32 replies to this topic

[unclewilly]

i'm developing a table, Pinbot, and am getting random crashes and vp/pinmame freezes. So far i have only experienced this issue with said table in the new 9.09 version. i switched over to testing it with vp 9.08 and am not getting the crashes as of yet. i will let you know as testing contimues. i'm not sure what the issue is, wether it's vp, pinmame, or the table itself. I will make the table available if someone from the development team wants to take a look or may have better insight than me as to what the issue may be. Maybe rascal, or sabbat moon, or one of the other testers can throw some input as to what they think mat be causing this.

thanks
uw

[Sabbat]

originally I thought it had to do with going back and forth between the 4:3 and the FS versions and the DMD position and rotation messing things up. It was just a thought, this probably isn't it at all seeing as how its not doing it in earlier builds of vp9.

I still haven't had a problem with Pin*Bot crashing midgame, just now and then at startup. Usually when i switch between versions which is why i thought the dmd had something to do with it.

[toxie]

you could PM me a link to the .vpt so i could run the debugger on it, if you want..

[rascal]

The crash is with VP 9.09 itself, as it wants to send info to Microsoft when it happens. The program closes afterwards. I had this happen with Rawd's Triple Strike too. It appears to be quite random as to when and if it crashes. I had it happen a few times when the table is first launched to play, and a few times in mid play. A couple of times on Pinbot, is would crash while playing a sound and the sound would be in a loop until I closed the error window, at which point VP would just close.

Hope this is helpful in tracking it down.

[toxie]

i'll check Triple Strike then..

[Rawd]

i'll check Triple Strike then..

Cool. At the same time, would you be able to tell me why the kicker has stopped working in 9.09? If you set the hit height from 9 to 13, it starts working again, but not the same as before (it pulls the ball in too easy now. I had fine tuned it with the 9 height, but I cannot go below 13 now).

Thanks for everything you do Toxie.

[toxie]

the kicker thing i don't know.. don't remember that there were any drastic changes in the code..

as for the crash on stratup: i reproduced it here with a release .exe, but couldn't reproduce it so far with a debug .exe version, will look into it tomorrow again (as i only have vc2003 here, the release is build with vc2008 which i only have on another computer)..

[unclewilly]

the kicker thing i don't know.. don't remember that there were any drastic changes in the code..

as for the crash on stratup: i reproduced it here with a release .exe, but couldn't reproduce it so far with a debug .exe version, will look into it tomorrow again (as i only have vc2003 here, the release is build with vc2008 which i only have on another computer)..

Thanks for looking into this toxie.
I appreciate all the work you've done on vp. It plays a lot faster for me now.

[toxie]

i can also reproduce the random pinbot crash here.. now lets all pray that the debug version also randomly crashes so that i can track it down..

in case someone wants to help with tracking down such random crashes (in general): try to do a 'binary search' on the parts of the table, that means remove half of the parts of a table, then try to reproduce the crash. if it still crashes, you've got the faulty/buggy element still on the table, otherwise it was in the other half of the parts (or, of course it can also always be in both, which doesn't really matter then). then do the same thing again and again until you eventually end up with the faulty part.
the downside is that this takes quiet some time and also might not work if the bug is due to some nasty memory sideeffects that vanish when other parts are removed..

[toxie]

what happened: the issue with triple strike was a bit heavy to debug, but is fixed now (yay! ), but no luck so far with the pinbot issue.. it might be fixed by the same fix as triple strike (as i couldn't reproduce it with the new .exe afterwards), but IMHO thats unlikely..

[unclewilly]

what happened: the issue with triple strike was a bit heavy to debug, but is fixed now (yay! ), but no luck so far with the pinbot issue.. it might be fixed by the same fix as triple strike (as i couldn't reproduce it with the new .exe afterwards), but IMHO thats unlikely..

That is very possible because i helped build and code a little bit of triple strike so the same methods were used in creation of both tables.
what object was the offender

[toxie]

its related to the animated plunger code..

[kruge99]

I'm testing PinBot for UW on my Fullscreen pinball PC and on my notebook but it hasn't crashed for me yet. (I'm still using 9.08 on the computers that I'm using - I haven't upgraded to 9.09 yet until the bugs are worked out.)


Best Regards,
Todd.

[powerchisper]

I don't know if this has something to do , but....

Im my case , happened always with system 9--11 games and always at the moment when VPM shows the display.
Happened also with :

-Funhouse FS ( sometimes it works , most of the times it doesn't)
-Black Knight 2000 ( Didn't work first 4-5 times , then W Vista 64 found an "online solution" )

Anyway ,Funhouse was WPC but it has an alphanumeric plasma.

Maybe this is silly but if someone from you programming experts can get a clue.....

[unclewilly]

its related to the animated plunger code..

So is it something i can change or is it in vp itself

[toxie]

its related to the animated plunger code..

So is it something i can change or is it in vp itself

it is/was in VP itself unfortunately.. i guess one could work around it, but this is something that destruk might be able to answer..

[toxie]

i just debugged pinbot some more and indeed it seems like it has/had the same problem as triple strike with the animated plunger code.. so i hope all the issues there are also fixed now..

[unclewilly]

Thanks for all your hard work toxie.
Looking forward to the updated exe.
Enjoy the early pinbot preview

[sleepy]

VP9.09 Image Manager .PNG crashes.
Load a .png image file in Image Manager and I get an "Unknown file type" error. Click the O.K. button to close the error message and VP closes.

Also, in the editor click Insert > ActiveX Object and click to place it on the table. Then start the table and return to editor.
The ActiveX object vanishes from the editor but remains in the script pull-down list.

I used Microsoft RichTextBox Control as the object.
EDIT: NOTE: Other ActiveX controls such as "ActiveX Control Plugin" will crash the editor immediately.

Place a second RichTextBox Control on the table after the first one vanishes and Visual Pinball crashes on closing the editor with a "Report to M$" message.

---------------------------
Visual Pinball - [ActiveDud]: VPinball909.exe - Application Error
---------------------------
The instruction at "0x00000000" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "read".


Click on OK to terminate the program
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

Enumerator error or error handling error when the ActiveX object cannot be created yet persists as an object in the list pull-down?

A footnote: Apparently I can create a Microsoft RichTextBox Control as a COM object in script, but then the editor rejects the .Visible = True command which is available in WshHost.
This could be a syntax error on my part.

Edited by sleepy, 24 November 2010 - 05:04 AM.

[destruk]

Does the uploaded 9.09 here say it accepts PNG file formats? Or do you mean it crashes for you on the latest build with all the fixins?