Operation Trident

[JohnTC02]

Hi Kaapo,

All I can think of here is that it's causing problems when you both plant the c4 at the same time, it may be confusing the script causing the crash, the other thing to watch here is that this map is very big and setting off yo many effects will cause problems.

As no one else has had this problem it might be worth just planting the C4 on one objective at a time and see if that helps.

I have seen the "C STACK: graw2 (???) : ???" error before and this is normally when the game is running out of resources.

Looking at your system specs do you mean that you are running 512mb of video memory and 4gb of ram, if so the 512mb of video memory maybe causing problems for this game.

Don't know what else to suggest at the moment.

John

[kaapo]

Ok John, as soon as we have time we try it again but placing C4 on just one objective. Our equipment was able to handle all the maps/missions until now including >2000 AIs of Bogies Harry Lee so this should be no problem. I'll keep you update.

[VICMAAL]

Hi all

i played Trident twice......

didn´t have any problems so far.....

liked it very much, like i did with Dualzone!

That map is again that kind of maps i realy enjoy playing, long distance( big once)....not too much enemies, helistress can be manage very good!!!

it didn´t have or c any BUGS in there or any other problems!

Instead of Chalco, for example...this a map oldschool veterans like to play!!!!

If there r specific reports u need from me, then pls tell me bout them!!!!

It´s my first report ,so have mercy with me!!!

I can imagine that this map is on of those who will be on each server, full with aditctive freaks!!!!

U did well and pls continue cause GR family needs u as u can imagine!!!

Greetz VICMAAL

My PC INFO:

Prozessor: AMD Athlon™ 64*2 Dual Core 5000 +2.60GHz

RAM :2.00 GB

32 BIT System

Grafic Card ATI Radeon HD 4300 Series

[JohnTC02]

Thanks for testing Vic.

Your feedback is very good for your first attempt at beta testing, all you need to do is mention any problems you find while playing the mission.

Things to look for are:

Lag, does the game slow down at any point making it look jerky causing the AI to become slow to react.

Crashes, if the game crashes at any point in the mission you will get a crash log, just copy the text and post it here, it may help me find the problem.

Map issues, if you find any problems with the map, things like trees, buildings or small props not touching the ground or the AI getting stuck and running on the spot then post these here.

Objectives, if any of the objectives don't work as they should or you find them confusing as to what you should be doing then let me know.

Suggestions, if you have any ideas that may improve the mission or anything you would like to see added/removed then I would like to hear what you think.

Over time you will get to know what to look for, it just takes practise and a well trained eye for spotting things that I miss, some of the testers here are really good at this.

I will get round to releasing this soon but I would like to wait and see how Kaapo gets on when he tests the mission again.

I am doing another co-op mission but it's a bit delayed as I'm getting the next campaign mission ready plus I'm still tied up making a custom mission for one of the clans that requested a mission for personal use.

Thanks all,

John

[JackDoe]

John,

Do you get to pick which weapons the AI are holding when designing the game? I'm guessing not and that you get to pick a class of AI and they carry predetermined weapon types?

Edited February 16, 2011 by JackDoe

[daro48]

Hello John,

Last time i played with 4 players, the map was set on game delux server, and.... after few triggers we had lots of lags.

I'm sure now the cause of most laggy maps is because bad server properties. Our server hardware is to poor to take this map.

We didn't run every rtigger, we played close, and i've seen teleporting AI and helis.

But there is good thing at the end, the "lag mode" makes this map much easier hahaha.

I can confirm the AI shuting through the wall at extract point, he is inside the buildning and not only that he is shooting, he still threatens us shouting something in a foreign language....

And this is only one seriously bug which we found...

This guy inside the bunker, i think it was AI runing outside the rooms, because now, when we had lags after i run the trigger no one was shooting but i saw one guy running in my direction, so probably, this exftra fast forces killed me 2 times there.

The crashes we had: all of them we had because the game issues, not map. At the first time when i played expand and hard mode alone on my own server i died over 30 times and had no crash, I did not have the courage to press "Z" because i want to do this test to the end

the last time we had few crashes, but only players who died more than 5 times.

I'm full of respect for you, to make map and put all enemies on that huge space you had to take alot of time and patiecne.

Great job John!

Best Regards,

Daro.

[kaapo]

Ok John, we tried it again.

I put C4 on B and Erika did nothing

I hit X and Erika crashed:

Unhandled exception - access violation

After that she came back into the game and put C4 on A

when she hit X she crashed again:

Unhandled exception - access violation

Now she was ######

later in the came she crashed another time with hold_weapon - graw issue

(after she came back into the game she had 16fps for a while instead of ~30-45)

I crashed one time at the tank at the transmitter road (\inventory.dsf(-1): cant find member) - graw issue

(after I came back into the game I had 12fps for a while instead of ~26-40)

Alse we can confirm as well the AI shooting through the wall at extraction point and talking bad

That supply objective thing is very confusing.

Like I said before, our clients and dedicated server has no chnages since the last 30-50 missions.

We are playing LAN only coop (no Internet usage) with a own LAN circuit, no AV and no firewalls installed.

Sorry that we could not test again earlier!

.......but a great map and mission.!

[JohnTC02]

Thanks for testing again kaapo.

Sorry to hear you are still having these crashes, I don't know why this is happening to you as almost everyone else can complete the mission without any problems.

Don't know what else to suggest, anyone have any ideas here? I'm still thinking it's a resource issue as this map is huge.

Cheers,

John

[kaapo]

Yes, must be the resources. Do you think the server (Centrino 1600M with1GB and 2028 cache) is the problem? On the otherside the client who crashed last time on both objective was E6750@2800+HD4870/512+4GB memory using WinXP. Anyway, if nobody else has this problem it must be local, so go ahead and release this fine map.

With greetings from Klaus and Erika

[JohnTC02]

Looking at your pc specs the server pc is the weakest link in the chain, having said that the server doesn't need to be as powerful as the rest.

I'm not sure of the exact specs needed to run a pc as a dedicated server but a 1.6Ghz with 1gb of ram does seem a bit under powered especially when playing these large maps.

Cheers,

John

[JohnTC02]

hmm, didn't see anything aggressive in kaapo's post, or am I reading your reply wrong daro.

All he is saying is that the crash problems he is having is at his end not my map.

Before I upgraded my pc I was getting a lot of crashes when certain effects went off but now I hardly ever have any problems, even the game editor is very stable and that's saying something.

You need to have a fairly good pc to be able to play these high resource type of maps which this one is.

We have found in the past that if you are having game crashes when completing objectives which have a lot of effects it may help if you lower the PhysX level in the game.

Hope I'm making sense here as I'm suffering with a migraine, had it for two days but can't shake it of.

[daro48]

ok i'm sorry

[JohnTC02]

Hey, no problem daro!

Oh, you deleted your post daro, there wasn't any need to do that mate!

Edited February 19, 2011 by JohnTC02

[Brettp]

I am sorry I haven't posted much on the beta, been extremely busy and when I do play it's late and I either am too tired to post immediately or someone else has already mentioned the problem.

I have played through alone on easy several times and have never managed to complete the mission without crashing out. I get kaapo's ??? error and never explosion related.

i also get tons of lag on this map.

The rest of the stuff I've noticed has already been posted.

(I know I'm gonna get told it's resources...lol)

DC E8400 4gb 64bit GT240 on Gaming Deluxe Server.

[kaapo]

Just a question John, is there a big difference between the Trident mission and Harry Lee with 2,056 Enemy AIs? We played Harry Lee a couple time and we had about 2 crashes per try which is a good value I think. What PC handles the objective scripts, server or client? If it is the server then I believe the problem is my CentrinoM 1.6Ghz/2MB because your scripts are getting bigger (of course because of new addons) and need a more powerful CPU and memory. I need to check if I can add memory to it or building a new server using my spare parts I have left (I build one already but sold it because it was needed in the neighborhood).

Brettp, do you had often crashes with other maps in the past? Operation Dualzone was not small as well but we had no crash or just one when we tried it.....and we tried it at least 4 times.

This question is just to find out how to solve the resource problems which should be not a map/mission issue then. Daro wrote as well that he had problems on the Gaming Deluxe Server so it could be a server resource problem there and on my side as well.

[JohnTC02]

Hi Kaapo and brett,

Just a question John, is there a big difference between the Trident mission and Harry Lee with 2,056 Enemy AIs? We played Harry Lee a couple time and we had about 2 crashes per try which is a good value I think. What PC handles the objective scripts, server or client? If it is the server then I believe the problem is my CentrinoM 1.6Ghz/2MB because your scripts are getting bigger (of course because of new addons) and need a more powerful CPU and memory. I need to check if I can add memory to it or building a new server using my spare parts I have left (I build one already but sold it because it was needed in the neighborhood).

I don't think there is that much difference between mine and Bogie's map apart from the scripting, as you mentioned all these new features means more code, Trident has 3220 lines of code but I don't know how many there are in Harry Lee.

My earlier missions used to have around the 1000 mark so you can see there is a big difference in these new missions.

As to the scripts, yes they are primarily handled by the server, when playing on a dedicated server the script will be running from there, if you crash then return to the game you will rejoin at the point in the mission you were at when the game crashed (unless the server crashed as well), the server will then sync your scripts to the server.

(I know I'm gonna get told it's resources...lol)

Hmm, yep, well sort of. I'm seeing a pattern here, when I release small maps there are very few reports of crash problems but with the large maps it's normally the same people that have crash problems, as I mentioned before I used to have a lot of crashes until I upgraded my PC now I hardly have any problems apart from the usual GRAW2 bugs.

I'll leave you all to decide what could be causing this.

That's one reason I make different size maps!

John

[kaapo]

Thank you for the detailed information John, now I understand the need of more resources because of the 3000 lines.

What is interesting, I removed Cartel Campaign from the custom folder at both clients because I forgot that. Now Trident was the only one.

Then we started again day, hard but using ALL objectives!

.....now the game ran better!? I realized at least 5-8 more fps but do not understand why.

Anyway, we completed ALL objectives except suppy bunker and had NO CRASH at all.

Then I placed C4 on supply B and hit X..........no crash.

Then Erika placed C4 on supply A and hit X........both of us crashed with the same error as before and I looked at the sevrver and have seen a message:

Out of virtual memory, extend the paging file and while doing this may new memory requests will not be serviced!

After a couple seconds the server reload the map because all clients was off.

This means for me that you are right with the memory of the server as well as something is included in the supply A script which eat up that memory. Is this possible?

What we need to say a s well is we have almost completed everything this time and the end we played last time so we have the impression of this great mission and map. It's awesome!

A fantastic map and mission........no glitches was seen when we "walked" through

Thank you John

[Brettp]

Thx for that kaapo and John,

Kaapo, it definitely sounds like your server is out of resources if it is doing the virtual memory thing....(said as an IT guy, not a gaming expert, cos I have yet to become that., but IT is my trade.)

The only other map I battle with is Los Morelia\Morels? I cant remember, names too similar, but the one with the sandbags and MG at the start. That one is unplayeable for me most of the time. Most of the clan has a similar experience and we have removed it off the server completely as a result.

I don't know what these GD servers specs are but i will find out.

I can happily play through Harry 2056 without any crashes strangely enough, as seen as you asked, kaapo. If you want to compare notes, you are welcome to add me brettp1970 to your xfire, then we can keep the back and forth out of the forums until we have some solid answers for the guys.

Funny enough the older huge maps like leopardos, los mochis, gunrunner and even newer like saltillo, veracruz etc, give me no lag whatsoever, just the odd graw crash. Even dualzone now that you ask kaapo, gives me no lag. John what is the diffs between maps like dualzone and trident? Both big, but one has no problems?

Programming is a weird thing which I won't pretend to understand, so I think you have a difficult task with all these variants.

[JohnTC02]

Just as a comparison I have unbundled the Harry Lee map and there are 1070 lines of code in the mission script where Trident has 3220.

I also checked the world.xml, this is the file that contains all the info (data) for the actual map, IE, all the props, buildings, vehicles, humans, locations and ai graph.

Harry Lee has 15,998 lines of code while my Trident map has 28,265 lines of code.

Just because a mission has a huge amount if AI it doesn't mean that it's going to be a resource hog, it depends on the layout of the map (including the amount of textures) and how the AI are triggered, spawning a lot of AI at one trigger will cause problems.

As has been mentioned before, it's the amount of new features I have introduced in my last few maps that make them more suitable for higher spec machines, that can be seen by the big difference in the amount of code used.

This is why I make my maps different sizes, we then have something to suit everyone, these large maps with the new features are probably best played on a decent PC and dedicated server.

John

[Brettp]

Hi John,

Thanks for that. I know this particular forum has been drifting , but thanks for your explanations. One last silly question. What specs do you recommend \ do you have? Just so we don't buy below the minimum.

Mine: C2D E 8400 \ 4gb \ 64 bit\ GT 240. Where should I improve? Then we promise to get back on topic....

[JohnTC02]

We are not really getting of topic here as it's all related to the crash problems with the mission.

Anyway here is my spec:

INTEL Core i7-930 - 2.8 GHz.

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 - Socket 1366.

GeForce GTX 480 1536MB.

Western Digital Caviar 1TB SATAII 64MB Cache.

Enermax - Revolution85 ERV950EWT PSU.

Corsair CMP6GX3M3A1600C8 6GB.

When playing Trident my frame rate was between 190 to 230 fps, played it a few times without any crashes.

I wish I knew what the optimum spec was to run this game, all I do know is that the recommended spec from Ubi is way off the mark, all I will say is that get the best you can afford.

There was a thread here somewhere which mentioned the problems people were having when running a dedicated server on a dual core PC, the advise was to run the server on one core only as the dual core setup would make the memory leak issues with the game much worse causing the server to crash.

Now a question for any computer geek here, my i7 is supposed to be a quad core so why is it reporting 8 cores when I check the system performance in the task manager looking at the performance tab.

EDIT:

So it seems that GRAW2 doesn't like dual core machines.

Have a read though this thread starting at this post.

Then read this thread for the fix.

Edited February 21, 2011 by JohnTC02

[daro48]

1.

C2Q8400 2.66 GHz, socket 775

Motherboard gigabyte p41t-D3 on intel g41

4GB Kingstone RAM DDR3 1600 working in dualchanel,

geforce gts250 1 GB RAM DDR3

2.

C2Q8400 2.66 GHz, socket 775

Motherboard foxconn intel g31 mx-k

4GB Kingstone RAM DDR2 1066 working in dualchanel,

geforce gts250 1 GB RAM DDR3

For thes game ubi said:

intel pentium 4 or athlon 2.8 GHz,

1 GB RAM,

graphic card 256 MB radeon or nvidia 6/7/8

I had no crash on trident, but i had loads crashes after explosions on gunrunner map in both equipment specifications.

With both spec i have low framerate, anyway i reported this few times, sometimes frame rate is between 48-60, sometimes in 80-120

Today i set dedi server on my virtual pc with win xp- sp.3 first time i set 2 GB RAM, 2nd time 1 GB RAM, i havn't noticed any differents. In both tests my virtual cpu resources was busy with 100% all the time

To test this map, i set lan server on my 1st spec equipment with win7 x64- no crash

Now a question for any computer geek here, my i7 is supposed to be a quad core so why is it reporting 8 cores when I check the system performance in the task manager looking at the performance tab.

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=41447

because your cpu has Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology, which means 4 cores plus 4 "virtual"

[Brettp]

Thx , btw got some feedback on our server: Dell R300 2.5 quad Xeon @1333 8mb L2 Cache 2gb ram allocated out of 6

[Brettp]

So I applied the fix and ran through trident and got 55fps and flew through with zero crashes. (apparently our server was upgraded yesterday, so that may have something to do with it.)

I then ran through in superman mode and triggered all the triggers simultaneously and np. just dropped from 55 to 28 fps.

Only thing I noticed was my graw2.exe in memory still grew form 512mg to 1024 after playing.

So must be resources then I guess....

[JohnTC02]

Hi brett,

Pleased to hear you have got things running a bit better.

Only thing I noticed was my graw2.exe in memory still grew form 512mg to 1024 after playing.

That would probably be due to the memory leak issues with the game, it seems to be worse when playing coop missions but I have no idea why, throwing a chunk of memory at your computer will help.

This is why we are having more crash problems with these large maps, they start of using more memory than the small ones and as you play it seems as if you are loosing more free memory the longer it takes to complete the mission which results in the crashes that have been reported here.

The fix, make smaller maps!