RSW

For the last couple turns I've had issues with the client crashing when I was doing turns for "weather" (but not the other 3 games I'm currently in). Finally I had to finish the latest turn on my other computer which is older and slower. When the turn kicked over I tried to pick it up on this computer and the client crashed just trying to import the latest turn. So I uninstalled the client thinking it somehow got corrupted, and reinstalled it --- and it still happened. It seems I had something like this happen before and I had to delete something, but I can't remember what.

Ha! I knew I'd had this problem before, and Dave had given me a fix but #1. I had to hunt through all the messages to find the one in which he'd given me the fix, and #2. I had to read carefully and see that AppData was a hidden file and wouldn't show up in searches. Deleted the datafile and redownloaded all the games.

Fix, yes. Permanently, no. And now it's even happening on my other computer! It seems that, once I've entered a certain number of orders for a given turn something hangs up and crashes the client. But I got smart and, instead of deleting the entire folder, I opened the folder and deleted the latest turn. Now the client runs and I can do other games, but when I go back to weather6k it crashes again. It even sent a bug report from my other computer this afternoon.
I may have to drop this game if this problem can't be resolved.

I managed to get weather finished last night, the turn turned over, and when I started the client this morning it immediately crashes. Deleted the game files, client tries to redownload them and immediately crashes. Uninstalled the client and downloaded a fresh copy --- same result. Something is SERIOUSLY wrong with the game weather.

When you say it "crashes" do you mean the client just disappears? Or does it pop up an RSW error dialog and offer you to send the bug report to me?

If the latter, then it's indeed a software bug in RSW that I should be able to fix; please do send the bug report to me so I can analyze it.

If the former, it might be a harder problem to track down. Is it possible you're running out of RAM on your computer? You could launch Task Manager and use it to watch the RAM consumption as the program runs.

David

Hi Dave, thanks for getting back to me.
The problem is on my "gaming" computer which has 8 gig of RAM, so I can't conceive of that being the problem --- especially since the game still runs on this (my "writing" computer) which only has 2 gig of RAM. At one point I did have a bug report box show up and I sent it --- but that was at least a week ago. The problem was always with the game weather6k. At first it would just shut down and if I hadn't saved to server recently all my work would be lost. Then it wouldn't load the game (but it would still load and run the others). I tried deleting the client data files, and even uninstalled and redownloaded the client. Now, I start the client, it starts downloading game files from the server, and 3/4 of the way through downloading for weather it just shuts down and vanishes from the desktop. Every time I start the client the same thing happens.
The weird thing is that it still runs just fine on this machine which is an older, Windows 7, lower powered unit I use primarily for writing and playing music.

I'm working on "weather" and just had the game stall and send a bug report. The game didn't crash, but I'm almost done with the turn and have a hugh number of orders entered. I've been saving to the server every 10 minutes or so so I don't loose all the work I've put in so far.

Repeat of everything I said in my last post. As I get close to finishing entering orders for weather the client starts misbehaving and sending bug reports. This doesn't happen with any of the other games --- only weather. And this is the ONLY computer that the client will run on anymore. It appears that there is only one other active player in the game, and if I'm going to have this much trouble entering orders I'd just as soon as end the game.

Not trying to be a smarty, but, you could try my client. It's very much tailored to my way of playing, but works well for me.

There is much more hands on needed to use it, but you could test and see. It requires a Windows machine(mine is Win7), but XP would also be ok. I run it at a resolution of 2560 x 1440, only cos I have a screen that big now. It was originally run on 1920 x1080, and the map will adjust accordingly.

Let me know if you interested.

Jim

I'm pleased that Jim's offering the use of his client to try out; I've gone out of my way to design the RSW server to be compatible with existing clients for Starweb as well as be open to new clients (such as Jim's) developed specifically for RSW. I want RSW players to have lots of options available.

That said, I also want my to make sure my own client is usable. Dale, from the logs you've sent me, it seems that something's going subtly wrong in the map-drawing code. I'm not sure whether it's due to computer resources being consumed until they're all used up, or due to some subtle timing issue in opening and closing windows; but for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to happen to me; and I don't see anything particular about weather6k that makes it more likely to cause this problem than any other game (other than that it's a big game, with four positions per player; and you probably spend a few hours in the game putting in your turn, right?).

I can try to put a band-aid on the problem reported by the crash logs, and we'll see if this solves the underlying problem, or at least prevents the client from crashing and losing your orders. I'll send this to you shortly.

David

OK, I did actually find and fix a real issue that could cause a crash with large game files, so I went ahead and posted a new official client update, 1.0.8.3. It should offer you this version to download; please let me know if it seems to solve the problem for you.

David

Oh, and to be clear, the update is only in the 64-bit version. The nature of the bug that I fixed was that the 64-bit version of the client was running partly with a 32-bit limit. To pick up the fix, you'll need to switch to the 64-bit version if you're not already using it (and looking at the logs, Dale, it seems like you're currently using the 32-bit version). The 64-bit version is much more able to access the full resources of your computer, so unless there's some reason you can't run it, you should definitely switch, especially if you want to play in really big games like weather6k.

David

Hummm... I can't imagine why I WOULDN'T have installed the 64 bit version on ANY of my systems.
Right now I'm at my brother's where the oldest of my computers resides. The last time I was here the game wouldn't work --- it hung up trying to download turn reports for weather. This time it told me there was an upgrade available, I installed it, and everything works fine!!!!
I expect that when I get home the other systems will also offer the upgrade when I start the client. If there are any further problems I'll let you know in a couple of days.
But for now, THANKS for finding and fixing this evasive bug!

Great! If the client doesn't offer you the upgrade when you get home, you might be running the 32-bit version there for whatever reason. In that case, go to the Clients page and explicitly download the 64-bit version.

David

I'm home (beat the worst of the storm), fired up the computer, opened the Client, downloaded the new version --- EVERYTHING WORKS!!!!
Your customer support rates and A+++!