Possible new (?) bug discovered

[wbs]

The other evening I was playing a QB against the computer (assault scenario). I was the Allies and I was on the assaulting side. It was a 500 pt. game.

I ran turn #1, and then tried to replay it. When I did, the timer changed to "0:0-^2" (i.e. 0:0-, and a small numeral '2' just to the upper right of the '-')

The timer stayed frozen during the replay. All units, with the exception of ONE Axis Halftrack, also stayed frozen. The halftrack started driving around and around in tight little circles. An Allied M10 got a target lock on it, but never fired--even though during the REAL turn it DID fire upon and destroy the halftrack.

I hit the 'Start' button for another replay, and this time it replayed perfectly.

I hit the 'start' key for a third replay, and the timer again went to "0:0-^2". THIS time, all of the units were frozen again (as was the timer) except for the German halftrack, but THIS time the movement of the halftrack was DIFFERENT.

The length of the board was initially around 1500 meters from the Allied back-edge to the German back-edge. The intial range from the Allied M10 to the halftrack was about 300 meters. During THIS replay, the M10 got a target lock on the halftrack (and the HT locked onto the M10) as happened during the "real" turn, but in this case neither unit fired. The halftrack started to reverse out of the field of view of the M10...and it kept going...and going...and GOING. It reversed OFF of the edge of the board, but it DID NOT DISAPPEAR. Instead it KEPT reversing--1000 meters, 3000 meters, 5000 meters, 7000 meters!! It did this over the next ONE HOUR AND 45 MINUTES (i.e. the turn did not stop after 60 seconds) :eek:

All the while, the M10 maintained its target lock--through 3 houses and 2 sets of woods and all the way off the board and several (real-life) inches up the screen to the edge. It never fired.

Finally, at 7,823 meters range, the halftrack suddenly disappeared and so did the M10's target lock.

I hit the 'start' button for yet another replay, and it ran perfectly. I again hit the 'start' button for the final time.

This time, I let the replay run for 14 secounds before I hit the 'forward' key to skip forward. The timer IMMEDIATELY changed to "0:0-^2" and only those units that had been in motion at that point in the turn continued to move.

The Halftrack again backed off of the board, but THIS time it immediately disappeared. My two M10's had been in motion moving forward towards the German lines, as was one of my platoons.

They ALL continued moving forward...right through the German lines (without being fired upon), THROUGH several houses and sets of woods (which is impossible for the tanks to do) and continued moving over about a 10 minute period until they reached the German edge of the battlefield. At that point they each disappeared, in turn, as they got to the edge.

I have played numerous times (before this incident) on this laptop (a SONY VAIO)without any problems, and I have not encountered any problems since then.

Anyone have any ideas as to what was going on? :confused:

[ May 09, 2002, 03:02 PM: Message edited by: wbs ]

[Schrullenhaft]

Most of the 'timer bugs' have been attributed to video drivers. Since you have a problem trying to reproduce this error, then it would be very hard to duplicate elsewhere and possibly fix.

Right now CMBO is considered a 'finished' product and is not scheduled for any more patches. A TCP/IP fix might be done for CMBO after CMBB is released (and subsequently patched), but there is no guarantee of that (and no official stand on that either).

Do you know what video card is in your Sony VAIO and what driver version you're using ?

[wbs]

Sorry, no, I don't know what video card or drivers are in the laptop. I bought it used and as long as it works to my satisfaction (which it does) I haven't taken the time to go digging around for the details of its various components.

I have played dozens of CMBO scenarios and QB's and have not had any problems before now (going back to September) and I've played a couple of scenarios since without a problem.

This incident was so odd, and unexpected, that I thought that I would mention it to see if it has been noted before, and what,if anything, had been done about it.

[Schrullenhaft]

Well it's a strange kind of bug, and yes it has been noted before. People who've had timer/replay problems in the past (where the timer would get screwed up and the movie playback would be strange in one way or another) have usually linked the problem to their display drivers. This problem only seemed to happen when they replayed the movie (it would not occur during the first run of the movie) or if they rewound the movie to a different point during playback.

I believe I saw people with both ATI and Nvidia based video chips have this problem. As far as I'm aware the problems were fixed (or almost never encountered again) by updating the video drivers (which isn't always an option for some laptops). Whether this actually accomplishes something or not, I'm not sure. I'd guess that you may have a laptop using an ATI Rage Mobility as the video chip.

As a bug this would be an extremely hard one to track down and eliminate (if it is a bug in the CM code). Such a feature (movie replay) has been used countless times by so many people that you'd think it would happen far more often than the few reports that have appeared here on this forum. Therefore the circumstances to produce this problem are either a very rare combination of settings, units and situations in a game or there is something up with the system that is playing back the movie. Even on your setup you seem to be unable to regenerate the error, which makes tracking such a bug very problematic.

[ May 10, 2002, 03:54 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]