Help with modding and Error Log from Abduction
J. M. Pescado:
Making sure that the car found is specifically not a spaceship is a good way to counteract the problem, albeit clumsy. I'm not going to actually issue a fix for this because it's such an obscure corner case that it's not worth the increased maintenance overhead to add it to our existing menu. It's just not a common enough problem.
dizzy:
In this case, you'd have to check for not just the Spaceship but also the Locator object (which is the one in your error log if you notice).
0x6C501691 (Spaceship)
0xCC501689 (Spaceship Locator)
Age Controller has a good example of the type of check you could do:
# Group = 0x7F07FBBC, Instance = 0x1042
# Title = Selectable - Ok To Select?
2: Test Object Type: type of Stack Object == GUID 0xACA2F7D8 (0x7F118C4F: NPC - Template - Social Worker) Checking against original, not current GUID; true: 3, false: 1
syberspunk:
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2005 October 03, 21:19:54
Making sure that the car found is specifically not a spaceship is a good way to counteract the problem, albeit clumsy. I'm not going to actually issue a fix for this because it's such an obscure corner case that it's not worth the increased maintenance overhead to add it to our existing menu. It's just not a common enough problem.
Well, there may be a more elegant solution, perhaps improving the search/Set to Next call or something else, but due to my lack of experience and knowledge, I can't think of a better one right now. And I know it's pretty obscure, and as I suspected, the problem only seems to be exposed if you use any hacks related to abductions to begin with. I'm surprised this error wouldn't have shown up for people more often for those who may be using twojeffs' increased abduction odds hack. This is probably similar to the hottub errors that occur "normally" in the game, but get exposed and show up more frequently if you use hacks involving the hottub, such as LizzLoves' stuff, which I think she even warns about. I don't know if the source of that issue has ever been determined or solved. Anyways, it seems that the more abductions you have, the more likely you might get this error, and in that case, I'd like to correct it, at least for my own game, since I would like to have these abduction related hacks.
@dizzy-two: Thanks dizz, I'll take a look at your recommendations and see if I can make a fix and test if it works.
What is the Spaceship Locator? Where would a test for this be necessary?
In the JobDataGlobals" Send to Work tree (Group = 0x7F8F4EB6, Instance = 0x200F) BHAV, would it be sufficient to add a check for the Spaceship after finding a carpool? I'm assuming that the category test that is getting checked in that line:
Quote
1D: Stack Object's category (0x3B) != Const 0x106:0x3(3); true: 1, false: 1E
is to make sure the Stack Object is a valid carpool vehicle. So... if this is true, then I can add in a check after this to see if the Stack Object itself is a Spaceship. This seems logical to me.
But where would I need a check for the Spaceship Locator? Does the Spaceship Locator also have a category (0x3B) that matches the carpool? And therefore it will erroneously return a true state causing the same error? Is that what happened in my error log?
Hopefully I'll have a bit of time to play around with this sometime tomorrow after class. :)
Ste
dizzy:
Quote from: syberspunk on 2005 October 04, 04:54:18
What is the Spaceship Locator? Where would a test for this be necessary?
Spaceship Locator is probably just an object that the telescope can use to prevent more than one spaceship from appearing. Since it's a clone of the spaceship, however, it will also be confused for a carpool.
I would just check for both Spaceship and Spaceship locator one after the other. If you change line 1F to go to line 20 on true and put in the GUID checks on line 20 and 21 (going to line 7 only if both checks are false and line 1 otherwise) that should work.
syberspunk:
Thanks once again dizzy, for all your awesome help and guidance. I added the changes as you noted and did a bit of testing, and so far so good. I know I need to do a lot more testing to be sure, however, since I don't know exactly what are the conditions required to reproduce the error, since it did not always happen. I suspect it has to do with timing, perhaps either the spaceship showing up at the time a sim's carpool is also supposed to show up. The two times it happened was when Nina Caliente returned from her abduction. I didn't note the time, but it seems logical that perhaps the return coincided with the moment that her carpool to take her to work shows up. And perhaps the spaceship or spaceship locator object gets found first before the real carpool and the code gets confused and pops up that error. Hopefully after some more rigorous testing, I'll have a better idea if this solves the problem. :)
I noticed that Maxis left in a non-function Point Break. ::) I don't see why they don't bother cleaning up their code. I guess it's theoretically harmless but wouldn't it be better to leave unnecessary lines of code, both to avoid confusion and to cut down on file size (and therefore, theoretically loading times as well)? I looked at one of the other Send to Work BHAVs, I think it was in the CarGlobals, and there's like a whole section of code that never gets used at all. It was either intentionally disconnected or it is accidentally broken. I didn't bother to really look into it and figure out what it did, or was supposed to do, but it looked like it was supposed to handle school buses differently than work carpools. *shrugs* If it was disconnected and not used on purpose, they should just delete all of those lines of junk code! Unless they purposely leave this junk code in, perhaps as afterthought of something that was unfinished and maybe they will later finish it in other expansions? If this is common practice of Maxis, or game developers in general, I find that a bit discouraging, if not altogether unsettling. :P But meh, I don't know jack about the game development process, so who am I to complain? Hehe. ;D
Ste
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