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Forum » Modding Bug Hunters' Guild

Modding Bug Hunters' Guild

B0rsuk 19 years ago
Hey

Don't post Default Notrium bugs here ! It's for modders !

I made this topic for several reasons:

- to make sure I won't make any of this mistakes again,
- to show people what they should not do,
- to create a place where people can ask for help with debugging (you may paste some code, preferably short and only important bits)
- to create a place where you can share debugging tips
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Very important rules:

I
Thou shalt not leave any blank lines in Notrium dat files. Most probably Notrium won't even load.

II
Each effect has to have 4 parameters, even if not all actually mean something. Forgetting this leads to a crash.

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1. If your creature is invisible, and you're sure you've set right texture - it's probably too small or weights very few (happened to me when I set weight and size to 0.3 blue alien)

2. If your creature doesn't fire, check all ammo/bar-consuming effects. Simply setting small blue alien weapon to rapid fire pistol won't do.

3. Some effects don't have counter-effects to disable them. (Notrium 1.33, prerelease 1.34) In such case the easiest way to turn them on-off is to make a wieldable item with this effect.
Examples: 8 light level addition (turns on, forever...), player controls creature, creature picks up creature...

(I'll write more when I make/recall more mistakes)

Thread made sticky by Quanrian. This information will be included in the next version of the Modding FAQ with full credit to the thread creator especially and all those that contribute. Please, for this reason make your posts as clean and ledgible as possible. I 'may' edit your posts to make them more ledgible.
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Quanrian 19 years ago
[list][*]When copying from other files or even from within the same one make sure you update the new entry. Most common mistake even amongst experienced modders is that we forget to change the identifier, making 2 sometimes 3 of the same identifier within a file. This usually will not crash Notrium, however it can cause any number of oddities.
[/*:m]
[*]Be aware that non-player creatures and player creatures used as a player DO NOT have the same cell ordering in their graphics. So you will need two separate graphics even if it will look the same in the game. One formatted for the player and one for non-player.
[/*:m]
[*]More often than not if Notrium crashes when you tried to run your mod and you have recently copied and pasted something than you probably left out a line or two. This can be a very common mistake after hours of working on a mod to accidentally miss a line or two. Notrium does not like this at all. So if it crashes, check your most recent entries and compare them to above entries and you should quickly find what is missing. In general anything that begins must end, so check to make sure everything has its start and end lines, for example begin_effects; and end_effects;. That composes a block and it's very easy to not include the header or footer for a block.
[/*:m]
[*]Related to the above problem, sometimes you can copy a line you don't need, creating a duplicate line of text, making two headers, or two footers. This is the second thing you might check as it not as common as missing a line but probably will happen at some point. This should also cause either a crash or something to not function noticably.
[/*:m]
[*]If any graphics show as a garbled font you can be assured that the graphic you associated with the entry either doesn't exist or is not associated properly. This is an extremely common problem, especially when borrowing from other mods. So make sure if there are graphics that are not native to the default game used by the entry that they too are included with your mod.[/*:m][/list:u]
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Casanova 19 years ago
4. The highest draw layer for a creature is '2'. Anything above that will make it invisible.

5. Dont make a creature's weapon X offset too large or it will miss all the time when firing. (unless weapon spread compensates)

6. Dont set '-1' for a creatures foot/step particle or the game will screw up.

7. Avoid using .tga for graphics since .png is easier to use and makes smaller files.
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B0rsuk 19 years ago
(...) all I did was change weapons and some starter scripts but when I put the mod in data Notrium won't start!! Why?

Check the debug start file. it should (may - B0rsuk) tell you where the problem is.


More often than not it's no good for me. No error messages !

I suggest pasting "end_of_file;" in various places of your files, just don't forget to remove that line later ! Place it above item you recently added, or a creature, or whatever. If Notrium no longer crashes, you got the problem nailed down. I often debug this way and I like it a lot.
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Idiota 19 years ago
If you place creatures on the map using the map editor, make sure you set the correct side. Creatures are placed on side 0 by default. You can change this by pressing the W and S button while the creature is selected.
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UberWaffe 19 years ago
Document all your changes and progress well. This will greatly aid you when working with items/scripts/effect/etc that depend on or call multiple other scripts/effects/etc.
If you have a problem with one of the things you have added recently then go to your notes and compare that all the identifiers and links are correct.
This also helps in picking up with modding after leaving it for some time.

Don't add too much at one time. If you have time then try and keep the new stuff added to as little as possible between each test run. This (along with the debug file) will help you narrow down problems more quickly. (IE: If you only added one thing to items.dat and items.dat gives an error than it must be that one item.)

If you cannot find a way to properly implement a certain section of code. Try doing the same thing in a different way. Usually there are more effective ways of doing something.
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MageKing17 19 years ago
Don't be afraid to ask for help. If something you're trying doesn't work, ask someone how they might do it. If that doesn't work, keep asking. Eventually someone might know, or someone will figure it out.

Also, don't be afraid to mod someone else's mod if you think you can do something great with it. Show them what you did, and work on it together. I'm sort of doing this with Wazzal II, in that I fixed the bodyguard bug that kept causing v0.2b to crash.
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ville 19 years ago
Also, If you think you've really found a bug in the Notrium engine while modding, mail me the mod and instructions on how to see the bug. Before you do this, please doublecheck that it's really a bug.
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blitzsolo 19 years ago
Make backups frequently. I destroyed 5 copies of Notrium because I forgot to make a backup for my new shield bar way back(like in WAZZAL 2).
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LunaticNeko 19 years ago
Make many copies of your mod to try out different things. Like mymod1 mymod2 mymod3 to try effects and compare in real time.

Don't think paper is not important. It can be used to make a checklist. Making it easier to remember what to do.
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sod9gfk 19 years ago
If you are going to edit the landing spot; be sure not to remove the crater the escape pod had made, it will spawn you randomly in the map If you do.
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Redemption 18 years ago
Creatures.dat seems to have a 141 creatur limit.
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Anonymous1157 18 years ago
Impossible.

Try making creature 142 with a header higher than 142, like 200, for example. I read on another thread that there's more than one game with a similar problem.
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FREAK 17 years ago
Why would there be a creature limit?
If it is the engine itself that is keeping a limit then is there a way to change the limit?
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Anonymous1157 17 years ago
These posts are relatively old. He's definitely either solved the problem by now or found a way around it. Don't solve problems in old posts!

... However, if you have anything relatively interesting to contribute, feel free to post away.
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