Question and a Forum Problem

from Elemental Forums

1.  Question:  I like to help myself, when possible, rather than troubling the support staff.  So I like to find problems similar to mine and apply the solutions.  That's what support forums are usually for, I think.

Anyway, I'm having troubles with 1.1 crashing.  So I'd like to find crash posts and responses.  However, the crash posts don't seem to have responses (except occasionally for complaints that not enough files were provided).  Does that mean that this forum is used as the first stage of communication with the support staff and not as a place to reference similar problems to one's own?

 

2.  Forum Problem: 'search' feature does not do anything for me except:

"Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET4.0C)
Timestamp: Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:36:41 UTC


Message: Object required
Line: 252
Char: 2
Code: 0
URI: https://forums.elementalgame.com/js/base.js"

 

4,210 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

the majority of the crashes are crashes with interactions between windows, drivers, memory leaks, and occasionally bsd re-boots, the majority of the crashes have been the memory leak issues which the developers are the only ones that can fix which is why they have not responded to them even though (I am told) that the crash report has been read & downloaded.

regarding the forum search issue, do you have java installed?

the search uses the google search engine which from the error you gave is looking for a javascript file

harpo

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I had an oem version of jre.  I spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out if it corresponded to the current java (shouldn't be too far out of date on this 'puter).  I gave up and installed the latest from the java site.  Problem solved.  Thanks for the... ummm java-ward direction you pointed me in.

About Stardock support: so all these crashes are bugs???  Holy smoke!

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

yes the smoke WAS a LOT thicker (more frequent crashes), but it is steadily thinning with each patch, but it is still thick enough to irritate most people

harpo

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Oh are there patches after 1.1?  I updated to that and that's when it started crashing.  I think I asked Impulse if there were any updates but, as usual, Impulse did not give me feedback.  It just thought about it for a while and then stopped thinking.  I assumed it would say something if there was an update.  Was that a safe assumption?

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

1.10 is the current version, but the crashes were a lot more frequent back in the 1.01-1.05 time.

if you want to find out the last thing done in elemental then look at the debug.err(in your my docs/my games/elemental folder) in notepad after a crash, AND BEFORE you start elemental again, and look at the last few lines, this will give you an idea as to what might be causing the problem

harpo

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, the error file ends with 6-8 pages of these:

Debug Message:  WARNING: CoreRefCount Object 2D76B24C is being destroyed but it still has 2 references
Debug Message:  WARNING: CoreRefCount Object 2D76B1D8 is being destroyed but it still has 2 references
Debug Message:  WARNING: CoreRefCount Object 2D76B164 is being destroyed but it still has 2 references
Debug Message:  WARNING: CoreRe...

Don' mean nuthin' to me.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

nor to me, but it does suggest an issue either with multithreaded ai and a faction dieing,

had you killed an enemy sov in hostile (to it) territory?

harpo

 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Not I.  And it's crashing (this particular crash, anyhow) when I attempt to move a group of my guys.  I don't have the auto-end-turn thing turned on, so it is not processing someone else's turn when it happens, either...

Wait a minute.  I had just killed a bandit group.  Is that an sov?  This was the next turn after that and I am attempting to move my guys for the first time after the battle.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

no, but it might be the point, as a army of bandits is still an army, and with multithreaded ai, it is processing in the background, back in 1.09 and earlier it was singlethreaded with a little extra threading for sound and animation(by obersvation of core usage in a quadcore hyperthreaded system.

harpo

 

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

So the only way to continue this game is to restore from prior to the battle and then avoid attacking the bandit.  And hope that one of my competitors does not kill him too, I guess.  Therefore in its current state, you can't count on being able to finish a game.  I've spent more time on it than I should since it's not really my kind of game.  It is more of a scavanger hunt than a strategy game.  I think I'm done.