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Red Alert Buglist

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get http://redalert1.com's ra95.exe, rename that to ra95.dat, and copy-replace that into your installed version. That could help. Only side affect is now the movies if you have them will no longer have scan-lines. won't help with "The lost files" for the time being, though. If anything else is amiss, check out http://hifi.iki.fi/cnc/ra/patches/

Edited by Sonarpulse

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Bullet: Without the stack trace it's impossible to see what went wrong where.

 

Do you have many files in the game directory which aren't needed to run the game? The game hashes all filenames, and if there are collisions, a wrong file may end up in the wrong spot. Maybe it's a screenshot or a text file being interpreted as SHP, or as AUD. Try to move all of these files to another directory.

 

If you modded the game, make sure the SHPs are in the correct format. The SHP file format has changed over the years and RA isn't forgiving in case you give it a file in a more recent format.

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My Game Directory of RA is always cleaned up and just has the necessary files in it because when it gets to messy for example because of maps i reunpack it again so its all new again.

And no this error message i posted above also occurs when you play the original game without mods. It is a problem within the game and probably a problem with the radar animation because it only happens then if you have a Radar Dome and you go low on Power. Btw i always play with cnc-ddraw in Fullscreenmode and Hires Patch installed from Hifi and only the english 3.03 Version with both Addons and no CD. And as you don't need any compatibility settings for the EXE File anymore because of cnc-ddraw i play without any of them.

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If you have a crash ending up in the middle of an instruction, that means a dynamic jump/call somewhere (like, 'jmp eax') went wrong. No way to trace where that came from.

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v3.03 German (Command & Conquer: Die ersten 10 Jahre (UnCut Patch 1.2) :D )

Unfortunately, the radar error isn't the radom error. The radom error is absolutely not determinable. It freezed for example when I simply put the cursor to the edge of the map. In rasetup.exe I had Back Buffer in Video Memory enabled. Maybe now the radom freezes are gone.

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AlexB: You said my error message with the instruction 005b4cf1 is leading to a problem with decoding a shp file. Do you know which shp file this is?

 

And btw yesterday i had the same error message again when i playered Multiplayer over cncnet but this time not when my Power runs low, this time it was so that, i had no Radar Dome but an Allies Tech Center and the GPS Satellite was already launched so that the map in the right top corner was fully revealed in the sidebar and then the enemy destroyed my Allies Tech Center with one hit so that my Radar in the sidabar had to change to black because i had then either the Radar Dome nor the Allies Tech center with the gps launched. And this made my game to crash and show this error message i posted above. Btw i had full power even after the Allies Tech Center was destroyed...

 

Any ideas?

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Alas, my dll is untested at the moment and it works for me, but it might not work for others yet. And the documentation isn't finished...

With a little bit of luck, I might be able to provide a newer version in the next week.I won't post it here but rather in the normal Red Alert modding section. If it is a crash and it shows an instruction error message, chances are good to see where it comes from (at least it gives a general direction).

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If it is a crash and it shows an instruction error message, chances are good...

 

Yeah, as long as it isn't the random freeze bug where no instruction error message appears. :P

 

 

Random freeze issue – The Test

Please download Red Alert - random freeze.rar and follow the Readme.txt

Could anybody reproduce this issue? :huh:

Edited by deepblue22

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I don't get a freeze, sorry. Tested with english and german 3.03 TFD version on Win7 64bit with and without ddraw.dll.

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Hmm... that's strange. I get a freeze as you see in the videos. I loaded the savegame, played a little bit and BAM! freeze.

When I close PopTray I don't get any freezes. Maybe because I have Windows XP, maybe because I have an Intel Pentium 4 CPU 1.90GHz, maybe because of the 1 GB RAM. Anyone else testet it?

Nyerguds, please take a look at the videos. See, there's no error message, it just freezes.

Edited by deepblue22

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Bullet's crash is inside Build_Frame(). And seems to be connected to compressed shapes (SHP's). So perhaps there is a shape image that is not correctly saved?

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Could this be the shp file radarfrm.shp? It is inside conquer.mix and if i delete it nothing around the radarscreen changes as it would have no effect or is obsolete...

Could you please check radarfrm.shp if it is saved correctly and if it is not saved correctly if it maybe causes the Radarscreenbug.

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Well, deepblue, do you use large fonts? (high PPP mode?)

 

What is your VideoCard? if it is a S3 Unchrome, Somehow C&C's games simple have a lot of problems with S3 videocards. If for some reason you use an dual-core videocard, you will need to use ddraw.

 

There's no problem with Pentium 4, but since you do not use cnc-ddraw, did you got Windows 98 Compatibility mode enabled on RA95.EXE, and if avalyable in your directory, RA95.DAT?

 

About PopTray: Probably it is trying to show you a message, but since the computer is in full screen mode with a palleted game, it would try to show it in Windows pallete (mess huh?) and simple freezes. I had a commom problem with that in Worms Armageddon and MSN8 trying to show me a message. It simple freezes WA.

There are also documented applications that crash/freeze the game when trying to access a memory that is reserved to the game. You should take a look to the Application's readme (like the old Windows PowerTools, crashes C&C95).

 

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

 

A bunch of you guys will say "Hey! but WinXP have a good Memory Manager Compared with Windows 98. Those are Old Things." An example about that is simple the Project64. External Applications can crash PJ64 in XP when it try to access a memory that is reserved to Project64 (usually Viruses). It is also Documented.

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Large fonts? What has this to do with Red Alert?

ATI Radeon 9600XT.

I tried all compatibility modes for RA95.exe. But the game also starts without a compatibility mode set. I think the compatibility mode is only needed when a game doesn't start or won't install. I can't set a compatibility mode for RA95.dat because there is no compatibility tab.

I guess this random freeze issue has to do with an animated tray icon. If I disable the animation, I'll get no freeze.

Old Windows PowerTools? Never heard of it. Give me the link to the app.

Edited by deepblue22

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Somehow Large fonts can crash some games :P

 

ATI Radeon 9600XT is Single Core, so no problems with that.

 

The compatibility mode disables all but 1 core. As some Pentium 4 do have the Hyper-Treathing Technology, it is required, otherwise it will always crash, unless you use DDraw.dll

 

What i was trying to say is that the Old Windows PoerTools can crash C&C95/RA95 for some unknown reason. Simple do not use that.

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What do you mean with large fonts; when there are new (large) fonts in the "C:\WINDOWS\Fonts" directory? I mean when I use new fonts I will start Word and select the specific font. You mean some fonts in the "C:\WINDOWS\Fonts" directory could cause a crash in games?

 

As I mentioned before, I guess this random freeze issue has to do with an animated tray icon. And really nobody else get a freeze while running PopTray?

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Large fonts is a Windows accessibility feature. Menus, window and control captions are drawn with a larger font size to aid people in reading. Some software assumes the font size is a constant and it will fail when this constant suddenly changes. It has nothing to do with the fonts folder.

 

Power Tools for Windows has long been discontinued. It was a pack of free software from Windows 95 up to XP several Microsoft coders created in their free time.

 

Referring to a post from last month: Cnc-ddraw should not slow down RA that much. Have you tried to enable the compatibility option "Disable Desktop Composition" on RA95.exe?

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Well, about CnC-DDraw, what you can try to do to get a better performance is:

 

- Disable the Compatibility in RA95.EXE. CnC-DDraw is made to get full performance in new computers, enabling compatibility will make the game run just... in compatibility mode :P

 

- Set your Filtering mode to nearest, the rendering mode to opengl and the maxfps to 70. It will prevent that the computer get overloaded trying to get most and most framerate.

 

-Disable the "Back Buffer on Video memory" in the RASetup, but if you get a very very fast mouse scrolling, enable it back.

 

 

AlexB: Disable desktop composition isn't avaliable in Windows XP. (at least not for me):P

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Large fonts is a Windows accessibility feature. Menus, window and control captions are drawn with a larger font size...

Aaahha..!, why didn't you tell me straightaway. :) Now I know what's going on. At the Appearance tab of the Display Properties, the font size. Good to know that this can cause a crash in games. It's set on normal though.

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Can you People tell me how for example change the foundation of the Ore Refinery without the Bib?

AlexB seems to be able to ...

Thx

Edited by Bullet

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That involves a bit of research into the exe file, and some messy hacking. I've found that stuff in C&C, no idea where it is in RA though.

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Hi guys,

just an update on my project, if you are still interested: Here is the announcement and a growing feature list. That's the place I'll soon post more information to. If you want to get your hands on an early version, just post there.

Edited by AlexB

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