Matrix Games Forums

I believe I may have found out the source of my "Game Crashes". Hopefully it is the cause of anyone elses as well. I can make this happen now 100% of the time within the duration of a single mission. On Windows Vista.

For testing I used the Syria Mission, average difficulty. Any first mission.

To get the game to crash (defined as just going to an all black screen and then being unresponsive):

Simply play the game as normal but before clicking any button in the bottom right click 1 to 5 times in the area below it. Around where the Vista Taskbar/Clock would be. Then click the phase button. Lower clicks may or may not be better. For added increase to crash, click in this area 1 to 5 times while combat is being resolved.

Worst case it went all black at the end of the first mission, but in every case I could make the game hang by going to a blank black screen at some point.

Just before the game went black Id see the windows toolbar (normally clicking in that area doesnt actually show anything other than the game as its full screen. Once the single toolbar flash and the all black background game goes unresponsive.

Since its normal to click somewhat around that area during game play I could see it quite possible that this is the same bug related to infrequent crashes with the exact same symptoms as the one I can now cause.

Playing a larger range of genres I might be slightly more click happy than others so it would seem likely from the above that I could see this problem more often than some others who might manuever slower and never mis-click a button.

Hopefully this info will be helpful in resolving the situation...

I think this may be related to the full screen mode; indeed if you press ALT+TAB the desktop will not reappear correctly.
If this is possible I think that the use of a windowed screen (not resizable) will make the game much more stable (and user-friendly).

Being "click-happy" (especially under Vista for some reason) can sometimes cause weird behavior, due to this being a custom engine, and the language used (VB6 is a slightly older language). I've played played the game under Win XP 200+ times during development, and never had this crash. Of course, I play fairly deliberately and don't usually mis-click the buttons (which are fairly large, so this generally shouldn't happen too much). I sometimes do play at a fairly steady clip as well, and have never had this black screen crash, and neither has Dan that I know of. ALT+TAB can cause occasional weirdness too if you're doing that. If you play steady but not super-duper speedy, you shouldn't ever have this crash.
 
I wonder if Vista has some type of weirdness with the game. Some of my older games play a little strangely under a Dell Vista laptop that I use (sounds are "delayed" a bit, screen flashes or clears out after screen updates sometimes, etc). Maybe its time to move to VB .NET. [:)]

It would be interesting to know if only Vista users ever get the black screen. When trying to force it to happen mis-clicks certainly seem to help. What I've not tried yet is on target but super-fast clicks. I wonder if the button graphic might somehow be clickable slightly before whatever logic loop processes the event and therefore end the player up in the never-neverland of code if they click too fast?

I think I'd have to agree with the windowed mode suggestion though. If the problem is that the click is "falling through" the app and getting processes by something in windows then basically the game just doesnt know to redraw/regen whatever is needed once focus returns to it. For clarity though I was not alt-tabbing during the crash testing I did.

As for .NET I can tell you from personal experience its well worth it. It accelerates the rate at which you can write and debug code and improves its integrity. Of course nothing really replaces experience and familiarity with an existing language/toolset but the jump to .NET isn't all that radical a one if you were already using the MS product.

During normal gameplay its rare that I get the black screen, but through the testing especially I can definitely confirm that at least on Vista it can and does happen.

I've had XP lock up on me once when trying to click through a phase. Had to hard reset the PC. I was clicking the end phase button at the time too.

Since I often have to move my cursor off the turn button and back every time I click it to go straight through a couple phases in a row, it may have had something to do with it.

Perhaps Windows thinks you're clicking on a program icon next to the clock and trying to open the popup window over HL?

Today another crash. I resized the screen with ALT+TAB to open Firefox and read this forum; when I minimized Firefox the desktop was black. I terminated HL and all was fine.
Other times I have done the same things without problems; this time I was in the movement phase I think, but I'm not sure.

ALT+TAB sometimes works (I know the designer, Dan, has been able to do it to write his AAR), and sometimes doesn't. If your background res is the same as the app (1280x1024) i've heard it works better. So again, it's a system dependant thing.