Custom Faction Crash On Game Start

from GalCiv3 Forums

Every time I try to start a new game with a custom faction the game crashes to the desktop.  I'm opted in to the latest 3.5 beta patch.

I have tried creating a completely new faction as well as making a copy of an existing faction.  I have also tried creating during new game setup as well as in the faction creator.

I am able to start new games just fine with any of the default factions.

One thing I notice is that it always has the same lines in the error log:

Debug Message:  Building tech tree for node: GenericEngineeringTech
Debug Message:  WARNING: Failed to find tech specialization def: -1189087473

Is the editor not correctly setting up the tech trees?  Anyone know of a workaround?

Thanks!

 

 

 

 

15,445 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Sorry to hear you are having trouble.

It would help if we could check the custom faction directly, it is located in \Documents\My Games\GC3\Factions or \Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\Factions

If you could upload it to a cloud service (DropBox, Google Drive, One Drive) and post a link here, the developers can take a look at it.

Thank you for your patience and patronage.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

It turns out that it was likely caused by a mod to increase trait and ability points for custom races.  Once I disabled mods I was able to start with a custom faction. 

The only changes in GalCiv3GlobalDefs.xml were the following (was experimenting with different values to see what was breaking the game):

<CustomFactionTraitPoints>24</CustomFactionTraitPoints>
<CustomFactionAbilityPoints>8</CustomFactionAbilityPoints>

As it turns out, with that mod enabled, even an unaltered copy of a base faction (albeit with extra unspent trait points) will crash on starting a new game.  That is what threw me off and didn't make me suspect the mod immediately.

I understand that you can't be expected to troubleshoot mod problems, but just in case I'll post the "bad" copy of the Terran Alliance. Here

Thanks,

 

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Hi,

I have a suspicion that you are being affected by a bug where mod data isn't being updated when it needs to be, causing the game to use stale dev data and sometimes crashing.  Could you go into your \Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\Mods folder and check that your Core.bin or GC3.bin files have a timestamp about corresponding to when you last updated the game? If not, could you try reenabling mods, deleting those files, and play with one of your custom factions again and see if that stops the crash?

If it does, then that is a bug that should be fixed by the next update we push, and you won't have to worry about checking the bin timestamps again :).  If it still crashes, it'd be helpful for you to put your screenname in the crash reporter message so that I can track down the crash report and make sure the issue gets resolved.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thank you for the response! 

I finally fixed it by modding a fresh copy of the GlobalDefs file from the game directory.  All works fine now.  I suspect that I somehow started with a wrong or outdated copy of that file.