Question: Where is the MiniDUmp file stored?

Man, been a decade since I las t was here , you can find them in the C:\Users\"your username"\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Debug note that this patch is for Vista and the XP is a little different. The debug folder is in the same folder as the mod folder if this helps

teal, how long have you been modding?

the xp path is C:\Documents and Settings\'user name'\Local Settings\Temp\Sins Dump

harpo

I'v looked at the minidumps, do they ever show anything usefull?

Not to us. Only Ironclad can read 'em.

like you evil, I have looked at the minidumps, but about the only info that I was able to find was the map name, the windows install key and a LOT of material that I can not translate/understand

harpo

Should we bug Ironclad for a minidump decoder?

that would be AWSOME!

Ahhhh..... enlightenment!!! Haha, i appreciate the responses. I've been modding, haha, if you can call the file tweaking and mesh resizing what i do as modding, about a year now, haha, i feel like an old timer.    Anyway, i always thought the minidump file had everything we could possibly want in it. Problem is of course i have never seen one to know, i just thought, well... i got it to work, i dont need it NOW! 

But i guess its hyroglyphics and code, so it probably isnt important to know where it is if i cant read it. 

But thank you for the notes!! Its helpful to know these things!!

Take care and have a good weekend!!!

-Teal

Ahhh.... A new toy for us!!

I like that idea alot.

-Teal

Well they are giberish... and not. Usually the same problem will give the same error, so if you get an error you have gotten before, you know what is bugging you. The errors in themselves however don't give any meaning.

  interesting note, i have Visual C++ on the computer for a class, and when i found the mini-dump folder, out in the mod folder or thereabouts,    It wanted to open it with Visual C++.  So i guess its programming, haha, though my class probably doesnt even get close to what the devs are doing. At least it would be readable, well... providing we can read code, better than the bin format that we see in notepad.

p.s. I am just guessing from looking at what the pc does when i see the dump file. So i could be like way wrong.

-Teal

Well I added some new abilities today which was full of spelling errors and structure errors, and took me 6 hours to make the game able to start. The debugger was quite helpfull and understandable on these ones though I still have some few errors that are geberish but lets me play  the game.

The three things I learned was this one:

Failed to convert 'DrainAntimatter' to an enum value.

And this one:

File: C:\Users\Bjørn\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Entrenchment v1.041\Project 1\GameInfo\BuffPsiEpicAbility2Detonate.entity
Label: numPeriodicActions
Line Number:24
Line Contents: drainAntiMatterRate

And this:

c:\gs\entrenchment\CodeSource\GS\Entity\Interfaces\IBuff.cpp(2055): assert! [weaponEffectsDef.weaponType != WeaponType::Beam]

Now the first one is kinda triggy since it doesn't say which file it is but only the "word" that is wrong which makes it hard to locate onless you add the abilities one at a time or use a tool to search through multiple text files. The error itself means that that command/definition doesn't excist in the game. Fx if you add a weapon class such as bombardment then it will come with this error. In this case I added this as an on delay instant action buff, but it can only be used as a periodic buff (probably spelled wrong).

The next one is when you don't follow the structure. This can be if you say 3 wepons and there only is 2 then you get an error saying that the Label: weapon (since this is the line that should be followed after the 2nd weapon when there is 3). And in Line Contents: (whatever line actually follows the 2nd weapon). It also shows if there is spelling errors including if you use capital letters at the right places. This can also be used if you don't know the structure. Fx in this case I found out that the name of the buff was RemoveAntiMatter, but I didn't know what I should write above the values. So I lod it be and started the dev to get this error:

File: C:\Users\Bjørn\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Entrenchment v1.041\Project 1\GameInfo\BuffPsiEpicAbility2Detonate.entity
Label: antiMatter
Line Number:24
Line Contents: drainAntiMatterRate

This way I could see that I had to write antiMatter above the values (got another error after correcting it because I didn't make the M capital -_-).

Now the last one Means that value is enum, but can't be used in this connection. In this case I wanted an ability to have a beam travel effect, but as you can see the travel effect for abilities can't (atleast with this ability) be a beam effect. Another case were I got this error was when I had set an aiUseTime to invalid. Now invalid is a enum value for aiusetime, but only when it is a passive abillity which this one wasn't.

I hope this info can help other people better understand how to debug their abilities and other editted files (note this only makes them crash free).

 ~ gruntmaster1

interesting work!! Thank you for the hard work. I have also gotten errors like these in some of my mods, I didnt follow through as closely as you have done. In some cases i had to abandon my idea and go back to stock.

-T