I have had a lot of problems with plugins crashing. I don't mean the plugins that crash back to the main menu because of a missing tagset or whatever--I mean the plugins where I get halfway through the level and the game turns off and sends me back to Windows. The only things I know of that cause this sort of problem are rendering (and I have tried all the rendering options) or scripting errors in Loathing, but it seems that with all the beta testing that goes on, it would be unlikely to find scripting errors in so many plugins. It may be a problem with my computer, but since it is less than a year old and far surpasses the minimum requirements for the game, that seems unlikely too. Some examples of plugins where I have this problem are Senex Silvae, The Alpha Guard 2, and the last level of Return of the Spider Cult.
I am patched all the way up to the 1.5 beta, but I had this problem with 1.4 as well.
Any thoughts?
Plugins that crash
There are a number of bad plugins around.
The deal is this: A lot of plugins where made by Mac map makers on Pre Mac OS X systems. Prior to OS X there was no memory protection in the Mac OS, so an application was free to poke holes in memory and if it didn’t corrupt anything important like the OS everything just kept running. Bad tags in a plugin can cause Myth to poke holes in memory. When played on a modern OS like OS X, 2000, or XP the OS catches Myth trying to corrupt memory and it kills the app. But with the large Mac community within the Myth community many plugins didn’t get much testing under Windows. Also a grey area is Windows 95/98/ME have some memory protection, but nothing like 2000/XP’s, so it’s possible that plugins could have worked under 95/98, but not 2000/XP also.
What we can do in Myth is to add code to keep it from doing something bad when it runs into bad data. We have done that in 1.5 for certain plugins, but there are still 1000s of openings where bad tag data could crash Myth. The good news is most plugins where well done and don’t contain any kind of bad data.
FYI: A game usually doesn’t contain checks for bad data, unlike other applications because it’s data is very static and a ton of checks takes CPU time away from doing the next awesome graphics effect. So there is almost no checks for bad data in most games, inlcluding Myth.
The deal is this: A lot of plugins where made by Mac map makers on Pre Mac OS X systems. Prior to OS X there was no memory protection in the Mac OS, so an application was free to poke holes in memory and if it didn’t corrupt anything important like the OS everything just kept running. Bad tags in a plugin can cause Myth to poke holes in memory. When played on a modern OS like OS X, 2000, or XP the OS catches Myth trying to corrupt memory and it kills the app. But with the large Mac community within the Myth community many plugins didn’t get much testing under Windows. Also a grey area is Windows 95/98/ME have some memory protection, but nothing like 2000/XP’s, so it’s possible that plugins could have worked under 95/98, but not 2000/XP also.
What we can do in Myth is to add code to keep it from doing something bad when it runs into bad data. We have done that in 1.5 for certain plugins, but there are still 1000s of openings where bad tag data could crash Myth. The good news is most plugins where well done and don’t contain any kind of bad data.
FYI: A game usually doesn’t contain checks for bad data, unlike other applications because it’s data is very static and a ton of checks takes CPU time away from doing the next awesome graphics effect. So there is almost no checks for bad data in most games, inlcluding Myth.
Actually a large amount of plugins that crash were not due to bad data, but actually in a bug in myth's code with the melee map action. The map action was documented at how it "should" work, but the code didn't live up to that, but people used the map action anyways since it didnt crash under OS 9. Public Beta #2 will have that bug fixed, and all maps that used that map action and thereby crashed on non-OS9 (Senex Silvae, Coming of the Dark Levelpack 1, Legend of Gorash, etc) should now work flawlessly in 1.5 Enjoy.
Iron: I played with Sisters of the Blade today and found it crashes under all renderers that I can test. I also tested it against the 1.3.5 build and it crashed that also under XP. Probably the only platform you can play that plugin is OS 9.
I'm still trying to find a check to put in place to fix, but no luck yet.
Myrd -> That's less what I meant by bad data, while it may be possible to enter something in fear, but if it causes the engine to send pointers into next week then it's bad.
I'm still trying to find a check to put in place to fix, but no luck yet.
Myrd -> That's less what I meant by bad data, while it may be possible to enter something in fear, but if it causes the engine to send pointers into next week then it's bad.
-
- Posts: 58
- Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2004 11:47 am
- Location: Los Alamos, NM
- Contact:
Would there be a way to fix "Assassin!" That was a cool plugin. You know the one where your that ninja and you have to kill that samurai-general-person-guy...Well you only have one controlable unit on the map so its not really that important to fix for multiplayer (mainly for "those old times" value) but it seems to crash M2 all the way to the desktop everytime the level is loaded. I was wondering if thats because of the plugin, M2 1.5, or maybe I installed a corrupt version? It worked when I first got it (1.3 when Bungie was still hosting M2) But the CD is old and has a couple scratches. I'd send you more info but thats all I could get on it.
Vidmaster's Oath:
I pledge to punch all switches, to never shoot where I could use grenades, to admit the existence of no level except Total Carnage, to never use Caps Lock as my ‘run’ key, and to never, ever, leave a single Bob alive.
I pledge to punch all switches, to never shoot where I could use grenades, to admit the existence of no level except Total Carnage, to never use Caps Lock as my ‘run’ key, and to never, ever, leave a single Bob alive.