game slows down in ToB

[Avenger]

This is a weird bug, i noticed earlier that my ToB game slows down gradually, but i didn't really care much.

I wouldn't have noticed the real problem, if it wouldn't cause a huge scrolling in GemRB.

In some saves i got 16k number of the same actor (sarbha02 - Oris Nimblefinger).

These areas are 30M uncompressed.

 

I'm pretty sure that i didn't save the game from gemrb, so i don't think it corrupted the save. I used only some TC (forgot the name, i still got some va# files in some saves), but i uninstalled it.

 

The sarbha02 actor also has 2 embedded effects which move it to ar5004 (this caused the lots of scrolling). The weird thing is that several of my games contain different areas with a flood of these actors wanting to teleport back to ar5004.

 

In the original game it just causes a very long load time.

 

If i wouldn't know better, i would call the IE engine got a virus, it spawns these actors so much.

[devSin]

I'm pretty sure this will be GemRB's fault.

 

Oris is scripted to RunAwayFrom() your Bhaalspawn (he may be Bhaalspawn, but he doesn't want anything to do with you). He'll often flee into the temple (AR5004), although you can coax him back out (basically, just speaking to him inside the temple should get him running away from you again). If you never visit the temple, he'll probably get carried along with the party (the engine injects him into every area the party visits that isn't the destination area), but he should get purged from the previous areas; I'm not aware of any bugs that would cause what you're seeing.

[Avenger]

Heh, when you say 'the engine injects him into every area', where is this 'injection' coded?

 

Because AR4500 (pocket plane) is full of his clones.

The funny thing is that i don't see them in the game, i just see them in the files.

 

Btw, I did some unusual things (didn't use gemrb), but i dropped all team members a few times, sometimes ferried them back to the pocket plane, sometimes not. I tried to kill some beholders in abazigal's lair

 

I noticed the slowdowns far before i loaded the game into gemrb, i just noticed what's wrong when i did that. Because the 'MovebetweenAreas' effect started scrolling on the console. As it turned out, i had 16k of Oris each holding 2 of the effects.

 

[edit]

I made extensive use of the pocket plane, it could it be that oris couldn't follow me sometimes, this could even explain if he accidentally got cloned a few times, but i don't think i used it 16000 times, so there must be some flaw where the transition doesn't work correctly, and somehow it is repeated infinitely.

[devSin]

Yeah, in combination with the creature flag (I can't remember the bit; Bit 13 or something), the two MoveBetweenAreas() effects (always added in pairs for whatever reason) cause the engine to carry the creature with the party (they get attached to the current area -- at least the current master area -- and removed from previous areas). I'd guess it's some sort of OnLoad/Unload code in area handling; you can look at the effect, but it's probably just a storage structure (i.e., the effect doesn't actually do anything).

 

I imagine the engine does this so you don't have to revisit the area the creature was traveling from before they'll show up in the new area (although, it's not like they transition across world map areas, so you probably always have to visit their original master area before getting to the destination, but I'm sure they had a valid reason).

 

The Pocket Plane is really, really weird, so I wouldn't rule out that there's some bug there. I don't know why, but it spends a lot of time loaded when a normal area probably wouldn't be (if you load a ToB saved game, you'll sometimes notice that the game fades in after loading and the restoration animation plays over the PCs -- AR4500 got loaded for some reason, and the OnCreation() block from its script is running -- and I've sometimes seen effects from the ppguy01 cutscenes run after traveling to Saradush and the intro cutscene finishes).

[Avenger]

Hmm, ever you checked your saved game then?

Just uncompress it, and order the files by size. If you got anything larger than 1M, tell me

[devSin]

I'll check it out eventually (I don't have any saves in the current install, but I have some backed up somewhere). I'm pretty sure there won't be any file with out of the ordinary results (certainly not 16K Nimblefingers!). Really, any ARE over 128K is probably borked.

 

I've done some work with the early ToB areas (looking at the AREs in the SAV archive), and I've never seen this, but I wasn't specifically checking for it.