RC4 crash on startup & other bugs

[SlipperyJim]

Man, I was so looking forward to RC4 but the darned thing just crashes on startup.  :cry:

What you guys had done in RC3 was so promising I couldn't wait to see RC4 but unfortunately I can't!!

My system specs:

Windows XP Pro
AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual core 3800+
Asus A8N-SLI motherboard (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI)
4x512MB (2 GB total) dual channel RAM
BFG 7900 GT OC 256 megs
Onboard sound - Realtek ALC850

Strange that RC3 worked fine for me (except that I had no sound)

[ubequitz]

is there any output/errors reported as it crashes? Maybe try running it from the the command line ("DOS" console?) and see if it prints anything out there...

[SlipperyJim]

Nope no error.  It just shuts down and windows tries to send it's usual error report.

The screen turns tan colour just before shutting down.

After about 5 attempts to run it the game finally started up!   I thought to myself "that was strange" and shut it down to see if it would restart.  It crashed 2 more times on startup and then a 3rd attempt worked properly again.  Very odd how inconsistant it is.

Here is the bottom portion of the ufoconsole.log when the game booted properly (not sure if this is useful)

Code: [Select]

------- sound initialization -------
Loading snd_sdl sound driver
Soundsystem: SDL.
SDL version: 1.2.10
SDL audio driver is "dsound".
Bits: 16
Frequency: 48000
Samples: 4096
Channels: 2
sound sampling rate: 48000
CD Audio Initialized
execing autoexec.cfg
"version" is "UFO: Alien Invasion 2.0-RC4 x86 Aug 28 2006 Win32 DEBUG"
...could not set to language:
...could not set to system language
Shared Client/Server Info loaded
...precaching 49 menus
Can't find pics/
====== UFO Initialized ======

Changing to Singleplayer
SDL audio device shut down.

Update:  I was just able to get it to boot perfectly fine about 4 times in a row.  I noticed that if I changed the sound render on the OPTIONS screen the game froze.  Perhaps this crash issue is related to sound?


Below is the bottom portion of the ufoconsole.log after one of those startup crashes (notice how it just ends and clips off the version information):

Code: [Select]

------- sound initialization -------
Loading snd_sdl sound driver
Soundsystem: SDL.
SDL version: 1.2.10
SDL audio driver is "dsound".
Bits: 16
Frequency: 48000
Samples: 4096
Channels: 2
sound sampling rate: 48000
CD Audio Initialized
execing autoexec.cfg
"version" is "UFO

[SlipperyJim]

Rather than starting a new thread I will just post this also here since it may be related to above...

I just started my first mission and after the map loads the music starts to stutter.  If I move my cursor around the screen it stops stuttering and the cursor moves smoothly.   If I move my cursor back over my soldiers the music starts to stutter again and the cursor moves in a laggy fashion.

I went into options and turned down the volume of the music which I assumes means turning it off.  I hit "continue" and the game was still acting strange in terms of the cursor being laggy.   I then ALT TABBED out of the game to post this message and when I went back into the game everything is fine.  I can move the cursor over the soldiers with the music on and it all works perfectly.

Very strange.

[SlipperyJim]

New bug just noticed after recovering alien weapons after a mission.

"Plasma Atomizer Charge [not yet researchable]"  this text is shown on the research screen.  The text is far too long on a 1024x768 screen.  It covers over the add/remove scientist section.

[Bandobras]

Thanks for the reports. Please try changing your sound lib in Options/Sound. If this hangs, change them in base/config.cfg manually. Also, perhaps update your sound drivers...

[SlipperyJim]

Sound drivers are already up to date.  Switching the sound renderer does cause it to crash.

I switched to "WAPI" sound renderer and all works well except that when a map loads and the console text is shown I can see that it reports "Sound overrun".

WAPI seems to work best.  DX causes it to crash immediately.   There used to be a third one called SDL but I can't get back to is to test because if I click left on the renderer selection arrow I get DX and if I click right I get DX also (both results in immediate crash).

________

Another bug that is pretty bad is that the game gets confused about which ship I sent on a mission.    What I mean is that I have 1 intercepter ship with a soldier in it.   I sent the dropship with 8 soldiers to land at a ufo terror site but when my ship arrives it is actually the Intercepter with the 1 soldier!

I saved the game just before my dropship arrived at the mission site and when I loaded and continued the game it gets confused.  I have manually checked that the proper ship is in transit on the geoscape screen but every time it lands it is the intercepter instead of dropship!

The other thing that happens when I reload the same save point is that the dropship is reported to be returning to base instead of still heading to the mission.   Somehow in the save process it has changed directions.

______________

The setting for the Sound Effects keeps dropping the volume to 0.  Every time I start the game I must manually raise the sound effect volume.

[kungfujoe]

I get lots of crashes on startup, too, but if I just start it again, it generally goes.  I'd say about half the time I run the game, it crashes and Windows tries to send its error report (unfortunately, I can't copy/paste the text from the technical details screen on the WinXP error report).

Once in awhile, it crashes and locks instead of doing the error report thing.  When that happens, I have to reset the PC.

[kolijoco]

crashes on startup every time for me...
i gave debug a try (o the binary) seems from the call stack the crash is sound related (through snd_sdl.dll or is it sdl_snd) hope this helps (would beuild a debug version and check myself, but am way short of time these days).
cheers

[Czert]

I found one small bug - in planes screen, tranporter plane is show twice (and I have only one) and intereceptor is show one times (and I have one) - showing is   T - I - T.

[ubequitz]

I found one small bug - in planes screen, tranporter plane is show twice (and I have only one)

This particular bug is fixed in SVN (and thus should be fixed in RC5 when it is released [hopefully very soon]).

The crashes at startup are a far more serious issue. There have been a few changes in SVN that might have helped with this... let's hope RC5 is more stable in this regard (or at least helps to shed more light on the exact cause).

[Gill_Bates]

Both RC4 and RC5 crashed for me. I start the game, see an initial grey screen, the system is trying to switch into another screen and then the grey screen returns (with the sand clock icon) and that's it.

Is there any way to see what it's actually looking for?