Game freeze bug

[mike.kreuzer]

> Mike,
>
> Can you please report this to the COTA support forum. That way I can
> keep track of it better.
>

I knew I'd get sucked into a proprietary forum sooner or later ... sure, done.

> BTW no one else has reported a similar error.
>
> What do you mean by a lock-up?
> Did the game freeze?

Exactly. I could alt-tab to the desktop & everything there worked, but the game itself was frozen.

> Could you still move the mouse?

After alt-tabbing I certainly used the mouse, but I don't remember if I did or didn't have a cursor (or mouse wheel) inside the game before that.

> Has it happened on any other scenarios on your machine?
>

No, but I have only played two scenarios, albeit a few times each (Tanks at P, and Tempe Gorge Crisis). Have HTTR on the same machine with no problems (not that that necessarily means anything).

Regards,
Mike Kreuzer
www.mikekreuzer.com

[Arjuna]

Mike,
 
Thanks for reporting this CTD here.
 
Do you have a saved game from just before the freeze? If so please email it to me at support[at]panthergames[dot]com.
 
Can you recall exactly what your last interface with the game was - eg. clicking on map, dragging unit, placing order etc.?
 
Can you get it to repeat?

[MarkShot]

Are we sure that the game has locked? Are you able to scroll the map? (suspect: AI background processing)

Do you know how to use Task Manager to check CPU utilization? If so, is COTA idle or pegged at 90+% CPU utilization?

Thanks.

[mike.kreuzer]

My memory of this is getting a bit dim, and unhelpfully I didn't save or have auto-save on, so there's no kind of record I can go back to, or send to you.

I used task manager to kill the process .. and I think COTA was revving quite high, but that might be me fitting a theory to my memory of what happened rather than the other way around.  Same with scrolling around, I think I remember being able to move around but with the game having just stopped moving/doing anything with units ... but that may be wrong.

Have played yet another scenario since (Blunting the Spear), again with no problems.

[MarkShot]

Please see the read me. I think this may just have been normal behavior.

[steed]

i get a similar slow down everyonce in a while , i think it might be the autosave.

one time it just hung there but then i realized there was no space on the HD.

[mike.kreuzer]

Normal behaviour with a 3.2 GHz multi threaded chip and hardly any (or possibly even no) AI units on the map?  Seemed more like an endless loop to me, albeit one that apparently gets hit very rarely.  If it does ever happens again I'll take better care to see what's going on & let you know.

Can't have been the auto-save, auto-save was off, and the HDD has about 15 Gig still free.

[Arjuna]

Mike,
 
Yeh it sounds like an endless loop within the AI thread to me. mmm...will need a saved game where this can be repeated to get to the bottom of it.

[Banquet]

A bridge hadn't just been blown had it?

[henri511]

I just got a freeze also on the morning of the 3rd day of the Clean Break scenario playing the Axis. It froze while Axis units were exiting the map. I succeeded in alt-tabbing out once,, and although I could start Firefox, I could not get its screen. After I stopped Firefox from the toolbar, I could not do anything else. This is the first crash in playing, I have played both tutorials and another scenario as well as a lot of TOAW3 without problems.I suspect it has to do with HQ units exiting the game. A numbe of units exited before the HQ unit that froze the game.

Unfortunately I do not have A SAVED GAME.[:(]

Mac Intel Macbook Pro with 1 GHz of memory (other games do not crash).

Henri

[Arjuna]

Henri,
 
When a unit exits the map and there are still other friendlies on the map the on-map forcegroups are changed and replans done. This may take some time, especially if the exiting unit was the previous on-map boss ( ie everyone will have to replan ). In some cases this may take more than a minute or two depending on the speed of the machine and the complexity of the scenario.
 
So my question for you is how long did you wait before deciding the game had locked up?

[henri511]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Henri,

When a unit exits the map and there are still other friendlies on the map the on-map forcegroups are changed and replans done. This may take some time, especially if the exiting unit was the previous on-map boss ( ie everyone will have to replan ). In some cases this may take more than a minute or two depending on the speed of the machine and the complexity of the scenario.

So my question for you is how long did you wait before deciding the game had locked up?

About five minutes, but I didn't count. Next time I will (and I will turn on autosave[:o]), if it happens again.

Shouldn't there be an hourglass or somthing indicating when the game is processing?

Henri