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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Sound Card Shenannigans!

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CumQuaT
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Location: Tasmania, Australia
Posted: 30th Apr 2013 16:56
Hi all,

So my game has been with my test team for a good two years now, and they haven't had problems like this before. But just yesterday, one of the team got a new sound card for his PC, and after installing it, the game keeps crashing when it tries to load in PNG files... If he disables the soundcard and reverts to onboard sound, the game works just fine again, and it breaks all over again if he tries to re-enable the soundcard... His drivers are up to date on the card, too.

What... The... Hell...

Anyone ever seen this? Would anyone even know where to start with fixing the issue?


Mobiius
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Location: The Cold North
Posted: 30th Apr 2013 17:26
I had graphics issue with an old soundblaster live 5.1 card. the card was trashed and caused all kinds of problems with my system so I had to remove it. (It was 5 years old by then though)

I live for video games! (And beers, and football, and cars!)
See what I live for here: [url]http:\\www.TeamDefiant.co.uk[/url]
Mage
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Posted: 1st May 2013 08:58
This is hard to troubleshoot being it's someone else's computer, probably at another location. If this tester is part of your development team you could try to write some simple test programs to clearly isolate the problem. Such as a very simple program that loads and displays a png image.

This is where a major developer using a more traditional platform differs greatly from hobbyist/indie DB developers. You probably don't have the resources to buy a bunch of different computer configurations to test on in-house. Also DB doesn't do any error handling. Usually people talk about the fact games crash, but in this case you could seriously use a detailed error/crash message.

You might want to look into getting a plugin that offers error handling/trapping. I heard STYX can trap errors but I'm not sure exactly what it's like or if it would specifically help here. However some sort of error code or message system would really help you here, especially since you are communicating with testers.

Mage
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Posted: 1st May 2013 15:24 Edited at: 1st May 2013 15:34
I'll also add that loading PNG and other images may have nothing to do with the problem. I've seen programs terminate on lines that weren't even where the error occurred, a previous line in the code. Usually this happens when an error occurs in a plugin. It's as if an error occurs, the program doesn't terminate, and the error handling in a following command picks up the error and displays that commands message and line number instead.

So I would investigate the code ahead of the error line.

CumQuaT
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Posted: 1st May 2013 17:58
Nah, it's definitely the PNG loading. As you said I'd done test apps that just load a PNG file and do nothing else, and they still break


Green Gandalf
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Playing: Malevolence:Sword of Ahkranox, Skyrim, Civ6.
Posted: 1st May 2013 23:11
Do PNG files open normally in other apps on the problem computer, i.e. Paint, MS DXTex.exe, etc? What apps are associated with PNG files, etc? Does anyone else have the same sound card so you can test this on another computer?
Mage
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Posted: 1st May 2013 23:14
Quote: "Nah, it's definitely the PNG loading. As you said I'd done test apps that just load a PNG file and do nothing else, and they still break "

Well that's pretty definitive.

Green Gandalf
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Posted: 1st May 2013 23:48
It is - but is it specifically a DBPro issue?
wattywatts
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Location: Michigan
Posted: 2nd May 2013 02:39 Edited at: 2nd May 2013 02:43
I wonder what would happen if he started the game with onboard sound enabled, then minimized the game and switched to the card in question after the files were loaded. This is the weirdest issue I've ever heard of.

edit
Just did some searching and apparently some people have had commercial games crash because of certain sound cards, so I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of it being the fault of the driver.

http://mattsmith.carbonmade.com/
CumQuaT
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Posted: 2nd May 2013 11:50
Yeah, I got them to open them in photoshop and they all worked fine. Seems to definitely be some sort of conflict.

wattywatts, that's an interesting test strategy. I might give that a shot!


Mobiius
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Posted: 2nd May 2013 17:59
Could you not change the file format of your png's to dds?

I know it doesn't fix the issue, but it's a workaround.

I live for video games! (And beers, and football, and cars!)
See what I live for here: [url]http:\\www.TeamDefiant.co.uk[/url]
CumQuaT
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Posted: 5th May 2013 06:48
I'm not after a workaround, I'm after a fix, as this shouldn't be happening.


Mage
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Posted: 5th May 2013 23:01
I wonder why the sound hardware would have anything to do with loading images.

Mobiius
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Posted: 6th May 2013 12:06
Quote: "I wonder why the sound hardware would have anything to do with loading images."

DMA Perhaps?

I live for video games! (And beers, and football, and cars!)
See what I live for here: [url]http:\\www.TeamDefiant.co.uk[/url]
Dar13
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Posted: 6th May 2013 15:03
Quote: "Yeah, I got them to open them in photoshop and they all worked fine. Seems to definitely be some sort of conflict."

Quote: "DMA Perhaps?"

I would imagine that Photoshop doesn't load the PNG into the same type of memory that DBP does; it probably would treat it as a normal file instead of as a graphical asset that needs to be sent to the graphics card.

Have you tried using a game in a different framework(not DBP) that specifically uses PNGs? Perhaps it might be the Direct Memory Access like Mobiius guessed.

WTLD has been put on indefinite hold.
A new project is under initial development now.
Mobiius
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Posted: 6th May 2013 15:06
It just might be the way it's decompressed into video ram, especially if the GFX card uses shared system RAM.

I live for video games! (And beers, and football, and cars!)
See what I live for here: [url]http:\\www.TeamDefiant.co.uk[/url]
CumQuaT
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Posted: 6th May 2013 15:30
It's what I was thinking :\

It's very strange! Definitely seems to be some sort of incompatibility!


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