RBMOD 6.7 released!

[Kret]

I think i would rather use the official vfs utility if I just want to calculate the MD5 WITHOUT replacing the other one, sigget's tool will replace even if you just want to know the md5 that should result from it. I don't mind doing it with the modded files or saves, but defenetly NOT with the gamedata.vfs file, or at least not without making a copy 1st.

 

Anyhow, continuing with the tests, I re-added the FPC mod along with RB67, got a mission with poppers and spitters and everything is working fine. So, now that I can't seem to replicate the crash, I can't help anymore. But it really bugs me when I know SOMETHING went wrong and now it decided to hide itself...

 

EDIT:

 

Sigget's vfstool md5 result for RB 6.7

7587A36629F73C1E8FD21CA924A057B8

[Aralez]

But it really bugs me when I know SOMETHING went wrong and now it decided to hide itself...

i know EXACTLY how that feels. Because i felt like this for the last days And best of all: I have a cold, too. Sneezing, coughing, fever, can't sleep... I hate it

[Lurker]

Well, then you can all imagine how I might feel 'crying wolf' concerning something that apparently only happens on a few machines. It's very frustrating to be the wet blanket at what should be a celebration.

 

I did run my virus checker on my main XP machine last night, just in case. A sixth test, you might say. No viruses found. Wanted to make sure.

 

Now, going to download TestVersion and try to find the link to the vfs tools.

 

Okay Kret, so which tool doesn't copy the gamedata.vfs and other vfs files when it checksums files? I need links to the right tools, then I need to figure them out how to use then, and then I need to do the work.

 

I'll postpone uninstalling and reinstalling UFO:AM until I have tried the TestVersion and run the checksums.

 

I too was hoping that others would have joined us. It would help to have more machines to work with.

 

After re-reading of some of this, I have two questions.

 

Is BlackAlmaz using RB6.7 or some previous version right now?

 

Kret, you report that there are no problems now. Is that no problems with RB6.7 or no problems with the TestVersion? Not clear to me what's no longer giving problems, and I am obviously curious. (EDIT: Ah, it looks like FPC and 6.7 no longer having problems. I'm clearly not that bright, or I need to slowly re-read everything.)

 

I need to re-read more of this thread, but Aralez's requests are priority. Catch you on the flip side.

[UfoMan]

I put in a plug on the ALTAR site hoping to get more people with more machines over here. I linked to this RBMOD 6.7 Release thread and to the SavedGames thread. It looks like the saved games are now gone. I found saved games to be both helpful and enjoyable.

 

But, I guess I can see how saved games might add an extra element of peril or give something more to go wrong. However, someone needs to update my thread for me over there at ALTAR, and it's now dead-link to saved games. <grin>

 

The Upload.zip saved game with the Cudgel was fun to watch and use on my working 6.7RBMod Duron Machine. But, I ran into some glitches with the Cudgel. He didn't have a body on the inventory screen when you took off his armor. And, I loaded up the Cudgel with the AutoCannon in addition to what you (Aralez) had given him, and when I got inside a mission, I couldn't get the Cudgel to put his GattlingLaser on the ground when it was empty. And though I could put the AutoCannon on the ground, the Cudgel couldn't put the GattlingLaser in the backpack. Finally got him to throw the empty LaserGattling, and then I was able to put the AutoCannon in his arms in its place.

 

The Upload.zip saved game worked right on my Duron machine, as you can tell!

 

With my Athlon XP machine, I don't know whether to uninstall and reinstall, try the TestVersion, or do the checksum on my XP machine that does frozen aliens. Unfortunately, it is my busy season at work, and there are deadlines and stuff, so I will be slow to help, whatever I do.

 

Hopefully each person will give what they can a try, when they can, and maybe over time a true picture will evolve. I wouldn't stress over it, though, Aralez. It will take time, and I would hate to see you give up too soon.

 

I do see the sense of keeping a version 6.61 of the Rebalance on the boards for awhile, though, if you don't mind my saying so, just in case.

 

I also came away from this thread with a disctinct feeling that it would be nice to have a Warp Targeting Device version of the Rebalance that does not have Spit and Boom. If there are no poppers or spitters in a modern version of the rebalance, then there will be none of their stuff to build up in inventory, as it's apparently doing on some machines. If there's no possibility for Spit and Boom to go into inventory, then there's no possibility for it to be corrupting saves. And, honestly, the Warp Targeting Device was a much greater selling point for me than Spit and Boom. I definitely want the final Rebalance to have a WTD, unless I can't get it to work right on all my machines.

 

Anyway, you might considering having a 6.7a, the original, a 6.7b the TestVersion, and a 6.7c Non-Spit and Non-Boom on the boards for awhile. If people can see the three versions along with a version 6.61 on the boards, along with some sort of explanation as to what each contains, then they can pick and choose silently in the background, testing as they have time. If they are the shy type, they won't even have to post. They can just PM you with their results or with their complaints, as time goes by. An elusive or etherial bug will by its nature take a bit of time to isolate or nail down, especially since it appears only on a minor fraction of machines.

 

There used to be a 4.1 and a 4.1b of the Rebalance for a good reason. Tracking down an elusive bug would be just as good a reason for a 6.61, 6.7a, 6.7b, and 6.7c to be on the board, in my humble opinion. Plus, last I saw, Slaughter liked having multiple Rebalances on the board in case someone couldn't get an older one or a newer one to work right.

 

Sorry that I can't be of more use right now, but over time, we'll see.

 

UfoMan

 

P.S. What does iirc stand for? I never figured that one out.

[Fulby]

I think i would rather use the official vfs utility if I just want to calculate the MD5 WITHOUT replacing the other one, sigget's tool will replace even if you just want to know the md5 that should result from it. I don't mind doing it with the modded files or saves, but defenetly NOT with the gamedata.vfs file, or at least not without making a copy 1st.

Sigget's vfstool can return the stored checksum as well, using the line:

vfstool.exe i gamedata.vfs

I suggested the "md5" option because that will calculate the current (real) checksum instead of the stored one which may not be correct.

 

IIRC the game needs the MD5 on the LocalizationPack.vfs to be correct but doesn't check the MD5 on gamedata.vfs. I could be wrong on that though.

 

Fulby

[UfoMan]

I decided to try another game with the RB6.7 and my Duron machine that runs it right. Figured it would be funner not to get frozen aliens tonight for Easter. <grin>

 

I went to a downed UFO. No frozen aliens, as expected, but it takes that Duron machine about two minutes to create a mission.

 

The ABIT KT7A-RAID Duron machine always had problems with freezing if it gets overloaded, what I call interrupt overload. It's the thing you get when you try to run C&C Generals on a non-Athlon machine.

 

Anyway, while scrolling and pressing a key, the game froze and the keyboard became unresponsive. Had to hard reboot. That computer just can't keep up. It has nothing to do with Aftermath or the Rebalances, that computer hangs during the starting musical flourish of Encarta, and will hang with other modern programs if they are processor intensive. And when I put a Thunderbird Athlon in there, the mobo overheated and hung randomly as well. So, I usually only use that machine for a Word Processing project that I'm doing for work.

 

1200 Mhz Duron machine is not up to Aftermath and such. I went back hoping that I could treat it more carefully and not get the freeze. The Duron machine will usually run Aftermath just fine. But, it was a mission with mountains and a million of those twisted dead trees, and apparently the Rebalance late game puts a bigger strain on the system than Aftermath by itself does. It hung on me again when two BFG9000 fired at the same time.

 

Anyway, no frozen aliens on the Duron machine for a fourth and fifth load. But, that's it for tonight, all the time I have for game playing and testing. I'll try something different tomorrow if my schedule allows. Let me know what is priority.

[Kret]

Lurker, sigget's tool is good for calculating the md5 of a vfs file, but make a backup copy just in case the game rejects the modified gamedata.vfs file (even tho I do believe Fulby is right and that for this file md5 is ignored by the game)

 

Note: This is something I noticed while developing the pilotfix tool and implementing the md5 algorithm into it. Looks like sigget reverses the even and odd characters of the resulting md5 string, so if you use a different tool, you should take this into consideration.

 

Yes, currently I have RB6.7 and FPC mods together and no problems whatsoever, so currently at a dead end in trying to figure out what went wrong.

[Lurker]

For some reason, the repeated advice to uninstall and reinstall UFO:AM made sense to me. Over the past decade, I have come to believe that uninstalling and reinstalling occasionally gets rid of flaws and serves to force games and other programs to adjust to updated drivers.

 

I realized that I could uninstall UFO:AM from my children's machine, and they wouldn't know the difference. I also realized that I have installed new programs, new drivers, and even new hardware since the last time that UFO:AM has been installed. So, I decided to make uninstalling UFO:AM my next experiment.

 

True, 6.61 didn't seem to have any problems adjusting to the changes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that 6.7 has no such problems.

 

Anyway, uninstalled UFO:AM from my children's WinME machine. Then I deleted the CENEGA subdirectory and all the saved games, and then rebooted.

 

I installed the game. Ran it to create default profiles. I then updated to 1.3, and I then put 67_mod.vfs into the subdirectory and ran it. Created a new game profile, and started playing.

 

Surrounded by Chompers and Poppers the first two missions in open fields and lost all my soldiers. Got two new soldiers for third mission, a city mission. I was able to set up an ambush on a bridge and take the Poppers and Chompers down one at a time with UZI's. I about lost both soldiers to a Spitter. Way too far out of range. But, I used cover and he eventually ran out of spit. Then I went hunting for stragglers.

 

There's a reason for mentioning all this. When I won the mission there was Spit and Spit Clips in my capture list along with 4 BOOM. But, when I got back to base, none of them ended up in inventory. I have come to believe the last couple of days that it is very important that BOOM and SPIT do not end up in inventory.

 

Then I saved, quit, and rebooted. I then loaded up the third soldier and went to my Fourth Mission. And guess what, no frozen aliens!!!

 

I know, it's probably too soon to celebrate, but that's four missions in a row without frozen aliens with RB6.7. That's a record for my machines. And, there's no SPIT or BOOM in the inventory either. Good deal.

 

Okay, I haven't tried ALLITEM's on the children's machine, and I haven't tried the Upload.zip files either, so I'm still hesitant to claim victory. I also want to finish a few more missions without any Aralez Saved games and without ALLITEM's just to see if the no frozen alien trend continues. Aralez removed the saved games for a reason.

 

BlackAlmaz was complaining that the beginning missions against the Poppers and Spitters is too hard. He's right, unless you get a city mission. There is a solution to BlackAlmaz's complaint that will also work for debugging purposes as well -- create a separate Rebalance 6.7 with everything in it except the Poppers and the Spitters. If there is no SPIT or BOOM to go up against in early missions, then BlackAlmaz and I won't have to lose half our missions to the hoard early on, and there will be no SPIT or BOOM in the capture lists to accidentally find their way back to base.

 

Anyway, I second BlackAlmaz's and UfoMan's request for a version of the 6.7 Rebalance that's only lacking the SPIT and the BOOM. Please remove the Spitters and the Poppers from a 'B' version of the 6.7 Rebalance, then see if BlackAlmaz is happier and see if any of the potential glitches disappear from the Rebalance.

 

Too early for me to declare that I have conquered the Children's machine and UFO:AM, but it looked promising. So, I can tentatively recommend uninstalling, deleting the subdirectory, and reinstalling to those who don't have saved games that they care to lose. More testing of the Children's machine tomorrow.

 

Then, I need to download and try the TestVersion on this WinXP machine and see if Redux TestVersion will pick up on 6.61 saved games and move forward without a glitch or a hitch. Keep our fingers crossed.

 

Thank you everyone, for putting up with me.

[Aralez]

As it seems it was a good idea to remove the savegames. More and more i come to the conclusion that they were the source of the problems. And it's very nice to hear Lurker finally got rid of his computer/UFOAM problems, too.

 

The "Boom"- and "Spit"-weapons should exactly work as Lurker describes, and it's good to see, they finally do.

[Lurker]

As it seems it was a good idea to remove the savegames. More and more i come to the conclusion that they were the source of the problems.

 

I can visualize that the saved games might be contributors to the problem, but in my THIRD TEST up above, I let 6.7 create a new Profile and I didn't use any saved games, and I got frozen aliens on my children's machine during the first mission that time around.

 

During that test, there were no previous Aralez Saved Games in the profile to do anything, so they couldn't have been the source of the problem, unless using the Upload.zip saved game sometime in the 'distant' past is all it takes to permanently corrupt a machine and all future saved games.

 

The only thing that is different between my THIRD test above and tonight's successful test is the fact the I uninstalled and reinstalled UFO:AM in between the two dates. Otherwise, they were the exact same test.

 

Furthermore, UfoMan got the Upload.zip to work right on his one machine, so it kind of gives one the feeling that there might be something else at work besides just the Saved Games.

 

If I get time, I'm going to have to try the Upload.zip saved game on my children's machine and see if it works now, since I have uninstalled and reinstalled UFO:AM on that machine, unless there is direct knowledge from this community that doing so will corrupt the whole saved game system on that computer, both past and future saved games, what few there now are.

 

My problem is that I have too many things to try and very little time to do so, comparatively speaking.

 

--

 

It was a great novelty and selling point to be able to claim that I ran the Rebalances from 5.6 to 6.61 on this WinXp machine with no serious glitches, from one version of saved game to the next, using saved games from previous versions as the starting points. So, it's kind of hard to delete those saved games and the whole subdirectory, and then uninstall and reinstall UFO:AM. But, I kind of have the feeling that I might have to do just that in order to get RB6.7 to function right on this machine as well, especially if Aralez is right and the use of older Saved Games is really the source of the problem. There is some value and history there in the 5.6 to 6.61 saved games on this machine. I probably should just uninstall and reinstall UFO:AM first, and then test RB6.7 to see if the previous saved games can then be used without the frozen aliens appearing.

 

Kind of looks like Aralez is getting tired of all my experiments, and I guess that I am too. I don't want to become a pain to the whole community. So maybe I will go straight for the throat of the beast, uninstall and reinstall UFO:AM on this machine, and forget about the other tests that have been suggested here that I should try, assuming that an uninstall and reinstall is all it takes to solve the problem permanently. Just skip the TestVersion altogether.

 

Anyway, I have reasons for believing that the Aralez Saved Games were not the real source of the problem. There was something else producing Spit in my inventory long before Aralez Saved Games and Rebalance 6.7 came along. I felt that that might be a useful piece of information for some people to have, just in case.

[Aralez]

I know how you feel about those old savegames. I once had a fantastic XCOM crew and wanted to recreate it in TFTD. The names were no problem, but somehow they didn't feel like back in the Xcom days. Then i found that tool that converts XCOM crews directly in TFTD ones. AND I WAS IN HEAVEN

[UfoMan]

Okay, let me summarize what I am seeing:

 

1. RB6.7 can't load any previous saved games that were created by previous Rebalances or any unmodded saved games either, without running the risk of eventual VFS corruption.

2. Or, RB6.7 can't always properly load and run version 6.7 saved games that were created on a different language version or on a different machine.

3. Or, the Upload.zip Saved Game with the Cudgel introduces additional flaws and glitches into Aftermath that somehow spreads throughout the system, and thus the Cudgel saved game is not the best one to start with or to use. (There seems to be logic contradictions between these three and what's written in this thread, but there they are.)

4. If you use the later Rebalances, then it's best to have an Athlon XP processor to handle the extra load. (That's my addition to the Rebalance 6.7 recommendations.)

5. If you have an nForce motherboard and you have updated the nForce Drivers and the Nvidia graphics drivers since the last time that you installed Aftermath (as I too have done), then you had better uninstall Aftermath, delete the Aftermath subdirectory, and reinstall Aftermath before continuing forward with Rebalance 6.7. Then let RB6.7 create its own profile after you have successfully reinstalled Aftermath and after you have no previous saved games anywhere on your system.

6. It looks to me as if the creator of RB6.7 wants you to delete all previous Aftermath saved games and create a new game profile with RB6.7 before continuing forward. But, if Aftermath is setup to use older drivers and RB6.7 somehow is sensative to that change, then an un-install of Aftermath and the re-install of Aftermath seems like a very sensible course of action to me as well. If you decide to go that re-install route in order to update Aftermath to the new Nvidia drivers and if you have a CD Burner, then you can write your old saved games to CD before you delete the CENEGA or Aftermath subdirectory during the reinstall of Aftermath.

7. It will take some time for us with the problem to get off work and to find the time to backup, uninstall, reinstall, and then test for a few missions to see if it really worked. Yes, keep our fingers crossed.

8. If it's spit and boom causing the problem all along, then we might someday need a Rebalance 6.7 from Aralez that doesn't have spitters and poppers anywhere in the mix.

 

--

--

 

EDIT: I was actually thinking today that the last week or two I have done a lot of downloading from the internet while simultaneously playing Aftermath on my computer. I enjoyed having a computer that could really do both tasks at once without either task seeming to suffer in the process. But, I have started to wonder if my frozen aliens were the result of a corrupted Aftermath saved game that somehow got created while I was simultaneously downloading from the internet and saving an Aftermath game all at the same moment of time. Maybe writing to two separate files at the same time is enough to mess one of them up, especially an Aftermath vfs file. While downloading, it seemed like one of my saved games took forever to save, and then suddenly was fine, or so it seemed. I have no way of knowing for sure if there is something to it, and this latest hypothesis is but one of an infinite number of things that can go wrong when a person starts playing with computers and pushing the envelope. There, now I have said it, and now I can stop thinking about it. <grin>

 

--

 

Okay, I guess I couldn't stop thinking about it. I could just hear the experts saying that a modern XP computer should be able to multitask the simultaneous saving of two separate programs without any problem. Actually, at the time that I experienced the weirdness with the Aftermath and Rebalance save, I was using GetRight to download three or four separate files with two more files waiting in the queue plus any files that Getright needs plus any requests that Aftermath might be making. It's very possible that I was asking XP to keep track of seven to eleven different files all at the same time, or even more. When you save Aftermath, it writes either two files or four files. Anyway, I now believe that it is possible that I could have overloaded my XP machine a bit, and maybe a corrupted VFS file and frozen aliens were the result.

[Lurker]

Hmm.

 

I took Aralez's last input as a suggestion that I should delete all saved games and then should uninstall and reinstall UFO:AM on my WinXP machine. I knew this day was coming.

 

So, I backed up my 5.6 to 6.61 saved games to CD. You can get the whole CENEGA subdirectory onto a single CD if you remove gamedata.vfs.

 

I actually saved my January 22, 2004, gamedata.vfs into another folder on the hard drive before deleting the whole CENEGA folder.

 

Then I uninstalled, deleted the CENEGA and UFO Aftermath folders, rebooted, and reinstalled UFO:AM. I updated to 1.3, ran the game, saved the Default Profile, quit, put 67_mod.vfs into the subdirectory, ran the game, and then created a new Europe Hard profile with RB6.7, and pressed Play. So, now RB6.7 it's setup as fresh as it can be, and I'm fighting off poppers in my first mission with Universal UZI ammo and TNT. We'll see how it goes, when I get time to play some more.

 

Meanwhile, I did a File Compare (fc /B) between my new April 12, 2004 gamedata.vfs and my older January 22, 2004 gamedata.vfs, and there were No Differences encountered.

 

So, I take that to mean that my old CDROM and my new DVDROM installed the gamedata.vfs in exactly the same way off the same UFO:AM CD that I purchased last year. Both pieces of hardware produced the same gamedata.vfs file on the same machine, according to file compare.

 

Hopefully, that means that my gamedata.vfs is NOT corrupted. And, hopefully, I won't get any frozen aliens or SPIT in my inventory during my next missions.

 

As they say, time will tell.

 

--

--

 

I'm on my fourth RB6.7 mission with no frozen aliens so far! No spit and no invisible icons in inventory, though there have been three opportunites for SPIT and BOOM to transfer over to inventory, if it was going to do so.

 

Yay! No frozen aliens.

 

Lots of poppers and spitters, and I did the city missions so that I could use cover and do ambushes and stay alive. I kept all four soldiers alive until this fourth mission. There's a Cudgel carrying a LurkerGun in my fourth mission! I thought BlackAlmaz didn't know what he was talking about when he mentioned BFG's in the first missions, but I guess BlackAlmaz was right.

 

While the LurkerGun is killing my team on burst one soldier at a time, I'm running for cover, dodging poppers, and switching to grenades. I'm using the convergence of concrete fences for my trap. Everyone dead now, except for my best person and he's just finished healing with a medical pack. I run back to the corner of the fence, lean around the corner and toss a grenade. Down the Cudgel goes. Get over to Dead Cudgel to see what he was packing, a LurkerGun with no clips in it now.

 

If you are wanting a serious challenge, it looks like RB6.7 is just what you are looking for. It's was actually kind of fun. I'm going to try to replay the same mission and see if I can win it without losing as many soldiers.

 

Anyway, uninstalling, deleting saved games, reinstalling UFO:AM, and starting a new game profile appears to be the way to go with RB6.7, so far anyway. I'm about ready to try ALLITEMs, or maybe not.

[Lurker]

Follow Up to Fourth mission:

 

There were Chompers, Spitters, Cudgels, and Poppers in the fourth mission. After loading and retrying, I got to cover behind the concrete walls sooner, and I used a soldier just out of range of the LurkerGun as bait in order to lure the Cudgel with the LurkerGun into a trap. When he would lift the gun to shoot, she would run further out of range making him come closer to the grenades and the ambush that was waiting just behind the concrete wall. I didn't lose anyone this time around, nobody in the hospital, and I got the LurkerGun.

 

Anyway, that was a little shameless advertising for all those out there who are wondering if the Rebalance is great enough and if the Rebalance makes it worth playing UFO:AM a second time around. I'd say yes. The Rebalance is a lot of fun!

 

But alas, I mention this because when I won the mission, there was Boom and a Clip of Spit in the capture list along with a %d at the bottom of the capture list. Usually, when I see %d's that's when things start to go bad, if they are going to go bad.

 

Anyway, the good news is that when I got back to base there were NO invisible icons or spit in the Heavy Weapon's category. Usually when there is a %d in the capture list, then there is usually something unpleasant in inventory when I get back to base. But, not this time around. Instead, there is a captured LurkerGun in inventory. So, despite the fact that I got %d's in my capture list, from the Popper Cudgel Spitter or Chomper, this time around I seemed to have escaped the darker side of %d's, hopefully.

 

Now to the fifth mission. Keep my fingers crossed that there are no frozen aliens.

 

--

 

EDIT: Fifth mission has come and gone on this WinXP machine. No frozen aliens and nothing bad in inventory!! Looks like it's time for me to shut up and go away, unless something really important happens. Thank you everyone. Seems as if Aralez or the UfoMan were right, it was either the use of the previously saved games from former versions of the Rebalance that caused the problem with RB6.7 or my machines were in desperate need of an uninstall and reinstall of UFO:AM and the creation of a new Game Profile.

[Aralez]

Aralez dances around chair, yells "Yabba-dabba-dooooo", and praises the creators of Aftermath

 

Finally a breakthrough ! So the "cure" for those bugs is:

 

-Do NOT use the savegames i uploaded (I deleted them anyway) They are no longer available.

 

-"Clean up" your UFOAM directory by re-installing UFOAM and running the launcher/config-tool

 

-Make sure you start a new game.

 

Somehow the "dam*ed" savegames had the power to make a UFOAM installation unstable. I have absolutely no clue how they do that, though. Maybe (just guessing there) they save the settings from the configtool in this files, too. And by playing them on other PCs with other configs they "pollute" that system.

 

Is that possible, Slaughter?

[Slaughter]

Well, I am not sure. Didn't think so...

[Aralez]

Ah, i meant they "pollute" the UFOAM installation, not the PC system, my fault.

[UfoMan]

Okay, I needed more time to think about this.

 

I know that it might sound silly or immature to some, but I found that with Aftermath almost anything is possible when it comes to bugs. For example, months ago I was under the firm superstitious belief that you would eventually get crashes or glitches in Aftermath if you tried playing a Europe Medium saved game inside a profile that was created American Hard, or some such odd combination. I can see from up above that Lurker was probably using an American Hard Profile to run your Europe Hard configured 115.zip and Upload.zip saved games. If my former superstition has any validity, and if it's possible for one configuration to pollute another, then Lurker should have been looking at problems at some point or another, after playing your saved games. Maybe I would too, eventually, if my Duron machine didn't already freeze during complex rebalance tactical missions, as it is doing.

 

My past experience has taught me that once the Aftermath system is corrupted and you are getting frozen aliens, then it's time to uninstall the mods and the game, and time to start over fresh and new. Furthermore, I noticed long ago that the use of Alpine with previously unmodded saved games always resulted in frozen aliens. So, following supersititious lines of reasoning, I believe that the more types of mods that you introduce to the system, the greater the chance of something going wrong.

 

I had to dream about it a bit, but I remembered more details this morning, as to what I think went wrong on my system. See my message up above for the introduction or the backstory. I distinctly remember thinking that I was going to run a test in order to see how much my new system could take. Most likely my mistake was to include Aftermath in such a test. GetRight allows you to download multiple files or segments at the same time. During normal usage of GetRight on dialup, two segments work just fine, and the third and fourth segments seem to start to gum things up. While GetRight was downloading three or four segments, I was playing Aftermath. During a tactical mission, I did Alt-Tab and went back to the desktop to see how the various downloads were going. I'm watching GetRight download while the Aftermath music is playing in the background, and then I get called away for 10 or 15 minutes. When I come back, Aftermath is still playing music in the background, it probably has cycled through all its music files by then and is getting pretty gummed up. I select Aftermath on the taskbar to bring back up the tactical mission, and I get a black screen and nothing will come up. I couldn't get back to the desktop either. I didn't know what was going on for a minute there, until something finally came back. Eventually, both Aftermath and the desktop came back. Now, I believe that most of Aftemath was probably archived into the swapfile by the time I got back to my desk, and it took forever to bring it back up. When Aftermath came back up, I saved at the end of the debacle while GetRight is still saving and trying to run, and then I quit Aftermath in an attempt to bring back some stability to the system. Aftermath wasn't running right anymore. I didn't remember the details until this morning, because it's been awhile since the weirdness. I only play one Aftermath tactical mission per day on average, so it could take awhile for problems to start showing up at that pace.

 

I hadn't had any real trouble with Aftermath for a month or so, until now. With all the crashes that I used to have with Aftermath, I got into the habit of saving any chance that I get, I realize now that I should have quit without trying to save when Aftermath was running wonky and when GetRight was downloading. Actually, I should only download one file with GetRight while playing Aftermath, and I should never leave Aftermath as the background task if I walk away from the desk. I can see that now.

 

Speaking of game saves and strange beliefs, I was always under the superstition where Aftermath was concerned (especially during the time that I was getting hourly crashes from Aftermath) that one should save and quit the game after the completion of each mission in order to keep Aftermath from crashing or keep it from having problems. I only play one tactical mission per day on average, so for the most part, my Aftermath system has been very stable the last month or two, only logical if my save-after-every-mission superstition has any validity.

 

But, now that I have seen frozen aliens on this system, I know the cure. Uninstall Aftermath, delete all previously saved games, reinstall Aftermath, and start a new non-default profile once you get your mods in place. And for best stability and security, DON'T play Aftermath games that were saved on other profiles with other starting settings or saved on other machines.

 

In summary, I do believe that Aftermath has no self-correcting features in its save-game routine to clean up polluted files as it goes along. So, if something goes wrong during the creation of a vfs file, the disease will spread like a virus into every subsequent file. And, as you have suggested Aralez and from what I have seen, it may even be possible that some of the corruption could spread backwards into previous vfs files due to a currently corrupted or confused config file. Sometimes superstitions and paranoia have a way of coming true, especially where computers are concerned.

 

For example, I imagine that once you get spit and boom in the inventory, then it's there forever in subsequent saves, so why not frozen aliens in every subsequent load and save once the frozen aliens are there and the configuration files are confused?

 

BTW, what's the story about %d's? Sounds interesting and mysterious! And what does IIRC stand for? I don't know the meaning of that short-hand. Time for me to go away too, I guess.

[Aralez]

The %d's appeared when i was forced to remove a weapon from a new RBMOD and Lurker had a savegame with that weapon in store. And instead of simply vanishing, those "phantom-objects" stayed in the savegame

 

IIRC means "If I Remember Correctly" that is iirc about that

[Lurker]

Okay, I won't import any saved games from other profiles or from other users and other machines.

 

With my brand new fresh install and empty saved game directories, I did get %d's in my capture list one time with RB6.7 last night, as mentioned above. They did not go back to base with me to corrupt the inventory, this time around, that I could see. Something in the spanking new and fresh install of RB6.7 produced the %d, possibly an unkilled Spitter or a Popper? But as long as it doesn't corrupt inventory, then I don't see how it could do any further harm. I surely hope that the %d's aren't sitting there invisible in some saved game 'phantomly' waiting to strike again when I least expect.

 

I don't have many saved games now, previous or otherwise, under my current UFO:AM installation. Hopefully, the %d's are harmless. It would be a 'shame' if they are messing things up, and we don't know about it. So, I do indeed hope that they just 'vanished' into thin air when I got back to base or even sooner.

[Aralez]

Maybe i should add a weapon called "%d" to confuse everyone

 

Just kidding

 

Imagine:

 

Soldier: "Yeah, Sarge we %d-ed them for good this time"

 

EDIT:

 

HA, Lurker i know what those %d's are ! Remember that Muton-bikinis ?! ........

[Lurker]

Ha!

 

D-strings, or is that G-strings. Something Thongy going on there squeezing us where it hurts. Wondering what percentage of support those Mutons are getting from their D-strings.

 

On the 'serious' side, I think that I'm going to defragment my hard drive tonight. It's probably time. No telling what 'percentage' of my files are fragmented in 'D' system. Maybe fragmented vfs files have the potential to glitch up?

[Lurker]

Nine missions, and five bases. No frozen aliens.

 

But, I have been seeing quite a few %d's in the capture lists. I'm beginning to wonder if they are the result of picking up some of the equipment off of dead aliens. I picked up a LurkerGun and a BFG4500 from a couple of Morelmen that I ambushed, and I stuck the LurkerGun in a backpack because I can't use it yet, and the BFG4500 I used to win the ninth mission. So, when I am done, the capture list tells me that I have captured a BFG4500 and a LurkerGun, but there are also two separate %d's in the capture list, which made me wonder if the one %d was the LurkerGun in the backpack and the other %d the BFG4500 in my hands. It can't give them to me twice, yet since they are now in my inventory and being used, it has to label them, so it labels them %d? Made me wonder.

 

Thankfully, no weirdness in the inventory from the %d's when I get back to base, and the saved games load up just fine.

 

I had a Morelman with a MiniLauncher waiting for me at the landing zone of mission six. I had to replay that one multiple times until I developed tactics that were able to keep all four of my soldiers alive. Nice to be able to pick that MiniLauncher up and start using it. The only ammo that survived was the unused ammo. The partially used ammo disappeared. And, to keep using the two remaining ammo cartidges one mission after another, make sure you don't use them up completely in the subsequent missions. They get filled again back at base as long as they aren't completely gone. I do that with a lot of my guns, reload when there is only one round left in the cartridge, so that I always have some ammunition for the gun.

 

During missions 1 to 9 with the Rebalance 6.7, I have had a couple of crashes to desktop. One CTD came when going to another mission instead of going back to base. It stopped loading the second mission at 30%, beeped, and froze. An Esc dropped me to the desktop. I rebooted just in case, and then loaded that same next mission again, and the second time the same mission didn't CTD while loading.

 

During the first area of my ninth mission and fifth base capture, I had the thing drop straight to desktop when I tried firing the Browning silencer weapon at a critter that was behind a barbed wire fence.

 

There was another CTD that happened on my children's machine as well.

 

I never got CTD's from the previous rebalances. Maybe I was just lucky. But, despite the occasional CTD with RB6.7, I just keep going, and I remember to save a lot. RB6.7 has been a lot of fun. I freshly installed, so I no longer have ALLITEMs, so I'm playing it without the cheats and trying to stay alive and so far I have my original five soldiers, though I did have to replay a couple of the missions.

 

Been a lot of fun. Thank you Aralez.

[Aralez]

As i said i will not mod UFOAM anymore (for some time), as i try to re-release an old project of me for another game.

 

Maybe if the patch 1.4 arrives or someone develops a model editor i'll be back.

[MirabelleBenou]

the download page on the first page do not seem to work.

 

where can I get the RB mod ?

 

thanks a lot