[StratComm]

I used to have a very similar bug.  Never figured out what was causing it, unfortunately, though it has almost completely gone away for me.  Of course, that bug prevents me from using vanilla FS2 (or FS1 of any flavor) on this machine.  Derelict has a couple of places that, with the latest Media VPs, can go through a ton and a half of texture swapping in the later portion of missions, but I've only had it outright freeze once.  Of course, the white textures bug has forced me to exit out of Freespace once every couple of missions to reset bmpman so I may just not be running for long enough to see it.

[Trivial Psychic]

Do I need to post the errorlog?

The freezing up issue has made it so that I can't even get past my current mission (4th or 5th runthrough, now).

I may be able to help you.  Assuming you're running an AGP-based system, try reducing the AGP-X factor to half of its rated speed.  On my old system, I used to get lockups with anything but the very newest drivers, then it just got to a point where I couldn't stop it.  Then, I had a major data loss incident, requiring a total reinstall.  When I started playing again, I found that Freespace ran much slower, but I didn't have any lockups or an occurence of a certain texture anomaly.  Eventually, I found out that the AGP drivers never got installed, causing it to behave as a PCI video card.  Restoring the drivers accellerated the game, but the locking and texture anomalies returned.  I then dropped the AGP factor from 4X (max) to 1X (the only other option with the controls I had) and the locking and texture weirdness went away, without any speed loss.

Some months later, I upgraded my core system (CPU, MB, RAM, & VC) and returned to playing Freespace, but the freezing bug returned.  I reduced AGP from 8X to 4X and the freezing went away, with no noticable performace loss in Freespace or any other program.  It even gave windowsXP a stability boost.  It seems that sometimes, FS doesn't like it when a system and card are running at their full AGP spec.

[WMCoolmon]

Based on the error report, itsounds like a pretty easy error to debug (assuming a coder can reproduce). It might also be something checked for in debug builds...try running a _d (debug) build, and see if it gives you some kind of error message in english. (Note: it may also give you a bunch of warnings which may or may not be at all relevant.)

[CP5670]

You can use zero byte files in the data\tables folder to override the tbms. I have done this and it's the best way of getting around them at the moment.

Is it possible to move all the tbms to an entirely separate vp that only contains those files? These tbms are indeed something of an annoyance with the 3.6.8 vps, as the only builds that currently support them have several other issues. (and the maxim also looks like crap with them in place )

Some months later, I upgraded my core system (CPU, MB, RAM, & VC) and returned to playing Freespace, but the freezing bug returned.  I reduced AGP from 8X to 4X and the freezing went away, with no noticable performace loss in Freespace or any other program.  It even gave windowsXP a stability boost.  It seems that sometimes, FS doesn't like it when a system and card are running at their full AGP spec.

What motherboard chipset do you have? This was a well known problem on some combinations of VIA chipsets and AGP cards and can occur in any game, although FSO may be triggering it especially often.

[Trivial Psychic]

Both my current and previous MB were ASUS, VIA-based.  A7V for the original and A7V600-X for the current one.  My original video card was an ASUS GF2MX-based video card, and my current one is an ASUS ATI-9600XT-based video card.

[Jetmech Jr.]

Do I need to post the errorlog?

The freezing up issue has made it so that I can't even get past my current mission (4th or 5th runthrough, now).

I may be able to help you. Assuming you're running an AGP-based system, try reducing the AGP-X factor to half of its rated speed. On my old system, I used to get lockups with anything but the very newest drivers, then it just got to a point where I couldn't stop it. Then, I had a major data loss incident, requiring a total reinstall. When I started playing again, I found that Freespace ran much slower, but I didn't have any lockups or an occurence of a certain texture anomaly. Eventually, I found out that the AGP drivers never got installed, causing it to behave as a PCI video card. Restoring the drivers accellerated the game, but the locking and texture anomalies returned. I then dropped the AGP factor from 4X (max) to 1X (the only other option with the controls I had) and the locking and texture weirdness went away, without any speed loss.

Some months later, I upgraded my core system (CPU, MB, RAM, & VC) and returned to playing Freespace, but the freezing bug returned. I reduced AGP from 8X to 4X and the freezing went away, with no noticable performace loss in Freespace or any other program. It even gave windowsXP a stability boost. It seems that sometimes, FS doesn't like it when a system and card are running at their full AGP spec.

PCI-Express.

Based on the error report, itsounds like a pretty easy error to debug (assuming a coder can reproduce). It might also be something checked for in debug builds...try running a _d (debug) build, and see if it gives you some kind of error message in english. (Note: it may also give you a bunch of warnings which may or may not be at all relevant.)

Which debug would you recommend I use?

[StratComm]

Unless you can pinpoint a start date for this problem, I'd say the current one is as good as any.

[WMCoolmon]

Part of the reason for moving to TBMs is so that models aren't broken if textures is removed, or vice versa...issues in the builds should be fixed anyways. Consider it incentive to report bugs...they are betas, anyways.

[Jetmech Jr.]

Unless you can pinpoint a start date for this problem, I'd say the current one is as good as any.

Sorry if this seems dumb, but uh...where might the current debug build be downloaded from?

[Wanderer]

in the same package (.rar) as the r-build. Or it is at least supposed to be there.

[Jetmech Jr.]

in the same package (.rar) as the r-build. Or it is at least supposed to be there.

R-build isn't very descriptive, at least, not to me. The VR build I'm currently using is labeled with an "r" and it came with no debug.

[Wanderer]

Then you might be able to get the debug build from the RandomTiger (?), didnt he release that VR build. Other and perhaps better option is to use d-builds included in recent CVS build packages, from the recent builds thread.

[StratComm]

R-build isn't very descriptive, at least, not to me. The VR build I'm currently using is labeled with an "r" and it came with no debug.

You should be using latest CVS for this, and those all come with debug builds.  The VR build is a bit of an anomoly so you shouldn't be using it extensively for testing purposes.

[Jetmech Jr.]

Just used the debug build. When it crashed, it gave me this message.

Assert: list->dec.n_poly > 0 && list->dec.vertex_buffer_start > -1
File: c:\fs2_open\code\decals\decals.cpp
Line: 2133

Yadda yadda Callstack info yadda yadda


I think it's the damage decals giving me the trouble, eh?