Hello,

Just today I found out, what the cause for seemingly random "Serious Error" crashes is.

Some of you might have seen this. Common thing in many big-scale AOD maps or when you watch Replays of big matches from huge heights using the higher gentool zoom limit:
"Serious Error" out of nowhere and one of the players starts "counting down", as his game crashed.

This is not related to the map at all, at least not directly.

This is an engine bug and related to the amount of units that are currently (in any FRAME) being displayed.

In depth explanation:
Units in Zero Hour have 2D and 3D shadows. Shadows are made out of polygones (or some *censored* like that). 3D shadows are, depending on the unit type, sometimes a little more complex.

The overall amount of 3D shadow polygones that can be displayed in any given frame is limited by the engine (probably a data type limitation).

So if the units that are currently on screen combinedly exceed a specific amount of 3D shadow polygones, the game will crash with the serious error.

This will also happen in with worldbuilder (if View -> Shadows is enabled) and there you get an interesting error message (which is attached to this post)

To fix this: SIMPLY DISABLE THE FREAKING 3D SHADOWS IN THE INGAME OPTIONS 😁 👍

I have also been given that error in world builder and the worst is the fact that what ever you do next , it can not be ignored but must be aborted .
But I mean I had my sight too high I could almost see +4000 objects at once and then crashed .
Do we ever even reach a certain number of displayed objects close to that in game ?

---

As I said, it does not depend on the unit count!

It depends on their shadows.

Depending on the complexity of the shadows of the on-screen-units, this will take A LOT less than 4.000 objects.

Very large scale AOD maps tend to crash because of this. Or noob games with no rush where everybody has tons of money.