Saturday, August 28, 2010

Alpha 4.1 Freezing Game Bug :-}

As the old Chinese saying goes : "new features = new bugs".
I think I know where it comes from but I must be sure before sentencing the culprit to death by coding.


THE BUG
The game appears to freeze randomly and you have to kill the application.


YOUR QUEST
- Play the game doh.
- Same very often. I mean very very often. Like often, but a lot.
- Oh My God! The dreaded Freezing Game bug! :-/
- Kill the game.
- Restart and load.
- If the bugs happens again at about the same time, "YOU ARE WINNER"! (well sorta).
- ZIP the save game file. It is located in your documents folder, eg:
C:\My Documents\\Rogue Survivor\alpha 4.1\Saves\save.dat
- Mail me, or if you can't, host the file somewhere (mediafire, rapidshare....).

MY QUEST
Well....
Mmmmh....
Let me think...
Drink a lot? No.
Have fun with fan girls?... Ah...


FIX THE DAMN BUG? Ah yes!
I'll do it in fun way :
- I'll play the game in debug mode and made a video of it, posted on youtube in my "Play!" serie.
- If the bug happens.I'll keep recording while I debug it, so you'll get to see the code and me raging at it :p
Bug hunt will start at part 7. Wish me luck (or un-luck).

THE REWARD
If all goes well,  I'll fix the bug asap and release a patch/a 4.11 version.

UPDATE:
If found a cause for the bug, but it might be not the only one. A similar bug might be lurking elsewhere so still need your help.
Here is the BugCast :p

Rogue Survivor - 7. BugCast Alpha 4.1!
Rogue Survivor - 8. BugCast Alpha 4.1!
Rogue Survivor - 9. BugCast Alpha 4.1!

For the curious/impatient, jump to the 3rd video at 8:00 to see the bug and the debug session.

End of post.

7 comments:

  1. Thanks :) I've been trying to isolate it since it's been out but it's been tricky. I'll work on it more now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. YEEES Finaly found a crash with only 9 moves on my save file. Mail inc!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I could only get consistent ones earlier when I entered the hospital district. Now I just get them and then the game continues past the crash point for another day or so before crashing again. I can't manage to pin it x.x

    ReplyDelete
  4. It should be noted that even with OPTION- NPCs STARVE: OFF - NPC civilians will still hoard(this is fine as I can trade items for food they carry) and EAT food, leaving absolutely nothing for the player character.

    If this could be fixed it'd make my playing experience a lot more enjoyable/make high number civilian maps playable. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kael, if they wouldnt leave anything for the player character it wouldnt be playable for anyone right? Im sure you do better next time. The reason for "Starve: off" is because when NPC starve to death its 80% chance they become zombies or somthing, not make it easier for player to get food. Found another bug btw :D I win

    ReplyDelete
  6. I just had one of these crashes... :(
    Up to the point I crashed, I did the following:
    I left my safe house, heading to the right one block before heading down three. I received a message about a chopper to the west 42 tiles, so I went to the west and moved up a several tiles coming to a drop. I was carrying a shotgun, shotgun ammo, and a shovel, filling my empty spaces up with army rations. (I didn't have Hauler). After filling up, I went up a few blocks, turned right, moved approximately 42 tiles to the right, past the hospital and to my safe house. I moved up several tiles, waited next to a police officer outside my safe house, who told me about the chopper and a skeleton slightly to the northwest. I moved northwest to look, moved back down, entered my safe house and dropped off my loot. After exiting the safe house, I followed the same route at the beginning, to the right, then down. Only this time I made it maybe one block when the game slowed, then crashed. I was repeatedly pressing the number '2' and RIGHT before the crash a zombie to the southwest was smashing something.
    I have a screen here: http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk290/Br1dgeTr0ll/gamecrash.png

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Thorvald: You can remove/lower the zombification by starvation % in the options, so it seems weird to have an option to have NPCs not starve, but then have them eat all the food on the map. Unless you get lucky with hoarding army drops- and the current state of being unable to kill civilians directly- makes high number of civilian games nigh impossible (especially when this already leads to lots of evolved diciples/neophytes with high undead #s).

    ReplyDelete