lol...Bug, first five minutes of playing HOF :) Rebels map

[myythryyn]

Lol, so im not having a good time with HOF.
I havnt even played the game five minutes, and ive found a game crashing bug.

ok first off, i thought id try out one of the maps that came with HOF.

i loaded up "In search of power". and its messed up.
player one, which is supposed to be inferno, is showing as acadamy on the player selection screen, yet when you load and start, your town is inferno, but the onscreen icon is an academy town. there is no inferno special building, just a big blank spot.
the dwellings also erase themselves every week.

so then i decide, well, maybe its time to start the campaign maps.

i start the first map "rebels", sit through all the cut scenes, get to the point when you move your heroes, then i think some Sylvan ambush is suppsoed to happen, then the game crashes.
ive tried three times now, crashes everytime.
even just tried a fourth time before i finished this post.

so i guess thats it. i cant play any of the HOF campaigns. cant even get past the first five minutes.
i searched the forums, but didnt see any post about this map, and the official bug post is very lengthy. so sorry if this is a duplicate post.

anyone have any ideas what i can do? definetly not very happy

[Wurtzel]

Maybe an installed mod causing problems?? Or maybe all those (excellant) maps you created have somehow corrupted some files within the editor, some of which I believe (and I could be very wrong) are used by the game.. Have you tried a fresh install of HOF along with patch 2.1??

[Elvin]

I don't know about the map but I never got a crash in the campaigns under 2.0.

[myythryyn]

yah i guess no one else has had this problem.
i dont have any mods of any sort.
im not sure what to do.
i guess i could try a complete re install. i would rather not go through the hassle of installing HOMMV, then HOF, then repatching and resetting things.

anyone have any ideas what could be the problem?

the only thing i can think of that was odd is that my HOMMV is a european version for some reason, even though i am in Canada.
and i think my expansion pack is a US version.
because i usally download and install the european patches, but this time, patch 2.1 european gave me the "game not installed message" so i tried the north american patch 2.1 and then it worked. not sure if that could cause any problems.

but apart from that, i have no idea why the game would crash in the first map. i was hoping to try out the campaigns this weekend.

[Elvin]

yah i guess no one else has had this problem.
i dont have any mods of any sort.
im not sure what to do.
i guess i could try a complete re install. i would rather not go through the hassle of installing HOMMV, then HOF, then repatching and resetting things.
.

HoF maybe but what does H5 have to do with it? Anyway try it with 2.1( or 2.0 if you started playing after you patched it).

[Wurtzel]

yah i guess no one else has had this problem.
i dont have any mods of any sort.
im not sure what to do.
i guess i could try a complete re install. i would rather not go through the hassle of installing HOMMV, then HOF, then repatching and resetting things.

anyone have any ideas what could be the problem?

the only thing i can think of that was odd is that my HOMMV is a european version for some reason, even though i am in Canada.
and i think my expansion pack is a US version.
because i usally download and install the european patches, but this time, patch 2.1 european gave me the "game not installed message" so i tried the north american patch 2.1 and then it worked. not sure if that could cause any problems.

but apart from that, i have no idea why the game would crash in the first map. i was hoping to try out the campaigns this weekend.

Hmm, your patching problem could be related to your zone settings. I had a similar problem some time ago when I tried to patch a game (not homm) and had problems. Turned out that I had US version but because my zone is Australia it came up with game not found.. (sound familiar??) Solution was to set my zone to US temporarily.. Incidently, I have the european version of the game as well and have had no problems with patching. I say this so should you want to try my solution, the Aussie zones work fine..

PS "disclaimer" no guarantee that the above will work...

[myythryyn]

im not sure how to change zones, but i have a feelling its not the problem.

i just uninstalled HOF.

yah i keep forgetting HOF a totally different .exe file.
glad i dont have to uninstall HOMMV.
im used to expansions that are just that, not completely seperate games.

i re install the game, i dont add any patches.

then i try to play the first campaign map the rebels. game crashes in the same spot.
so the patch isnt the problem, nor is a bad install.

im completely stumped

what should i try next? i dont understand why the game is crashing.
anyone have any ideas?

[Elvin]

If you get that in both 2.0 and 2.1 then maybe play some maps and wait for 2.2...For all you know having a different version than your original may be the problem in which case it could carry on in 2.2. Hopefully not

That would be a bit time consuming but...Does a friend have H5 us version? Try to install that one(don't bother to patch it) and THEN install your HoF. At least this way you'll know if that's the problem.
Good luck!

[Wurtzel]

Should you wish to try the zone idea, double click on your time/date icon (bottom right corner on most computers) select the "time zone" option and then, from the drop down menu, select either a european country or, as in my case, an Australian state. Goodluck....

[Qurqirish Dragon]

I have the European H5, and US HoF, and I live in New Jersey (Eastern time zone, USA). I had no problems installing and running HoF. The campaigns worked without patching (I played them before the 2.1 patch was out), so it isn't a version or time-zone setting problem.

Since HoF is an expansion, even though it has its own executable, it probably uses resources from the main game as well, so you might want to try a complete reinstall. The problem you experienced in running a standard map tells me there is some problem in the connections between H5 and HoF. Have you fully patched H5 as well? perhaps there are some hooks that need fixing.

I have no "real" knowledge to go on here (aince my install worked fine), but these are the only ideas I have for you.

[myythryyn]

Maybe an installed mod causing problems?? Or maybe all those (excellant) maps you created have somehow corrupted some files within the editor, some of which I believe (and I could be very wrong) are used by the game.. Have you tried a fresh install of HOF along with patch 2.1??

lol, what do you know. you are right.

i finally got to the bottom of the problem. it was one of my maps that i made. i discovered that at some point, i completely forget why, or when, but i tried to customize the peasant hut into something for reason, (which didnt work anyways), and the customized setting became part of the map file i created. then i found the peasant hut file by accident when i was looking for another file.

The crash would happen when the campaign map would reveal the peasant huts in the first turn of the first campaign map, so the customized settting from my map file messed that up.

what i dont get is how does one custom setting in a totally unrelated map in a totally different folder affect the entire game files?
i thought the only way that custom map setttings affect things is when the game reads the map. but why would the game be reading or looking at my map file when im trying to play the campaign? it just makes no sense.
the custom peasant hut setting was contained in my map file, no where else.
can anyone explain how this could happen?

so at least i finally get to try out the HOF campaign's.

[Apocalypse]

This game (from 1.4 onwards?) reads the maps as paks. Every file you have replaced with the map, and if the map is in the maps folder, WILL load first and disable the original one. It's like renaming the map .pak and moving it in data folder

So, to ALL: Maps are Mods, if you want to play a custom-map, make sure it's the only one in the Maps folder (move the others in another, say Maps2). NEVER let the maps in the Maps folder as it will provide 'check sum' errors in multiplayer, and crashes (probably) in singleplayer.

I don't know why Nival did this, because AFAIR this wasn't a problem in 1.3

[myythryyn]

wow....im simply amazed.

the game after patch 1.3 reads map files as packs? why did they change that? that is very stupid thing to do....oh wait this is Nival, and should be expected.

so, when you load the game .exe file, as its loading, it then looks in the map folder, and then reads every map file, and then takes every custom setting it finds and applies them to the game data files and disables default settings?

lol that is too funny.
why is the game even looking in the map folder when it loads? there is no reason for it to be checking all the map files.

that makes no sense at all, and is a very bad decision of nival. all it does is make things complicated if the map maker wants to use custom settings, first nival removes mods, and now they do this...

[Apocalypse]

Yes I agree... it's completely without logic... I'm just afraid of what will happen with this game with the last patch of the second expansion

[ywhtptgtfo]

Yeah, I wonder what's wrong with Nival... that development team seems to be fond of making very obvious mistakes that even amataurs can catch.