"Nowhere" objectives

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DoctorX
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"Nowhere" objectives

Post by DoctorX » 2010-02-10 21:40:22

Reading some of the recent posts about Europe being worked on again (Yay!), reminded me of something I discovered a while ago when I tried fiddling with the theater:

The problem with many of the objectives being named "Nowhere" seemes to stem from there being too many objectives in the theater. The problem isn't so much with the number of objectives, but rather with the number of names of objectives.

From my testing, it seems that the europe.wch file is limited to containing ~32kb of data. If this file gets any larger, the rest of the names stop being recognized and are instead called the default name, which is "Nowhere".

Just wanted to throw this out there as something to keep in mind as development continues. Good luck.

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Re: "Nowhere" objectives

Post by derStef » 2010-02-10 23:27:41

I can't confirm this.

for me it seems that they just have no dedicated name (as you mentioned in the wch file), so they get the "nowhere instead. you can find that in every theater.

and further yes, there is a max number of objects, if you get above, TacEdit will crash while you try to save.

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Re: "Nowhere" objectives

Post by DoctorX » 2010-02-11 03:15:45

If an objective is not given a dedicated name it is supposed to inherit its name from its parent, not be "Nowhere".

If you look through all of the objective names in game you can actually find the first name where the limit has been exceeded, its name will be mangled and contain a bunch of garbage data. If you find what name that objective is supposed to have you can then look up that name in the .wch file. All of the objective names below that one will not show up in the theater, whereas all of the ones above it will be there.

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Re: "Nowhere" objectives

Post by Tobias Adam » 2010-02-11 12:57:52

Yep. Those do not have a parent. That's why I wanted to rework those. Also, sometimes the parent is wrong- and so the name is wrong.

So there is a limit in names, but not in objectives (until that number mentioned when TacEdit will stop)?

Best regards, Tobias
DoctorX wrote:If an objective is not given a dedicated name it is supposed to inherit its name from its parent, not be "Nowhere".

If you look through all of the objective names in game you can actually find the first name where the limit has been exceeded, its name will be mangled and contain a bunch of garbage data. If you find what name that objective is supposed to have you can then look up that name in the .wch file. All of the objective names below that one will not show up in the theater, whereas all of the ones above it will be there.

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Re: "Nowhere" objectives

Post by Luk » 2010-02-12 17:19:44

From my testing, it seems that the europe.wch file is limited to containing ~32kb of data
I suppose, you dont have some more exact number...?
My current europe.wch is 32 174 (win explorer shows 32Kb). I can still add new names. But it looks I am on the "edge".
I still want to add a lot of new objectives! :D
So in case you are true, we should make mentioned crops later and sort out areas of interests.
But it is for another topic.
Luk

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Re: "Nowhere" objectives

Post by DoctorX » 2010-02-13 01:12:47

Looking through my old notes, I unfortunately only wrote down the line number of the limit I reached, which is meaningless since I don't have the .wch file I used to test with anymore.

I'll test it out again and try to get an exact character (byte) count for you.

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Re: "Nowhere" objectives

Post by Snake Man » 2010-02-13 08:47:22

Topic moved to Terrain / Theater area as it was more generic than specific theater related.

Also I cant remember if "nowhere" and "noname" are two separate issues or the same thing. Here is topic for Noname issue, hope that helps.

When we have definite conclusion for this issue, then I'll open dedicated wiki page for it.
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Re: "Nowhere" objectives

Post by DoctorX » 2010-02-14 00:16:20

OK, so the magic number seems to be 32,759 (give or take a few bytes) for the max size of the .wch file.

Once this is exceeded, all of the names that occur after that will be some form of "Nowhere" or "NowhereNew" (it appears that the corrupted names will have the correct character count, but will be composed of the "special" names "Nowhere" and "New").

The first objective where things went awry is relatively easy to identify if you look through the OOB in game. The name will be far longer then it should be, composed of it's own name plus the next two or three names merged onto the end of it.


So to sum up, to eliminate most (if not all) "Nowhere" objectives from a theater, ensure every objective has a valid parent, and that the .wch file does not exceed 32,759 bytes in size.
8-)

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Re: "Nowhere" objectives

Post by Luk » 2010-02-14 10:32:02

OK, so the magic number seems to be 32,759 (give or take a few bytes) for the max size of the .wch file.
Thank you very much DoctorX!

Did you test it in FF5? Or did you in another subversion of Falcon 4?

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Re: "Nowhere" objectives

Post by DoctorX » 2010-02-14 23:34:26

FF4

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