. You think people would want that?

I would. Both description and stat bonuses.

I DID IT, I FINALLY FIXED IT!!!!

After 16 hours I finally figured out why viewing the 6th History would crash the game. Believe it or not, you can't have 2 stat bonuses too many times in the same trait effect. And in this case, every history had a +1 to a Attribute and a +1 to an Ability. As soon as I moved the bonuses over to Feats, it fixed the issue completely. I can freely view as many Histories as I want now!!

Stupid Bloodlines engine!

So what you did was change the trait effect so that it gives a bonus to the feat rather than the ability or attribute?

Silly game engine.

Well... Congrats, Zer0!

I can't even believe the cause was so dumb... VtMB's engine is so special...

Dragatus wrote:

So what you did was change the trait effect so that it gives a bonus to the feat rather than the ability or attribute?

Exactly, but after looking at it I think I actually like this way better. The +1 Attribute/Ability was too much of a bonus because it affected more than 1 feat. This way, you are good at just the Feat, not multiple feats that have nothing to do with your background. This also gives you less of a bonus making the game slightly harder, and more realistic to your background.

So, the engine is dumb making me do something I didn't think of but turned out better than the end product would've been, so in the end, as frustrating as this bug was, turned out to be a good thing.

Yay!

Now that you can freely view the histories without TFN crashing, do I still need to make a list of all the histories? If so, do you want it in a .txt format or maybe something nicer like .doc, .docx, or .pdf?

Would asking for pdf be too much?

Feral wrote:

Would asking for pdf be too much?

Not at all, I would probably create it in Microsoft Word and then convert it over so really I'd have a docx and pdf format, whichever the player wants to view. Where should I put these files in the packaging of TFN? Should I stick them in the root folder, maybe have it auto-open after installation as an option?

Zer0Morph wrote:

I'm an American badass.

We're not worthy!

malak wrote:

We're not worthy!

Thank you, thank you very much!

Hail to the Bloodlines engine!

Grats you found a way. Otherwise it would totally suck if it would slow down or even halt the progress of 1.3

Zer0Morph wrote:

Should I stick them in the root folder, maybe have it auto-open after installation as an option?

Somewhere hard to miss for sure... Half of the people will miss it anyway ;-)

kyoden wrote:

Hail to the Bloodlines engine!

Grats you found a way. Otherwise it would totally suck if it would slow down or even halt the progress of 1.3

Yeah, I was seriously bugging out about this for 2 days. It was nice to know that the histories worked, but really pissing me off that you could only view 6 of them at a time before the game crashed. I know it would piss off players too, not to mention I added some amazing character editor music when looking at your stats and that would get interrupted too. The whole thing was a mess, so I'm so glad a fix was found.

Feral wrote:

Zer0Morph wrote:

Should I stick them in the root folder, maybe have it auto-open after installation as an option?

Somewhere hard to miss for sure... Half of the people will miss it anyway ;-)

Probably the root folder then. I could also see about posting them in the installer window, but then again the window is already squeezed for space with all of the changes from each version in there. I'll figure something out, maybe I can just have it as a file you can download separately on ModDB and the TCI forum.

Okay so I've spent the last 10 minutes trying to get TFN to crash by flipping between clans, histories, and genders, and I can't get it to crash anymore even if I try. HAHA!!! It's fixed, I'm SOOO happy!!

Great. Now stop trying to crash the game and continue working on the mod.

Hmm....now there is a place I've never been. Sitting before a desk, hearing the mumbles of a lunatic, which consists of nothing but...

"Come on, crash? Please?"

"You know you want to, so do it!"

"Oh, please. Do the trick where the train runs into the fake tunnel? Please?"

"People say this engine is unstable, but I can't get it to crash."

Personally, I've always taken that massive freakout train the moment I have a game crash. Nearly ready to flip this desk(which is a lot more restrained with this new screen I'm looking at) with a yell of...

"What the hell happened NOW?"

Of course, if it would be Oblivion, it's more like...

"*sigh* It would take giving something worth it to Hermaeus Mora to figure this out."

That aside, I'll grab a shovel and heap the praises too.

HAHA you guys are hilarious! Alright, I'll stop trying to break my creation and continue building it, but just know, IT'S REALLY STABLE NOW!!