Dungeon Master Forum

Well, I had to play a few games of DM to locate
a rather elusive bug in the Record/Playback feature.

Since many people seem to come close to losing their
lunch at the very mention of Morphus, and since I have
always believed that it made little difference after the
first few minutes of play, I recorded what many may
agree is the 'Worst' DM party, namely a:

REINCARNATED MORPHUS using Non-DM (CSB) reincarnation
rules.

You can watch him waltz through the 13 levels in about
one minute. Get

http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/WorstPa ... -NonDM.zip

Unpack it to a directory and run the batch file.

Anybody think there is a worse party? I'll believe it when
you demonstrate that a different party must take longer
to complete the dungeon.

now this i got to see!!! *rushes to download and watches it with a glazed off stare*

EDIT: well, not only was that movie too fast, it crashed the moment lord chaos appeared in the distance, now theres proof that he is truly ebil :P

same for me, it crashed near the end, while pressing the fuse action two tiles away from lord chaos

I believe the character choice makes a large difference in speed runs. And I am sure I can prove it comparing Stamm to some of the others.

Yes, the playback crashes here as well when "Fuse" is selected. Very impressive to see a movie THAT fast... Maybe we all don't give Mophus as much credit as he deserves.

tantor: all the only one who gave mophus true credit was selie o.o she probably be bouncing around if she saw this though :P

I downloaded it to a:

AMD Athlon 1.8Ghz Windows 2000 --- Worked OK.

I downloaded it to a:

Intel P1 266Mhz Windows 98 --- Worked OK.

So what is it that you folks have in common when
it crashes? What kind of crash? Did you change
anything using the menu selections?

mophus rocks, there are worse characters

my about 10 yrs old ranks give following results:
wu tse
wuuf
boris
chani
syra
nabi
mophus (yes, 7th!)
elija
zed
gando
tiggi
iaido
linflas
gothmog
hissssa
alex
hawk
leif
azizi
daroou
leyla
stamm
sonja
halk

BUT, these ranks are not for speedruns(and mainly base on wisdom^^). the worst speedrun-character should be amongst linflas, iaido and tiggy (lowest vit and nothing to substitute for).

Wow! It runs so fast!

First time, it hanged. Then the second time, it worked well.

Well, nice game "Paul the Second"!

Interesting list Sucinum! I think mine would be about the same but in reverse! Just shows how different we all play.

Just shows how different we all play.

I think it shows:

that it made little difference after the first few minutes of play

But where are the folks for whom the movie crashed?
What system are you running? Any idea what is different
from my two systems?

AMD athlon 1800Mhz, win XP

Intel P4 3.4ghz, Win XP

I disagree with you Paul, to a certain extent. In speed runs you need a character that has good stamina that does not drop quickly to prevent sleeping. I have tried many tactics here, had 100s of runs through using combinations of magic, fighting and spells and its always the characters with stamina that pay off. This is why with certain characters I can not get anywhere near my Stamm times. We are talking times nearly double.

No, we agree on that. For speed runs, where
time is critical, you are quite right. I was referring
to normal, entertaining play where I can take a few
extra trips here and there, kill a few extra worms,
or sleep a few extra times to get my mana back
up or whatever. If the contest were for the fewest
spells cast or fewest monsters killed or fewest levels
gained then things would be very different for different
champions.

hehe, yes, it was more stressful than entertaining to do this! Fewest spells is an interesting one: as Stamm has no mana to start with, this can be a bonus... but even when I did acquire some mana after a few war cries, I hardly used any magic at all. Obviously mana is essential to finish the game. Fewest monsters too is a part of speed runs, as I dodged everything I could.

This is why I tries to initialise a new competition where you collected items, or various tasks in the dungeon as standard to mix things up. This would test the theories more accuratlely, be more entertaining for sure and I dare say teach us (me) new skills.

about the system crash near the end of the movie, I think it´s winxp.
I have also this os installed and same problem..

I think it´s winxp.

Thanks for the info. I don't have a machine with XP on it.
Sooooo........Hmmmmmm........ What to do?

Anyone willing to spend a couple hours running some
experiments? I'll try to put a make a playback file
of only the last couple minutes of play, see if we can make
that fail, then add lots of extra traces (hoping that the
trace code does not fix the problem), and repeat until it
is fixed.

So far, nobody has told me how it crashes. What happens?
Does it hang up? Disappear completely without warning?
Get some sort of error message? Does Lord Chaos
turn upside down? What?

Haha, Lord Chaos upside down! Good one! Well on my comp (Running XP also) it just ominously pauses for a second or two, with LC about two or 3 tiles in front, with him being at the end of a corridor. It just brings up an error message saying CSBWin has encountered an error and needs to close. The program no longer runs and after a few seconds the window goes completely white until you click on the close/ok button in the dialog box.

It just brings up an error message

Is the message itself too private to disclose here on the forum?

Strange! twice there was a crash like pad pointed out:(no csbwin message but windows message : memory leak?
THen there is the option to send "it" to microsoft; some txt file I could not copy by any means..)

the third try it worked..made size =1,
I clicked on function trace and then on graphic trace; Worked well.
fourth try didn´t work: clicked just on graphic trace.
fifth try: if you ckeck function trace it works well.

Strange. Thanks for the details.

The message in question is more of a dialog box, exactly like zoooom pointed out. I turned function trace on and it worked fine until fusing Chaos. The animation starts, he changes into Order but the whilst the transformation is occuring the window goes white like before but no error message appears and the sound still plays. As soon as the the Grey Lord appears the graphics return as if nothing happened...

Well, the Fusion Sequence uses the operating system
function 'Sleep()' to delay the execution. This is used
VERY sparingly elsewhere in the program. During a
Sleep I am not accepting system Windows messages.
Perhaps XP is more sensitive to this.

So, I took out the delays just to see if this is, indeed,
the problem.

http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/CSBwin98v109.zip

contains this 'test' version. Could you folks try it in the
movie of MORPHUS? It will zip through the Fusion
without any delay. It will also claim to be the wrong version:
simply answer that it is OK. I just want to know if it
crashes or not. If not, I will replace the delays with
something the OS likes better.

Nope, same thing happens again, freezes with Chaos at the end of the coridoor...

ja. It also crashes at the sight of lord chaos..
function trace on and everything works completely fine.

Okay, I debugged it with Visual Studio and here's the error message:

Unhandled exception in CSBWin: 0xC0000005: Access Violation.

The offending instruction is at memory address 004417E9 and looks like this: Do you want me to send you the entire listing? By the way, it worked fine with function trace, except for a brief freeze at the end. Definitely an operating system issue. If you want, I can install Virtual PC and test it again under Windows 98 or 2000, whatever. Won't be able to debug it, though.

By the way, good job finishing the game with Mophus solo. ;)

Thank you very much. You are the first person to
even tell me what the error message said. This may
suffice. I appreciate it.

zoooom and myself weren't being funny or akward by not posting the error messages - WinXP really doesn't tell you what is going off. I've taken screenshots of the actual error message and parts of the error report but there is no way to actually copy and paste the contents of the error report and I can't screenshot every bit of it because there is literally hundreds, if not, thousands of pages of it.

Here is the screenshot of the error message:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/padthemad/im ... nCrash.JPG

And here are a few screenshots of the error report itself:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/padthemad/im ... Crash2.JPG
http://members.lycos.co.uk/padthemad/im ... Crash3.JPG
http://members.lycos.co.uk/padthemad/im ... Crash4.JPG
http://members.lycos.co.uk/padthemad/im ... Crash5.JPG

And this is the mentioned textfile to be included with the report:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
<DATABASE>
<EXE NAME="CSBwin.exe" FILTER="GRABMI_FILTER_PRIVACY">
<MATCHING_FILE NAME="CSBwin.exe" SIZE="544768" CHECKSUM="0xDE3AB525" BIN_FILE_VERSION="1.0.0.1" BIN_PRODUCT_VERSION="1.0.0.1" PRODUCT_VERSION="1, 0, 0, 1" FILE_DESCRIPTION="CSBwin" COMPANY_NAME="home" PRODUCT_NAME="home CSBwin" FILE_VERSION="1, 0, 0, 1" ORIGINAL_FILENAME="CSBwin.exe" INTERNAL_NAME="CSBwin" LEGAL_COPYRIGHT="Copyright © 2001" VERFILEDATEHI="0x0" VERFILEDATELO="0x0" VERFILEOS="0x40004" VERFILETYPE="0x1" MODULE_TYPE="WIN32" PE_CHECKSUM="0x0" LINKER_VERSION="0x0" UPTO_BIN_FILE_VERSION="1.0.0.1" UPTO_BIN_PRODUCT_VERSION="1.0.0.1" LINK_DATE="10/05/2005 18:00:45" UPTO_LINK_DATE="10/05/2005 18:00:45" VER_LANGUAGE="English (United States) [0x409]" />
</EXE>
<EXE NAME="kernel32.dll" FILTER="GRABMI_FILTER_THISFILEONLY">
<MATCHING_FILE NAME="kernel32.dll" SIZE="930304" CHECKSUM="0xCBCCF8A9" BIN_FILE_VERSION="5.1.2600.1106" BIN_PRODUCT_VERSION="5.1.2600.1106" PRODUCT_VERSION="5.1.2600.1106" FILE_DESCRIPTION="Windows NT BASE API Client DLL" COMPANY_NAME="Microsoft Corporation" PRODUCT_NAME="Microsoft® Windows® Operating System" FILE_VERSION="5.1.2600.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920)" ORIGINAL_FILENAME="kernel32" INTERNAL_NAME="kernel32" LEGAL_COPYRIGHT="© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved." VERFILEDATEHI="0x0" VERFILEDATELO="0x0" VERFILEOS="0x40004" VERFILETYPE="0x2" MODULE_TYPE="WIN32" PE_CHECKSUM="0xE7ED3" LINKER_VERSION="0x50001" UPTO_BIN_FILE_VERSION="5.1.2600.1106" UPTO_BIN_PRODUCT_VERSION="5.1.2600.1106" LINK_DATE="08/29/2002 10:40:40" UPTO_LINK_DATE="08/29/2002 10:40:40" VER_LANGUAGE="English (United States) [0x409]" />
</EXE>
</DATABASE>

Hope this helps.

Thank you very much. The registers and stack
contents and error address may turn out to be
extremely helpful. I have not stopped studying
Tom's information yet. If I run into a dead end
I will start studying the information you supplied.
Notice that it failed in a slightly different place!!!
(But in the same graphics function, the one that
is used for almost every pixel that gets displayed).