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Author
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Topic: Chat text crash bug discovered
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Mighty
General
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posted 07-20- 06:51 PM
   
Since this is one that you have some control over, I thought I'd tell you about it.I stumbled across a bug in the in-sim chat text. Once upon a time, when I put that in there, I was hoping we would have time to implement a scrollback buffer. So I save off 120 lines of chat text. It turns out, when that gets full, there's a bug in how I delete the oldest one. It will cause a crash every time. Now, 120 lines is actually quite a few, so it doesn't show up very often. Obviously, this is more likely to show up in the missions that has a lot of people chatting with each other. And also during longer missions. So you might want to be a little circumspect on using the chat area. If you can use Roger Wilco, you probably want to do that. This bug has nothing to do with the lobby area. Just the in-game "radio" chat text. I've fixed it, and the fix will appear in the next beta. Unfortunately, the next beta probably won't appear before we ship RC Sim. IP: Logged |
Pang
Pilot
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posted 07-20- 09:49 PM
Guys, it's okay, he's not talking about an operation on the male genitalia at 8 days old.He just means don't talk so much in the missions. (whew) IP: Logged |
Pang
Pilot
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posted 07-20- 09:56 PM
Or... we should circumscribe our circumlocution.btw, how do you make a circumflex appear on screen? IP: Logged |
spin
Pilot
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posted 07-23- 12:15 AM
That could explain why some people drop out of missions late in the game. Would the bug affect all players? IP: Logged |
Mighty
General
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posted 07-23- 02:34 PM
Yes, it should affect all players. They should all crash at the same time, unless someone didn't get a chat message due to packet loss.IP: Logged |
Spyder
Pilot
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posted 07-23- 09:25 PM
I doubt we even get close to that many lines of text in there but it's worth knowing about.
By the way, seeing as there are some people working on the source now, why not pass on the fixes to them and maybe they can release a new compile before your other sim?
I'm not alone wanting the dt bug removed and the sdoe war has been a real pisser with this problem now we have a lot of players again.
How about it guys? Can you give us a Dt bug free version before going onto other things?
Thanks------------------
 IP: Logged |
Mighty
General
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posted 07-24- 03:03 PM
It's in the source and they'll get it in the next drop. Unfortunately, the current NDA doesn't let them build executables for release.IP: Logged |
Spyder
Pilot
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posted 07-24- 08:59 PM
Ok so they can pass the changes to you to compile for release yeah?
That wouldn't be time lost on your rc sim putting it up for download.
Can you guys do this then?------------------
IP: Logged |
Spyder
Pilot
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posted 07-25- 09:58 AM
bump
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IP: Logged |
Mighty
General
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posted 07-25- 02:58 PM
Actually, it does take time away from RC Sim. There are a lot of little details that go into building a new executable for release. Gathering everything together, building the patch, building the installer, making sure the install actually works, making sure a change we made in RC Sim didn't break something so bad in SDOE that it's not worth releasing until it's fixed. Unfortunately, it's not a five minute job.IP: Logged |
Zurawski
Pilot
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posted 07-25- 03:25 PM
... Mighty,LOL! We have arunning joke here in my department ... Our CEO's favorite statement while discussing changes to our code-base is... " what, you can't just change it?!"  Sometimes the desire for a feature/change clouds the realization that it's not as simple as "changing" something ... IP: Logged |
Spyder
Pilot
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posted 07-25- 08:02 PM
I'm not asking for a friggin feature, just a fix to the bug that has plagued us since I can't remember.
Mighty is the bug in Sdemons.exe? Then it wouldn't require an installer but a quick download to write over the current one.
Whatever file it's in would only be a matter of overwriting our current file(s) I'm sure we can handle that.
IP: Logged |
Mighty
General
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posted 07-25- 08:59 PM
Has this bug really been plaguing people? I don't remember many missions where everybody crashed out at the same time. I don't think we're hitting it very often. I just figured that, with the war going on, large missions would be more common and the bug would be more likely to pop up. So I wanted to let people know about it in order to save a mission or two.As has been pointed out before, we only have one source tree. Therefore, all changes that have gone into RC Sim are also going into SDOE. It would take even longer to back out all of our source changes to the last release, apply this one fix, and then recompile. And that would give you the latest beta (which isn't ready for prime time) plus a fix to a bug that is rarely encountered. Going back to the 1.5 patch would take even longer than that, because we'd have to back down to Visual C++ 5.0. I know it's frustrating, but "just one fix" is almost always a can of worms. Even if we were lucky enough to distill it down to a single half-hour recompile, it has been my experience that these sorts of "quick fixes" almost invariably generate a blizzard of tech support. "Which executable should we fly?" "If you can fix that bug, how about this one?" "Or that one?" "Or this other one?" "I know you said you only fixed the chat bug, but when I installed the new EXE my textures are all screwed up. I'm sure that's the only thing that has changed." Sorry. That's the nature of the beast. IP: Logged |
Mighty
General
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posted 07-25- 09:10 PM
Oh, wait. I just realized you're probably talking about a different CTD bug. I know the Michael addressed several CTD bugs prior to the latest couple of betas. Unfortunately, there are other things in those betas that make them unusable for many people. And those issues are not quick fixes. Hopefully the people with the source will be addressing some of them. Michael and I won't be able to get to the SDOE-specific bugs until RC Sim ships.One advantage of the Internet is you can talk directly with developers. One disadvantage is that you learn the ramifications of tight development schedules whenever you make a feature request :-/ IP: Logged |
Spyder
Pilot
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posted 07-25- 09:52 PM
Yes it's the ctd bug when entering a mission, sometimes just sitting in the lobby.
It's more frequent with more players but still there even with 3 players too.
Yeah I get pissed about it because it was fixed a long time ago and I can't understand why it couldn't have been a priority release.
It really kills online play when you go from the desktop to the lobby sometimes as much as 5 times or more.
That some don't encounter this problem I don't give a rats about, those that do know what I mean.
However that you don't have a backup of the fix from way back sounds to me we won't be seeing it for a long time and by then it may be too late to care.
Major bummer.
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IP: Logged |
Mighty
General
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posted 07-25- 10:34 PM
quote:
...don't have a backup of the fix
Well, actually we do have backups of everything. It's just that the CTD bugs you're talking about are woven into other code. It's not like it's a two-line fix or something like that. There's code that was introduced between v1.5 and those fixes and code that was introduced after. It would probably take most of a week to back down to v1.5 and introduce just those fixes and then get back to where we were. Instead, since we'll never have an entire week to spare, it would probably be better for us to spend the equivalent time attacking bugs in the current beta. I know how frustrating the CTD bugs you're talking about are. I've given up on a couple of different evenings when I got dumped. IP: Logged |
Spyder
Pilot
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posted 07-26- 04:48 AM
Fair enough.
It's a shame we couldn't have had the post 1.5 dt fix before you guys went onto adding other things at the time. I don't hold you responsible for that decision.
Life's a beach.
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IP: Logged |
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