Crash after Beast fight removes NPCs from previous saves

After wiping out the entire military checkpoint in Cordon, Beast and his men for Ghost, I was on my way back to Sid to sell off some loot when the game crashes because there's way too many npc bodies on the ground for the engine to handle.

I reload the save which happened after Beast died and I took the documents. No friendly npcs, no bodies anywhere, not even guns. That's normal because after the mercenary invasion of rostok, I was accustomed to bodies being deleted.

Okay, so I'll do the entire fight again without crashing. Reload save before talking to ghosts group. Rookie Village is completely devoid of NPC's except Sid... Even the Military Checkpoint is completely empty. That's not a good sign. I'll reload a save before I used the ATP to go to Cordon (my favourite shortcut from Bar), then transition to Cordon again. No luck. There are no NPC's still.

I decided to check the error log since I can't check the crash because it's a fullscreen game which locks up the display when it crashes.

===
stack trace:

Scheduler tried to update object esc_blokpost_soldier1

FATAL ERROR

[error]Expression : fatal error
[error]Function : CScriptEngine::lua_error
[error]File : E:\stalker\sources\trunk\xr_3da\xrGame\script_engine.cpp
[error]Line : 73
[error]Description : <no expression>
[error]Arguments : LUA error: ...ad\stalkersoup\gamedata\scripts\bind_det_arts.script:152: C stack overflow
===
If this is fixable, great. If it's not, then I guess this is where I stop playing. Because I'm going to guess every single NPC in the game except traders got deleted too.

Previous post:

I have never experienced this before. Certainly if you transition and return the dead NPCs are removed and their guns remain. You could try going back to a save where the Game worked OK, and proceed forward from there. You may have to do tasks etc to return you to the attack on Beast. When you say there were no NPCs were those in the Rookie Village dead too or just the ones that came with you? Are you playing version 1.10019.1? Because Stalkersoup generally improves with each update. I will send you a private memo.

Quote :: I have never experienced this before. Certainly if you transition and return the dead NPCs are removed and their guns remain. You could try going back to a save where the Game worked OK, and proceed forward from there. You may have to do tasks etc to return you to the attack on Beast. When you say there were no NPCs were those in the Rookie Village dead too or just the ones that came with you? Are you playing version 1.10019.1? Because Stalkersoup generally improves with each update. I will send you a private memo.

====

Not really sure how to view private memos, it says I have new ones but there's nothing showing in my inbox.

I'm currently playing the latest update, and I rewound to the ATP before I had even gone into cordon, transistioned and there were no NPC's except Sid, suggesting that something had been corrupted in my game.

Hi IamTwi

I'm hoping that one of the developers will read your post and suggest a solution, because it's certainly unusual

Inasfar as I can help, what version of Windows are you using, please? If Windows 10, then Home or Pro?

And have you read the installation guide [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and followed it to the letter? Especially if you're using Windows 10 or above

Sword2012 wrote:: Hi IamTwi

I'm hoping that one of the developers will read your post and suggest a solution, because it's certainly unusual

Inasfar as I can help, what version of Windows are you using, please? If Windows 10, then Home or Pro?

And have you read the installation guide [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and followed it to the letter? Especially if you're using Windows 10 or above

Hello Sword2012!
Yes, I made sure to isolate the game to its own folder on a different hard drive where it has all the permissions it needs, and followed all the installation steps. I am using Windows 10 Home.

Hi IamTwi

Okay. Just checking that you've followed all the instructions on page 10 of the Installation Guide, because the Home version creates most of the problems associated with Windows 10, which involve the game not being able to access the files when you most need them

If you're certain you've done this, then please please send your log file to the forum

You'll find the log file in: STALKERSOUP\_appdata_\logs\ xray_your name_Date_Time.mdmp.log

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Hi Sword2012.
Hopefully this link works correctly?

Hmm. Your log file should be able to open in Notepad, and look like this

Log file:

But when I open your file in Notepad++ it looks like it could be corrupted, so at this point I'd recommend uninstalling the game totally, including your registry, and follow the guide again to do a full reinstall

However, Aleks may pick up on this to help you out

Sword2012 wrote:

Hmm. Your log file should be able to open in Notepad, and look like this

Log file:

But when I open your file in Notepad++ it looks like it could be corrupted, so at this point I'd recommend uninstalling the game totally, including your registry, and follow the guide again to do a full reinstall

However, Aleks may pick up on this to help you out

Hi Sword2012,
Yeah I looked at my log file just now on my own computer and it's corrupted just as you said. I'm going to guess my crash just completely corrupted my game. Because all the previous logs are corrupted too.

Is this something that's going to have to be looked into? Here's an actual notepad file that's not corrupted. It's not mdmp, but it contains all my crashes from when I started the game(15th Feb?), to now (11th March).

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Hi IamTwi

At this point, I'd uninstall my game totally, down to every last registry entry. Then I'd check my Windows install, and that everything was clean, tidy, and up to date - including all drivers and Redistributables

Then I'd do a full reinstall of the game, following the Installation Guide to the letter, followed by a full step-by-step test of the game to check that everything's okay, before turning it all up to 11 and going for it

This advice is based on many such crashes and reinstalls, and everything I've gleaned from the StalkerSoup forum over the past seven years...

Please let us know how you get on, and at what numbered stage in the Guide you start having problems...

Hi Sword2012,

I've done a full reinstall, double checked and triple checked that I have everything. My NPC's exist again however, I crashed when the helicopters started attacking the village. My MDMP logs still get corrupted. Here's a notepad file of the crash since mdmp just doesn't work for me, and I included the mdmp alongside it.

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Hi IanTwi

Just checking, but would you please tell us from where you got your installation files?

Hi Sword2012, I uh. Don't remember. I want to say it was from either ModDB or Google Drive. Definitely didn't get the files from Mega as listed in the PDF.

Edit: I have temporarily band-aid fixed my crashes with the Helicopter Assault. All it took was the blue beret npc bugging out and refusing to attack like the other military npcs to allow me to clear out the checkpoint of everyone except the blue beret (since killing him triggers the helicopters).

Ghosts friends went halfway down the road before realizing that all of the Avengers were dead and returning. I made sure to GTFO of Cordon, since there were around ~40 dead bodies and I kept crashing every so often until I left the area so they could despawn. Currently heading to North NPP and game is fairly stable.

IamTwi wrote:: Hi Sword2012,

I've done a full reinstall, double checked and triple checked that I have everything. My NPC's exist again however, I crashed when the helicopters started attacking the village. My MDMP logs still get corrupted. Here's a notepad file of the crash since mdmp just doesn't work for me, and I included the mdmp alongside it.

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Hi IamTwi, re Private Messages, at the top of the Forum page is a heading for this. Private Messages are if I recall correctly not usually discussed back on the open Forum but are about Stalkersoup.
Regarding the helicopters attacking the village, are they opening fire or just dropping off soldiers. If you have a saiga shotgun (Sid gives these in exchange for a meatchunk artefact) it is possible to shoot down both helicopters before their passengers land. The one to the rear is easiest as the front drop-off is quick. However a grenade before they spread out, can remove them all. There is an option in TB3D Modders.Script for helicopters to attack the player with true false options. The script is very handy if player's PCs experience crashes for lowering settings. Anything marked M or IM or similar is often best left at false. If you do decide to edit the script, I suggest you back up the vanilla script first, as a precaution. You can also make things easier by choosing Cadet. Have you checked your game for a virus or similar that might have corrupted your files?
Regards TrueB

IamTwi wrote:: Hi Sword2012, I uh. Don't remember. I want to say it was from either ModDB or Google Drive. Definitely didn't get the files from Mega as listed in the PDF

Just so you know, the base files hosted by ModDB are obsolete. They don't work properly any more, which could be causing the unusual problem you're having

The Google Drive files, as hosted by Aleks1970, are up to date, as are the dedicated torrent files, and those hosted by Mega

IamTwi wrote:: ....
Edit: I have temporarily band-aid fixed my crashes with the Helicopter Assault. All it took was the blue beret npc bugging out and refusing to attack like the other military npcs to allow me to clear out the checkpoint of everyone except the blue beret (since killing him triggers the helicopters).

Ghosts friends went halfway down the road before realizing that all of the Avengers were dead and returning. I made sure to GTFO of Cordon, since there were around ~40 dead bodies and I kept crashing every so often until I left the area so they could despawn. Currently heading to North NPP and game is fairly stable.

Hi!
I will need your save just before entering the Cordon to replay this problem...

Thanks, Aleks

Hi Aleks. Here's the save you asked for as well as the .png image it creates, as I'm not sure if it needed to be included.

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Hi Sword2012.
Oh. If I got them from ModDB and ran the updater to micro rev 1, wouldn't that have fixed the problem?

IamTwi wrote:: Hi Sword2012.
Oh. If I got them from ModDB and ran the updater to micro rev 1, wouldn't that have fixed the problem?

I'm afraid not. The base files on ModDB are obsolete legacy files, and have been for years. They're not the same as the modified base files available on Mega, Google Drive, and the torrent

The Updater does not bring them up to date, and this would definitely account for the unusual problems you've been having

This is why the most recent comment in the ModDB comments section recommends NOT downloading from there... Evil or Very Mad

Having said that, it hasn't stopped people adding further comments that just muddy the waters, so I've updated it again now Very Happy

Hi Sword2012.

Thats unfortunate. Do the files ever plan to be updated so you don't get edge cases like mine where its the users fault haha?

I've grown accustomed to weird crashes or frequent crashes, after all it takes about ~5s to relaunch the game. But things like disappearing npcs threw me for a loop so I had to figure out what was going on.

Well. My resolution is, next time I get a gamebreaking crash I'll replace the old packed bin files with the ones from gdrive.

Hi IamTwi

This may occur at some point, but as it's not happened by now it's unlikely...

Several years ago TB created major changes to the base game which made the old files incompatible with the new content, and necessitated all players starting a new game

But there were problems dealing with ModDB, in addition to other hosting sites (even the paid-for ones!) due to the sheer number of downloads StalkerSoup was getting - which resulted in moving to the only sites that would host the new files, with the obsolete ones remaining stuck as 'legacy software' on ModDB

It didn't help that a fan obtained the rights to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], hosted the new files from there, but then went abroad and stopped maintaining the site - which I believe got snapped up by a company who then ran it as a cover for nefarious activities

Hence the importance of getting the base files only from reliable and recommended sources Crying or Very sad

As the obsolete files are no longer supported as the game continues to grow, there's no knowing what will happen in your game from here on

Your old base game will not work with some of the new content you've updated it with, and any saves you've made will not work with the new base files. So the choice of whether to continue, or to totally eliminate every last trace of your current game down to registry level, and start again from scratch, is totally up to you

But errors in the game will gradually accumulate and, just like running a self-driving car that's been recalled with dodgy AI, it'll crash whatever you do... affraid

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