Desktop crashes ?

[ProAsm]

Are you guys experiencing many Desktop crashing.
I am finding the game total unplayable and its whether I use Sw.exe or Swp.exe, 8 bit and 32 bit although 8 bit is no where near as bad.
Usermaps are especially bad, the actual game maps and most TC's are better but still the crashes are there.
On a usermap I average about 10 to 15 crashes.
I have afairly good system setup and I dont have this problem with Duke3d at all.
One map, Airport2.map I cannot even get started and it crashes.

[Parkar]

My guess, the fact the source is made up of parts from diferent versions of sw and some parts from duke. I guess the bug hunt can begin.

[TerminX]

Sounds like a problem on your end, to be honest. JFSW gets a lot of attention from JonoF, and neither he nor I have noticed any sort of massive crashing (as far as I know).

[Ecmaster76]

I have had a few crashes myself. But I only did a quick playthrough of the SP levels.

My comp does have a few gremlins so it very well could be my system (and his) but I think you may be being a bit quick to pin the blame on the enduser.

I am not complaining about the quality of the port. I appreciate it. But it does have bugs, like the HoM effect in the first level. Probably more. Its understandable, $#!+ happens.

Perhaps its not precisely a bug. Maybe the program is more sensitive than most to little variances in the host machine.

It works on Jono's comp, it works on your comp (of course it works best for the ones who debug it ). So at least two computers don't have issues. But that hardly constitutes a sampling of the possible combinations of hardware and OSs in existance.

Hell, even thorough testing on hundreds of machines would just begin to cover all the crap on the market. Every chip, every board made from a kind of chip, every spyware ridden installation of Windows is different. Even the power coming out of different outlets is different. The program, ideally, should be designed to operate on less than ideal setups.

But yeah, you are proabably right TerminX he probably just needs to reinstall the port and configure it right. Maybe format his computer for the first time since he bought it six years ago (or whatever). Or clean the loads of dust out of the poorly ventilated beer can he calls a computer case. Or uninstall (with a flamethrower) all the free screensavers he downloaded. Etc.

[TerminX]

I was thinking he had more of a hardware or driver problem, personally. ProAsm isn't an idiot.

[Ecmaster76]

Didn't say he was.

=> statement made in jest

Well, I thought it was in good humor. But maybe my co-op job (in which I must fixeth similar crap in a corporate environment) may have warped me a bit.

[JonoF]

ProAsm, and anyone else for that matter, if you find something that crashes the game, feel free to email it to me and I'll look into it.

Jonathon

[ProAsm]

Hell thanks for the inputs guys.
Jonathon, this is basically what I've been doing the last week is trying to find a pattern so I can email it to you.
Also maybe if I can find where in the code it does this to make life easier for you.
But its just plain random and that makes me think maybe TerminX is right and its something my side as I'm sure if everyone was experiencing this something would have been said by now as I'm a pretty conservative type of guy and put up with a hell of a lot before I complain.

What I have done over the last 3 weeks:
Initially I had a nVidia GeForce ti4200 which works great in Duke but the crashes were bad in SW.
This card had a faulty fan which eventually blew up so while I looked around for a new card I used the onboard Intel 865G 96 meg Graphics card.
Things were worse here in that it was so laggy in 32bit I hardly played much but the crashes were there.
Last friday my new nVidia GeForce 6600 256 meg arrived which I installed with the drivers from the CD.
Hell even with the wrong drivers this card should kick ass as in other games its fantastic.

Anyways to my dissapointment the locking up on occasions and crashing in SW was still there.
So the next thing I did was a drastic move.
I reformated my C drive and installed Windows Xp Pro from scratch, this time I did not add the ServicePack2 as I thought maybe that had something to do with the problem.
Also I have not installed any of my normal stuff and have no antivirus installed as I know that can cause problems, so basically except for Watcom and a few necessary stuff, I have nothing else installed and the lockups and crashes are there and bad.
I have fiddled with the settings on the 6600 but no change.

My current system:
2.8 gig Intel P4
Intel LaCross (D865GLC) motherboard.
2 x 512 megs Intel memory in Dual DDR 800 mhz fsb.
Seagate 80 gig (8 meg cache) hard drive.
SW I play in 1024 x 768

With Duke3d there is absolutely no problem (maybe a small lockup once in a blue moon), and I also play a lot of UT2004 and thats as smooth as silk playing at 1280 x 1024.

This week I will try other OS and PC's and see what happens.

[Just_Jim]

I was able to crash Shadow Warrior using:

sw.exe -map airport2.map

sw.log revealled:

Fatal Signal caught: SIGSEGV. Bailing out.

On a related issue I am unable to launch swp.exe because Windows 98 cannot find winmm.dll. The file is in C:\Windows\System and I when I had a copy of winmm.dll in my Shadow Warrior directory, the same error was thrown.

I do not recall how to register a .dll fill with Windows so winmm.dll can be found.

[Parkar]

How about just putting it in the windows sytstem folder? Usualy works for me.

edit: Ohh misunderstod what you wrote.

[hitman71]

try it in system32 and reboot.

On the subject of crashes, i get loads too and i have a good clean tidy system. Its more apparent on user maps (god knows why), its frequent when being attacked with the triple whammy fire line thingummy (lol) and it also happens a lot when dying from being crushed by a door.

My guess is its a sound buffer overflow type problem, not enough channels available or too many being used at once ?

Athlon XP 2500+, 2x256 333 DDR memory in dual mode, 256mb FX5700, Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe nforce2 mobo using the inbuilt Soundstorm. DirectX 9.0c, SP2 + all updates bar the malicious software removal tool. Soundstorm uses soundblaster emulation (doesn't everything now) and is superb everywhere else. I'm using the last but 1 official forcewares (latest have known brightness problems) and using the best set of audio drivers (general consensus on nforcers website).

An idea on how tidy i keep my system.... C: has only 4gig on it with 6 gig free. D: is for games, E: is for downloads. C: holds all the apps i use too !! That bar that scrolls across while booting up (WinXP) goes across just 4 times and i'm in...

Anywhooo, my guess is its a sound issue or quite possibly an HRP conflict issue. (due to silent crashes in the Amazon TC)

[ProAsm]

Just_Jim, here is a recompiled version of Swp.exe using M$ rather than Watcom.
http://www.unreal.co.za/files/temp/Swm.zip
I renamed the zip to stop confusion.
I ran up Win98 here and no matter how I compiled it with Watcom it gave that error.
In future I may switch to M$ although I do prefer Watcom's options.

Hitman, regarding your sound causing the crashes theory, mmm that could be possible although I must say when I fired up Win98 I hardly had any destop crashes although the sound was badly distorted and I only played for about an half an hour.
I use a SB Live.
I still could not run up Airport2

I also installed the game on my server which is a P3 1gig with Win2k, using a S3 graphics card and although the card was slow, even on 8 bit, the crashes were there and that PC has an old Awe64 sound card in it

We need to get to the bottom of these crashes as its pointless trying to fix the code when maybe its not even the codes fault, but in the meantime I'm getting very frustrated here

[Just_Jim]

I appreciate the effort with Swm.zip. The executable sw.exe could not find CLBR11.dll and niether could I (on my system nor on the web)

I previously tried the suggestion of C:\Windows\System32 and ran "System File Checker" to refresh winmm.dll and setupx.dll

I have run into sound issues in the past. Maybe its because I can only "carry a tune" in a bucket?

[ProAsm]

Yeah I ran up sw and swm on a independant PC today running Win98 and I also had that error looking for the clbr11.dll
Once you add the clbr11.dll it now complains that it cannot find mt7r11 so here is everything you need.

http://www.unreal.co.za/files/temp/98files.zip

clbr11.dll
clbr11.sym
mt7r11.sym
mt7r11.dll

Just drop them into the sw root folder and all works well.

[hitman71]

I don't know why i think its a sound issue, it just feels that way. Theres a lot of loud sound from that fire attack, also when squished by a door theres a loud crunch/squish and big flash of red.

Problem is, that amazon first level crashes just by looking in certain directions. Making me think its a texture thing...

I wonder if crashes are so frequent when the HRP is disabled ? I gonna go try

[ProAsm]

The crashes are less frequent with the hrp disabled but not by much, well in my case anyway.

After some more investigation it seems to happen when I use the rocket launcher at close range, or when that black ninja shoots his napalm (whatever) and as it hits me, I crash to the desktop.
It sometimes also happens if I shoot the Ninja with a rocket launcher at point blank range.

On wednesday I'm hopefully getting a new mobo for my PC under guarentee as my CPU heat sensor has packed up and shuts the power supply down instantly - hell this is annoying

I'll also check the sound card issue - time I upgraded my old SB Live

[hitman71]

Well, it seems its crashing the same for you as it is for me. You say its rocket launchers at point blank. Well, you would take a huge hit of damage and the screen would go red. Same as the napalm attack from cloaked or red ninjas, you take a big hit and the screen should flash red from the damage. Red flash on screen when crushed by a door too. Also, a close explosion, like a point blank rocket or door crush means a loud noise. Red screen and loud noise = crash. At least for me.

The Amazon crashes are probably just a map glitch/missing texture prob as it rarely crashes for no reason at any other time. Almost always from a huge health hit.

[Just_Jim]

Just got home from work. The 98files.zip file was not in temp.

[ProAsm]

Really, mmm wierd, ok I uploaded again - try before they dissapear again

[SamSwashbuckler]

Are you guys saying you don't get ANY crashing at ALL? I get quite a few, but it doesn't seem to be from any SPECIFIC events, so I didn't report anything (except that one usermap).

it's not "our computers", there are some bugs left in JFSW, but I haven't tried to reproduce any yet.

[ProAsm]

Well I tried Win98 on my PC now and still the crashes.
I also tried disababling the sound, also removing the hardware acceleration completely, but still the crashes persist.
Only thing left is the mobo, which will now only be done thursday.
Eish, talk about persiverance

[SamSwashbuckler]

it's not your hardware, ProAsm, don't bother.

[hitman71]

i agree, its not hardware. Basically the game needs running thru a debugger in uncompiled form. Stepped thru if needs be. Reproduce something that casues a crash and see what routines its going thru... See if any values are going stupidly high or negative when they shouldn't etc.

[JonoF]

Have you got the address the game crashes at by any chance? Dr Watson logs are especially good.

Jonathon

[Just_Jim]

Thanks for the dlls. The games has not crash often for me, but I will take notes when and where it does. I am new to Shadow Warrior so have not played through the original levels yet.

[ProAsm]

A good map to test with is the TC Amazon.
Play in skill 2 and near the beginning, once you end up in the river below, there are about 4 or 5 small Rippers and one big Ripper.
Fight these buggers with your fists, dont use any weapons and soon you will crash to the desktop, well its does me for 9 times out of 10.

[SamSwashbuckler]

When I did that level it crashed all the time, nothing to do with using your fists. Once you got away from the river it was fine. Maybe something to do with the river sound effects, scrolling water texture, echo noise (does that happen above water at all?). I couldn't pin it down except that it happened near the river.

[hitman71]

ProAsm said:
Yeah I ran up sw and swm on a independant PC today running Win98 and I also had that error looking for the clbr11.dll
Once you add the clbr11.dll it now complains that it cannot find mt7r11 so here is everything you need.

http://www.unreal.co.za/files/temp/98files.zip

clbr11.dll
clbr11.sym
mt7r11.sym
mt7r11.dll

Just drop them into the sw root folder and all works well.

i've also asked this in the swp thread, but i find the answer here. However i'm a little puzzled that this sounds like a problem only on win98 machines ? Mine is XP and WAS working before adding the latest version of SWP.exe. I'll add these dll's but i wondered whats changed ??

[ProAsm]

Yes I also found wierd things happening.
The latest Swp I think is a Swm (Win98) just renamed.
In future Win98 will not be catered for as it gets to confusing keeping track of who's who in the zoo
I have spoken to JF and I'll get an update out soon which will incorporate a number of his updates etc.

[hitman71]

coolio - hurry hurry

oh btw, the dll's made it work fine.

[ProAsm]

Anyone played Crates.map yet ?
An excellent map but I had at least 100 desktop crashes.
http://www.proasm.com/files/other/crates.zip

Would be interesting to know if you have less than 10 crashes, and if so whats your setup.

[Old Sparky]

Same problem.

Fatal signal: Floating Point Exception (SDL Parachute Deployed)

Only on some maps, like this crates.

I compiled bin on linux.

[JonoF]

Woo. Crates.map certainly is a nice collection of crash-inducing stuff. So far I've found two crashes and just managed to get an arithmetic exception which should be rather fun to figure out... not. Also, it gives Polymost something to think about in this particular area: http://jonof.edgenetwork.org/misc/lotsapolys.png

Jonathon

[SamSwashbuckler]

Good to hear, keep up the great work Jono. A working map (as in the overhead map you get when you press Tab) would be nice too, especially on maps like this one. I was stuck in that warehouse for too long and eventually just gave up and quit :P

[TerminX]

SamSwashbuckler said:
Good to hear, keep up the great work Jono. A working map (as in the overhead map you get when you press Tab) would be nice too

Heh.

[ProAsm]

ahhh Good to hear JF, looks like there is still hope

SamSwashbuckler, being stuck in that warehouse, yeah I was also until I flicked that switch outside the 2 big double doors (where all the rocket ammo is) and the ramps lifted up.
I thought all along the switch was for the doors, so I left it alone.