crash on save game screen

[Zyx]

i saved my game and "game saved" appeared. I pressed enter and the game crashed. Anyone else?

[beowuuf]

this might be related...

after playing for a while, (first seen on level 4, at the main portculus door to the worm area) on restarting my champion portraits disappeared and were replaced by a grey square
The next time i died (rather quickly...darn blocking door from nowhereworms) and restarted, my game collapsed into nothing.
Have had this same behavious twice afterwards

Now, this time, the portraits had gone, but i wasn't actually dying, i'm on level 5, after the invisible teleporter room...so i was saving alot (every few creatures killed) and after about 5 - 10 times, the game collapsed after clicking ok to save

my computer behind it was acting like, at these times, it was low on virtual memory, but since i now have a 27Gb hard drive, with 14Gb free, then this shouldn't reeeally be an issue i would have thought

[beowuuf]

OK, just got exactly what zyx got

I am on level 6, pinned down by skeletons/beholders in the solid key room (where the two teleporters were). The low memory style thing above wasn't happening. I saved the game, and then the game crashed from the game saved screen...

I've saved it about twice at this area with the same creatures around...infact i saved it just when a beholder started opening a door, and that saved no problem, so i don't think it's a dungeon problem...

[Rick]

Maybe it's an uninitialized flag - i've done similar things (saving / restoring), not with games but with data files. Took me almost a month to find out it was a TINY LITTLE flag

[Gambit37]

I've not yet experienced this in version 0.12, but I got it in v0.10 a few times. Just before it happens I always hear the hard-disk being thrashed quite badly, so I can tell what's going to happen, and I just have to grin and bear it.

When I used to use DMute I would get the same thing happening after about 250-300 changes to the same dungeon. The map screens would clear and the hard-disk would be thrashed for several seconds.

I made a comment about this and thought it was something to do with a memory management issue. George, at the time you replied that Windows handles all the memory issues so there's nothing in DMute or RTC for you to worry about. Far be it from me to question you, but I am still convinced that there is a memory leak somewhere in both these programs and it's not being returned to the system. After a while, it all runs out (virtual or not) and the program crashes.

Am I completely barking up the wrong tree here? These are the only two programs that have exhibited this behaviour on my computer. I dunno - I see some straws and go clutching...

[beowuuf]

No, i have to agree with you...i think v0.12 has it worst though

dmute would slowly drain the virtual memory without it quite being totally recovered, so eventually i would lose the ability to use multiple programmes even if i kept killing dmute and doing a disk clean up

with rtc, the effect does dissipate afterward, but during, in previous versions, they have started to trash windows virtaul memory so that graphicvs behind it if i try and run any other programme are totally gone

with this version, i seem to find that anything after abvout the first few minutes of rtc can't run, and also after multiple replays after death in the game even rtc starts finding it hard going (portraits go, then finally it crashes in on itself during saving or new try at replay)

so yes, there has been a tiny annoying leak i think in previous versions, but v0.12 i'd say has a large problem somewhere, that might be partially to blame for some of these crashes

most of the crashes i've had i'd put down to no memory, except the most recent that sounded like zyx's..there were no other low memory signs, it just collapsed without warning - i think there are two things going on here

oh, i had another low memory crash, this time i started tryign to save a game (portraits gone) and the game crashed, but befroe mygame saved...luckily the previous position was still there

[Rick]

I use AnalogX maxmem <a href="http://www.analogx.com">www.analogx.com</a> - it's FREE!
That guy has other utilities too, seems like a great programmer (maybe we could hire him for RTC? )

Anyway everytime that my web browser (or one of my c++ programs) crashed, i had to recover the used memory. With one click on the MaxMem icon, voila! I get all the memory i had lost.

Also there are some tips to stop disk trashing. On your system.ini file (available by executing SYSEDIT on win95) search for [vcache] and type just below the following lines:

MinFileCache=1024
MaxFileCache=2048

That minimizes memory use (windows uses unlimited virtual memory for disk cache, so after the virtual memory is exhausted with the disk cache, the hard disk begins to trash - way to go Microsoft!) The lines just limit the disk cache and free up the memory so it can be used for other apps.

For the virtual memory in win95 (my computer), i use 128megs for both the minimum and maximum virtual memory values.

I had 32megs in my machine and these tricks helped a lot. With 64megs they helped even better!

[cowsmanaut]

I'm not sure if you are just joking around or half serious or just not sure of what is going on here. RTC while in one way may seem like a community effort it's not really. It's more a personal project being done by George. It just happens he's sharing it with all of us and allowing for editablility by us.

You just seem to be making a lot of comments about getting other people to work on the code. I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass but I'd like to once again emphasize that it's a personal project as George has stated time and again in other posts and on his web page.

we all are here to offer suggestions, ideas, and bug reports. I for one respect that this is George's pet project to learn more about programming. I for one don't like the idea of a number of people painting on my canvas.. It takes away from the personas pride in the efforts I've put into it.. it makes it less mine.

As I said, I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass it just seems you've been riding this coding issue a little bit and it seems a little like badgering. I'm sure if George wanted others to snoop through his code he'd have made it open source by now.

as for this program, thanks for providing the link.

[beowuuf]

This would cover the crashes i've had on previous versions,
when i had about 300-500Mb free on my hd, and is exactly what happens with dmute - so that is a useful tip/tool, cheers

it doesn't explain totally the current low memory behaviour i'm getting, because it's managing to run low of resources fairly fast on the larger banquet of 12-14Gb! Hmm, try the settings and see if it helps...but I think it might be something to do wit the saving routine (as I said, i am doing it alot, have to on certain sections where one wrong move is death!)

[Rick]

Yes of course. I dindn't mean it as a SOLUTION, but rather as a temporary workaround until George gets that bug fixed (i'm just trying to help - sorry if i offended anyone with this). If the workaround doesn't work, well, at least i can say i tried.

[beowuuf]

This crash on saved game screen (just before it saves, so i lose what i've just done) is relatively common now, maybe because i am saving regularly every little bit done - and there are definitely low memory in windows repercussions from running rtc

[beowuuf]

Hi, just to say this crash is a regular feature of my playing still
I save quite alot, and eventually the game and my comp behind it show low lemory signs (to be fair there will be at least one app running with it, like outlook express, ie, etc)

A few interesting things:

1) Explorer crashed, and RTC was amazingly stable for quite a long while playing (no low mem, no crashing)

2) I left my comp running (so doing nothing! nothing!) with a paused RTC game, and one or two windows progs still up like outlook when i went out
Came back to find RTC had crashed

All these crashes are the red windows warning crashes, rt terminates to nothing

[George Gilbert]

Fixed for V0.13