PBEM++ problems

[M.Herm]

Good evening,

 

1. What can I do when a PBEM++ game always crashes at 25% when I try to load  the incoming save file? It is happening by two games, all the others running fine.

 

Slitherine support does not respond to my tickets.

 

KR

[Andrew Kulin]

These are probably not helpful suggestions but ...

• Have you tried rebooting your computer?
• Are you running different versions of the game on your computer (e.g., both 1.06 and 1.07) and then accidentally trying to load a game where the versions don't match?  (I have done that myself)
• How large are the game files?  Do you have a lot of other stuff running on your computer as well when trying to load these turns
• Have you asked your opponent to replay their turn(s)?  I have had the same issue in the past with large files that won't load and after a few failed attempts have asked my opponent to replay his turn and the revised turn that was sent back then loads up.

[M.Herm]

Thank you for you fast reply Andrew.

One question: How do you replay a turn? The file is not available to select for continue.

[Andrew Kulin]

Sorry I messed up.  You are right PBEM++ removes the incoming game file from your opponent's view (which I would say is a bit of a flaw in the way it works, in instances like this).

If it is regular PBEM, he should still have the game file.  Probably no chance of this -->, but maybe he has a save file elsewhere (as in his saved game folder) that he could play over again.  And then maybe he can replay it and send as an old fashioned PBEM file (by e-mail or using one of the user generated PBEM Helper tools like Whose Turn is It (by IanL) or Head to Head Helper (H2HH - by greenasjade - no longer seems active on forums)).  But that is a real long-shot.

Looks like you may need to wait for Slitherine.

[ALBY]

ok.  this is a new one.  driving to the finish in my CW GT game.  in between turns, I get this message when trying to log in.   @BFCElvis

 

sorry for the distortion, it's Re-Shade misbehaving.

[Andrew Kulin]

13 minutes ago, ALBY said:

ok.  this is a new one.  driving to the finish in my CW GT game.  in between turns, I get this message when trying to log in.   @BFCElvis

 

sorry for the distortion, it's Re-Shade misbehaving.

I am getting this too.  This morning.  I am pretty sure it means the Matrix/Slitherine server is down.  This has happened before.  Just give them a few hours

[ALBY]

Thank you !!

[BFCElvis]

The server is back up.

[M.Herm]

Alby I am glad that your problem has been solved, but your post has nothing to do with my topic.

In the meantime, three PBEM++ games cannot be continued because the game crashes without a message on WIndows, the file is defective, my opponent has the same problem with another round of ours, we currently have five. three of them are apparently defective.

If the files are on a slitherine server, is there a way to get them?

So the problem is with the file the system sent. The errors are in a round that was only 5 turns old as well as a round that already has 175 turns. So totally random.

Windows gives this message:

Name of the faulty application: CM Red Thunder.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, timestamp: 0x6470f61d
Name of the faulty module: ucrtbase.dll, version: 10.0.22621.2506, timestamp: 0xac92626e
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Error offset: 0x0009e34b
ID of the faulty process: 0x0x1E94
Start time of the faulty application: 0x0x1DA136550514087
Path of the faulty application: C:\Program Files (x86)\Battlefront\Combat Mission Red Thunder\CM Red Thunder.exe
Path of the faulty module: C:\WINDOWS\System32\ucrtbase.dll
Berichtskennung: e09b1fae-5582-4c68-bd0d-8021e2935a29
Full name of the faulty package:
Application ID that is relative to the faulty package:

 

Slitherine offers PBEM++ support via their site only for Cold war, at least that is  the only combat mission game in their list, and their support never replies to my tickets.

 

Edited November 10, 2023 by M.Herm

[Andrew Kulin]

MHerm:

What version of the game are you running?  Is it the Steam version (bought or downloaded/installed via Steam) or the BFC version with files downloaded/installed from BFC website.  And has this only happened with Red Thunder or other CM games too?

Have you or your opponent recently updated version of CMRT while playing your games?  As I recall, you can do this, as long as when you do, your save game file is in the Orders mode, not replay action mode.

Are both you and your opponent running the same version of the game?

Can you provide information about your computer - e.g., Win 11 Pro, Intel i7-13700K (not overclocked) on Z790 mobo, 64 GB Ram, RTX4070 GPU (12GB), ...

Here are some other suggestions:

• Have you turned off the game and then restarted it?  I leave games running for days in the background and over time they can become unstable.
• Can you install the game on a different computer and try loading the defective turns on that PC?
• Uninstall and then re-install CMRT on your affected computer.  Try loading the game files again and see if crashes continue.
• Maybe there is corruption in some Windows files.  Here is a web-link to a discussion on ucrtbase.dll which I see listed in your error output.  It might be helpful:  https://www.partitionwizard.com/disk-recovery/ucrtbase-dll.html

I will say that I have had similar issues crop up with CM PBEM games in the past for me (pre-PBEM++) with files not loading up, or me not being able to complete a game save and the game hangs up (I need to shut down in task manager) or just shuts down on its own (no windows error messages or BSODs).  In those cases if this happens after 3 tries or so I would contact my oppo and ask him to resend the turn, and that has always solved the problem (so far...).

But, I will add, that since I have loaded the Steam versions of the game (with PBEM++) on my new computer (since the summer) I have noticed some odd little bugs, the most rememberable being that at random times (and after game has been running a long time (days)) the keyboard commands don't work (like pressing "T" for targeting).  So I have to shut the game down and restart it and then things are fine again.

[M.Herm]

Thank you again Andrew for your intensive effort in solving this problem.

Slitherine support has replied to my ticket, they wanted to know which scenarios and opponent the rounds have. I would really appreciate that they can fix it, but more important is, will it happen again and again, and what the problem exactly was.

 

[PIATpunk]

It may also be worth refreshing your install of Microsoft Visual C++ distributable 2015-2022 as the game relies on it since the latest update.

https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x86.exe

Edited November 14, 2023 by PIATpunk