Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Bug/Patch Discussion => Topic started by: hyperion on March 12, 2021, 09:52:12 PM

Title: Cannot run smac-in-smax because of bad technology key error
Post by: hyperion on March 12, 2021, 09:52:12 PM

Hello.

I have been trying to get into SMACX after years, and I just can't get it to start!

Steps:

1. Installing SMAC+X (tried both GOG and CDs)
2. Installing patches (for CDs, official ones, and then tried the following combination for both install types:
2A. Yitzi's patch 3.5 -> 3.5 d ->PRACX 1.11
2B. Scient's patch 2.1 -> PRACX 1.11
2C. PRACX only
3. Putting the mod manager beta 3 in another folder that is not the SMACX root folder, choosing the correct folder, and letting it backup.
4. unzipping yitzi version of smac-in-smax (i tried the other version once too) onto an appropriately named folder in modmanager/mods/
5. using mod manager to move it to the right, clicking apply
6. starting SMAX

No matter what combination I used, it gives me this error about a bad technology key in alphax. not being able to parse the integer about probe teams stealing technology enable/disable (which looks perfectly fine in the file itself) no matter what value you feed it. The Scient's patch and no unofficial patches combinations break a different integer in a different line, but you get the idea.

without smac in smax it works, so I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I spent a whole day trying to set it up to no avail and am out of ideas, so I'll be glad if someone here could help me troubleshoot.

Thank you.

Title: Re: Cannot run smac-in-smax because of bad technology key error
Post by: bvanevery on March 13, 2021, 05:37:30 AM

Is your goal merely to play SMACX ?  You don't need all these procedures to do that.  The GOG version of SMACX works just fine on recent Windows 10.  It's my officially supported binary for my modding.  I don't use any patches at all.  It's stable for me, almost all of the time.

There have been some rare problems, which sometimes I've had to invoke the Scenario Editor to work around.  They are so rare though, that I have not been driven to use Scient's patch on a permanent basis for it.  I think I have tried "let's do Scient's version" when faced with a bad game, and I can't remember what the results were.  The one problem that tends to bite me, is when AI factions break an alliance, and an enemy ends up in a previously friendly city.  Depending on what happens next, that can make the game crash.  I know it's the problem and what to look for nowadays.  And like I said, it's rare, so I just haven't had much reason to be more specific / better about a fix than that.

Is the point of SMAC-in-SMACX to avoid the narrative indignities of the Aliens etc?  Are you already aware of those indignities and have suffered them, or do you merely think it's going to be a problem?  If the latter, don't rely on people's violent second hand opinions about it.  Go experience it firsthand.  If you think those new factions suck, you can just not play with them.  Nothing stopping you from picking whatever 7 of the 14 factions you want.  I always play randomized opponent games and always take a random faction unless I'm doing a themed After Action Report.

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a bad technology key in alphax

Try taking this modded alphax.txt is and dropping it on top of an official GOG binary installation.  No other files, and no patches.  If it still chokes and dies, then you've proven that the bug has nothing to do with the patches and binary stuff.  It's just an error in whatever modding smac-in-smacx was doing.

Which wouldn't shock me... because frankly, my own level of modding testing and release anal retentiveness is nearly professional grade.  The only reason I say "nearly" is because I'm not doing automated unit testing, I only test by hand.  Very few amateurs are as thorough as I am, but I have an extreme open source disciplinarian background.  I spent all my open source time mastering build systems, because of everyone else's broken builds all the time.  Not saying others can't make good releases, but I take it more seriously than most because I consider my professional reputation to be on the line at all times.  I don't think other people do.  Others are probably more like, "Oh, well, haven't had much call for that feature in awhile.  Guess something broke."

Title: Re: Cannot run smac-in-smax because of bad technology key error
Post by: hyperion on March 13, 2021, 12:54:24 PM

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Is your goal merely to play SMACX ?  You don't need all these procedures to do that.  The GOG version of SMACX works just fine on recent Windows 10.  It's my officially supported binary for my modding.  I don't use any patches at all.  It's stable for me, almost all of the time.

Yes, my goal is to play SMACX. I was lead to believe by this wiki https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri)
that SMAC-in-SMAX is the best way to play because you can then enjoy the benefit of patches that fix bugs in game
(they specifically recommended yitzi's, saying that it's made by a combination of scient's and kybur's,
 which probably contradicts the fact that scient's is the most recently updated one. They also said SMAX has the better engine.
But according to your reaction, I assume that the wiki was wrong about this and that I don't need the patches?

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Is the point of SMAC-in-SMACX to avoid the narrative indignities of the Aliens etc?  Are you already aware of those indignities and have suffered them, or do you merely think it's going to be a problem?

I am not yet aware of the aliens - it's just that the patches I was convinced I should be using are SMAX related,
 and I thought that you can't play with the original game rules (original factions, no aliens, original tech tree and effects) on SMAX...
 which I assumed is what SMAC-in-SMAX is for - playing the original game with the added bugfixing and modding capabilities of SMAX.

I eventually would like to play both units (and form my own opinions!), it's just that I thought I should start with "classic" SMAC before playing SMAX,
and that the patches fix bugs I didn't want to encounter, and that they require using SMAX (and not SMAC). Confusing, huh?

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Try taking this modded alphax.txt is and dropping it on top of an official GOG binary installation.  No other files, and no patches.  If it still chokes and dies, then you've proven that the bug has nothing to do with the patches and binary stuff.  It's just an error in whatever modding smac-in-smacx was doing.

Nice, I should have thought of that!

Yes, using the modded alphax exclusively still makes it die. Picture: https://i.imgur.com/p31Ry33.png (https://i.imgur.com/p31Ry33.png)

Now I wonder if it's a local problem or if others have had this too. I mean, however inaccurate that wiki may be, they wouldn't recommend it if it didn't work for everybody.

So, are the patches/mods not the best way to play SMACX? Should I not be worried about bugs?
 That wiki should be updated as it could confuse more people -
 I had to go through a whole forum once to find out that what they recommended about another game is outdated,
 and I should have kept that in mind more as I was doing this...

Title: Re: Cannot run smac-in-smax because of bad technology key error
Post by: bvanevery on March 14, 2021, 01:19:06 AM

Quote from: hyperion on March 13, 2021, 12:54:24 PM

But according to your reaction, I assume that the wiki was wrong about this and that I don't need the patches?

I think patch authors build up a cultural zeitgeist, where everyone believes a patch is an automatic improvement.  Possibly in every gaming category - art, writing, AI, UI, bugfixing, etc. - even when a specific patch, may not address several of those categories at all.  People just think, "patches are better".  So they go and collect them.  Then they get into trouble with all the cross-interactions, and the cold hard realities, that sometimes patchers and modders introduce new bugs and also misfeature some part of the game.

As a single player on Windows 10, I've done just fine with no binary modding, almost all of the time.  That wasn't always true, there were some periods of time where Windows 10 seemed to create bugs in some ways.  Those seem to have abated, at least in the games I've been playing.  I've often wondered whether the multiplayer crowd, exposed a lot of bugs that really affect them, and if multiplayer experience is what drove a lot of the patching.  I wouldn't know because I've generally regarded the game as too long to play with other people.

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and I thought that you can't play with the original game rules (original factions, no aliens, original tech tree and effects) on SMAX...

Although technically true in the narrowest sense, it's very very picky to be worrying about it.  New factions, you can just blow them off and specify whatever factions you want to play with.  Such as the original 7.  So what else changes?

SMACX has fungal towers and spore launchers.  I think complaining about those is whining.  YMMV, but I say there's nothing wrong with them. 

Pulse armor, Resonance armor, and Resonance lasers bug some people.  I can understand the desire to get rid of them.  I just rebalanced their tech tree placement and cost.  Especially, I nerfed the early R-Lasers.  They're only strength 3 now, so you're only going to use them if you're going mindworm hunting.  Think of it as "anti-mindworm recon unit" rather than weapon of all-encompassing death.

I think piracy of ships is new, the Marine Detachment.  I don't think it's that big a deal in the real world.  It does provide another avenue of tech leakage though.  You don't want your very advanced ship to be taken by pirates!

Various new Secret Projects are overpowered.  Various old Secret Projects are also overpowered.  The answer is the same in both cases: rebalance them with sane costs.  I do that, some other mods do it.  People who care about this, have spent a lot of time analyzing the relative worth of the SPs, and we have some loose consensuses about it.  Of course, then we all go off and do exactly specifically different things.  But nobody's debating that The Weather Paradigm and the Empath Guild are overpowered.

Soporific Gas Pods are dumb.  Generally speaking, anything that makes it trivial to get more and more offensive firepower bonus is dumb.  So I made them expensive and available later in the game.  Late enough that you're probably gonna find them irrelevant by the time you can do them.  I think Dissociative Wave might also be another one of the newfangled dumb ones.  Dealt with it the same way.

Anyways SMACX puts a little too much crap into the game, in some cases.  You know, selling people toys, justification for an expan$ion.  I modded what should have been.  So have some others, like Will To Power mod.

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I eventually would like to play both units (and form my own opinions!), it's just that I thought I should start with "classic" SMAC before playing SMAX,
and that the patches fix bugs I didn't want to encounter,

The official game binaries are not buggy POSs.  Just go play them.  Try waiting until you actually run into a problem, before worrying about a bugfix patch.  In that case you'll try Scient's.  And if that doesn't solve it, it'll be esoteric, and take brainpower from multiple people on this forum.

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Picture: https://i.imgur.com/p31Ry33.png (https://i.imgur.com/p31Ry33.png)

That alphax.txt is specific to some modded binary, which has changed the parsing format.  Here's what the line looks like in an official alphax.txt:

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10,      ; Retool exemption (first X minerals not affected by penalty)

Some binary modder has added an extra parameter.  And somehow in your stack of patches, you're no longer using the binary that understands the new format.  Who is to blame for that?  Well there are at least 3 different binary patches to point the finger at.  Maybe now you'll understand why I KISS and don't do binary patches.   ;lol

I bet if you knock off that leading "50," it'll all magically start working.  'Cuz then you're back to what an official game binary expects.

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I mean, however inaccurate that wiki may be, they wouldn't recommend it if [reasons]

Remember that maintaining a wiki, is a kind of open source development.  As are all these patches and mods.  The effort and conscientiousness of $0 volunteer open source developers over time, especially over a long haul of many years, is not consistent.  It is actually normal for things to be out of date and wrongly documented.  One of the skills of an open source dev is swimming through all of that routinely, to get to what is really true.  Don't ever believe that because it's on a wiki, it's correct.  It's on a wiki so that you can make it correct, when it inevitably is wrong / does break.
 

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Should I not be worried about bugs?

You should not be worrying about bugs at this time.  You should be just playing the official game, either SMAC or SMACX.  No patches, mods, nuthin'.  Playing the original game, is the only way you're gonna know that a patch or mod is actually an improvement.   8)  When the official game starts to irritate you for some reason, either because it's buggy, or imbalanced, that's the time to reach for a mod.

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That wiki should be updated as it could confuse more people -

You can!  Once you're confident that you're right about something.  I didn't even know it existed.  I don't hang out wherever that is.  I mainly hang out on r/4Xgaming, and here.  That's pretty much where I put the support time in.

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I had to go through a whole forum once to find out that what they recommended about another game is outdated,
 and I should have kept that in mind more as I was doing this...

Hmm if you didn't come here following a Reddit recommendation, I'd be mildly interested to know how you found out about this site.  Reddit seems like the biggest critical mass of new blood, but it would be ironic if there's some other channel that I don't know about.

Title: Re: Cannot run smac-in-smax because of bad technology key error
Post by: hyperion on March 15, 2021, 06:36:42 AM

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Hmm if you didn't come here following a Reddit recommendation, I'd be mildly interested to know how you found out about this site.

Also from that wiki. It links here for the various downloads they recommend.
They also have a link on the top of the SMAC game page.

Code: [Select]

General information

 alphacentauri2.info - Active Alpha Centauri modding, patching and multiplayer community. Perhaps the last on the web.
Thank you for all the info and your thoughts though, I can see your logic on patches, wikis, and development.

I do get, however, why some people would automatically install bugfixing patches to avoid future bugs - They assume think that every volunteer developer who contributes a patch is a professional because they aren't as privy to the reality of development (including myself), so they read the fancy changelog / feature list and say, "wow, that solves a lot of bugs - I should get that!"

They might be wrong, as you've said, but I can look from inside their shoes, as we say here.

I will be playing the game like it comes from GOG.

Title: Re: Cannot run smac-in-smax because of bad technology key error
Post by: bvanevery on March 15, 2021, 08:19:02 AM

It takes experience to know what matters, and also some focus.  Yitzi, he did a lot of bugfixing.  But I strongly suspect it was opportunistic bug fixing.  Was tooling around in the binary, saw a problem he could fix.  Went and fixed it.  Wet, lather, rinse, repeat.  Didn't do it according to what needed fixing, I think.  Maybe sometimes yes, driven by other people's complaints, but other times I think he just found something he could fix.

After awhile of doing that sort of thing, most people are going to burn out.  You have to go get your 1st real paying job or some such.

I have no idea how Scient has sustained his effort and interest, but he's still around.  Must see it as some kind of life project.  Same way I see my mod as, gotta put SMAC right.  I went bankrupt in the early 2000s trying to make a SMAC-like game, so it's personal.

Title: Re: Cannot run smac-in-smax because of bad technology key error
Post by: dino on March 15, 2021, 08:43:35 AM

The Scient's and Ytzii's patches are 100% improvements and as stable as vanilla if not more, but they mostly fix some minutae inconsistencies and errors in rules implementation.
So not essential for the beginner, but there is also no reason not to use one of them.

SMAX expansion is a mixed bag from a gameplay point of view, but generally more of the same with few slightly unbalanced overpowered features.
Most players eventually gravitate toward playing expansion over SMAC, buy there are like 10-20% of purists that play mostly SMAC, or SMAC in SMAX mod instead.
From the narrative and mood point of view the original is way more elegant and mysterious and SMAC is the best in the 4X genre in that area.
I'd advise you to play at least one game of SMAC to completion, before you move on to trying the expansion, just play without patches if you won't manage to get SMAC in SMACX mod working.

There is one more option to rule them all:
https://github.com/induktio/thinker
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qsps5bhz8v020o9/AAAp6ioWxdo7vnG6Ity5W3o1a?dl=0&lst=
https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21013.0

It integrates Scient's 2.0 patch and a few fixes of it's own.
It integrates SMAC in SMAX mod, where you have to just enable it in the thinker.ini config file.
It's an AI improvement mod and few optional rule changes to deal with few unbalanced vanilla combat rules.

Vanilla AI can't play the game properly, maybe it's not as bad as modern CIV games, but it's bad enough to make the game pointless once you learn to play well.
It doesn't matter if you play your first few games with it, but after you learn the basics, there is no point in choosing vanilla over it for singleplayer.
If you keep playing vanilla untill you can consistently win, you'll develop bad habits you'll have to unlearn after trying thinker.

Mods authors will disagree, but in my opinion you should stay away from a heavily rules altering mods like The Will to Power, AI growth, SMANIAC etc. untill you understand the game really well.
Out of these mods The Will to Power has the most merit in my opinion and is the only one I play, but it's a long road before you should worry about these.

There is also a non essential UI mod: https://github.com/DrazharLn/pracx/releases/ The latest version works with all patches and mods.
It introduces a few QoL features like smooth map scrolling and panning for example and unfortunately one mild visual glitch with the text on the info panel that the author never fixed despite multiple reports ;)

Title: Re: Cannot run smac-in-smax because of bad technology key error
Post by: bvanevery on March 15, 2021, 04:38:03 PM

Quote from: dino on March 15, 2021, 08:43:35 AM

The Scient's and Ytzii's patches are 100% improvements and as stable as vanilla if not more, but they mostly fix some minutae inconsistencies and errors in rules implementation.
So not essential for the beginner, but there is also no reason not to use one of them.

Yitzi changed the way alphax.txt values are encoded in 3 places.  This breaks any alphax.txt that is not Yitzi-specific and doing it his way.  Meaning, the game crashes.  I think it's the Stockpile Energy change of encoding, that causes the crash.  It was and still is a bad idea, to make changes to alphax.txt mandatory.

Scient did a way better, non-invasive job about this sort of thing.  Any Scient-specific stuff in alphax.txt is optional.  Scient is known to work with my mod and probably anyone's mod.  I don't specifically test with Scient, but I have no reason to believe it won't work.

Yitzi and Scient are not equal in this regard.

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If you keep playing vanilla untill you can consistently win, you'll develop bad habits you'll have to unlearn after trying thinker [or any other serious mod].

Doesn't matter.  That's kind of the point of gameplay modding, to make your brain work harder.  Gotta expand those neurons somehow.  If everything was the same and played the same way, why would we make gameplay mods?

The reverse is true as well.  If you play Thinker too much, you'll become lazy about spamming supply crawlers and thermal boreholes, because it's clearly the best and possibly the only way to win the game.  This won't help you at all in either SMACX AI Growth mod or The Will To Power, because neither of us as game designers believed in these exploits.   We suppressed them.

Playing what you're playing, makes you best at what you're playing.  Always was and always will be.  Heck, usually when I make a new release, I don't know how to play my own mod for a certain period of time afterwards.  But then I adjust.

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Mods authors will disagree, but in my opinion you should stay away from a heavily rules altering mods like The Will to Power, AI growth, SMANIAC etc. untill you understand the game really well.

I never recommend that noobs start with my mod.  Any disagreement here is slight, and one of emphasis.  You don't have to understand SMAC really well to move on to a mod.  But you should understand it.  If you don't know how the original game works, you won't know why a mod is an improvement on it.  Worse, you might complain that some bug or gaming misfeature was a fault of the mod, when it was the fault of the original game.  When the original game starts to make you itch for some reason, when you think you're facing something game mechanically stupid, that's the time to move on to a mod.

Like overpowered probe teams.  Hate those things.

Title: Re: Cannot run smac-in-smax because of bad technology key error
Post by: scient on March 20, 2021, 11:54:40 PM

Quote from: bvanevery on March 15, 2021, 08:19:02 AM

I have no idea how Scient has sustained his effort and interest, but he's still around.  Must see it as some kind of life project.  Same way I see my mod as, gotta put SMAC right.

You an me both lol. It ebbs and flows. Day job has been particularly busy so in the ebb part right now.

@hyperion: If you want to try just my base patch, happy to have a look if you run into any issues. I've moved on to OpenSMACX but my changes alone should be 100% compatible with base GOG install. If you wanted to get crazy, you could overlap OpenSMACX on top of it. However, any net new changes in OpenSMACX will be pretty minor. The last release of both unofficial patch and SMACX are stable and haven't had any issues reported to my knowledge.

Title: Re: Cannot run smac-in-smax because of bad technology key error
Post by: hyperion on March 21, 2021, 02:24:25 PM

Quote from: scient on March 20, 2021, 11:54:40 PM

You an me both lol. It ebbs and flows. Day job has been particularly busy so in the ebb part right now.

@hyperion: If you want to try just my base patch, happy to have a look if you run into any issues. I've moved on to OpenSMACX but my changes alone should be 100% compatible with base GOG install. If you wanted to get crazy, you could overlap OpenSMACX on top of it. However, any net new changes in OpenSMACX will be pretty minor. The last release of both unofficial patch and SMACX are stable and haven't had any issues reported to my knowledge.

Thank you. Do you recommend your patch as a net gain to every install, or is it especially for people who have difficulties/dissatisfaction with the unpatched game? And is it a bugfixing patch or a balance patch?
I'm mostly asking for updating that wiki more than just for my own use. Been busy with unforeseen work load but will definitely play as soon as I get the time.

Title: Re: Cannot run smac-in-smax because of bad technology key error
Post by: scient on March 21, 2021, 11:17:21 PM

I would recommend it but I'm probably biased. :)

I think it's a net gain and I know some other modders have used as the ground work to build off of. I was pretty careful when it came to writing the assembly. Granted back when I was doing direct binary patches I was pretty clueless compare to now regarding the overall game internals. As far as I know of, no one has reported any recent issues with my patch alone. There were some issues with text file updates that got reported/resolved (changes to text files weren't my own). While I no longer maintain the patch and won't be adding any new fixes, if you do run into any issues I can troubleshoot them fairly easily. I've kept detailed notes about offsets for each change. This has come in handy while working on integrating fixes into OpenSMACX.

It's almost entirely bug fixes. My philosophy has always been to have the lightest touch as possible when deviating from the original behavior. In instances that I have had to make a change for whatever reason (source material about mechanic isn't clear, likely coding error, etc), I document it clearly with justification. I'll leave the balance changes to other talented modders. You can see the full changelog for patch here (https://github.com/DrazharLn/scient-unofficial-smacx-patch). I did close up a bunch of exploits and tried to extend mod-ability while tip toeing around not breaking existing installs.

If you want to be on the latest and greatest of my work as well as help out as a tester, add OpenSMACX on top as a last step. You'll see some overlap in fixes from my unofficial patch rolled in as actual code fixes. I'd say the current release (0.2.3) is extremely stable and safe for normal play. If you do notice or run into any issues with this project, I'll fix them right away. The goal of this project is a bit different than the patch where I'm trying to decompile the entire game and have fixes built into code. The way it works is by redirecting code from the binary to a dll that is compiled from source. You can see changelog here (https://github.com/b-casey/OpenSMACX). Most of the net new changes are under the hood and most people probably would never notice them. Let me know if you have any questions about a specific fix or change.

With all that said, SMAC is a fairly stable game vanilla excluding exploits. Off the cuff, SMACX seems to have had less code review. The majority of the bugs were introduced by SMACX or SMACX mechanics.