Game crash, where to start debugging?

[critto]

Hi, folks. I'm a bit at loss here.

 

I have the following setup:

- EE1.3 (latest patch before 2.x) with the community-made Chinese translation (added to the respective dialogue folder, switched on via the in-game language selection screen);

- the mod (IAv6.2) which now now has texts both in the original English language, as well as the community-prepped Chinese translation (just another set of tra files, nothing new here).

 

Without the mod installed, everything works perfect, the new game starts without problems.

 

However, when bg2ee (Chinese version) + IAv6.2 (Chinese version) is ran, the game hangs immediately after the "new game" button is pressed. Obviously, something gets screwed up in the dialog.tlk (the CH version) when the mod is installed on top.

Where do I start looking, though? Are there any strings that are loaded from it when the "new game" is pressed? What could possibly lead to the crash, in theory?

Any ideas are welcome.

Cheers,

critto

[lynx]

Ouch, at best you could try a pyramid of string tables. You know which strings are fine at least in the main menu. Replace all others with that one. Does the problem go away? If so, replace one at a time. If that is not enough, two, three ... yuck.

 

FLOSS ftw.

[argent77]

I can only give you a few general pointers:
1. Make sure all chinese text is encoded in UTF-8.
2. You can start the game from the console to see additional text messages.
3. Activate strrefs in the baldur.ini: 'Program Options', 'Strref On', '1',

[critto]

Thanks for the suggestion guys. argent77, could you clarify a bit more on the subject of starting from the console. Where will I see the extra messages?

[argent77]

Starting the game from the console (Terminal, Command Prompt, or whatever it's called on your OS) will show you additional messages about the current state of the game. It might help to see what or where something went wrong.

[critto]

Well, I do pretty much everything from the terminal. I launch the .app file using the open utility and it doesn't give me any extra info into the console. Should I turn another option on in the config file or look for a log file or something?

 

Right, nevermind. Simply converting setup.tra to UTF-8 appear to have helped, there are no crashes anymore. I'll process the rest of the files and sent the patch to the Chinese guys for more extensive testing. Thanks for the hint.

[critto]

Right, that's me again. Apparently, if those translation files that were converted into UTF-8 are installed on top of ToB, the result is gibberish. ToB doesn't work well with UTF-8, I gather? What's the recommended approach here? Keep two sets of translation files? Mess with the charsets (I've noticed such code in various mods but never studied it in depth)?

[Mike1072]

Do you mean a non-EE ToB?

 

The HANDLE_CHARSET stuff is needed because .tra files need to be encoded differently for EE and non-EE installations. It manages the task of converting your .tra files to UTF-8 when dealing with the enhanced editions.

[critto]

Yes, non-EE. Thanks for the pointer. I'll read the documentation, didn't realise it's already built into WeiDU.