[Crash] Unknown crash of my Campaign Map (1.31.1)

[Tuwnew]

Hello everyone!

I have a persistent issue on one of my map I made for my custom campaign. It happens only on my Chapter Seven: Sifting the Ashes.
It bothers me a lot and though I've made some intense testing and debugging, I can't find WHY it crashes "randomly".

So today, I am asking if some of you may have an idea of why it crashes.

1. My map was made from Undead Campaign Map: Trudging through the Ashes where I removed every triggers, customs objects and units, and expanded terrain.

2. My triggers are quite simple: cinematics, quests, a few events and dialogues... No timer, no "Unit creation", a few spells only.

3. Custom Units are persistent throughout the whole campaign. It's the only map crashing, so I guess it does not come from this...

4. It's a 4vs6 map. While it's quite a "big confrontation" for a campaign, it's not that much, so no lagging, nothing...

5. No crash if you are using Whosyourdaddy. After destroying Purple and Orange first bases, you can disable it and you don't crash.


Old file is available on my thread. Feel free to open it and check for triggers and all.
I can provide new version if wanted. There were a few changes made but it crashes anyway.

Thank you!

 

[Footman16]

Do you use any multiboards in the map?

 

[Tuwnew]

Do you use any multiboards in the map?

I don't. But now you say it, I use Dialog buttons, which is the only time of the campaign.
Does it leak or something?

 

[Footman16]

If you destroy a multiboard without first hiding it, it causes a crash. Might be worth looking into the Dialog buttons. If I had to guess, there's something that happens that is causing the crash. The number of leaks required to crash it would be substantial, and it would lag first before the crash.

 

[Tuwnew]

If you destroy a multiboard without first hiding it, it causes a crash. Might be worth looking into the Dialog buttons. If I had to guess, there's something that happens that is causing the crash. The number of leaks required to crash it would be substantial, and it would lag first before the crash.

The Dialog appears at the beginning and never after.

Here are some screenshots of this trigger:

Spoiler: First Trigger

Spoiler: Second Trigger

I've hidden "Else" stuff, because it's quite similar to "If" stuff.

Sorry for the few french words :S


EDIT: Technically, I never "destroy/hide" the Dialog. Should I add a specific trigger?

 

[Tuwnew]

Well, it doesn't come from it. I disabled it you can still crash.
It happens regularly around the same "event", when you attack first purple or first orange base. I've never had a crash after those two bases are destroyed.

 

[Footman16]

you attack first purple or first orange b

Could it maybe be an ability that isn't available until late enough in the mission if you attack vs if you whosyourdaddy destroy them earlier?

 

[deepstrasz]

3. Custom Units are persistent throughout the whole campaign. It's the only map crashing, so I guess it does not come from this...

Depends if you're using some other custom material not used in other maps. Textures could bug or even selecting some units. Depends on the case. That can happen based on the game version as well. Have you by the way tried that map on a newer patch?
Have you debugged by disabling all triggers related to those two bases if you think it might be a trigger issue?

 

[Remixer]

You should try to locate the source of the crash. I tried to check the triggers but could not find anything alarming that would directly crash the map - there are leaks in the triggers and they are done very inefficiently, but nothing so dramatic that would cause a crash or even notable slow-down unless the map takes tens of hours to finish.

None of your imported models seem to crash the map either (at least the editor), though I only browsed through the models briefly.

Now to narrow down the source you should make a list / markdown resources that are only present on this map, even better if you can tell the situation in which the map crashes:
1. Custom objects used only on this map (units, abilities, items).
2. Triggers that are running during the crash-window (there are not very complex ones and I could not find anything super alarming)
3. Custom resources that are used only on this map (skins, models)

Note that not only custom-made stuff can cause the game to crash: for example increasing the hero stat of a normal unit by picking up a tome used to crash the game (not sure if it is the case anymore).

 

[Tuwnew]

Could it maybe be an ability that isn't available until late enough in the mission if you attack vs if you whosyourdaddy destroy them earlier?

I'm not sure I understand. These two bases are the first to attack and destroy, and they're the only ones to crash.
The following bases don't crash and yet have practically the same units or abilites, if not more.

Depends if you're using some other custom material not used in other maps. Textures could bug or even selecting some units. Depends on the case. That can happen based on the game version as well. Have you by the way tried that map on a newer patch?
Have you debugged by disabling all triggers related to those two bases if you think it might be a trigger issue?

I have no more version around me. Reforged is crashing, but it's Reforged lol.
Now you say it, there are very few units not present in other maps. But, it should crash during the whole chapter anyway.

There are no triggers related during the crash, it's just a """big""" battle (far from being as big as in Arkain though...)

Spoiler: About the battle

There are two sides:

Purple is attacked by Yellow or Player. Here we see Yellow attacking with a squad:

Or on the opposite side, Dwarves attacking Orange:

It's just during these fights that it crashes. Sometimes it don't crash and I can destroy Orange (I mostly attack this base anyway), but I crash at Purple. Sometimes there are no crashes...


Sometime it crashes because Yellow attacks Purple, sometimes because Gray attacks Orange and one time when Light Blue attacked Orange... But all this stuff happened around the same time for each game.

 

[deepstrasz]

Hmm, have you tried enabling only the purple and orange AI and fight them yourself to see if it happens?
Also, I remember some researches might crash if not properly done, like the Initiate-Adept-Master ones for mage units. I'm thinking of this since you said it takes some time before the crash appears.

 

[Tuwnew]

You should try to locate the source of the crash. I tried to check the triggers but could not find anything alarming that would directly crash the map - there are leaks in the triggers and they are done very inefficiently, but nothing so dramatic that would cause a crash or even notable slow-down unless the map takes tens of hours to finish.

None of your imported models seem to crash the map either (at least the editor), though I only browsed through the models briefly.

Now to narrow down the source you should make a list / markdown resources that are only present on this map, even better if you can tell the situation in which the map crashes:
1. Custom objects used only on this map (units, abilities, items).
2. Triggers that are running during the crash-window (there are not very complex ones and I could not find anything super alarming)
3. Custom resources that are used only on this map (skins, models)

Note that not only custom-made stuff can cause the game to crash: for example increasing the hero stat of a normal unit by picking up a tome used to crash the game (not sure if it is the case anymore).

Thanks. It's what I am trying!

• Leaks surely exist, but I don't have any lags and it's mostly Hero Spells, easy to spot on the battlefield, and around the whole campaign. (If you want to edit Spells to remove leaks, feel free to do so )
• Obviously, there are no special units or whatever spawning during the crash. Most custom units are used throughout the map or campaign itself.
• I already tried to narrow some stuffs. First of all, Arcanist model is solely used here, but not its abilities. Months ago I did a playthrough without this unit, and it crashed as well. I just tried today by removing Air Elemental as its model seems to have an issue during death animation, but nope, crash.

I will try to do a complete list.

I am curious about the known crash, if you have any in mind.

I have attached the last version of my map, if anyone want to try it. You can play directly Chapter Seven and it takes less than 30mn (hopefully) to defeat Orange or Purple normally.

Alliance Ashes for Debug Purposes

www.hiveworkshop.com

Hmm, have you tried enabling only the purple and orange AI and fight them yourself to see if it happens?
Also, I remember some researches might crash if not properly done, like the Initiate-Adept ones for mage units. I'm thinking of this since you said it takes some time before the crash appears.

I haven't.
Can you tell me more about this Initiate-Adept?

 

[Footman16]

Another could be morphs, if you select a unit with it's dependency equivalents not properly set up, that can crash.

 

[Tuwnew]

Another could be morphs, if you select a unit with it's dependency equivalents not properly set up, that can crash.

I don't have any Morphs in my map (well I think).

I read somewhere someone having troubles with Hero Glow Attachment. I use two in this map. I will try without it.
EDIT: Welp, it crashed.

"I've found if a custom AI script for a custom race doesn't have enough space to build a base,
it crashes the game if you attack that base in game while it is fully built up to its maximum."
-> will try this later. Yes I do keep notes here

 

[deepstrasz]

Did a test run letting all AI bases fight amongst themselves with warpten and greedisgood. All of them researched to max besides the yellow AI which did not research any mage ranks or troop attack or armour upgrades.
No crashes. Been playing around 1h or more. Saved Diana though. Only destroyed the orange base in the east, early on and ran with whosyourdaddy through all enemy bases in case that triggers anything like attack waves/starts running any AI scripts.

read somewhere someone having troubles with Hero Glow Attachment. I use two in this map. I will try without it.

Never seen that happen.

EDIT: ha-ha-ha; it just suddenly exited the game after a while upon maximizing the game :\

"I've found if a custom AI script for a custom race doesn't have enough space to build a base,
it crashes the game if you attack that base in game while it is fully built up to its maximum."

Never seen that one happen either. It might be related to the AI though or to something later in the game since it kinda seems to happen around a certain time.

 

[Tuwnew]

Did a test run letting all AI bases fight amongst themselves with warpten and greedisgood. All of them researched to max besides the yellow AI which did not research any mage ranks or troop attack or armour upgrades.
No crashes. Been playing around 1h or more. Saved Diana though. Only destroyed the orange base in the east, early on and ran with whosyourdaddy through all enemy bases in case that triggers anything like attack waves/starts running any AI scripts.


Never seen that happen.

EDIT: ha-ha-ha; it just suddenly exited the game after a while upon maximizing the game :\


Never seen that one happen either. It might be related to the AI though or to something later in the game since it kinda seems to happen around a certain time.

Thanks for testing!

I think there was an issue with Yellow in the public release. It should be fixed in my pastebin.
Anything happening when it crashes? Like a fight, or something?
Do you have an error window when crashing? Personally I don't. And which version do you use, just in case?

 

[deepstrasz]

Anything happening when it crashes? Like a fight, or something?
Do you have an error window when crashing? Personally I don't. And which version do you use, just in case?

Played on 1.31.1. Yeah, seems to be related to the dwarves attacking or being attacked by orange, maybe. Trying to confirm. It regularly happens after a yellow attack (hero+4 types of mages) on the nearby purple. Also, the time when orange attacks Granis' base with Deathscythe; and Grim heads out.

EDIT: loaded a couple of times; now past that moment with no crash. Seems inconsistent.
EDIT2: reached a point where it crashes immediately after load. I wonder if it has anything to do with corpses or units exploding on death because of meat wagons or mortar teams since the green were fighting the dwarves.

 

[Tuwnew]

Played on 1.31.1. Yeah, seems to be related to the dwarves attacking or being attacked by orange, maybe. Trying to confirm. It regularly happens after a yellow attack (hero+4 types of mages) on the nearby purple. Also, the time when orange attacks Granis' base with Deathscythe; and Grim heads out.

EDIT: loaded a couple of times; now past that moment with no crash. Seems inconsistent.

Grim is a good suspect. But you see, there are no clear clues. Pretty weird huh?

I have no idea what to do, so weird. I might try to redo tests without some factions, like Dwarves, but removing a whole player-slot might be a bit overkill.
By the way, I haven't edited Meat Wagons nor Mortar Teams (Perhaps a bit for techtree purposes).

To me, it looks like at this particular point of the map, there are many things happening, and it crashes. If you remove "those things" by using whosyourdaddy for example, you might play normally for the rest of the map. But how to determinate what are those things happening?

 

[deepstrasz]

Not sure if related to Disease Cloud (probably not); here it might look like the skeleton touching the dwarf causes the crash but who knows what else happens on the map at the same time.

 

[Tuwnew]

Not sure if related to Disease Cloud (probably not); here it might look like the skeleton touching the dwarf causes the crash but who knows what else happens on the map at the same time.
View attachment 451195

lol, plaguing a skeleton unpleases Kel'Thuzad perhaps.
I can see Yellow is battling green. It might come from here too. If you load and move really fast, do you see what's happening?

 

[deepstrasz]

I can see Yellow is battling green. It might come from here too. If you load and move really fast, do you see what's happening?

Maybe someone kills the Archmage the wrong way ?

EDIT: a far fetched one. Maybe some Animated Dead units don't like exploding on death/expiration?
Also, any A Unit Enters Region triggers that might do this, potentially?

 

[Tuwnew]

View attachment 451196

Maybe someone kills the Archmage the wrong way ?

EDIT: a far fetched one. Maybe some Animated Dead units don't like exploding on death/expiration?
Also, any A Unit Enters Region triggers that might do this, potentially?

Hmm, it might be. There is trigger adding Green's new Units into a Unit Group. Perhaps it causes some issues with summoned/reanimated.
It's not the case for Orange or Purple though.

 

[deepstrasz]

Hmm, it might be. There is trigger adding Green's new Units into a Unit Group. Perhaps it causes some issues with summoned/reanimated.
It's not the case for Orange or Purple though.

That should be checked indeed.
Is there also any Raise Dead/Animate Dead or similar spell that might target heroes?

Another improbable one: an FX as that of an aura that might apply on some units and crash the game for some model defect reason.

 

[Remixer]

I am even struggling to test the map and its abilities since even if I add an ability to a unit it does not show up ingame.

 

[deepstrasz]

I am even struggling to test the map and its abilities since even if I add an ability to a unit it does not show up ingame.

Run the map through the custom campaign menu.

EDIT:

Spoiler

Is that ability on some unit? I haven't been able to find one with it and I presume not since it's named Unused but just to double check.

 

[Tuwnew]

Run the map through the custom campaign menu.

EDIT:

Spoiler

View attachment 451200

Is that ability on some unit? I haven't been able to find one with it and I presume not since it's named Unused but just to double check.

It's not. It was for Necrolyte before, but I changed that and kept the ability in reserve.

 

[Tuwnew]

Sorry for the double post, but I pursued my investigation.

I noticed a thing:
- my custom abilty Light's Will gives a Reincarnation ability to a targeted unit for 7 seconds. So if it dies, it can revive, but only if killed in this span.
However, my trigger is a bit simple: it adds a new ability and removes it after 7 seconds. While it doesn't crash everytime you remove the ability to a dead unit, I am pretty it does crash a few times for this reason.
It is inconsistent, though.


Yet, I did a play through WITHOUT this ability at all and it crashed around the usual times.

Do you think this ability is an issue and could be improved?

 

[deepstrasz]

Do you think this ability is an issue and could be improved?

Not sure how it crashes but you could add a condition for the ability to be removed only if the unit is still alive.

Try testing without any custom scripted abilities to see if the unknown source crash still appears.

 

[A]mun]

This reads like a proper thriller up to this point!

I recently read somewhere:
"Setting an ability (adding or incrementing it) to a DEAD unit may cause a crash"
- tmmcv

Which is quite a pickle, since many things MAY cause a crash, but not always do.
Unless you have found the issue?

 

[Tuwnew]

This 'may' might explain the weird behavior.

I lacked time recently to pursue my investigation. I disabled all my custom spells ans it still crashed.

Once, it crashed everytime when doing testing, I stop and retry next day... And I wasn't able to crash, while I made no changes from last time. Pretty weird behavior.

So IDK, there may be multiples reasons to crash.

 

[Duckfarter]

This map looks oddly similar to another map that had this issue with Call to arms but there was an orc base on the top right and more human bases. The normal and alternate forms were incorrect. Looking at yellows base it seems that Peasant (Dalaran) and Keep (Dalaran) has Call to arms abilities with incorrect unit types. That will cause a crash when the unit attempts to return to its normal form.

 

[A]mun]

This leads me to believe, that a faulty model/object editor setting is the culprit - and not a trigger.
But why aren't the other maps crashing then...

Would you upload the testing version again? Seems to be gone.

 

[Tuwnew]

This map looks oddly similar to another map that had this issue with Call to arms but there was an orc base on the top right and more human bases. The normal and alternate forms were incorrect. Looking at yellows base it seems that Peasant (Dalaran) and Keep (Dalaran) has Call to arms abilities with incorrect unit types. That will cause a crash when the unit attempts to return to its normal form.

I haven't checked this issue (yet). It may be a cause of crash, but a new one since in all my testings, Human Bases were not under attacks.

This leads me to believe, that a faulty model/object editor setting is the culprit - and not a trigger.
But why aren't the other maps crashing then...

Would you upload the testing version again? Seems to be gone.

Here it is.

Alliance Ashes Debug Version

www.hiveworkshop.com

Pretty sure it still crashes, though.
I did some tests on putting a lot of units battling each others till it crashes.

 

[Kasrkin]

Whatever it is seems to happen in the first thirty minutes of gameplay, if you somehow get past that by reloading then the rest of the mission plays out fine.

 

[deepstrasz]

Whatever it is seems to happen in the first thirty minutes of gameplay

Yeah, whatever the cause either something related to the AI has to be calculated to understand what it might be at that time, or an upgrade/research, ability, trigger, anything around that time, of course.

 

[Tuwnew]

I agree with you: I was never able to reproduce bug after that timing (or approx' when first Purple and Orange are destroyed).

Yet, I was able to reproduce this by doing some tests as in this video:

 

[deepstrasz]

I am not able to detect anything particularly wrong between the troops fighting shown in the video.
If you still have the save file please check out what's happening in the green base where yellow attacks and if gray triggers anything with those venturing troops.

EDIT: some ideas for further testing that. Try without units being able to cast spells (+/- upgrades like poison and whatnot); try without any damage and armour upgrades, then weed out by removing a unit type (like first take out the Abomination, then a skeleton and so on; do the same with the other factions).

 

[Kasrkin]

Reloaded an earlier save the 4 in this case and it didn't crash this time. There are no invisible models as far as I can tell, the doctor seems to be gone in this version, undead only start upgrading after the base protecting vandermar itself is killed, but legion agents is always 0/0 for weapons and armor and likely mastery as well.

I don't know if it could be the generic undead scourge green faction with its random buildings that always try to train units to be sent to the outlying goldmine.

That's all I've really noticed while playing.

 

[Tuwnew]

Okay Legion's Agents upgrades are fixed. Was a small issue.

Maybe that generic faction can cause some issues. It's the one I used for my tests afterall. But that would be weird though, they don't do much.
But it's worth the try I guess.