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BC Forums => BC Technical Support => Topic started by: Flowrellik on January 29, 2015, 07:44:56 PM

Title: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Flowrellik on January 29, 2015, 07:44:56 PM
THIS TIME: I have been using ships from WickedZombie and Starforce productions.
Idk what is going on here but my Bridge commander keeps crapping out after a certain number of ships is added regardless of creator.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: FarShot on January 29, 2015, 11:59:09 PM
I don't have a solution.  What I have is a tear.  A tear from my eye, a tear of joy.  Joy from knowing that after all this time, there's still use, there's still life in this subforum.  *sniffle*  Bravo, Bridge Commander.  Bravo, Flowrellik.  Bravo, community.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Flowrellik on January 30, 2015, 01:12:52 AM
sighs...yeah.
I wish this game would still go even farther. seems like alot of people are just...dissapeared.
I remember back in the day I just started out as helping my dad with some weird mods, one of which is the Dambassador (the Red and Green menance). I gave him the texture idea for the ship.
I just hope that this site and this game will still have a good bit of life to it.
That said, I still need assistance....badly.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: FarShot on January 30, 2015, 03:50:16 PM
Something about... foundation or something?  I know a couple of the dudes here still have the game installed.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Bones on January 30, 2015, 04:50:17 PM
Might be BC engine hitting it's polygon render cap, or simply your machine can't handle certain ammount of ships ...

Mind telling us how many ships you added ?

Does console report anything useful ? go on and share the report here, it might help ;)
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: hobbs on January 31, 2015, 09:59:42 AM
agreed with bones.

also id check the texture sizes... mine goes down if i use even a few with 2048 textures infact i think even one does it... i have to resize them before use
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Mario on January 31, 2015, 04:23:28 PM
More details:
1. How many ships?
2. Texture sizes of ships?
3. After how much time of playing did the game crash?
4. Installed mods list?
5. Computer specs?
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Flowrellik on February 02, 2015, 09:26:20 PM
I have 95 ships in my files but for foundation I keep the stock ships off. I add one more ship and BC goes poof when I go quickbattle (and it doesnt matter what size of texture).

I am aiming for a Tos/TMP Era fleet.
Trying to keep the ships interesting. Each ship from each faction can have their own special arsenal and ways of attack, including special weapons for some ships. The branches are as follows: Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Gorn, Andromedan, Hydran, Orion, Lyran, and a few misc ships like Tholian and classic ships *even adding in the Promellian ships*
Most of the ships I have are of lower poly like starforce productions and wickedzombie's ships, but I added in Wiley's Excelsiors, both NX and NCC.
I might have a couple with hi-res'd textures that go above 2048, like DMAkula, TMP Constitution....TMP Miranda class USS Britain....
oh wow.
IS there a better way around this. I never had this problem before and its killing me.

Timing before this happened is limited. when I added one more ship then went Quickbattle, crashes instantaneously.

My PC is an HP p6-2143w with 8GB RAM, windows 7 64bit, AMD A6-3650APU with Radeon HD Graphics 2.60GHz.

The Mutators are standard. MVAM Infinite, Foundation, BCS:TB set, QBautostart, Submenu, NanoFX 2.0 Beta. I just kept stock ships off for a better fleet.

EDIT: Apparently its because of the dreaded BC memory leak. Honestly I wish someone would make a fix for this damn problem. If someone can find out what causes STBC to do said memory link and fix it, ALOT of problems can be solved and maybe STBC can be more thrivable.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: King Class Scout on February 04, 2015, 02:41:18 PM
The BC memory leak can NEVER be fixed, because Activision-Blizzard has NEVER released the actuall engine/exe for repair.  this is why excalibur is being made in the first place.

I think it's the same problem facing two RPG's I know of.  neither the original Super Mario RPG NOR the first two of capcom's Breath of Fire series can ever be re-released due to Sqeenix owning HALF the rights to both games.  no side wanths to budge, and it's just cheaper to let everything die.

I used to have several tweaks I applied to BC to slow crashes by overload.  most of them involved only certian mutators being on for mods, plus I allocated 10 GIG of virtual ram to slow down derps.
there's a tweak in the newer KM's that disables about 50% of the NanoFX items, which seem to trigger a lot of them.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Flowrellik on February 04, 2015, 04:12:07 PM
Yeah I heard about the stabilizer as well. I might try that out if things get too severe. Doesn't also deleting the vox files help as well?
I also wondered if Excalibur project would be made so you can directly import ships from BC easy, despite being different game.
 (I know too many questions. don't kill me.)
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: King Class Scout on February 04, 2015, 07:38:41 PM
I believe from KM 1.1, several elements were pruned from Nano (mostly the plasma explosions), as they were found to be the the key items that caused BC to cough up a hairball.  my BC would max out somewhere near four GIG of memory before it would collapse (and then only if a few of Baz's JJverse ships popped up in my Gal Charts fleet)
I was cleaning out vox's as a matter of course, eventually.
the point behind excalibur was to redo the engine for higher def textures and larger screen sizes PLUS the ability to bring in the old mods.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Flowrellik on February 04, 2015, 11:02:58 PM
Yeah. I just found out that Nano causes ALOT of the memoryleaks. I did a test with nanoFX turned off and it works perfectly.
I can maybe trick the system like turn it off then back on.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: hobbs on February 07, 2015, 05:43:19 AM
hmmm thats really good to know Flowrellik thankn you.... means i can have longer BC trek fun :D
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Bones on February 07, 2015, 12:53:30 PM
Me too :) it's always like 3 rounds of QB then CTD for me ;)
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Flowrellik on February 07, 2015, 04:23:42 PM
I FOUND A GRAND FIX.
BCStabilizer + NanoFXSpecularfix
http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/file/Nano_FX_2_Specular_Fix;96773
now I just need to figure out why some ships when specular is on glows (MAINLY 3 ships. The Komo Vals and the Accuser Dreadnaught)
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: hobbs on February 07, 2015, 06:42:51 PM
I FOUND A GRAND FIX.
BCStabilizer + NanoFXSpecularfix
http://bridgecommander.filefront.com/file/Nano_FX_2_Specular_Fix;96773
now I just need to figure out why some ships when specular is on glows (MAINLY 3 ships. The Komo Vals and the Accuser Dreadnaught)

I think i had that... is it because there are no alpha chanels created for the textures... im sure i made a ship with speculars or glows and didnt have alpha chenels saved in the texture and it mad my ship glow.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Flowrellik on February 07, 2015, 09:06:14 PM
So is there a fix somewhere for this problem?
EDIT: Some screenies to help. This only happens to the Komo Vals and Accuser. all 3 by Zombie Zan
Without Specular
(http://i1012.photobucket.com/albums/af249/flowrellik/ScreenShot001_zpsb1a1d024.png) (http://s1012.photobucket.com/user/flowrellik/media/ScreenShot001_zpsb1a1d024.png.html)
With Specular
(http://i1012.photobucket.com/albums/af249/flowrellik/ScreenShot000_zpsc104e887.png) (http://s1012.photobucket.com/user/flowrellik/media/ScreenShot000_zpsc104e887.png.html)

usually with my ships they end up looking rather Amazing looking but this is sad.
So is there anyway to fix this plz? I would like to have all my ducks in order so this
(http://i1012.photobucket.com/albums/af249/flowrellik/ScreenShot002_zps988877ba.png) (http://s1012.photobucket.com/user/flowrellik/media/ScreenShot002_zps988877ba.png.html)
can look like this
(http://i1012.photobucket.com/albums/af249/flowrellik/ScreenShot003_zps751c4646.png) (http://s1012.photobucket.com/user/flowrellik/media/ScreenShot003_zps751c4646.png.html)

Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Nebula on February 08, 2015, 01:31:03 AM
look for the fix bright glow bug option in the nano fx menu
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: Flowrellik on February 08, 2015, 01:45:09 AM
It does it regardless of bright glow bug on or off.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: flarespire on February 08, 2015, 09:03:01 AM
Try converting the textures to a .bmp and then back to a .tga, sometimes if a .tga says that it has no alpha data it can contain some anomalous data regarding the alpha channel, by converting to a .bmp you are completely zero-ing that data so that when you convert back to a .tga that data stays zeroed in the file, then all you need to do is go into a program like Photoshop and add an alpha channel to it that is completely black and save, then it should be fixed.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: King Class Scout on February 08, 2015, 10:46:06 AM
ooh, yeah.  I forgot about the bright glow bug fix.  that's another one that gets on your nerves.

the problem with blanking alphas means you have to go in and recreate the alpha channel from scratch.  some ships need that done, however, to catch stray bits that got away in the initial making of.  I used the Void set to occasionally check a ship's Alphas.  the hardest part of recreating an alpha is redoing the registry spots and so forth.

ZZ's ships have soft, subtle glows to them that can make you wonder if they even HAVE any.  then there's ships like the Promellian that actually HAVE alphas on them, but they're not lit.  I went over the promellians, and found that the channel was pretty much turned off in the conversion process.  there's a strength level to alphas that needs to be adjusted in some cases.

speculars are another thing alltogether.  some ship makers put a VERY subtle specular together, providing a very "matte" appearance.  I believe this is how ZZ set up his speculars when doing the ships above.  I have the accuser myself, and have done some tweaks to bring the appearance up, mostly by rebooting the speculars for the ship.

a little goof to watch out for concerning speculars is that some ships were given a specular, but the author forgot to remove the Alpha Channel first when making them.  this will leave the specular effect underneath ONLY the alpha layer areas.  this is noticeable on ships with a lot of registry spots at the right angles.
Title: Re: Bridge commander Quickbattle error problem...again
Post by: hobbs on February 08, 2015, 11:37:35 AM
the only thing you can do is delete the specular alpha channel and make a new one.