Re: The Maunstraut 2009 Project

[Holy_Diver]

I think I'm going to have to get to the bottom of the first map on exit bug that crashes the game if I'm going to get back into the saddle with this one.

I'm thinking I'm just going to copy the project and start deleting huge sections of the map and see if that doesn't make it go away (to at least narrow things down)


Could you (Todd) outline anything you were able to rule out back when you were trying to figure this out? Did you ever do any new work with your cliffside set btw? Because I just can't shake the feeling it's something about those map pieces. Though it makes no sense. Of course with SoM it could be anything.


I really adore everything I've done with this, but I'm just at a point I'm not sure where to dive into next. I'm thinking maybe I should work on building the new Winds Lair from scratch. My basic concept there was to try to make a series of floating islands (in air) connected by your bridges primarily, though it would be cooler to have stone like bridges like something out of Ico one day. The stone bridge pieces wouldn't cut it.

[dmpdesign]

OK, I want to help you get the warping issue figured out, but if I recall I was unable to actually get the problem to surface on my copy of your project.

Since my computer that had all your work on it shit the bed, I am gonna ask you to re-upload your most current project files etc and I will again try to reproduce your bug and see if I can help you nail it down.

If you could include a save game where you have the warp bug happening that would be helpful (maybe save right at the doorway and I will see if when I load it up I have the same problem).

There are certain things we can try to figure it out that are much easier than others...so I will start with the most basic stuff to test before moving on to the deleting map sections.

I still think it may be enemy related, I can get my games to freeze all the time thanks to a nice bug SOM has with projectile flinging monsters (I am not 100% sure of the cause, but it seems to be a combination of the projectile going past the enemies trigger point or line of site, but either way if the magic is on the screen and the enemy is not the game will black screen, its quite annoying.)

I really do think I will finish my game by September, so I can help devote some real time to troubleshooting your game at that point.

[Holy_Diver]

I'd rather just try to narrow it down at least myself. I think your recall must not be very good. As I recall (which several posts in here should attest to) you tried a number of different things and could not avoid the crash yourself until you appeared to give up trying.

The only way it would not have shown up is if you were using an older version of the project, even though I had already uploaded a newer version and made it clear I had done so. In which case I'm not sure why you would've made all those posts

At any rate, it doesn't look like you'll be able to remember any potential causes you were able to eliminate

[dmpdesign]

Lol, Im sorry, I must have forgotten everything...

But I would definitely start with changing the warp event to a different map just to be sure it isnt something with map 2 instead of map 1.

[Holy_Diver]

Same happens basically from any map change point after some conditions are met. In other words there's more than one way out of the first map and they can all cause the crash to occur (usually do)

It is sort of related to the next map, because the crash happens like after the next map is fully loaded but after some point (after the first event -- ie, print the map name with the new map in the background) ...but what the next map is does not matter.


Oh well, at least I can split this convo from this thread since the new forum overhaul

[dmpdesign]

Regardless of my aforementioned memory lapse I would like to help you try to pinpoint the problem when I am done with my game if you havent gotten it already.

[Holy_Diver]

Well, I just tried every possible thing I could think of to no avail...

It matters where you start on the map. From what I can tell however it just matters how much crap you pass before you get to the exit whether it will crash or not.


I was able to make it from the basically beginning of the level to end once. But I deleted much of the run up stuff (including all your cliffs -- though they are not apparently at fault) and a couple NPCs which I thought might be a part of the problem (because one acts erratically sometimes and the other is perma warped after reaching a spot beyon which the crash will not occur) ...so I thought something I did fixed it, but I went back and tested all of that stuff independently to discover nothing. So most likely just deleting all the stuff in the map freed up some memory which in turn held back the crash.

This is a classic memory overflow sort of behavior. This doesn't mean you're using too much memory, but that a memory write wrote over something it shouldn't have and created a sort of cancer in the program which eventually causes terminal failure in an often unforeseeable way.

That said I can't forsee any way of being rid of this bug. I can try to copy the levels and put the catacombs on another map is all and hope that frees some memory somehow, even though I typically never enter the combs while doing a test run.

However another very telling behavior is when you save your game, and restart, then load the game, the tendency to crash seems to follow the game, though I'm not 100% clear on this. Which is odd? because it seems to imply something also stored in a saved game is causing the crash.

If I start from the exit map, go back into the crashing map from the exit, run to the beginning of the crashing map as if from a fresh start, then back to the exit it does not seem to want to crash. However if I start on say a zero map, exit that map to the beginning of the crashing map, then proceed to the exit map it does crash.

I sort of wonder what might happen if I started the game by having an event quickly warp the player thru all the maps so to initialize the save file in some way to possibly prevent this behavior. Though my intuition is even if some way to start the game and avoid the crash was found the crash is just a symptom of a larger problem that would come back to fuck up peoples games.


More notes. If I copy just the map pieces into a fresh map, there is no crash. If I remove all the events from the map, it still crashes. So it's not an event related thing. Nor perhaps is it strictly map piece related.

I keep trying to remember what stuff I was working on around the time I noticed this.

[dmpdesign]

Have you tried removing all the items placed in the map and leave everything else the same?  The issue I had with map crashing was caused by an item that Tom found.

[Holy_Diver]

Funny, after deleting all of the items the crash did not occur.

I thought I had an idea of what items might be responsible, so I deleted the debugging project and opened the real project, and started deleting every item I could afford to. I wasn't able to get the crash to go away, so I guess I'll have to setup the debug project again and start randomly deleting stuff one by one (and hope that that does the trick / wasn't just a coincidence)

I honestly can't imagine why any of the items in play would make a crash happen

But at least this is good news, whereas before I was pretty hopeless.

[Holy_Diver]

I think I've narrowed it down to a single item, but I swear I can't fathom why/what's going on.

I swear I removed the item when I first deleted all of the cliffside area etc, and the crash still occurred.

But if I just take it out alone, I seem to slip through. It still makes no sense to me.


Ironically the item is actually a cursed samurai sword / jump off the cliffs homage easter egg. So now it has a true curse / back story (or so it seems)?

It never caused trouble before / seems to be completely square. So I have no clue what's happening. I definitely want to get the crash to go away and keep the item setup. But like I say, it makes no sense. I replaced the item by copying it and deleting the original (map instance) ...but that did no good. It's possible it's item number is cursed (135 I think)


Even though I just can't seem to find the enthusiasm anymore (lately) to really sit down and work with this project... I just never get tired of turning it on and taking a stroll thru it. Everything is so clever and well done (maybe I'm biased) ...I think it's kind of at a point where it needs the attention of a team of people. Though the way the files are arranged a CVS setup would be a must... on top of keeping track of who is doing what in general (maybe a private board would be good for that) ...I think soon I'm going to drop like $300+ dollars on a host with Subversion etc (5yr plan)

I would like to see everyone collaborating on a project, but I think there would have to be a single director's vision to make it work. That is it's great to talk about what would be best, but when it comes to making the final decision democracy is not the best recipe for critical success I think.

For example, like in the Path of Sorrows, I'd like to see a lot more large graves (the third kind) lining the walls. It would be nice to be able to ask someone else to do that. Not always such seemingly mundane tasks, but we could all sort of chip in like a support group. Because we all know I think how wrenching it can be slaving over the same maps for a long time etc / never getting a project done. Speaking of which also need the base of the graves to not be included in collisions as we discussed. I think this new Maunstraut could really be something else if everyone really got into it.