Ambrosia Software Web Board: Need help - Ambrosia Software Web Board

---NEED HELP---
I am currently working on a plugin. I've finished 8 levels, and they are guaranteed to have no bugs. None. However, this little error comes up after you finish every level. It's so annoying! Also, because of this error, level 5 is completely inaccessible. The errors are always error numbers 1, 2, and 3. And on level 8, it says -- "Can't manage any more sprite tables." -- and it quits. And when it quits, you will have to start up Ares all over again.

So, as I already said, I need help.

Just give me your e-mail and I'll mail it to you.

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"A life without danger is no life at all."

[This message has been edited by Blood Eagle (edited 04-29-2002).]

I believe errors 1, 2, and 3 are memory errors. This means that you should cut down on the number of objects in the level, or increase Ares' memory allocation (Get Info, Cmd-I)

"Can't manage any more sprite tables" means that you're using too many different sprites, which generally means you're using too many different objects.

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"Welcome to our Pirate outpost. Please enjoy your stay, and realize that any irregular actions can and will be used against you in the afterlife."

Ok. So I've got like about 50 objects in play. But I noticed something. In one of the plugs I downloaded (Think it was "The Aftermath" by Patrick), there were at least 80 objects. And it didn't even go weird. And yes, don't think I haven't tried altering the memory already. Maybe I didn't put enough memory into Ares. I think it's because I'm using new sprites, not the ones that are already in Ares. But I didn't use too many different sprites. (About say, 15?)

Well, thanks for the help. I'm open to suggestions.

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"A life without danger is no life at all."

It may have been the aftermath( The Gaitori fleet in one of the last levels was 20 carriers and 50-60 gunships and cruisers if i recall correctly)

In any case, if you want to email it to me ( [redacted] ) I'll see if I can take a look.

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***Sign up for the Ares ladder***
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This post has been edited by Patrick: 25 September 2007 - 03:08 PM

50 to 60!? If I recall correctly, I had way less than that.

I'll send the plug to you. But wait for a while -- I'm busy now.

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"A life without danger is no life at all."

I'm e-mailing the plug to you. I'm planning to submit this in the Ares Add-ons page, but I'll do it later.

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"A life without danger is no life at all."

I got it but havent played through the first level yet(Those cloaked HVDs ruined my plans to kill those 4 reinforcing carriers )
One thing i noticed is that the plugin is in the "optimized" format. If I recall correctly, that is the reason for your problems. Try saving it as a normal Hera file instead.

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***Sign up for the Ares ladder***
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send it over here. jager_1@mac.com or stuartjager@yahoo.com

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Heh heh heh...
Patrick, the levels are meant to be hard. But, there IS a way to beat it. Just read the messages carefully and build lots of gunships.

About the "optimized" thing, you mean that optimized plugs have memory errors? Now that you said it, I can't correct it anymore - I deleted my Hera copy.

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"A life without danger is no life at all."

Luckily, I recreated an unoptimized copy of my plug-in. I'll test the unoptimized one, and then compare it to the optimized one. Just wait and see...

Oops! Wrond prologue for Level 1! Gotta correct it...
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"A life without danger is no life at all."

[This message has been edited by Blood Eagle (edited 05-04-2002).]

Quote

I know that it's beatable. I just only played it once then Ares quit with a type 11 error. Therefore I didnt retry it with the knowledge that my HVD would lose to the enemy fleet 1 v 6

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***Sign up for the Ares ladder***
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GameRanger/MagChat SN: Col. Patrick [EL]

I was starting to play my last level, and then, 2 errors came up: 1 saying "Can't manage any more sounds" and the other "Can't manage any more sprite tables". What is wrong?

I can't even play my last level anymore.

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"A life without danger is no life at all."

As I have not seen your plug my response can be at best somewhat speculative.

Ares has a limit on the number of objects a level can handle, also on the number of different sprites (=items, ships, weapons fire, asteroids planets, bugs etc). this only becomes a problem on heavy combat scenarios. In my plug Audemedon Crisis I pushed the "sprites" limit right to the edge. I wanted to create a big battle involving lots of races. I ran out of sprites. My final solution was to reduce the number of weapons sprites by creating Human Gunships which were armed with Ishman weapons, this knocked about six sprites off the sprite count for the level. Try creating a copy of your plug and delete an entire ship class (which will reduce the sprite count by maybe 10) to see if you get the warning. Continue deleting ship classes (ie all the HVDs of a particular race for example) until you no longer get the sprite warning). To continue using a ship class that had to be deleted to bring the sprite count down you will need to re-equip the ship class with weapons already used by other ships in the level (bearing in mind that each ship itself will occupy a sprite count of at least one). This is a bug that can be fixed, and this is how I fixed it when I encountered it. There may be other solutions also.
Remember also that Ares loads each sprite only once. So 50 HVDs of race X will load, maybe 20 sprites say (=ship+weapons+anything else generated by the ship). One HVD of race X will load the same number of sprites. you can use this to your advantage by re-arranging weapons allocated to ships, or weapons' fire sprites.
Again, this bug is totally fixable.

The sound bug is linked to that of weapons sprites, and will generally fix itself if you fix the sprites bug.

Adjusting the memory allocation to Hera and or Ares will not help.

Another word of caution, keep an eye on the number of objects that are created in your plug. Ares will allow approximately 1200 in a plug. Above that and my experience is that the plug is corrupted irrevocably.

Additionally, in this age of gigabytes of Ram and (almost) terabytes of hard disk capacity make back-ups of your Ares scenario. I back up my file each time I make any change on it. This is useful in troubleshooting bugs as well, as it enables you to trace back the originating point of a bug. You would also be well advised to keep a back up of Ares and of Hera, and of your Ares Preferences file, just in case.

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Oh, so it is another bug hunt then...

Patrick, how is my plug going?

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"A life without danger is no life at all."

My suggestion would be for you to boost up Ares memory a little bit. Ive had similar problems, and usually when it gives you errors about quantity (too much of something) it needs more memory. I suggest bumping it up to about 25 to 30 megs just to be sure. I had a very similar problem, and fixed it this way. If it doesn't work try remaking the level, sometimes Hera messes itself up in very strange ways. Good luck!

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Thanks for all the advice. I'll do as you say. Umm, whoever I sent my plug to, how is it? (Skip level 5 with Hera)

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"A life without danger is no life at all."

[DELETED]

[This message has been edited by Blood Eagle (edited 08-05-2002).]