Map Issues

[Finalrace]

Hello BGEE Trilogy team!

 

I have done a full "recommended" installation with the big world installer, and everything seems to be looking and working great! However, I have a black screen as the world map, the icons for towns pop up, but on top of all black. It is far from a broken game, but I am wondering if this is a common issue with a fix?

[Doskious]

Hello BGEE Trilogy team!

 

I have done a full "recommended" installation with the big world installer, and everything seems to be looking and working great! However, I have a black screen as the world map, the icons for towns pop up, but on top of all black. It is far from a broken game, but I am wondering if this is a common issue with a fix?

 

I've encountered this event a few times myself (I also used the BiG World installer), but in every case I've discovered that the black-instead-of-map-image seems to precede a game crash due to what appears to be an out-of-memory or invalid memory address issue with Windows. It's entirely possible that the modifications I've installed are (strictly speaking) too much for the engine to handle all at once and therefore result in a memory leak that leads to the game not being able to allocate enough memory to display the map's background image properly (among other things)... Saving and exiting the game, then opening the game and re-loading has always cleared the immediate problem for me, but doing this doesn't seem to be a permanent fix...

 

As I said, I chalked it up to a memory allocation glitch due to the number of mods I have installed that extend the game, but I've installed far more than the "recommended" selection of mods.

[Roxanne]

I have done a bit of research for this (it seems to be a vanilla game problem of how they feed large graphics that some graphic cards - mine as well - sometimes *choke* on - there is an issue open on bean dogs forums.)

My method is to go to some small inside area (a house or such), call up the worldmap, which in most cases works. Once you loaded it into whatever memory, you can play this session without issues. Of course when you completely exit the game and return at another time, you need to repeat it. At least on my PC it helps, I get these *freezes* when I want to access worldmap from a big outside area first.

It also helps a lot when you have no memory excessive programs run in the background when you ipen worldmap for the first time in a session.

[K4thos]

If this is still an issue than I think we should request Wisp to change BP-BGT Worldmap MOSv1 to PVRZ based MOSv2 format for worldmap art when the mod is installed on EE games. This will make the file about twice smaller, so less memory usage for the engine.

 

Finalrace, if the issue is unfixable and you are not using Sandrah mod than you can simply uninstall BP-BGT Worldmap and play with default EET worldmap instead, which should be much less demanding - I've never encountered a problem like this with it. You will need to start a new game after doing so though.

 

edit: but first look at the below post.

[K4thos]

Finalrace, if the problem can be easily reproduced in your game let's test it out if PVRZ based BG-BGT Worldmap art will fix the problem. Please install this mod at the end and let us know if the problem is still there:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35433122/setup-bp-bgt_worldmap_pvrz.7z

No need to start a new game.

MOSv2 format reduced the art size from 60MB to 21MB. Not sure if the engine needs more resources to handle MOSv2 so it's definitely worth testing out before requesting Wisp to change it officially.

 

Others using BP-BGT Worldmap should try it too. Roxanne, does it reduce the time needed for the map to show up? If yes - how much faster it is?

[Roxanne]

Finalrace, if the problem can be easily reproduced in your game let's test it out if PVRZ based BG-BGT Worldmap art will fix the problem. Please install this mod at the end and let us know if the problem is still there:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35433122/setup-bp-bgt_worldmap_pvrz.7z

No need to start a new game.

MOSv2 format reduced the art size from 60MB to 21MB. Not sure if the engine needs more resources to handle MOSv2 so it's definitely worth testing out before requesting Wisp to change it officially.

 

Others using BP-BGT Worldmap should try it too. Roxanne, does it reduce the time needed for the map to show up? If yes - how much faster it is?

Installed it and made a quick test.

 

I called up worldmap while outside in a large map already, had some other programs run on my PC in the back, everything looks fine. Before, such a scenario would most likely have ended in this overload freeze-like CtD situation, in about 90% of the cases.

(Additional test - uninstalled the fix - repeated same scenario>>>> CtD)

 

Map graphics and functionality looks fine as well. It seems we are on the right track with this solution. I will keep this setting and continue using it. I will let you know in a couple of days if anything unusual happens or if it solves (at least my) issue.

 

PS - used it on a running game successfully (as expected).

[Roxanne]

Roxanne, does it reduce the time needed for the map to show up? If yes - how much faster it is?

It is definitely loading faster, the non-PVRZ map takes at least three times longer (if it loads at all). This is for the first time you call the map after you started the game. Once it is (?in some runtime memory or whatever?) *loaded* in a game, there was still a second of delay to load with the original map while the PVRZ one is *immediately*, if such a thing exists.

 

Small side observation - NI seems to like the old format better, it finally loads the new MOS and WMP, but it needs some time for each (much longer than the old formats). Not crucial. however.

[K4thos]

glad to hear that.

 

Small side observation - NI seems to like the old format better, it finally loads the new MOS and WMP, but it needs some time for each (much longer than the old formats). Not crucial. however.

 

NI should be able to load MOSv1 too, but in order to do so you need to allocate more memory (1024MB) to it via bat file:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_91\bin\java.exe" -Xmx1024M -jar NearInfinity.jar

where the first part is, of course, the path to java that will be different on your computer.

 

edit: misunderstood your post, sorry. Sounds like you already use this solution if you were able to load MOSv1 format.

[Roxanne]

glad to hear that.

 

Small side observation - NI seems to like the old format better, it finally loads the new MOS and WMP, but it needs some time for each (much longer than the old formats). Not crucial. however.

 

NI should be able to load MOSv1 too, but in order to do so you need to allocate more memory (1024MB) to it via bat file:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_91\bin\java.exe" -Xmx1024M -jar NearInfinity.jar

where the first part is, of course, the path to java that will be different on your computer.

 

edit: misunderstood your post, sorry. Sounds like you already use this solution if you were able to load MOSv1 format.

I use NI in this mode via Hide NI DOS.exe

[argent77]

"Hide NI DOS" is not needed anymore if you install the 64-bit version of the Java Runtime instead, which uses extended memory settings by default.

[Roxanne]

 

glad to hear that.

 

Small side observation - NI seems to like the old format better, it finally loads the new MOS and WMP, but it needs some time for each (much longer than the old formats). Not crucial. however.

 

NI should be able to load MOSv1 too, but in order to do so you need to allocate more memory (1024MB) to it via bat file:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_91\bin\java.exe" -Xmx1024M -jar NearInfinity.jar

where the first part is, of course, the path to java that will be different on your computer.

 

edit: misunderstood your post, sorry. Sounds like you already use this solution if you were able to load MOSv1 format.

I use NI in this mode via Hide NI DOS.exe

 

 

 

"Hide NI DOS" is not needed anymore if you install the 64-bit version of the Java Runtime instead, which uses extended memory settings by default.

I am no expert for this...I seem to have jre1.8.0_121 - how do I know it is 64-bit?

I have just recently re-installed that Hide NI DOS because I had problems with NI (searches never finished, worldmap never loading).

[argent77]

64-bit version should be installed into "C:\Program Files" (e.g. C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_121) while 32-bit version can be found in "C:\Program Files (x86)". Alternatively start Near Infinity, open the Task Manager with Ctrl+Shift+ESC and switch into the "Processes" tab. Look for an entry called java.exe or javaw.exe. The 32-bit version should use the suffix "*32" (might be a bit different on Windows 10).

 

A list of the current JRE version for different platforms can be found here.

[Roxanne]

64-bit version should be installed into "C:\Program Files" (e.g. C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_121) while 32-bit version can be found in "C:\Program Files (x86)". Alternatively start Near Infinity, open the Task Manager with Ctrl+Shift+ESC and switch into the "Processes" tab. Look for an entry called java.exe or javaw.exe. The 32-bit version should use the suffix "*32" (might be a bit different on Windows 10).

 

A list of the current JRE version for different platforms can be found here.

Great - thanks for that help. For whatever reason I was running the 32.bit version on my Windows 10 64-bit. I will try to fix that.

[Roxanne]

Finalrace, if the problem can be easily reproduced in your game let's test it out if PVRZ based BG-BGT Worldmap art will fix the problem. Please install this mod at the end and let us know if the problem is still there:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35433122/setup-bp-bgt_worldmap_pvrz.7z

No need to start a new game.

MOSv2 format reduced the art size from 60MB to 21MB. Not sure if the engine needs more resources to handle MOSv2 so it's definitely worth testing out before requesting Wisp to change it officially.

 

Others using BP-BGT Worldmap should try it too. Roxanne, does it reduce the time needed for the map to show up? If yes - how much faster it is?

I have now used it on various EET saves and in my post-ToB extension at the point where all possible areas on the worldmap are revealed. It solves all problems I have encountered with respect to Worldmap.

 

I would add it to the list of compatible mods, maybe with a remark that it is only needed for BP-BGT Worldmap and is to be installed after that mod.

[AL|EN]

Worldmap MOSv2 format fix is added to BWS along with required dependence

https://bitbucket.org/BigWorldSetup/bigworldsetup/commits/d9d6d7be266d3f4a207eee7ee64787d6256c1d69