Complaint: Approved model causes game crashes

[MN Lahmar]

Hello guys, sorry i can't find the suitable section for this complaint but i wanted to share this with you.
This model Skullblaze Torch causes crashes, doesn't work and it will destroy your map after you import it and save it. I urge someone to try to fix it or remove the approval. Thank god i had a backup for my map.
The creator of this model has not been seen since April 2017. I hope someone fixes it or remove its approval. (Not trying to be harsh but i wanna alert everyone i even shared my doubts in the World Editor Help Zone. Does this model work fine for you?)

 

[Ralle]

Hey @Vortballat, can you fix this model?

 

[General Frank]

Hey @Vortballat, can you fix this model?

The user has not been online for many months and quite frankly, I don't think the author has a good understanding how wc3 models work.
I fixed most stuff, removed potential flaws and made it less a pain in the butt to work with.

 

[GhostWolf]

@General Frank Can you elaborate on what the actual cause for the crash was? thanks.

 

[General Frank]

I cannot really pin point what exactly was the cause really, I just scrubbed the the things that I personally found very wrong.

Some things that are I found a puzzling to me:
1. Having an animation at ZERO length is kinda wrong.
I choose a frame for the animation from '0' to '1000'.

2. Moving particle effects via translation instead of setting their position directly in the node is not efficient.
Corrected that.

3. Stacking particle effect on another instead of just attaching them to a bone directly.
Fixed that. Maybe has also to do with the problem explained in 2.

4. Some geosets had the same material. Merged those together.

 

[Ralle]

In case GhostWolf wants to keep a record of this I am attaching the model here. I will replace the uploaded one with the one Frank provides. Good job Frank!

 

[General Frank]

No problemo.

 

[GhostWolf]

The problem is that the stand animation is zero length. Giving it any length fixes the issue. However, at the same time, if the animation isn't fixed, but the particle emitters are removed, it also works.
This might mean there's a division by the animation length in the code handling particle emitters. A very likely thing, considering there are many dynamic things in particle emitters that depend on the animation.
I suspect a similar crash would happen when using other dynamic things in a zero length animation (particle 1 emitters aka super spray, event objects, etc.)

I always treated zero length animations as warnings, not sure if I should treat them all as errors now, or just when there's a particle emitter running. Or maybe just the stand animation. Hmmm.

/Edit
Tried adding a Walk animation with zero length to this model and fixing the Stand animation length to something positive.
Oddly enough, the game did not crash upon ordering the unit to move.

/Edit 2
If the Walk animation is not at frame zero, and has zero length, the model isn't even loaded by the world editor.

 

[General Frank]

So what we learn is that an animation with a non-zero length should be added at any time.

 

[GhostWolf]

That is a sure thing, it makes no sense to have an animation of zero length.
I am mostly interested where it stops being a warning (might mess up graphics in some cases) and turns into an error (crashes the world editor or the game).

 

[MN Lahmar]

The user has not been online for many months and quite frankly, I don't think the author has a good understanding how wc3 models work.
I fixed most stuff, removed potential flaws and made it less a pain in the butt to work with.

Thank you for fixing the models and uploading them most people would've gave up on them. Good work.
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