groundpounder Posted August 8, 2000 Share Posted August 8, 2000 Has anyone else encountered a saved battle that won't load? I have been working on a battle for several weeks. Last night I made a small tweak to terrain and now it won't load in the editor or game play. The file size increased by about 40%. I have pretty much chalked it up to a simple case of file corruption, but thought I would check with the CM community. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted August 9, 2000 Share Posted August 9, 2000 What do you mean by "won't load"? Does it not show up in the file list? Or it does, but when you select it to load, something bad happens? What, specifically? Charles 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
groundpounder Posted August 9, 2000 Author Share Posted August 9, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: What do you mean by "won't load"? Does it not show up in the file list? Or it does, but when you select it to load, something bad happens? What, specifically? Charles<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The file is seen, but when I attempt to load it in the editor or game play the program locks up an I can see repeated attempts at hard drive access (read errors?). I have let the computer sit for about 5 minutes to see if it would return controle thinking if it was getting read errors that it would time out. The program stays locked up and I have to do the three finger salute and kill the process. The fact that the battle file size went from 9K to 17K after making only changes to a few tiles and unit edits leads me to suspect an EOF type of problem (i.e. when I did the last save the program blew the EOF out beyond valid data and when I attempt to load it it goes in to a sphincter loop). I have tried to load the file on two different systems with the same result. Terry 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted August 9, 2000 Share Posted August 9, 2000 OK, this is a new one AFAIK. Maybe de-fragment your hard drive? Charles 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jostapo Posted August 9, 2000 Share Posted August 9, 2000 I had this same problem under Windows 2000. Have not experienced it at all under Windows 98 (same hardware, blah blah blah). I'm a developer myself and I've seen this happen with VSAM and proprietary data files (Access, Paradox, etc etc) when write behind cacheing did not full flush it's buffers. I just disabled the setting on my hard drives and am about to give it a whirl. Btw, this error manifests itself as an unhandled exception in windows 2000 and as an out of memory error under windows 98 (once the save game is munged windows 98 can't load it either). I debugged into the break point using visual studio's debugger and it appears to be a null/invalid pointer causing the issue. I'll let you know 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jostapo Posted August 9, 2000 Share Posted August 9, 2000 PS> This was with the latest demo. I'm still waiting for my full version to arrive. ;P 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
groundpounder Posted August 9, 2000 Author Share Posted August 9, 2000 Charles, I tried defraging the hard drive. No difference. I think once the file is munged its munged! Let me know if you want to see the file. If I get ambitious I might try a compare of a previous version of the file and try some binary hacking of the file based on that. Or would that violate my EULA? Terry [This message has been edited by groundpounder (edited 08-09-2000).] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
groundpounder Posted August 10, 2000 Author Share Posted August 10, 2000 jostapo, Where in Win98 can I disable write behind cache? Terry 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jostapo Posted August 10, 2000 Share Posted August 10, 2000 In the System Properties dialog you will find a trouble shooting tab. On it is a "Disable Synchronous Buffer Commits". Ensure that this is _NOT_ checked. Also, verify that "Disable write-behind caching for all drives" _IS_ checked. The latter setting may impact your system's performance while saving data (actually it will affect it's apparent performance but makes no difference to real performance). Play the game for a while and see if that fixes the issues. (make sure that you make a mental note of the changes you make shoudl you need to undo them) I did the same thing under Windows 2000 and it appears to have fixed the problem. Now if we can just convince the game team to add some code to ensure the cache is committed (might i suggest a closefile() or a dozen just to make sure). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
groundpounder Posted August 10, 2000 Author Share Posted August 10, 2000 jostapo, Thanks for the tip! Terry 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
groundpounder Posted August 11, 2000 Author Share Posted August 11, 2000 Charles, Here is the scoop. After re-installing Win98SE and defragging, the problem acts a little different. Instead of CMBO locking up on a load attempt of the munged battle file in the editor, the Windows defalt "critical stop" sound is called and the editor simply does not load the file. REASON uring editing and testing of the battle I saved (from game play) with the same name as the battle file. When you look at the battle files menu it now shows as a saved game (brown) rather than a battle file (white). I guess CMBO lets you over write a battle file if it is not saved in tourny mode. It might be a goody idea to change this for the next spin of code. Terry 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
groundpounder Posted August 11, 2000 Author Share Posted August 11, 2000 OOPS...gotta remember to turn those darn smilies of! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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