D2X-XL Bug Reports - MS Windows

[Suncho]

The D1 exit bug just happened to me again. Here's the sequence of events:

1. I'd been noticing that movie playback was choppy and the sound was cutting out, so I disabled high quality movies.

2. I watched all the movies from the main menu.

3. I cheated my way through the vertigo series. I read the entire first briefing and then the entire end-game briefing.

4. I let the vertigo series credits scroll all the way through.

5. I started a new D1 game and instead of showing the briefing screens, it showed me robot intro screens.

Note: I had noticed that on both the Vertigo missions and when I started D1 that the message text typed in *VERY* slowly (ie much slower than the sound of it typing).

6. After several robot intro screens, it finally started showing the D1 briefing screens.

7. I finished the D1 briefing and \"prepare for Descent\" popped up, then the game exited.

Note: This is just a theory, but maybe it's possible that the game is exiting when it tries to play movies that aren't there? In Descent 1, when you finish a level, no movie plays, but in Descent 2, it does. Maybe something is happening where the Descent 2 code is taking over in some instances. This would be consistent with the robot intro screens taking over for the D1 mission briefing.

I'll test it further.

----------------------------------------------

For the bug where I start the game and I still see my desktop, but in D2X's resolution, I think it happens every time if I have Trillian running.

[Diedel]

Escorter!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

All the time it was your bloody setup!

The robot movies are so slow because that is the punishment for your sins, especially the one concerning using corrupted data.

Actually, with the new menu style, for every new letter the entire screen has to be redrawn. On slower systems this will cause a slowdown of the briefing screens and bot movies.

[Escorter]

In a nutshell: my machine is a bit slow for the new menu style.

[TechPro]

For the bug where I start the game and I still see my desktop, but in D2X's resolution, I think it happens every time if I have Trillian running.

Curious that you're having that problem. I use Trillian all the time and never see that. Is your Trillian set to "dock" the contact list(it's a default setting I always turn off) ? I suppose that could be having an effect on it. Just a guess.

[Lord_Kane]

Animated Robot eye textures, like on the Thief bot, hulk and others do not animate.

[Suncho]

Hot damn. I've been trying to post this for hours. The following was actually supposed to be 2 quick edits to my post above:

Ok. I went straight into D1 after starting the game, and this is what I noticed:

1. The D1 Briefing screen started normally, but when it did the robot introductions, it introduced a lot more robots than appear in the first level.

2. The text scrolled in at a normal rate and not slowly like it did last time.

3. Since I switched off high quality movies, the robot introductions have been turning smoothly so long as the text is done scrolling. While the text is still scrolling onto the screen, the robot models jitter as the turn.

4. After I finished the D1 briefing, the game started normally... no exit crash. Maybe this problem has to do with playing D2 and then playing D1 without restarting D2X-XL?

I'll test more.

EDIT:

I have 100% reproducible steps for the palette bug, the exit bug, and the bug that makes the robot intros play at the beginning of the D1 briefing.

First, the out of order robot intro bug:

1. Start a Descent 2: Coutnerstrike or Descent 2: Vertigo game.

2. After the first level loads, exit out.

3. Start a Descent: First strike game.

4. Play through the briefing screens. The robot intros appear at hte beginning.


Second, the D1 palette bug:

1. Start a Descent 2: Vertigo game.

2. After the first level loads, exit out.

3. Start a Descent: First strike game.

4. The robots on the briefing screens now have corrupt texture palettes.


Third, the D1 exit bug:

1. Immediately after starting D2X-XL without doing anything else, start a Descent 2: Vertigo game.

2. Press the escape key to skip the briefings.

3. After the first level loads, exit out.

4. Start a Descent: First Strike game.

5. On the first robot intro, press the escape key to exit the briefing.

NOTES:

1. If you start a Descent 2: Counterstrike game and quit before you start the Descent 2: Vertigo game and quit, the D1 palette bug will happen but the exit bug will not.

2. If you skip the D1 briefing on the shiva station briefing screen, the game will start normally without exiting. You *HAVE* to skip it on the first robot screen.

3. I've had the D1 exit bug happen in other situations, but these are definitely 100% reproducible steps (at least on my machine).

[Suncho]

Curious that you're having that problem. I use Trillian all the time and never see that. Is your Trillian set to "dock" the contact list(it's a default setting I always turn off) ? I suppose that could be having an effect on it. Just a guess.

It does dock, yes. I'll try undocking it. I noticed the game runs fine in windowed mode. This problem only occurs when I go full screen.

EDIT: Yep. That's it. If I undock trillian, no more problems!

[Diedel]

Suncho,

thanks for the bug reports. I could fix a few things.

These are neither the palette nor the D1 exit crash bug though.

Palette bug shows when entering the level: Textures look totally strange and wrong.

Exit crash bug happens after having destroyed the reactor/boss and when flying through the exit. Where the game should now display the mine exit sequence (flight through collapsing tunnel), the game crashes.

[Suncho]

D'oh. I was hoping they were just different instances of the same bug. I'll continue to test.

[Neumaennl]

Palette bug - you mean this: (D1 L6)?



happens everytime I load the savegame of that level, but I'm sure it wasn't like this when I saved the game, but well, I upgraded to v1.5.120 in the meantime

weird: when I start a new game and select d1 level 6 it looks alright

here's the savegame

[Diedel]

Neumaennl,

I have completely changed the Descent 1 texture handling in D2X-XL. D2X-XL will now use all D1 textures, including animations, if they are present. There is no conversion to D2 textures anymore. During that conversion, the level's texture ids had to be changed to, and the changed ids got stored in save files. Now the texture ids from the save file do not match the D1 textures any more. If you have one, load a save game from short before exiting the last level, bear the bogus textures and get through the exit once more. The next level will look alright then.

Suncho,

these two are random bugs. The palette bug might be completely gone, now that I have changed D1 texture handling. Some people have the exit crash, some don't. Could even be corrupted data, like in Escorter's case.

[Escorter]

Ehhh... Diedel,

My D1 exit crash not related to the corrupted datafiles. And the D1 exit sequence was perfect with D2X-XL, when I last checked out (Now I'm usind D1X-Rebirth - It's a REAL Descent 1 port).

I have problems with the D2 exit moives, because my other-h.mvl was corrupted, but I'm copyed this file from the CD again, and all problems gone.

[Kirby]

(Now I'm usind D1X-Rebirth - It's a REAL Descent 1 port).

what don't you get??? D2X-XL was NEVER meant to be a genuine D1 port. It's built off the D2X code, damn it.

[Escorter]

I can't imagine why everybody using D2X-XL's fake D1 support. D1X-Rebirth is playable, and it's real Descent 1.

[Kirby]

I can't imagine why everybody using D2X-XL's fake D1 support. D1X-Rebirth is playable, and it's real Descent 1.

I must be weird then

Can you even see what you are typing? REAL D1 would be running the unmodified source code (with all the pixelated textures and 8000fps on a P4). DXX is a continuation of the D1X project.

Enough of this....I only came into this thread to say that movie playback is very slow

[Escorter]

I don't want to play that other guy's version anyway.

My previous post is dedicated to Suncho. He using D2X-XL for D1.

[Diedel]

Escorter,

I can take well care of myself and don't need you to deal with others for me!

Though D2X-XL is not D1, D2X-XL's D1 support isn't as bad as you put it. It now uses the full level texture set including animations, has the D1 ship flight physics, and uses the proper boss sounds. On the other hand, D2X-XL has a lot of features that would do D1X-R good too, like all the resolutions, all cockpit views, UDP/IP support, high configurability, etc.

You seem to be pretty much an exception with your constant problems.

[Escorter]

Okay. No more stupid post - I promise you.
And sorry again - I has gone two days without sleep, so I'm going mad...

[Peterix]

a little bug with v.1.5.121 - things like flares and markers don't animate anymore (at least on my computer).

[Suncho]

My previous post is dedicated to Suncho. He using D2X-XL for D1.

I use it for D1 because of Mulitplayer. Sure, not very many people are playing it now, but that will change. Also, I don't know who's doing D1X-Rebirth. Diedel is actively maintaining D2X-XL so I'll be able to get all my D1 and D2 multiplayer in the same place. For the most part, the D2 code is just the D1 code improved and the D2X-XL code is just the D2 code improved. Sure there are some minor incompatibility issues, but they'll get ironed out as more people play it and encounter the bugs.

[Escorter]

In that case, sorry! I completely forgot the multiplay.

[Diedel]

Tadaa!

[Kirby]

I love the dimming of the weapon lights!!!!

However (lighting related), this looks fudgy to me after blowing out all the ceiling light....shed some light on this issue please!!

[TechPro]

I have found the code doing turn banking, and have removed this behaviour from D2X-XL for D1 missions.

Very nice and very authentic. However, I like the feel of banking. Can you make it so that can be toggled for D1 missions? Should I put that in the suggestions?

I have completely changed the Descent 1 texture handling in D2X-XL. D2X-XL will now use all D1 textures, including animations, if they are present. There is no conversion to D2 textures anymore. During that conversion, the level's texture ids had to be changed to, and the changed ids got stored in save files. Now the texture ids from the save file do not match the D1 textures any more. If you have one, load a save game from short before exiting the last level, bear the bogus textures and get through the exit once more. The next level will look alright then.

Looks very nice! I had not told my son about this change and when he saw me start up D1 his first comment was "Wow! Looks nice!".

EDIT: Some of the D1 audio clips are not playing in the right place if you have it set to play the D1 audio clips. For example, at this fan in the first level of D1 First Strike you hear a bot clip instead of a fan clip. If play D2 clips, it sounds like a fan.

[Diedel]

Kirby,

I will check that.

Techpro,

D1 sounds sometimes seem out of place. I don't know why, it's very hard to fix.

[Suncho]

Bugs in 1.5.122:

#1:
If I have 2 D2X-XL windows open and alt+tab from one to the other, the non-active window doesn't ungrab the mouse:



#2:
I can't seem to get restricted games working. I started one, and got this message when I tried to join it with another client:

\"Failed to join the netgame. You are missing packets. Check your network card and try again.\"

On the server, I see the join request message, but the client gets disconnected before I can accept his join using F6.

Am I doing something wrong?

Another thing I've noticed is that even when I create open games, they show up as restricted in the list.

#3:

The mouse can't click on these scroll arrows:

[Diedel]

#1 Add '-grabmouse 0' to d2x.ini.

#2 Cannot reproduce this on my local machine (two game instances on the same machine).

#3 Last time I checked this it worked ...

[Suncho]

#1 Add '-grabmouse 0' to d2x.ini.

Now I can't play because it doesn't grab the mouse.

#2 Cannot reproduce this on my local machine (two game instances on the same machine).

I was trying to join the game in progress. Something else that happened is the client tried to auto-download the level and ended up corrupting the mission file because it tried to overwrite the mission file. Now ATHENA.HOG is empty.

[Diedel]

If mouse grabbing is off, the mouse will leave the window if you move the (invisible) cursor past its boundaries, but you should still be able play. That's at least how it works on my system.

I tried to join a running game too, and could do so w/o problems. The restriction mechanics (join request, accept with F6) only apply when trying to join a running game.

As the UDP communication is connectionless, packet loss in such critical communication processes can lead to such problems. I might need to implement TCP/IP, too.

Edit:

Was the game host named 'HELP' I saw recently at night yours? Currently I don't have time to join your announced games, as I am getting swamped with bug reports I have to look into by someone here ...

[ToxicFrog]

Playing D1, some of the purple spawnwebs crash the game when they activate - the swirling purple effect starts to form, then it dies. Not all of the spawnwebs cause this effect; the first ones were the ones in the reactor room on level 4 (the one in the red key room worked fine), and then the one next to the blue key on level 5.

Feeding it to gdb gives the following info:

Code: Select all

Program received signal SIGFPE, Arithmetic exception.
0x0041de68 in ?? ()
(gdb) where
#0  0x0041de68 in ?? ()
#1  0x00000003 in ?? ()
#2  0x00f39540 in ?? ()
#3  0x0012f7a4 in ?? ()
#4  0x6951392c in glTexParameteriv () from /c/WINNT/system32/opengl32.dll
#5  0x00000001 in ?? ()
#6  0x0041bda5 in ?? ()
#7  0x00000000 in ?? () from 
(gdb) disassemble 0x41de68 0x41de70
Dump of assembler code from 0x41de68 to 0x41de70:
0x0041de68:     idiv   %esi
0x0041de6a:     mov    %eax,%ebp
0x0041de6c:     mov    0x9(%ebx),%al
0x0041de6f:     test   $0x80,%al
(gdb) print $esi
$1 = 0

If there's a build with debugging symbols available I'll be glad to use that and see if I can get you a better stack trace; sadly I don't have the tools to build the windows version from source.

Also, the following workaround allows the game to be played normally (gdb commands; suitable for use in a .gdbinit in your D2X-XL directory)

Code: Select all

set height 0
file d2x-xl.exe
break *0x0041de68 if $esi == 0
commands
set $esi = 10
cont
end
handle SIGTRAP noprint nopass
run

Setting $esi=1 results in physics wackiness (your ship spins around a few times, incredibly fast, whenever an enemy spawns), but setting it to 10 seems to work fine.

[Diedel]

Please send me a save game from short before the crash if possible. Send it to karx11erx at hotmail dot com.

[ToxicFrog]

Done. Sent you one from just before the reactor room on L4 and one near the blue key on L5.

[Edit]
Also, some minor cosmetic issues...
- instead of the D1 briefing music in the intro, there's a sort of whirring fan noise
- instead of the D1 briefing music between missions, there's a sort of grinding squeaking noise (same as the fan below)
- the fan on level 1 doesn't make the fan noise, but some other (robot?) sound -- this is fixed by unsetting use_d1sounds -- fans on other levels seem to be fine
- the escape-from-mine music doesn't play
- the textures on the mine entrance in the escape sequence are completely off; it's textured with the PTMC video screen!
- upon entering the secret level from Mars-3 (level 10, I think?), I have all three keys! This shouldn't happen.

[Warlock]

umm d/led the 1.5.124 and the version in there was 1.5.123

[Suncho]

If mouse grabbing is off, the mouse will leave the window if you move the (invisible) cursor past its boundaries, but you should still be able play. That's at least how it works on my system.

Yep. I want mouse grabbing on. I want it to grab the mouse, but when I have a different window selected, I want the new active window to grab the mouse instead. I think it's a bug that it grabs the mouse even if it's not the active window.

This is more of a feature request:
It would also be nice if the game stopped grabbing the mouse when the mouse cursor is on the screen (ie. whenever I have a menu up). In singleplayer, if I press the pause button, the game pauses and ungrabs, the mouse, but there's no equivalent in multiplayer. I want to be able to play multiplayer, but also be able to respond to things going on in other windows without shutting down the game.

I tried to join a running game too, and could do so w/o problems. The restriction mechanics (join request, accept with F6) only apply when trying to join a running game.

Ok. I'll try some more.

As the UDP communication is connectionless, packet loss in such critical communication processes can lead to such problems. I might need to implement TCP/IP, too.

Shouldn't it just wait for the packets?

Edit:

Was the game host named 'HELP' I saw recently at night yours? Currently I don't have time to join your announced games, as I am getting swamped with bug reports I have to look into by someone here ... :P

Nope. That wasn't mine. Sorry about all the bug reports. ;)

[Cesar]

This is to go along the bug report Setsunaaa mentioned.

Antialiasing in D2X-XL won't work unless I enable gl_reticle and set AA mode to 8xS (it only works on 8xS, and not any other modes). However, the AA mode looks like it's rendered as AA2x in the game. Not only that -- I noticed that only lines on the vertical plane get smoothed while horizontal lines stay jaggy.

I'm on Windows XP (SP2) with Geforce 6600GT (MSI NX6600GT), nVidia driver version 78.01. D2X-XL win32 version 1.5.116.

Another thing: d2x-xl does seem to override the 4x alias setting from the gfx card menu, turning it off, other games (like the old Quake2 in 1600x1200 too) don't.

[Weyrman]

I have found with the last few versions (sorry, can't be specific) that the first time I run the new version, it crashes to desktop when I try to load a savegame. I then promptly reload it and it works fine from then on.

DON'T SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON THIS!!!! In fact, if you like, don't bother at all, I can live with it and no-one else seems to have this problem or couldn't be bothered mentioning it

[Diedel]

Cesar,

afaik AA in D2X-XL depends on the driver settings. D2X-XL does nothing here. I need to check how gl_reticle can affect this. It shouldn't at all. gl_reticle only enables drawing the reticle using OpenGL line functions instead of using the bitmapped reticles that come with D2. Btw, NVidia AA sucks. They have totally compromised it to squeeze a few more fps from all the game bench marks to make their hardware sell better to all those clueless kiddies who only judge gfx cards by max fps. ATI is similar (forced by NVidia), but not as bad. The last really good AA was in the NVidia drivers for the GF2 line of cards.

Suncho,

you probably don't understand UDP/IP. With UDP/IP data is sent w/o requiring the receiver to acknowledge receipt of the data within some time limit. So if the data doesn't reach the receiver, the receiver will never know it had to receive something, and the sender will never know it didn't reach the receiver. D2X-XL has nothing to do with negotiating this. It periodically checks whether some data have arrived for it, and if not, so be it. It's the matter of the networking code to react to data loss. IPX probably does that, TCP/IP can do that. UDP/IP does not. It would be a pretty difficult task to make D2X-XL handle this, and might even lead to lock ups during game play.

I will add mouse ungrabbing if the game is run in windowed mode and you're in a menu.

ToxicFrog,

your savegame hasn't arrived yet.

[Suncho]

Suncho,

you probably don't understand UDP/IP. With UDP/IP data is sent w/o requiring the receiver to acknowledge receipt of the data within some time limit. So if the data doesn't reach the receiver, the receiver will never know it had to receive something, and the sender will never know it didn't reach the receiver. D2X-XL has nothing to do with negotiating this. It periodically checks whether some data have arrived for it, and if not, so be it. It's the matter of the networking code to react to data loss. IPX probably does that, TCP/IP can do that. UDP/IP does not. It would be a pretty difficult task to make D2X-XL handle this, and might even lead to lock ups during game play.

Diedel,

I do understand UDP/IP, but I don't know much about IPX. My network training is a distant fog and I never used IPX after I learned it.

AFAIK most games use UDP/IP and they just call it TCP/IP so people will recognize it.

Shouldn't the game wait for the acceptance packet before doing anything? I mean... isn't it just supposed to sit there waiting until it receives the packet telling it that it can join? If the packet never got to the client, then why is the client kicked back out?

I'll keep testing it. Maybe I can get it to work. Maybe I can figure out why it's not working.

Kirby,

Please remove your picture. It's stretching the window and forcing me to scroll horizontally.

[ToxicFrog]

If it still hasn't arrived by the time I get home from work I'll upload it to my webspace and link you.

[Neumaennl]

I downloaded v1.5.124 (although it says 1.5.123 when I start the game) and everytime I enter the reactor room of D1 Level 4 the game crashes. Savegame

and the outer texture of the exit tunnel on every D1 Level is garbled - it shows the PTMC logo