4.101 Support & Bug Reporting

[_RAAF_Firestorm]

Dear TD,

I'm not sure if this is a bug or whether it's a remnant bit of programming from the non-MDS versions of IL2 (pre-4.10), either way I've found a potential "cheat" in completing the "Destroy Ground" objective. Try this:

1. Create a moving dogfight map with an area of water (Pacific Islands for example).
2. Place a "Destroy Ground" Primary Objective over an area of water, increase the radius of the circle to max and set Destruction percentage to 100%.
3. Place a moving or static ship inside the "Destroy Ground" objective circle.
4. Place a test runway and a red homebase outside the target circle, make it an airstart at 300m toward the target circle.
5. Save the map, create a new multiplayer game and spawn at the airstart airfield.
6. Fly toward the ship and enter the area of the target circle, descending and levelling off at wavetop height.
7. Press Ctrl+E to bail out.
8. The moment your pilot hits the water, bingo, MISSION COMPLETE.

Here's what I think is happening:

a) The "Destroy Ground" target circle recognises one ship inside it's effective radius at the start of the map so it needs only one target to count destroyed for the objective to be complete.
b) When you bail out at wavetop height, your pilot doesnt have enough height to deploy his chute.
c) The instant the pilot hits the water, he becomes a USpilot 1 or 2 object (effectively a "Stationary Ship" object) and is immediately killed because he hit the water too fast.
d) The "Stationary Ship" US pilot is destroyed and the target circle counts that one object toward it's total.

Has anyone in the TD team seen this effect before and if so, is there any way to counter it? Your feedback here would be appreciated, thanks in advance,

[talonite]

Originally Posted by the_cat_with_hat

a first i would like to thnak you for those wonderful mods you did, but i discovered a little bug with the video capturing/playing function.

I do some kind of dogfight analysation after the most of my flights and as i flew with a Hs129B-2/Wa (B-3) to find out what an effect this tiny canon has on a B-29, I destroyed it completly.
As I watched the Video, the B-29 remained undamaged and my plan did what I actually did (Left turn etc.) But then it crashed into ground what I defentliy didn't. Same Problem with the Hs 129 B-2.
I recognized this problem with no other plane at this moment.

There definitely is something wrong with Hs 129 videos. In replay the plane keeps shooting anywhere far away from target and then crashes.

[IceFire]

We're having a problem with the UK-Dedicated1 server and I'm wondering if it's a bug that has cropped up with the release of 4.10 or 4.10.1. We've only really narrowed down the possible cause recently but I believe this may have been happening the whole time.

A little preface: When I say narrowing down the cause... I mean there appears to be correlation but I've not been able to determine anything else.

The problem is that many users are complaining of periodic stutters or screen freezes while playing on the server. This does not appear to affect them offline. We're not sure if it affects them on other servers or not. Although people have been having problems for a while now I've only just recently noticed the problem myself. I've not yet had a screen freeze but I have seen my FPS decrease and periodic stuttering appear.

The only connection we can see is a series of error messages that seem to appear at random (from our perspective) in the IL-2 console.

[15:56:27] INTERNAL ERROR: Str2FloatClamp() - Clamped 3 -> 2 (delta = -1) to Range 0..2

Or...

[16:26:15] INTERNAL ERROR: Str2FloatClamp() - Clamped 3 -> 2 (delta = -1) to Range 0..2
[16:26:20] INTERNAL ERROR: Str2FloatClamp() - Clamped 3 -> 2 (delta = -1) to Range 0..2
[16:26:31] NetAircraft error, ID_03: java.io.EOFException
[16:26:31] NetAircraft error, ID_03: java.io.EOFException

And...

NTERNAL ERROR: HierMesh: Can't find chunk 'NullPart_D0'
[15:51:52]
WARNING: Clear VBuf 130993
[15:52:02] WARNING: Clear IBuf 219315
[15:52:06] INTERNAL ERROR: HierMesh: Can't find chunk 'NullPart_D0'


INTERNAL ERROR: HierMesh: Can't find chunk 'NullPart_D0'

[15:55:58] INTERNAL ERROR: HierMesh: Can't find chunk 'NullPart_D0'

[15:56:27] INTERNAL ERROR: Str2FloatClamp() - Clamped 3 -> 2 (delta = -1) to Range 0..2
[15:57:15] INTERNAL ERROR: HierMesh: Can't find chunk 'NullPart_D0

Although I've seen internal errors pop up before... I've never seen them linked to stutters and pausing. In one session I had a repeating internal error (this one: INTERNAL ERROR: Str2FloatClamp() - Clamped 3 -> 2 (delta = -1) to Range 0..2) over and over and over again in the console and my frame rate was reduced significantly on a very lightweight map.

We are running FBDj (1.5 I THINK) on the server and it is a dedicated server. The scenarios we run sometimes have MDS elements in them such as moving ships, vehicles or AI aircraft. Other times they don't and the problem still crops up. The one where my frame rate was decreased had no MDS elements on it at all. No moving ships, vehicles, AI or anything of the sort. Just static objects only like an old style dogfight server scenario. Why it was cropping up there I have no idea.

Finally it doesn't appear to affect all players at the same time. I had one error, someone else had a different error (in the same session) and others reported no errors at all. Which leads one to think it's a client side problem. It is being reported by a confirmed 5+ people in our mini-community alone with more casual players on the server also reporting similar problems.

I'm starting to post this message around in a few different places to see if anyone knows what is happening and if this is a bug or a glitch (with 4.10/4.10.1) or something specific to our server... if it is... any clues as to what is going on?

[JtD]

Do you have a track from when this is happening? I wonder if the error is there in the track as well.

[IceFire]

I hadn't thought to do this. Next time it comes up I'll record one...

[bingofuel]

Hello,

many thanks for your continuous improvement of IL2 46.
I'm really keen of course to discover the next 4.11 issue.

I identified two online maps :
- online 2 winter
- online 10b winter
in which the ground texture is reduced to flat white everywhere and even the airfields are not visible.

It should be not a big effort to render these maps with better frames and visible airfields or even to reuse their slots with more interesting maps.

Tx for all.

[MadBlaster]

There is a bug for online play. Your are flying along then it is like someone presses the escape key and the game screen comes up and you can't get back into the cockpit, but your plane keeps on flying and you usually die from crash if you don't disconnect or hope it goes back to normal. It could be a cheat or someone running the server being an azz, I really don't know. Maybe others can confirm.


This was on a 4.101 server

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by bingofuel

Hello,

many thanks for your continuous improvement of IL2 46.
I'm really keen of course to discover the next 4.11 issue.

I identified two online maps :
- online 2 winter
- online 10b winter
in which the ground texture is reduced to flat white everywhere and even the airfields are not visible.

It should be not a big effort to render these maps with better frames and visible airfields or even to reuse their slots with more interesting maps.

Tx for all.

They only look flat white because the sun is at the 12:00 noon position. If you've been blinded by the snow on a sunny day after a snow storm this looks very natural. Change the time to morning or evening and you'll see a very different and much darker look to things.

Changing maps breaks compatibility with missions that are run online and offline using these maps.

BTW: Online10 was made by Oleg's team on specific request for a dogfight map with no terrain features.

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by JtD

Do you have a track from when this is happening? I wonder if the error is there in the track as well.

BTW: It hasn't happened to me again so I don't know what's up. Others on the UK-Dedicated servers continue to have troubles... as you know

[JG52Karaya]

[15:56:27] INTERNAL ERROR: Str2FloatClamp() - Clamped 3 -> 2 (delta = -1) to Range 0..2

From my experience this kind of error message comes from a buggy effects file that uses incorrect settings, too large textures or too many particles for the graphics engine to handle

INTERNAL ERROR: HierMesh: Can't find chunk 'NullPart_D0'
[15:51:52]

This one on the other hand is caused by a specific aircraft that is missing said part (NullPart_D0) of its 3d model which is called for within the hier.him file or the aircraft class file itself! Would be interesting to find out which one exactly is causing the problem...