Eden Smallwood Posted October 30, 2002 Share Posted October 30, 2002 Previously working fine. The other day I loaded a "Large" Operation, I looked at it, said "Oh Sh*t!", and just saved the game and quit. Today I went to load that game, and the program "crashed" in loading graphics. An unusual crash, more like a call to ExitToShell()- no muss, no fuss, just all of a sudden the program is gone. I thought- OK, that Op is just too big. I increased the memory from 100M to 140M; same. Long story of hypotheses blown away short, I threw out the prefs file, restarted, (something I hadn't done in six months)... It's not that file, it's not just Ops, it's anything- even tiny scenarios- anything. Very strange. Very...disconcerting. I'm sure someone will tell me to reinstall, and I suppose I will. But there should be something else I can throw out rather than go through the whole six hours of installing...? Also disappointing are the other posts I found when I searched, none of which have a response from tech support. Bummer. Eden [ November 11, 2002, 11:42 PM: Message edited by: Eden Smallwood ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmatt Posted October 30, 2002 Share Posted October 30, 2002 Okay, first things first. Which game is this? CMBB or CMBO? Next, does it crash on ANY game now, Quick Battle, other saved game, scenario, operation? Can you go into the scenario editor, autocreate a map and preview it? Did ANYTHING else change on your computer recently? New driver extensions, upgrade, software install etc? What OS are you running? Have you tried disabling the backside cache? Madmatt [ October 30, 2002, 01:22 PM: Message edited by: Madmatt ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eden Smallwood Posted October 30, 2002 Author Share Posted October 30, 2002 Originally posted by Madmatt: Okay, first things first. Which game is this? CMBB or CMBO?LOL!! Thanks for stopping by; CMBB of course- the Wargame o' Champions! Well, you're "too late", I've already reinstalled, but I'll tell you a few things, because it really looks to me like a bug which could and should be addressed- let me explain and that statement will be specifically clear. Next, does it crash on ANY game now, Quick Battle, other saved game, scenario, operation?Too late to try QBs- it was any saved game, any op, any scenario. But there's more information than just that. The telling sequence was this: 1) First, load "large" operation saved game; die. It went through "Loading Graphics..." for quite a long time, maybe it even finished that part and was ready to go on to the next, then it died. With just that first crash, the supposition that it was a high memory requirement related programmatic bug is very natural. Right? So obviously that's where I gave CMBB 140M rather than 100M and try again. 2) Try again with more memory, but crash again. But NOTEZ BIEN- it crashed in "Loading" again, but THIS time EVEN EARLIER. 3) Do Frantic things like try another op, another game, a fresh scenario I've played a thousand times, toss out prefs file, restart... Still crashes *early* in "Loading", and sometimes even the splash screen fails to draw. Now- my point: What this very clearly implies is that there was a STATIC CONDITION BETWEEN PROGRAM LAUNCHES WHICH IS NON-RECOVERABLE. It doesn't prove that, but it's a pretty strong implication. At a minimum, there is a programmatic bug in what appears to be a high memory requirement situation. Possibly that bug caused the application to modify it's own code, but that's a real stretch. No, as I say, it seems hard not to believe that somehow in the coding there is use made of a static written file on the drive during the loading process (?) which is non-recoverable, id est, if it gets corrupted during this execution, it will crash you from now on. Well, that's my hypo, anyhow. And if it works fine after reinstalling, (which it does!), then that implication gets REALLY strong. Can you go into the scenario editor, autocreate a map and preview it?Too late, sorry. Did ANYTHING else change on your computer recently? New driver extensions, upgrade, software install etc?Absolutely not. Nothing's changed on this iBook for months. OS 9.0 , nothing fancy installed, no strange INITs, no yadda yadda. 160M of RAM, 161 with Virtual Memory, no RAM disk, Disk Cache is the default 5120, which it *strongly* advises you not to change unless you know what the heck you're doing. Have you tried disabling the backside cache?Wha ? Are you thinking Windoze? Well thanks for taking an interest anyhow. I will certainly answer any questions I can, but for this time, this forum was *crawling* this morning, (just me?), like it was under a denial of service attack, so I felt like I had to reinstall. Eden 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmatt Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 There is no file written to the computer while it loads which would trigger a re-occuring crash, the game doesnt behave like that. It does check the saved Prefs file to configure the resolution, and various in game settings (unit size, etc..) but thats it. Windows systems don't have backside caches (as such), thats a Mac thing. You will need a Cache Profiler program which you should be able to get from www.powerlogix.com So, are you still having problems or not? Did the re-install make a difference? Madmatt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eden Smallwood Posted November 12, 2002 Author Share Posted November 12, 2002 Just remember it's always easier in hindsight... It took awhile, but I've got the sine qua non of this bug: It happens, as described above, whenever the applications heap is essentially full. Perfect one-to-one, if and only if relationship. I mean when CMBB takes up almost all of the remaining RAM. The reason it seemed persistent, before, is that my first reaction was to increase the size of CMBB's partition!! Insidious, eh? The backside cache thingie is irrelevant to this behaviour. So. A simple workaround, (just be sure to leave the OS a nominal amount of memory), and for a hypothesis, how's this: CMBB requests some service like temporary memory, which in all normal cases is granted, but when crucial to the OS is not granted, and somewhere there is a failure to check for the service's nonesxistence in CMBB::LoadingGraphics()... Well it fits, you see. And it *really* looks like a call to ExitToShell(). Anyhow, thank you for your attention. Hth, Eden [ November 11, 2002, 11:53 PM: Message edited by: Eden Smallwood ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarmo Posted November 12, 2002 Share Posted November 12, 2002 CM can't request additional memory, OS limits it to whatever you've chosen. Finder, however can and will request more memory when it needs to do something extra. Most likely the OS tries to load RAVE graphics extensions, doesn't have the RAM left and crashes CM. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
demoss Posted November 12, 2002 Share Posted November 12, 2002 Yup. It's a major no-no in Mac land to have ALL of your memory allocated. The same holds true in Windoze, of course, but the manifestations tend to be, well, different, and there you have only one way of dealing with it (not counting the "don't do that!" method) - increase the size of your virtual memory settings. In your case, I'd probably suggest doing that anyway unless you're short of disk space. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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