Ixian, War of Assassins campaigns are broken after launching Summers' Solstice missions in GruntMods Edition 1.64

[strelokac]

I found that Ixian levels, War of Assassins, and original levels had modifications applied from Summers' Solstice. The issues appered after Summers' Solstice mission played: 

• Some of levels start then show screen with statistics after 1 sec,
• In some of mission's enemy starts with low credits, haven't Refineries so they can't harvest spices and build army, all enemies become easy targets.

Some of levels crashed with error:  Too many initial buildings for EMPEROR [ gGameTicks = 0 ]

 

Edited October 7 by strelokac
corrections

[strelokac]

Found that it was issue with mission launcher, it suppose to backup original game files before it launches custom mission, but somehow they arent been restored.

Game reinstallition fixed the issue

[Fey]

7 hours ago, strelokac said:

Found that it was issue with mission launcher, it suppose to backup original game files before it launches custom mission, but somehow they arent been restored.

ah, apologies that I haven't responded; we noticed this post but I was busy patching some other stuff ^^

for anyone else having the same issue, I'll elaborate: once upon a time, in order to play missions with mods, players had to copy the mod files into the folders and stuff themselves. it was a huge pain in the butt since you had to back up everything, and then replace later with the original files when you wanted to play different missions

Feda's upgrades to the Mission Launcher do this on the back-end, automatically copying mod files under CustomCampaignData where they're needed, when they're needed, and then replacing them with backup files when you're finished with the mission. this is how the mod files from one campaign get into your main data folder in the first place

as for why they remain there and why the Mission Launcher doesn't replace them with the backups, that probably has something to do with the read-write permissions of the install directory. I don't really know how it works, but what I do know is that trying different install directories or adjusting the permissions for the directory you install to can remedy this issue

I hope that helps anybody encountering the same issue

[strelokac]

On 10/8/2024 at 10:34 AM, Fey said:

ah, apologies that I haven't responded; we noticed this post but I was busy patching some other stuff ^^

for anyone else having the same issue, I'll elaborate: once upon a time, in order to play missions with mods, players had to copy the mod files into the folders and stuff themselves. it was a huge pain in the butt since you had to back up everything, and then replace later with the original files when you wanted to play different missions

Feda's upgrades to the Mission Launcher do this on the back-end, automatically copying mod files under CustomCampaignData where they're needed, when they're needed, and then replacing them with backup files when you're finished with the mission. this is how the mod files from one campaign get into your main data folder in the first place

as for why they remain there and why the Mission Launcher doesn't replace them with the backups, that probably has something to do with the read-write permissions of the install directory. I don't really know how it works, but what I do know is that trying different install directories or adjusting the permissions for the directory you install to can remedy this issue

I hope that helps anybody encountering the same issue

I found and read the manual of Misison Launcher in gamedir. 

So, I assume when player starts mission with mod, Mission Launcher backing up original files, replaces them with mod-ones, then waiting when games finish to restore the backup.

And if player encounter power outage or Mission Launcher will be terminated while game running, next time when player launches the Mission Launcher, files wouldn’t be restored, because state is saved in-memory when Mission Launcher running.

I suggest to save the state on disk, in some file in gamedir, rather than keep it in memory, in this case if Mission Launcher accidently stops, at the next start it could read the state from that file and restore game content automatically, so it will eliminate the issue.

[Cm_blast]

5 hours ago, strelokac said:

I found and read the manual of Misison Launcher in gamedir. 

So, I assume when player starts mission with mod, Mission Launcher backing up original files, replaces them with mod-ones, then waiting when games finish to restore the backup.

And if player encounter power outage or Mission Launcher will be terminated while game running, next time when player launches the Mission Launcher, files wouldn’t be restored, because state is saved in-memory when Mission Launcher running.

I suggest to save the state on disk, in some file in gamedir, rather than keep it in memory, in this case if Mission Launcher accidently stops, at the next start it could read the state from that file and restore game content automatically, so it will eliminate the issue.

The creator of the Launcher is Feda, so he is the only one that knows exactly how it works, but just to be clear, the files that are going to be overwriten are named as ".bak", so for example you have the file "template.bin" which contain the units on the game. If my mod make that the raider now cost 5000 credits, that file is already modded.

when you play my mission with the that modded file, the launcher first pick up the original "template.bin" and named it as "template.bin.bak", so in the worse case of a pc shutting down, you at least still have the original missions and you can proceed to renamed your self.

But also, on the main folder on the game installed, a folder called "MissionLauncherBackups" is going to send the original files that were about to be overwritten, so if the Pc just "break", the best solution is going to that folder and copy everything on it. It probably will contain files that weren´t part of the group copied with this mod but previous mods, but at least you know that copying these files into the proper folder (usually is "\data") is the safest way to recuperate the original state on the game.

And to be even more safe, if I am not wrong that mission folder back up copy the file only the very first time, so with the example of the raider, it will copy the template.bin there before applying the modded version, but later, whatever is replaying this mod or 5 other campaigns that modified the cost of other units, it won´t matter, the "template.bin" on the back up folder still will be the one that was originally before loading any mod.

Edited October 10 by Cm_blast