2.1 Crash to desktop (Full Version)

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mendaliv -> 2.1 Crash to desktop (6/22/2003 11:56:07 PM)

First off, my apologies if this is the wrong spot to post this sort of problem or if it's a known issue.

Anyway, I've been experiencing crashes to desktop with 2.1 that I was not experiencing with 2.0. In fact, I never had a crash to desktop with 2.0.

The crashes come with no warning and no apparent triggering event. They happen at a seemingly random interval; I could have been playing for 3 minutes or for 3 hours.

The only thing about my hardware setup that would worry me is this: I am using a motherboard based on the nVidia nFORCE 220d chipset, which uses an integrated video card that uses system memory as video memory, that is, I have 512 MB of RAM, the video card takes 32 MB, so Windows reports that I have 480 MB of RAM.

My hardware is:
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Asus A7N266-VM
2x Micron 256 MB PC2100 RAM chips

I'm running Windows XP Pro SP1 (a fresh install to boot; just reformatted the other night).

As I said, I never experienced this trouble before on this machine. Any thoughts?



Zaxsubaru -> (6/23/2003 2:22:24 PM)

This has happened to me as well, but only once so far. Playing the game and then gone....no error message or anything, just back to the desktop



mcousins -> (6/23/2003 5:52:50 PM)

yep, me too. I've only played 2.1 though - I bought the retail version. It's infuriating! It's one of the most enjoyable and addictive games I've played in a while, yet I've had to abort two games (after investing hours of gaming time) due to crashes to desktop at certain points. When I reload from the saved game, it inevitably crashes again at the same point. I'm now on my third game and have been compelled to register on this forum as it's starting to happen all over again :mad: :mad: :mad:

So, if anyone has any advice on improving stability until it's patched I'd be extremely grateful! Eg; Is there any way of retro-patching it to 2.0?

Cheers,
Michael.



Andrew Ewanchyna -> (6/23/2003 8:47:24 PM)

If you have a saved game that causes a crash, email it to [email]support@apezone.com[/email] as an attachment and I'll take a look at it. Go to the Games subfolder and you'll see all your saved games there (e.g. autosave.sav).

One thing you may want to try is turning off random events. It's one of the least tested part of the code, as it's the newest. So maybe that's causing the problems. Either way, provide me some feedback so I can fix the problem.



mendaliv -> (6/23/2003 10:11:45 PM)

I'll give turning off random events a shot.

As for a specific savegame, I have had the crashes in all games insofar.

But, I've got an idea regarding that. I'll keep playing until I hit a crash, reload the autosave, and if I can somehow regenerate the crash, I'll send that savegame.



Andrew Ewanchyna -> (6/25/2003 5:06:17 AM)

Okay, thanks to Mcousins saved game, I've been able to locate the source of the crash and fix it. I've gone through all the v2.1 code changes and verified that I didn't make the same mistakes anywhere else (I didn't). I'll ask Matrix Games to post a quick patch on this. Sorry about that.



mendaliv -> (6/26/2003 12:30:03 AM)

Cool, I can't wait to get my hands on that patch! :D

Also, if I may be so bold, what event would trigger the crash?



Andrew Ewanchyna -> (6/27/2003 12:23:34 AM)

Well, Mcousins has proven to be a lightning rod for discovering crashes. The most likely one deals with some new code I
added for tractor beams that stopped the premature ending of rescue missions. For those with some c/c++ programming background it was using a null pointer (should always check first).

The other one deals with a fighter squad that has no pilots. While easy to fix so it doesn't crash, it still stumps me as to why this happens. Normally, when all pilots are killed the fighter squad goes with it. People who use fighters on manual should look out for anything strange and get back to me.

Anyways, I'm going to get a quick patch out that fixes these bomb outs, so if you find one, email it to me.



mendaliv -> (6/27/2003 11:30:57 PM)

Huh, fighter squads with no crews?

I wonder if you can send a ship to go rescue them... heh.



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