Instant Action flying error-exit to desktop

[Sherlock]

Hi all,
I am experiencing a somewhat odd error.

I am using Blueprint's BaZT-SRTM terrain that he did for me (thanks Bluey!). The theater I am testing is a 64x64 theater.

I am currently just flying around in Instant Action to check things out on the terrain.

I have explored (flown) around a large portion of the map but at two places, whenever I get to those locations Falcon will error and take me back to the desktop. The error from the WinXP event viewer says:

"Application Failure falconaf.exe 1.0.12.5068 in falconaf.exe 1.0.12.5056 at offset 0008 47ec..." or the other location ends with "...at offset 0023 47ec".

Is it a bad offset tile? It sure looks like that is the problem now that I look at the event viewer error message. But I have looked for errors in the terrain L2 (exceedingly high spots and missing offset tiles, etc.). I've corrected any of those I found using TV. I will search on these offsets numbers and see what I can find.

Has anyone else seen behavior like this? Does anyone know what causes this?

[Snake Man]

Nothing specific/else comes to mind except the missing tile.

[Sherlock]

I searched through all 5 levels of L2 files and didn't find any bad tiles for the one location I am sure of where it is located. Next thing I did was start looking at maybe a bad objective....? Still working on that.

[Sherlock]

I don't know for sure but I may be on to something here. I'm putting out this theory in hopes that someone can confirm or deny that the theory I have is true (or not).

I've noticed as I fly around that the crashes only occur in certain spots on the terrain AND I am within sight of the border of the theater at the time.

I also know that for one airport when the different levels of terrain were generated using the BaZT-Theater terrain generator program there was an undefined offset tile (which I fixed with TV after building the terrain).

Putting all this together here is my theory:

When the fartiles were built during the terrain building step, the bad offset value was used in particular places in the fartiles file. So when I fly close to those places (within sight of them) on the border of the theater, then the sim crashes...

Possible or just "hot air" ?

I'm going to go back through the terrain generating steps with the corrected airport tile offset and see if it fixes the problem.

[Snake Man]

I searched through all 5 levels of L2 files and didn't find any bad tiles

Regarding the normal terrain building, there is no reason to search all levels, just the L2. However I never even seen the SRTM data thing so I dont know.

within sight of the border

If you mean the "theater edge", then thats never caused any problems for me in the good old days (meaning never tried on AF).

[Zaggy]

I'd probably start by rebuilding the theater using JUST the GLOBE data (not the SRTM data) and see what happens. Im not saying i think its the SRTM data doing it, im just saying, cut stuff back and make it as simple as possible...

Once youve got the GLOBE based theater working OK, re-insert the SRTM Data...

[Sherlock]

Yeh, Zaggy I was thinking the same thing last night.

I did rebuild the terrain using a new set of files that Blueprint provided that had "spikes" removed from the Caspian Sea. Using that rebuild of the terrain I flew around the entire perimeter of the theater. It only crashed up at the Caspian Sea area. I am beginning to think there is just something the F4 terrain engine doesn't like about the big difference between the Caspian Sea elevation (0 meters) and the large mountain elevations on either side of the Caspian Sea East and West when that difference is situated on the theater border.

I'll try building the terrain in the normal manner next and see what I get.

[Sherlock]

Well I rebuilt the terrain from just the normal download data (not using SRTM from BP) and it still crashes to desktop as I fly toward the middle of the Caspian Sea area (coming from the west, east or south). All I can think is there is a defect in the data somewhere that the exe doesn't like.

[Zaggy]

OK, how about rebuilding the terrain with as little in it as possible... IE, remove all the objectives and etc... You could even NOT load the TDF's (in case there is something screwy in one of them)... Finally, if all else fails, move the center of the theater a degree north, south, east or west and see what happens...

[Sherlock]

OK, how about rebuilding the terrain with as little in it as possible... IE, remove all the objectives and etc... You could even NOT load the TDF's (in case there is something screwy in one of them)... Finally, if all else fails, move the center of the theater a degree north, south, east or west and see what happens...

Zaggy,
I think you may be on to something here. I tried rebuilding the terrain with another Texture.zip/Texture.bin package and that didn't work. It still CTD in the same spot. But I just now tried it without any objectives on the terrain and it seems to work fine (no CTD in the spot where it usually CTDs). I'll look the objective .csv file over and see if I can spot a "bad" objective in it around that location.

Thanks for the idea!

[Sherlock]

Well, that seems to be doing the trick. I deleted any objectives except cities, towns and villages in the offending area and now when I've flown over and past the previously bad area it didn't CTD. I'm still flying around the entire terrain to confirm any other bad areas and deal with them. Thanks for the suggestions Zaggy!