Cursed missions

[bardosy]

I have question and answer for the community...

I played a few ArmA missions (from the net) whitch was bugged: when the player try to load a privously saved state, the ArmA crashed to the desktop. I thought the mission maker who did this mission, made a mistake or use a bad script or anything and I deleted the mission from my PC. But at the weekand it happened with me:

I made a huge, complex mission with many units, triggers, scripts... Everything was fine, but when I saved and later loaded, the ArmA CTD. I thought maybe one of the sript caused this problem. But I was wrong, because in the very begining of mission - when no script runs - happened the CTD again, when I save and load. (If you never load, the mission was playable and no errors, no bugs...). I didn't find better word: this mission is not bugged, this mission is cursed.

Then I tried something: I create a new, empty mission and started to copy the units, triggers, WPs to the new mission one by one. And After every item copied, I tried the save and load.
Once - when I copied half of original mission - I copied a single SLA soldier (a rifleman) and the new mission cursed too. So that SLA soldier was the problem. I delete this soldier form my original mission and that works!!! Then I tried to create a new simple SLA rifleman again (in the middle of a military base) and the mission cursed again (ArmA CTD).

It was funny. I (and you) used this SLA rifleman in every missions and once he cursed a mission.
I don't know what was that... It was a miracle.

Well, my question is: what was that?

And my advice, tipp&trick: If you found your mission cursed too, follow my lead and create a new, empty mission! Then copy the items one by one and after a copy, try the save/load procedure. And when the new mission is cursed, that unit was the problem...

[h-]

Smells badly like a game bug 
I thought they would've fixed this already.
Unless the 1.07 beta patch has introduced such a glitch (if you're using it)..

In OFP this exact same problem appeared when you saved a mission with lots and lots of global variables (this problem was riddled with saves using the first ECP I think), there was too much data for the save game function to handle it and thus the save file got corrupted and crashed OFP when it was loaded.
Why that didn't happen with local variables I don't know, maybe the save game bit in the engine treated local and global scripting scopes differently..

Maybe you ought to post the mission of yours so we all (willing) could test and see whether it happens with us as well..

[Cheetah]

Have you looked at the ID of the soldier you placed? Might be a repeating problem, caused by a object with a particular ID which causes all the CTDs.

It sure is interesting to know more about this as those CTDs might ruin a lot of possible complex and enjoying missions.

[bardosy]

h- : I fixed my mission, but I'll try to recreate the mistic bug and post here...

cheetah: I checked the SLA soldier's ID in the mission.sqm and it was unique.

[Planck]

His ID wasn't 666 by any chance was it?

Yes, post an example if you can recreate the problem so everyone else can get a chance to experience it.


Planck

[bardosy]

It's shame... or luck! But I couldn't restore the cursed state of my mission.
I hope I never found this, but if I do, I will post it here...

[LeeHunt]

Unfortunately I have the same problem-- created a lengthy mission with about 300 units, 15 global variables, multiple background scripts running all the time, 15 cutscenes, etc etc. 

I was curious how to go about

A) the bug hunt

B) designing a mission efficiently to reduce saved game "corruption"

I've made the mission as efficient as possible for lag, with triggers being deleted as they are used, variables rendered nil after they are used, and deleting just about everything else as quickly as i can, but this is new and tricky.

I guess i could copy one by one as Bardosy successfully did, but it would not be fun!      

Have you also noticed the game crashes if you play use hintc to freeze the game and give a hint message, and then the player does not click continue in a reasonable amount of time?

thanks!

[The-Architect]

I had a base and I wanted to test arcs of fire and such, I place sthree squads of SLa from the groups menu and got CTDs.

[LeeHunt]

FYI gentlemen,

I cleaned up my mission, reduce the number of global variables to 12...made sure all my scripts end in "exit" and made sure all used triggers deleted, etc etc etc. More importantly i saved the mission as a new name and transferred all the scripts and voiceovers to the new folder.  Not sure which of those steps ultimately made the difference, but i can now save my game and reload after quitting ArmA with no problems.    Phew!  Lotta work NOT down the drain...

[CrashDome]

Not sure, but is it possible that the scripts looping is what is crashing ArmA?

Do you use SQS of SQF? What happens if you make one loop versus two loop or three, etc...

What happens if you do the same switching from SQS to SQF?

[LeeHunt]

Good question Crashdome.  There are a few looping scripts, one that runs the entire game and executes scripts every 2.5, 5 and 45 minutes.  Most of these scripts launched from the big looper are one offs.  I don't know how to use SQF functions really yet (next mission).  I think the immense number of global variables before might have had a lot to do with it.  Though i cleaned up the scripts and made sure things were more efficient, the global variables was the biggest change.  Gonna post the mission within the next couple weeks, have to finish it first (takes 10-20 hours!) before I ask others to