[Pnakotus]

I've recently pulled down the new media vps and reinstalled FS2 to have a bash with the new builds, and everything's looking great!  However, I had several crashes when accidentally locking onto debris with 'target ship in reticle'.  I restarted in a debug buid to get a spew, and I find that the 'target ship in reticle' behaviour is different, and that it's much harder to 'accidentally' get a worthless piece of debris if there's an actual target in that direction.  With the release build, I pointed straight at a science ship in Fall of Epsilon Pegasi, and locked onto a debris piece BEHIND it and crashed.

So I can't replicate it with the debug build, although it's very common in the release build.  I'm using Karajormas 17-5-06.  Is this a known problem?  It's all fresh - I've reinstalled FS2, patched, thrown the launcher and a build in with the new media vps.

[Mars]

I'll be honest, I'm so used to builds that do this, I use "Y" very carefully.

[Pnakotus]

Really?  I haven't played in several months, and I don't recall this from older builds.  Is the 'target ship in reticle' thing just brokez0r?

[ShivanSpS]

No, has happend before... in older CVS, like march or older ones...

[Mars]

Yeah, and one last year... it's an infrequent but recurring problem. Chances are it'll be fixed by next build, mantis doesn't like me, anyone want to mantis this?

[taylor]

It's already in Mantis.  Just add any comments to that bug. (http://lore.maxgaming.net/~scp/mantis/bug_view_advanced_page.php?bug_id=0000001)

[Flipside]

Isn't this the bug that's been bugging people since the year dot?

[Goober5000]

Yup.

It's rather funny in that the bug has sort of trained people not to use that key.

[taylor]

Isn't this the bug that's been bugging people since the year dot?

Yeah, but it was fixed, supposedly.  The code that was supposed to be causing the problem was replaced.  There was a hack-fix which got around the problem before, and it's still there if you use the -y_bug_fix cmdline option.  If you don't use that option the it just uses the retail code for it.  The problem now is that people have started get the problem again with the "fixed" code, and the original fix which worked for everyone (-y_bug_fix) appears to no longer work either.  There is an off-chance that builds released this week may have a fix, but I don't know for sure if it actually helps in any way.

It needs serious debugging to figure out what's going on.  There are two problems though: 1) It's Windows only so the large supply of bug finding talent, which use Linux and OS X, can't help here, and 2) I have never been able to reproduce the crash on Windows so I haven't been able to debug it myself.

[Pnakotus]

It's strange that I've only just encountered it: I've been messing around with SCP for years, and my first thought was that I'd broken something in my latest install.  It's my favourite targetting function and all!

[Mongoose]

I just encountered the same bug for the first time myself, and I've been using CVS builds for a while too.  The thing was, I happened to trigger it at the exact same moment during the exact same mission of Derelict, when I was trying to target a newly-arrived wing of bombers and managed to snag a debris chunk behind them.  I don't need to tell you that I was more than a little exasperated. I just chalked it up to the debris' glowmap being too much for my vid card to handle at once; I'm kind of relieved to know that it's a known issue.  I'm with Pnakotus, though; that targeting function's definitely my favorite, so I'll have to make a serious effort to be careful about using it.

[Flipside]

Yeah, I know the SCP guys were breaking their backs to fix this some time ago, I thought it long gone, that's why it came as a bit of a surprise to me.

[Pnakotus]

Are there any differences between the release- and debug-builds involved?  The debug build - at least for me - has 'proper' 'target in reticle' behaviour - it takes the nearest target to the reticle, even if it has to ignore many 'non-targets' like debris and ends up selecting a target several inches away from the reticle.  The release build often selects debris when there are 'proper' targets nearby.  I've played several 'debris heavy' missions with both, and the debug always works fine - to the point where it's quite hard to target debris at all, since it prefers actual targets - and the release build crashes quite often.

[ShivanSpS]

Well, by now, just be carefull to where you aim... the game will only crash if you target a Debris or asteroid...

[CaptJosh]

Odd, considering when I map the function in question to a button on my Joystick I don't see this behavior. It just locks on to the debris and drives me batty trying to get it to lock on to something else.

[Parias]

Odd, considering when I map the function in question to a button on my Joystick I don't see this behavior. It just locks on to the debris and drives me batty trying to get it to lock on to something else.

Sadly I still get the crash - I have Target In Reticule bound to one of the buttons on my joystick setup as well, but a half-second or so after I target debris, the game still crashes. Totally at random of course - sometimes I can get away with targeting all sorts of debris with no problem.

[Pnakotus]

Yeah, it seems oddly intermittent.  It locks onto debris too much (even if there's a ship close to the reticle), but the crash only seems to happen sometimes.