v0.2.8: onCharsUpdate never fires; onCharacterIndoorsChanged fires ~3900/sec; reproducible AV at KenshiLua.dll+0x5c5c8

[DonSmirelo]

Environment: Kenshi 1.0.65 (Steam, x64) · RE_Kenshi 0.3.4 · KenshiLua v0.2.8-alpha · Windows 10 Pro 19045

We spent an evening building a companion-banter mod on KenshiLua and hit three separate problems. Each is reproducible on a clean setup (fresh Kenshi reinstall, one probe script in scripts/init/, hot reload disabled). Happy to split this into separate issues if you prefer, and I can share the crash dumps (.dmp) and full logs.

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1. onCharsUpdate never reaches Lua scripts

A minimal probe registering 15 notification handlers shows control events firing normally (onKeyDown after 5.4 s, onCharacterSelect after 15.5 s, xpRunning, onCharacterAddOrder, onCharacterIndoorsChanged), while onCharsUpdate produces zero calls over minutes of active gameplay (running, fighting, entering buildings). Registration itself raises no error.

We now use xpRunning as a tick source instead (measured: steady 23–26 calls/sec while moving — works fine).

2. onCharacterIndoorsChanged fires ~3900×/sec and kills the game

With a single registered handler containing only a counter and a log call, loading a save near a walled town produces:

23:36:49.883  call #1
23:36:50.746  call #3370      ← 3370 calls in 0.86 s
~23:36:51     process dies

The handler body does no game calls at all — the dispatch volume alone appears fatal. This coincides with interior/navmesh streaming (Havok log shows interiors being added at that moment). With this event not subscribed, the same save/location plays fine.

3. Reproducible ACCESS_VIOLATION at KenshiLua.dll+0x5c5c8 (v0.2.8)

Three crashes, all at the same instruction, reading near-null (0x1 / 0x4 — looks like a field read through a null/invalid object pointer):

#	When	Faulting thread	Read addr
1	~30 s after a faction encounter; squad under continuous move orders	"AI Rendertime Backthread" (per kenshi_info.log thread id)	0x4
2	seconds after an onFactionEncountered → our callback called getName on the faction object	(different tid)	0x1
3	~0.5 s after picking a character up (body equips into a KenshiLua.hand slot); our main-tick resolver called getName + read .quality on the equip event's object	(different tid)	0x1

Observations that may help localize it:

• Crash MyGUI Colored Text Corrupting Lua Script Serialization and Causing Errors in Script Editor #1 proves KenshiLua code executes on a background (AI) thread, not only the render/main thread.
• Unsubscribing onPlayerOrderGiven (orders are AI-thread territory; they were streaming ~12/sec) extended survival from ~50 s to ~8 min without changing the crash signature — consistent with per-event probability of hitting the bad path.
• Empty scripts/init/ → the same save/session is fully stable (load, run, interiors, alt-tab), so the base stack is fine.
• Calling a binding on the object received in a callback (e.g. getName on onFactionEncountered's faction, or on onCharacterEquip's item when the "item" is a picked-up body/hand slot) seems to be the most reliable way to hit it.

Working hypothesis from the dumps: either callbacks are dispatched synchronously on whatever thread raises the game event (and some per-thread state is null off the main thread), or a shared binding entry point dereferences short-lived/invalid event objects. All three dumps funnel into the same instruction either way.

Current workaround in our mod: never call any binding inside an event callback — callbacks only enqueue raw references, and a resolver on the next xpRunning tick does all dereferencing. This plus dropping the two events above got us from ~50 s to 8+ min sessions.

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Logs available: KenshiLua.log excerpts for each session, RE_Kenshi crash dumps (crashDump1.0.65_x64.dmp, ~500 KB each, exception stream parsed with a custom minidump reader). Thanks for the project — the binding surface is impressively wide, and with xpRunning as a metronome the scripting side works great.

[Genpretz]

Issues

1. onCharsUpdate Not Functioning as it Should

   • This issue has already been reported to me by another user and is already dealt with. The next release wiill probably be released later today.

2. onCharacterIndoorsChanged fires ~3900×/sec and kills the game

   • My first thought on this is that this function might just not be a suitable event to use as a callback. The original function is Character::_NV_notifyIndoors and I'll try and hook it just in C++ and see if it shows the same kind of response.

3. ACCESS_VIOLATION at KenshiLua.dll+0x5c5c8

   • If you have the crashdumps/logs that would help for determining the issue with KenshiLua.dll+0x5c5c8

Upcoming Release - KenshiLua v0.3.0-alpha

• There are going to be some breaking changes in this upcoming update. I'm not sure exactly where to detail them here on Github, but I've also posted them ahead of time on Nexus Mods and the Genesis Modding Discord. Here is the link to the details on NexusMods: Link
• Be aware that with KenshiLua still being in alpha breaking changes are an expected possibility. especially as I begin to finish implementing all the bindings and begin focusing more on things like naming conventions for use Lua. Like I'll likely be removing all the instances of _NV_ methods from the bindings because as far as I know they serve no real purpose that their virtual counterpart can't do in Lua. Those are really only there in KenshiLib because only non-virtual functions have a static location in the game's binary which is required for hooking them in C++.
• I'll be posting the complete update here later today I think, but you're welcome to test the current state of things with the attached archive.

--Removed link because official release is available now--

Callbacks

Right now I've just been binding everything I can from KenshiLib and randomly adding callbacks for things that sound like they would be useful. In C++ you'd have the freedom to create your own unique hooks for whatever you wanted but because I need to hardcode them for use in Lua, I've just been gradually adding callbacks for various things. Ideally in the future either I would find a way to let the user create their own hooks or I was thinking each event would have at least 2 variations, one where you get the parameters before the hooked function so you can change them before passing them to the hooked function and another where you get to intercept the return value from the hooked function and have the option to replace the return value before it gets passed back to the rest of the game.

If there are any specific functions in KenshiLib you would like to have callbacks for, please let me know. Also this update should add callbacks on a bunch of Kenshi's constructors for things like Character, Item, Inventory, Armour, Weapon, etc.

[Genpretz]

I checked onCharacterIndoorsChanged(Character::_NV_notifyIndoors) and that is its normal behavior. I think it's fair to say that it isn't suitable for use as an event callback because it seems like it's impossible to distinguish if a character has entered a building with it and the absurd number of calls only makes it useful for counting something like game ticks which there are already callbacks for.

I will likely be removing it from the list of callbacks. Thank you again for letting me know about this.