Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Error: Tried to destroy world that hadn't been created!

I'm attempting to get back into modding for Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space.
I really love that game, and when the mods work, they're a lot of fun. When the mods are crashing, it's not nearly so much fun.

In the past, when it crashed, I had no clue what exactly was causing it. Now, I have a debug tool. It's not great, but rather than being totally clueless, I get to ready pithy little reports like this:
Error: Tried to destroy world that hadn't been created.
Which is annoying to see pop up when there's nothing in your mod that destroys worlds.

Other interesting bits include:
Can't load asset misc/intro_scrugug.ogg
Frustrating when there's no scrugug.ogg referenced anywhere in your mod. In fact, a search of my harddrive indicates that file doesn't exist. So I thought maybe I'd try to figure out what referencing it. Searching the contents of files, I found the reference. The main game has a line that is supposed to trigger the playing of that file - yet the file did not come with my download.

Oh well, sometimes the debugging mode generates helpful messages. For example, it clued me in that I'd missed an "s" in one occurrence of the command to access the file graphics/items/s_itemssgq1.jpg. Adding in that s got rid of one potential crash.

And it gave me pages of the following:
warning: couldn't make new Gongaquai fleet
warning: couldn't make new Gongaquai fleet
warning: couldn't make new Gongaquai fleet
warning: couldn't make new Gongaquai fleet
warning: couldn't make new Gongaquai fleet
warning: couldn't make new Gongaquai fleet
Fatal signal: Bus Error (SDL Parachute Deployed)
*** malloc[396]: Deallocation of a pointer not malloced: 0x281ca00; This could be a double free(), or free() called with the middle of an allocated block; Try setting environment variable MallocHelp to see tools to help debug
*** malloc[396]: Deallocation of a pointer not malloced: 0x281ca00; This could be a double free(), or free() called with the middle of an allocated block; Try setting environment variable MallocHelp to see tools to help debug
The malloc stuff is right over my head, but I at least have an alien race called the Gongaquai, who only show up if a particular quest is triggered, so I have a solid lead on where to start looking for the source of the trouble.

2 comments:

Master of the small and pointless said...

Get off your ass and get this done! I love this game as well (thanks for the tip) and would love to play your mod. I have yet to play any mods and am just enjoying the standard game.

rbbergstrom said...

Dude, I've got three different mods available (two of which are actually good) and there's plenty that others have created. Have you checked out the WW:RTIS forums?