trying to edit Mazz VI in Loathing, Loathing crashes
-
warpwizard
- Posts: 19
- Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 1:42 pm
- Location: Canada
trying to edit Mazz VI in Loathing, Loathing crashes
Every time I try to open Mazz VI (v2) (I tried v1 as well, same thing happens), Loathing crashes. Any idea how I can stop that from happening?
-
warpwizard
- Posts: 19
- Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 1:42 pm
- Location: Canada
-
The Elfoid
- Posts: 1014
- Joined: Mon May 03, 2004 5:30 am
- Location: Devon, England
- Contact:
You mean so people couldn't read scripts and stuff Gray?
http://theramblingelf.tumblr.com/ - my blog
-
The Elfoid
- Posts: 1014
- Joined: Mon May 03, 2004 5:30 am
- Location: Devon, England
- Contact:
-
warpwizard
- Posts: 19
- Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 1:42 pm
- Location: Canada
-
Death's Avatar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 1023
- Joined: Mon May 24, 2004 8:59 pm
A version 3 wouldn't help. Keeping the secret level secret was actually a secondary benefit resulting from a need to add more scripting than is normally possible. Thanks to a special build of Loathing, Mazz 6 has hundreds of more map actions than is normally possible in a map. You can't open it because regular Loathing can't load that much script into memory and thus crashes.
The build of Loathing that comes with 1.6 already allows for more scripting than before, just not as much as the build I have. The Myth II engine handles all this extra scripting well, but only if you know what you're doing. It's pretty easy to make a script very unstable unless you take great care to optimize the script to constantly stay under a certain memory usage in game. Myrd decided it might not be a good idea to release a Loathing that has an increased potential to make buggy maps, but allowed me to have it at my own risk. Apparently, he'd had enough of debugging problems that resulted from too much script memory usage in 1.5.1, so he increased things to a safe level for 1.6, which is where he wanted to leave it so he wouldn't have to provide any more tech support for this kind of problem.
Of course, at this point I begged and promised till he relented with the condition that I'd be on my own if I made problems for myself. I'd already become proficient at optimizing script memory as I struggled to expand the scripted events that could occur in Mazz 6, so the plugin turned out fine in this regard. It is already pushed right to or close to certain limits, however, so tinkering with it could easily result in crashes or an otherwise unplayable map.
Personally, I don't have any issues with the special version of Loathing being released, but that's not my call to make. Perhaps Myrd will release it one day under the same conditions he gave me (no support) but merely giving a warning that it won't be supported isn't likely to prevent posts asking for help (or prevent anger at the Magma programmers when maps made with this Loathing don't work right), nor will it prevent the inclination to want to help when these posts appear.
The build of Loathing that comes with 1.6 already allows for more scripting than before, just not as much as the build I have. The Myth II engine handles all this extra scripting well, but only if you know what you're doing. It's pretty easy to make a script very unstable unless you take great care to optimize the script to constantly stay under a certain memory usage in game. Myrd decided it might not be a good idea to release a Loathing that has an increased potential to make buggy maps, but allowed me to have it at my own risk. Apparently, he'd had enough of debugging problems that resulted from too much script memory usage in 1.5.1, so he increased things to a safe level for 1.6, which is where he wanted to leave it so he wouldn't have to provide any more tech support for this kind of problem.
Of course, at this point I begged and promised till he relented with the condition that I'd be on my own if I made problems for myself. I'd already become proficient at optimizing script memory as I struggled to expand the scripted events that could occur in Mazz 6, so the plugin turned out fine in this regard. It is already pushed right to or close to certain limits, however, so tinkering with it could easily result in crashes or an otherwise unplayable map.
Personally, I don't have any issues with the special version of Loathing being released, but that's not my call to make. Perhaps Myrd will release it one day under the same conditions he gave me (no support) but merely giving a warning that it won't be supported isn't likely to prevent posts asking for help (or prevent anger at the Magma programmers when maps made with this Loathing don't work right), nor will it prevent the inclination to want to help when these posts appear.
It's not just not working right. It's crashes and really a horrible experience (sprites going black, OOS, etc), if the script overruns the memory limit.
The problem is, when the game is running, the amount of memory the script uses can increase based on what the script is doing. So if your script is within Loathing's memory max (for example 64k), it can go to something like 75k in game, unless measures are taken to prevent this by a mapmaker. (In 1.6, the limit in-game has been expanded, but the Loathing limit remains the same.) If this case is not taken, the issues I mentioned above will occur, which will result in a terrible experience for players.
This is why the limits are different between Loathing and Myth II 1.6 (Loathing having a lower limit), to allow for some extra space that will be used by the script as its running, above Loathing's limit - so it doesn't overrun the limit in game, and produce horrible problems.
On the other hand, if CP wants to allow players to make Mazz VI Mods, I don't see why he can't release a version with some scripting cut out (such as unit auto-detach), that is openable in normal Loathing. Though, that would require extra work on his part. It's up to him.
The problem is, when the game is running, the amount of memory the script uses can increase based on what the script is doing. So if your script is within Loathing's memory max (for example 64k), it can go to something like 75k in game, unless measures are taken to prevent this by a mapmaker. (In 1.6, the limit in-game has been expanded, but the Loathing limit remains the same.) If this case is not taken, the issues I mentioned above will occur, which will result in a terrible experience for players.
This is why the limits are different between Loathing and Myth II 1.6 (Loathing having a lower limit), to allow for some extra space that will be used by the script as its running, above Loathing's limit - so it doesn't overrun the limit in game, and produce horrible problems.
On the other hand, if CP wants to allow players to make Mazz VI Mods, I don't see why he can't release a version with some scripting cut out (such as unit auto-detach), that is openable in normal Loathing. Though, that would require extra work on his part. It's up to him.
