TCP/IP crashes

[LeBlaque]

BUMP! (My Gawd what is it going to take-- just read the Tiger threads so let's try this approach) Hey, BTS, are you HIDING out there cuz you can't fix this one???

bhahahahahahah

[Lempereur]

bumping

[Claytonious2]

Same problem here. Windows "ding" noise and then the game is hosed and the autosave is sometimes unrecoverable (but not always.) There is definitely no correlation with size of battle - happens on both small and large battles, and I think the "captured" theory is hogwash but I can't prove it.

Here's my system specs:

Pentium4 1.4GHz

128 MB RAM (never changed since CM installed)

NVidia Geforce2 MX (so, yes, I have the usual CM transparency and text bugs too ... what fun...)

Windows2000

A frequent opponent of mine also gets the ding of death sometimes, and his machine is an Athlon 800 MHz.

Nowadays, we save the game on every single turn so that if the autosave gets hosed we only lose a single turn. Big pain in the butt.

I just assumed that everyone on Earth already knew about this problem until I saw this thread. Jeeze. We have encountered the Ding of Death on many different machines, including various machines at work and on a LAN, so you can rule out the following:

1) Internet vs. LAN

2) Specific CPU

3) Specific amount of RAM

4) Specific graphics card

I do believe all of the machines have been Windows2000, though.

Ah, well, CM is damned good, but ever since 1.12 bugs never get fixed.

NVidia players - go pound sand.

TCP/IP players - go pound sand.

Hopefully these will be fixed with CM2.

[Subvet]

Well, it isn't just Windows 2000 either. I run Win 98(SE) and have encountered this problem a couple of times.

Come on BTS, throw us a bone. Even if you tell us that it won't be fixed at least we will have an answer.

[Lempereur]

bump :mad:

[Holien]

Hi,

I would be interested in the resolution of this as I have had it happen in the Tourney finale with Nawait.

It happened just after I took one of his guys prisoner.

I run Win 98 2nd Ed.

This is the first time I have had the problem and we had to continue the game via PBEM.

This did not help my game play and was further helped (NOT) by the game crashing and it remembering my opponents move and not mine.

He had hit go and I had not so when it was loaded from his autosave it would not allow me to continue issuing orders.

I presume if I had loaded it from my autosave it would have been ok? (Except that it would have forgot all my opponents moves?)

If anyone can answer either of these problems it would be great.

H

[Madmatt]

Guys, here is what we know after reviewing this issue for some time:

I have NEVER been able to replicate the crash, neither have any of my testers I asked to check into it.

Some people who have been playing TCP/IP games for many months have never experienced such a crash.

I am certain that there is *something* going on though, thats why I have continued to research this issue.

It is NOT hardware specific.

It is NOT OS specific.

It *appears* to sometimes be triggered by the appearance of duplicated crews or after prisoners are captured. Other times there is no such triggering event.

The reason for the crash itself is that it appears something is corrupting the transmitted data between systems. What happens is that when one system tries to process the corrupt file it locks up the game and it drops to the desktop (or dings). This also explains why you can not reload some autosaves from crashed games as they are themselves corrupt.

The root cause for the corruption is where we are having difficulty discovering. It could be when the host compiles the turn or it could be getting corrupted at some point doing the transmission between systems.

I have said repeatedly that Charles will look into this issue but he has not had time to do so in depth yet. When we have more to report we WILL REPORT IT.

That's all I have for you at this time.

[ 07-31-2001: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

[Ex Bellator]

I've been away from this thread for a while because - woot for us - me & my buddy have resolved our Ding of Death problem.

Don't get excited, all we did was host the games on my machine instead of his. Works perfectly every time now.

Of course we're now scratching our heads as to what the differences between our machines are and why they might impact the sending of TCP-IP data. Neither of us have altered our machines or versions of CM in any way since our ding of death affliction reared it's ugly head.

Good to see the professionals are still looking at this problem, and I hope they get it sorted soon for everyone who is still struggling with the bug.

[Subvet]

Well damn, this bug just hit me AGAIN! I think it could be my opponents machine that is causing it though, because he said he hasn't been able to finish a game in months.

Madmatt, thanks for the update. I'm glad to hear you guys are still working on this as much as possible. It is just nice to get an update, even if there is no solution or progress.

[Panzer_Meyer]

yo Subvet,

Yea I am the ooponent. Like he was saying, this bug is terrible. I can't finnsh a single game. The last time I fiinshed a TCP/IP game was in MAY!!! But I don't play that often either. Maybe once a week. Still it the worst bug ever!

What I've noticed though is I don't have to catch prisoners. Somethimes it happens. I alse noticed it happens mostly on the later turns like 20 and up.

BTS better fix this because I aint the only one with this problem. I have heard the same story from so many people I can't even count them anymore. It is quite frustrating when you can't finnish your tcp/ip games.

[Subvet]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rommel22:

I alse noticed it happens mostly on the later turns like 20 and up.

It is quite frustrating when you can't finnish your tcp/ip games.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It happened to me on turn 3-5 during a 35 turn game. It was against Jhereg or Amanuensis in the last tournament. This bug hurts the worst when it happens during a tournament game because starting over isn't really a good option and you are very limited by the time you have to finish the game. Even during regular games it is just downright annoying! I'm glad to hear that BTS isn't ignoring the problem. Hopefully they will find the cause and a fix soon.

[MajorH TacOps Developer]

Just a stab in the dark but ...

I have sometimes had problems replicating bug reports from TacOps users because I (like most developers) keep a very clean operating system on the PC that I use for coding. I do this to get every possible bit of speed out of the CPU for compiling and debugging. But by keeping a clean system I have missed some common interference problems that were found fairly quickly by testers with heaviy polluted (i.e. more normal) op systems. Real Internet junkies who have not done a clean Windows reinstal lately, often have an amazingly long list of programs running in the background of their computer - that they may or may not know about .

Have all of you gents tried disabling everything on your PC except for Explorer and Systray, before loading Combat Mission for a TCP/IP game?

Do a single Ctrl + Alt + Delete keystroke. When the "Close Program" window appears, select each item shown in it (except for Explorer and Systray) and click the "End Task" button. Do this until nothing remains except for Explorer and Systray then close the window. Now load and run Combat Mission and start your TCP/IP game with an opponent who has also disabled everything on his system except for Explorer and Systray.

If you normally have problems with TCP/IP games and if this work-around should happen to solve your problem then you would be providing a very useful clue to solving this thing. If this should solve the problem then the next thing to do would be to compare the items that were deleted from the "Close Program" window to see if there is one (or more) that is common in name or function to items on other computers that have been having the TCP/IP problem.

This method will only provide a useful clue if your opponent also cleans everything out except for Explorer and Systray before the game session.

[ 08-02-2001: Message edited by: MajorH ]

[Panzer_Meyer]

MajorH,

Yes, I have no programs running in the backround what so ever. I have it set up so none come up at start up either. Only systray and explorer are on. I alse cleaned out my registry (used a program to sort throught it and delete any un-need registry files), I scandisked it and defraged it. The last two I do every two weeks. But I think my system is fairly clean.

Thanx though!

[Subvet]

I'm going to bump this one. Not to nag BTS about it or anything, just to keep it on the first page so that anyone that encounters the problem for the first time can read about it.

[Lempereur]

Matt,

Thanks for the update. This is the most annoying bug since it hits during the middle of the game.

[Lempereur]

[Frenchy]

Thanks for the update - I've only encountered this bug once (reported earlier in the thread) and have yet to encounter it again.

I play a TCP/IP game on the average of once a week. I am running Windows98SE as my OS.

[Claytonious2]

My friend and I have noticed that this ding of death in TCP/IP games only occurs on our computers that use ATI graphics cards. Could the rest of you guys please post what kind of graphics card you're using (on the computer that gets the ding) so we can see if there's a common thread here?

[wbs]

I may have a work-around solution for this glitch.

I play a friend of mine on a semi-regular basis. One day we were playing a QB via TCP/IP and had it happen to us. We were playing on two PC's that were located in the same room, so we decided to try to fix the problem since we could both see the results of our experimental solutions on both PC's at the same time.

The problem was that machine A would ding and freeze up. However, on Machine B the turn would continue to run normally to the end of the turn. We saved the game to a floppy from machine A and loaded it on machine B, so the effect was that we were still playing the same game, but we had swapped PC's. Machine A locked up again even though it was now the "AXIS" PC instead of the "Allied" PC.

The work-around solution we devised was this:

When machine A locked up, we let machine B continue to the end of the turn, and player B ended the turn and started the next turn. Player A exited the game, which was auto saved, and when he reentered, it took him to the start of the NEXT turn (i.e. the same one that player B had just started) so that they were then in sync. We were then able to continue the game normally to the end of the scenario (It was a brutally fought draw, by the way)

The only "penalty" for using this work-around was that player A was unable to view the playback for the corrupted turn, but he could figure out what happened by looking at the next-turn starting locations and status of the various units.

I hope that this is helpful.

[Catacol Highlander]

Folks/BTS

I have the same problems as described on this very interesting thread [first time I've seen it and I'm bloody glad its here...]

On 6 consecutive operations with a pal in Australia we have had this problem. No workarounds seem to be helpful apart from turning to tedious and slow pbem.

The bug itself has variable consequences - sometimes both machines lock up - sometimes he gets a replay where mine fails to go past the end of the download and the system just locks up. A few consistent features are aparrent though:

1) His machine is the faster and does the calculations - it is always mine that locks up during or at the end of the file download. Am I right in thinking the faster machine by default does the calculation? This makes swapping roles with a saved file irrelevant as it appears to be the machine receiving the movie that gets hit and that is always the slower

2) Captured troops have always been involved. However it appears that it is captured CREWS that trigger it - we have both captured squads and mgs without a probem but the minute a crew is got hold of the nasty bug hits

In an operation once you get to the end of a battle and deploy for the next the bug is gone - that is anew observation I think...

Matt - if you need a save game file just prior to a bug for analysis I can probably supply one given a bit of time - I'll certainly keep a whole load of saves when we start our next battle [currently finishing a battle that crashed by pbem and it takes a long time]. The biggest downer for me is that the game is fantastic, but now that my pal and i have moved on to big battles it is very difficult to stop crew getting captured and the bug is hitting us every time we play. By about turn 15 there as so many knackered crews with low morale all over the place that inevitably one gets caught.

Hope a fix can be found, or if not that it will NOT be present in CMBB - that would be a tragedy beyond belief....

Cheers

Al

[Catacol Highlander]

As an addition to my previous message today the nasty bug struck again after one of my guns was charged by enemy Gebirgs troops and the crew captured. As usual the game crashed and we are back to the tedium of using pbem, but I did manage to escape out of the frozen cm to find an "unhandled exception" error on my desktop. I think someone else on this thread found the same thing - I'm just reinforcing the point....

Any news on the testing front - is it only the poor gamers who can produce this error still, or have BTS managed to do so now??

Cheers

Al

[NightGaunt]

thats funny, yesterday for the first time i got an unhandled exception error also.

wrote it down somewhere if bts wants to see it

[The_Rooster]

for what it's worth this is not a Windows issue. i get the same problems running Mac VS Mac on TCP/IP games

[Holien]

Just to keep feeding this one in the hope of resolution I have just had my first instance of mutation.

I am playing a scenario Ham and Jam and the German Bunker has given me two sets of prisoners from the same Bunker.

So now I have 12 prisoners (two groups of six) and can not play the game TCP IP as we were doing when the Ping of Death appeared.

I just hope I get extra points for those captured crews.

Save file available if required and a more detailed description of our PC's upon request.

H

[Catacol Highlander]

Folks

I have managed to get this bug to replicate itself on the old beta exe file and hence have an error log I have sent to Matt.

Anyone else got the old beta exe still on their HD? If so it might be an idea to play a few games with it so that we can get Matt as many error logs as possible. That way he might be able to find a remedy...

Just an idea.

Cheers

Al