I am going to do what I hate people to do: spitball ideas that just waste time. But over the last couple of days I read of servers not using TacView recently because of issues. No idea what “issues”. I’ve been a longtime fan and supporter of TacView but don’t have it installed on my new PC. I also have had no problems with DCS on this rig. I use the carrier and Supercarrier daily.
I’m hip. It only happed to me once (though it could have been more but I thought it was an error on my part). I’ve put a ‘catch’ in my code to check for this. Thing is, I re-use the same ‘source’ miz file over and over, never (or very rarely) generating a new one from the mission editor (I generate in my desktop app). Perhaps that’s why I haven’t had the issue in a while - I’ve not used the ME to create them?
Miz files (and lua in general) I’m finding are highly ‘frangible’ - get a single value wrong in, say, the loadout entry and it just sits there…and sits there. Not an error notification in sight.
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Well I went digging through a few of the offending missions and sure enough it has a value for it in all the missions… so while that may be one of the issues, I’m not sure its mine.
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The freeze will happen even if the .miz was never opened in the ME between the mission working and freezing, so unless DCS does something to the .miz file when it’s run then I don’t think it’s a code issue with the mission itself. It seems to be something within DCS itself, or interacting with other software on our machines.
I run TacView on my dedicated server, but not my client. My friends run Tacview on their client but don’t have the Sim PostStart freeze.
@Andrew116 Can you send a copy of the mission so I can see if it crashes on my system too? The only two common denominators I have found with my missions are static deck crew/equipment (even on Forrestal), and F10 menu triggers.
Ok Clutch I sent you a copy of the mission.
At this point I feel I have two options, take this to the main ED site and try to plead my case there though I suspect because I run mods and the community isn’t howling bloody murder over the SC and most missions being unusable, that I am in a small group having the issue.
The other side is a FULL reinstall of DCS… which… probably has been coming for some time. All I can think to do is start over from fresh and slowly add things back in and see if I can narrow it down more.
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You can send me a copy if you’d like. My desktop app parses the miz file (outside of DCS) so there’s a chance my code might throw an exception if something is funky in that regard. Slight chance but, I’m always up for finding these things out.
The other day I discovered DCS doesn’t like too many nav_point entries - it just starts dropping them. Think the number is 30. Not something most people, as far as I know, use much but, anyway.
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…go on. Are these “nav_point entries” waypoints for units?
I’m starting to wonder if DCS has a similar limit for static objects.
As I understand it they were originally put in there for the A-10, and believe it still uses them. And, I’ve heard other platforms do to so they are not ‘extinct’. Others can chime in here as while I use them I don’t use them as designed - seemingly as ‘extra’ data for targeting. Akin to a waypoint offset mark for targeting or IP’s.
I use thousands of them but I don’t load them via standard methods (they are just ‘raw’ data in a table) - DCS never touches them when it loads. But, I did put 30 in the main mission for the intended usage and it barfed = crashed DCS on me cus my lua was expecting them ALL to be there. Oddly when you opened the actual miz file they were in fact all there which led me to believe something went wrong , internally, during load.
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So this has still been a recurring issue for me and it’s driving me nuts. I’ve seen at least three threads on it over on the ED forums as well and no one can figure out a cause or a fix 
Refresh me. Hanging on the loading of DCS or loading a particular mission (or any mission)?
I’ve loaded (not joking) hundreds (thousands?) of missions in the last couple of years. Constantly testing stuff.
The debug.log has actually helped me. You won’t always get a hint as to the offender at the very end of the file - often a little ways up.
There appears to be a correlation between error in the mission or dictionary file (no file extension on either) and freezing at about the point the progress bar gets to the ‘VT’ prompt (what that means I’ve no idea).
I normally have to crack open the above named files; load them into Notepad++ (tell it it is the lua language is important) and see what looks odd.
For instance; if I miss something with something as simple as the situation or briefing text (it is formatted uniquely) it will hang on that - no way to find that error without looking inside.
Something I’ve posted around here before too: if DCS does a CTD (or you run outta patience and Ctl-Alt-Del to kill the task) it does not clean up after itself (can’t) and it can leave, depending on the mission, a LOT of files in the temp folder. Seemingly it has to do something with those the next time and that takes forever. It’s like it’s checking for something it can reuse but when there’s thousands of files in there it will take a long time. The amount of files may be unique to my situation; more likely when you have a lot of doScript calls.
When loading a mission with the Supercarrier and/or deck crew assets, the sim just hangs at loading “Sim PostStart.” When I check the dcs.log it used to get hung up on some kind of table referencing the deck crew or start carts, but now it keeps getting hung up on:
2024-01-15 07:47:21.740 ERROR WORLDGENERAL (Main): Error: Unit [F-14A-135-GR]: No cell for property records CELL#147 CELL#150 CELL#164 CELL#166 CELL#169 CELL#170 CELL#178 CELL#179 CELL#180 CELL#184 CELL#185.
Happens pretty regularly with this one mission I have, but sometimes it will hit with any mission on any terrain–even paid campaigns–that use the Supercarrier or deck crew assets. Occasionally I can get it to load by loading a different supercarrier mission first, but if it’s a bad day and all my SC missions aren’t loading I’m SOL.
Don’t know if they fixed the MSAA Off crash bug, but that one made me pull my hair for a while…
I can also confirm, I’ve been dealing with the freeze on load with super carrier assets as well! At least, that’s what the logs tell me! No other problems to report, and the old carriers load up just fine!
SC assets?
Are these default assets, ones that come with stock DCS? I use the SC constantly with static and non-static assets on board and no issues. Granted not very many for two reasons:
- Third-party assets have caused me problems, ones that most frustratingly are intermittent. I’ve never had a freeze using as few default assets as I can get away with.
- If I add too many (which isn’t very many at all) they interfere with each other; the engine can’t handle many and not have chaos ensue. This is about runtime more than crashing on load.
Yeah, it sux.
I’ll have an upload this week of my project that uses the SC but you’ll observe that the SC isn’t very ‘busy’ like you’d expect a carrier deck to be in a wartime action.
I have at most 2 flights departing (the number is variable; sometimes both, sometimes none). And NONE arriving [within the first 15+ minutes] as the engine logic here (last time I tested it) is such that the arrival and departures ‘block’ each other in very un-appealing ways. It’s nearly as bad for land bases too. It needs a system to ‘manage’ this and while I’ve given it thought I’ve no time to do that - and they are suppose to be working on it.
And you can’t spawn very many without them ‘jamming’ each other on the deck; it’s very finicky.
I think ED would greatly help in this situation if you were given more information when something goes wrong - a tool to ‘pre-compile’ & test a mission. At least at the start. There is no such thing and your only recourse is to: load, wait, wonder, dig into the debug.log; remove suspected items, lather, rinse repeat. It’s been my life for the last two years. 
I’ll save my opinions as to why this is the situation for private.
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I believe it may be the new S-3 Viking? I’ll load a hornet SC training mission to generate an error log as soon as I get the chance.
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Yep, the default deck crew, tugs, etc. If I delete all the statics from the mission it usually fixes it, but I can’t stand an empty deck, and I can’t alter payware campaign missions so…I’ve had Speed and Angels shore-based missions get hung up too because they have the tugs and deck crew standing around on the ramp at Nellis.
Here’s my Marianas mission that almost always gets hung up on load.
What’s frustrating is that the error lines in the log are the same for missions that hang, and for missions that work normally. For whatever reason DCS just stops responding with no clues as to why.
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D/L’d it. I’ll have a look-see.
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I do the same - the yellow-jacketed dudes. Think I use some of the tugs too, at Incirlik. No issues. Still loading it up in DCS. A quick glance insde the miz and I see some Moose stuff and such. Opened all the usual suspects in an editor and nothing stands out. Running it now.
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Loaded right up. In about 10 seconds. Joined on the CV63, Hornet. No issues.
Two things…
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I’m running with a stock clean system - nary a mod in sight
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Is this a single-player mission? I ask cus you can do SP missions but make every module a ‘client’ to make life easier for choosing a platform (as a mission maker).
I tried this too. Gave it up about 2 years ago cus it would cause problems in odd edge-cases (and not so edge). Thus I had to do all the work outside DCS (see my ‘Lil Project’). Now, I’m going to have to dig through my notes on this cus I can’t recall the exact issue right not.
Anyway, I’ll try it on another box, my older one too.
PS: Ok, my notes talk about functionality issues not loading or crashing bugs using ‘client’ for everything; sadly I didn’t document it quite well enough.
Ok, loaded on both PC’s fine. Got into the cockpit no problems (amazing how much faster my 2-yo new PC is than the 7-YO one).
Neither machine has any mods except the A-4e-C.
I bring this up, again, cus I had so many problems with mods before. And the broken-record responses on the ED form from the moderators: remove all mods. EVEN if you’re not using them in a mission.
Made no sense to me, at all, if I didn’t use them. But, from playing with this Rube Goldberg machine that is DCS I suspected that it is trying to read files contained within my saved games/mods folder even if I never referenced them in a mission. Makes sense though the way it ‘automatically’ picks up modifications; it looks into the saved games folder first for items contained within folders with the same name [as the install directory tree].
Or never used them I should say - didn’t add them to the mission that is. As I mentioned above, DCS doesn’t give a lot of feedback.
Anyway, not much else I can add.
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