Problem with Scroll

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd
ericbabe (feels kinda strange calling you that...I hardly know you! [;)])

Ha! My name's kind of interesting. I'm told it's from the Ukrainian <Babich> which means something literally like "of the woman" (the <bab> is the same in <babushka>, "grandmother"), but colloquially it either means "mama's boy" or else "ladies' man." I suppose I prefer the latter meaning.

It doesn't seem worth your time trying to track it down unless someone can recreate it and give steps on what happened, as it's going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack of needles. On the other hand, you may stumble across it...

I definitely want to fix this. My guess about it being machine specific: it may be related to some Windows setting, since it seems to be that the Windows timer message is being shunted off somewhere it shouldn't be. Since the keyboard is still responding, I could do a stupid fix by having a key that just grabs the timer and directs it back to the right Window. The game timer is paused when users do certain things, and users are apparently able to do something that pauses the timer, and then either the timer isn't starting back up or else it's been redirected somewhere useless. Even if I can't nail down where the problem is at, I may be able to fix it anyway by adding some sort of verify timer code. The hard part is, since I don't know how to reproduce this yet, I won't really know whether a fix has worked or not.

[Adam Parker]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

... it may be related to some Windows setting, since it seems to be that the Windows timer message is being shunted off somewhere it shouldn't be. Since the keyboard is still responding...

The mouse is still reposonding too but only the wheel and the buttons to click various things.

Eric I know I'm letting my frustrations come out in my recent posts but I really thought this game would be solid seeing as it was building on the lessons from CoG.

I just don't know what I'm meant to make of it all?

[Gil R.]

Adam, the game was thoroughly tested, and by some damn good testers. But some things do not come up until there are many more people playing a game on many more machines, since some problems will only crop up on particular systems (or systems with particular settings). This almost certainly will prove to be an example of that (in which case another month or three of playtesting wouldn't have led to its discovery). And now that we know about it, we'll work to solve it.

[jimwinsor]

Yeah I can vouch for that,&nbsp;we testers had the scroll problem at one point, myself included.&nbsp; But then it got fixed in beta (or so we thought) and we never saw it again, so it looks fairly likely to be system related somehow.
&nbsp;

[Queeg]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe


I definitely want to fix this. My guess about it being machine specific: it may be related to some Windows setting, since it seems to be that the Windows timer message is being shunted off somewhere it shouldn't be. Since the keyboard is still responding, I could do a stupid fix by having a key that just grabs the timer and directs it back to the right Window. The game timer is paused when users do certain things, and users are apparently able to do something that pauses the timer, and then either the timer isn't starting back up or else it's been redirected somewhere useless. Even if I can't nail down where the problem is at, I may be able to fix it anyway by adding some sort of verify timer code. The hard part is, since I don't know how to reproduce this yet, I won't really know whether a fix has worked or not.

I played for several hours tonight on two different machines with very different results. So maybe my observations will help:

1. I had numerous scroll freezes on my AMD machine but only one on my Intel machine. The AMD machine: AMD 64 4000+, 2GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1800 with latest Omega drivers, Windows XP Pro. Intel machine: 2.16 CoreDuo, 2GB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with latest Omega drivers, Windows XP Pro. So the machines are essentially similar except for the CPU chipset.

2. The freezes on the AMD machine happened quickly (within 10 minutes) and under a variety of circumstances - so frequently that I could not detect a pattern.

3. The one freeze on my Intel machine occurred in a very specific and repeatable sequence: when trying to right-click a second container while the first container was still open. (Specifically, trying to move generals from James by right-clicking on the ANV without first closing the general container. When I reloaded and made sure to close the container first, everything worked fine.)

So, could the AMD processor somehow be the main problem? Perhaps it would help if folks with the problem posted their specs.

Great game by the way!

[JudgeDredd]

My system is:
AMD Athlon 64bit XP3200+
2GB DDR PC3200
nVidia Geforce 6600GT 128Mb

Haven't had the freezes as regular as you mention in your post, though, for Athlons. In fact, I played the tutorial last night for a fair few turns and didn't have a scroll issue once...must've been an hour or more

[Adam Parker]

Nah, it's nothing to do with Intel vs AMD etc.

We have to go back to the first post here. A guy had it happen to him in CoG. So it's bad code.

No other game freezes up scrolling.

[freeboy]

I had this problem, opening and closing several other screans seemed to reset this to normal.. hope this helps

[Hard Sarge]

there does seem to be a pattern to some/most of these, for what ever reason, a info box (container) is not being closed before another one is being opened, as long as the first box is still opened, the map is not going to scroll

by doing what some have reported, I have also made the stop scrolling

the statement about the Alt Tabbing is being misunderstood, what is being said is that by alt tabbing while a box was open, we where haveing troubles, once we learned what was doing it, we were able to stop it

and in CoG it was still the same thing

looks like maybe the trick will be, to "force" a open box to close if another box is opened, this way the first box will always be closed

[Mike Scholl]

So progress is being made..., but we're going to have to live with this a bit longer? Good to know.

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

So progress is being made..., but we're going to have to live with this a bit longer? Good to know.

Hi Mike

(lol, when I first seen the post, I thought the title was Problem with Scholl [:-])

beleive me sir, every post is being looked into, and talked about

and if a Bug or a problem, worked on

some are simple and some are misunderstandings, and some are mistakes or bugs (but they are stuff that were not seen earlier)

Eric is working on some of the hassles and thinks he is getting some of them, and once he gets it up and ready, we will test it as fast as we can, so it can be seen if it is working the way we expect it to

I can honestly say, it has been months since I last seen any trouble with the scroll, and a long time since we had any window crashes

we will try and find and fix any bugs or hassles as we can

[Mike Scholl]

[b]"(lol, when I first seen the post, I thought the title was Problem with Scholl )" [/b]


You owe me a new shirt..., I just spit coffee up all over mine when I read this. Good to see some sense of humor breaking out around here.

Seriously, as long as someone is actually looking into the problem, I think we can all be quite patient.

[Adam Parker]

Always best to bring some people new into the test team at the last hour (not minute) to road test something as ambitious as this. Some min spec, some max.

Any flurry of last minute updates is also a sure way to break or forget something. Flurrying for dollars I can understand but as I wise mentor taught me, "things can wait".

[Hard Sarge]

Got ya

we put too much work into getting this thing out, we not going to let it rot now

[moose1999]

Having this issue too and I'll just add one little detail:
When the scrolling freezes you are also no longer able to get info from a province just by running over it with the cursor. The picture in the info panel stays the same no matter where you put your cursor (not clicking, just moving the cursor).

[MorningDew]

Getting it as well.

[ericbabe]

The main screen timer is being misdirected or suspended: this affects many things related to mouse movement.&nbsp; Our current hypothesis is that this happens when players manage to open two popup windows at once and then shut one of them.&nbsp; I will look at adding code either to prevent more than one popup from opening at once, or else to close any open popups when another one opens.

[LarryP]

Me too and it stops me from being able to play long. I also lose the popup tabs at the same time my mouse won't scroll anymore. Reloading the game resets it but after going to the eastern side of the map it seems to do it most. I was really getting into the game but now it is a pain to play. Dang it!

LarryP

[Adam Parker]

I just tried a game where I set containers to close on "mouse movement" away.

I've played for a couple of hours now on basic with no problems at all - no freezes and no CTD's.

Don't know what I'm doing but my CSA is 5 victory points and the USA -5!

There have been seiges won and lost on both sides aplenty too.

[scott64]

ORIGINAL: briny_norman

Having this issue too and I'll just add one little detail:
When the scrolling freezes you are also no longer able to get info from a province just by running over it with the cursor. The picture in the info panel stays the same no matter where you put your cursor (not clicking, just moving the cursor).

Same thing happened to me on turn 2 [X(]