FA2 Overlay limit

Mig Eater · Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 11:36 pm Post subject: FA2 Overlay limit

I've been trying to add several new walls but it seam that FA2 is unable to use more then 258 overlays Confused

If I select any of the new overlays then FA2 will crash, however I should point out that ingame they work perfectly fine.

I've tested moving GASAND (No.1 in the list) to 260 & the new wall at 260 to the top of the list, the results being the new wall works fine but if you select sandbags FA2 crashes.

So has anyone else encountered this before? I doubt anything can be done to fix this but there are lots of unused overlays so I can always just override them to get my new walls working, it puzzles me tho why just overlays & way 258.

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Aro · Alcohol Fueled **Joined**: 10 Sep 2006

Sounds a lot like this.

Cranium · Defense Minister **Joined**: 05 Dec 2009 **Location**: USA

Hmm, thats strange. I'm at 264=ROCK11 and havent come across this error yet.

Mig Eater · Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 12:03 am Post subject:

It could be just walls, I'll try with a simple overlay.

Edit: Nope nothing past 258 will work in FA2 for me :/

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Cranium · Defense Minister **Joined**: 05 Dec 2009 **Location**: USA

Mig add this into your FAData.ini , there should already be a [YROverlay] entry, just comment it out so you know what you changed in case this dosent work for you.

[RA2Overlay]
Begin=01
End=255

[YROverlay]
Begin=256; which number is the first from new YR overlay?
End=999

Mig Eater · Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 2:27 am Post subject:

Nice thought but didn't help.

I've used all my usual debugging techniques & haven't got anywhere so I'm at a loss.

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Cranium · Defense Minister **Joined**: 05 Dec 2009 **Location**: USA

Well after reviewing a little further, It seems I have 8 overlays commented out, which is why I believed it was letting me use higher numbers than 256. So indeed the overlay limit is 256. and even more so convinced by what it says in the "set overlay manually" dialog box. It says "enter number of overlay from 0-255, do not exceed 255"

What the hell is up with all this 256 limit crap?

But like you say, there is a crap full of unused overlay to reuse.

FurryQueen · General **Joined**: 24 Jul 2010 **Location**: Liyue

It's an unsigned byte used to give the max length. Not much you can really do.

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CCHyper · Defense Minister **Joined**: 07 Apr 2005

I think Westwood wrote FinalSun with the amount of crap that application contains...

Cranium · Defense Minister **Joined**: 05 Dec 2009 **Location**: USA

yea, it looks like 256 was westwoods magical number for alot of things. I did however notice that the lists start to repeat themselves. If all 01-256 numbers were already used and you input 257= it starts all over from the beginning. So if like 01=GASAND so too will 257=GASAND regardless of what name you listed. Thats how it works in my FA2, I dont get the IE like Mig is getting.

Dutchygamer · Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 4:33 pm Post subject:

256 ain't a 'magic' number: as Fen already mentioned, it's the max value of a unsigned byte. It's used often in programing.

Cranium · Defense Minister **Joined**: 05 Dec 2009 **Location**: USA

I didnt mean it like that. But I'm sure if westwood wanted too, they could have made it to accept more than 256.

Dutchygamer · Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 4:51 pm Post subject:

Cranium wrote:

I didnt mean it like that. But I'm sure if westwood wanted too, they could have made it to accept more than 256.

I think they choose this as the next step (byte iirc) can take way more then WW ever planned (why take a type that can have over 10000 entries when you only need about 100).
This is only me guessing of course, as I didn't design the game #Tongue

Orac · Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 8:08 pm Post subject:

Yeah, after all Westwood was really only making the game - modding interests aren't usually taken into account.
Then again, things which are taken into account tend to include stability, grammar and spelling, and not giving hard drugs and alcohol to your programmers, so Westwood may have been trying to break the conventional mold.

FurryQueen · General **Joined**: 24 Jul 2010 **Location**: Liyue

Orac wrote:

not giving hard drugs and alcohol to your programmers

This is Westwood we're talking about. They would have been blitzed 24/7 to make the decisions they did.

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