Milestone 5

[RonHiler]

Okay, thanks Strike, I'll take a look at it. I've glanced at it briefly, and I have a thought, but I want to look over the log a bit more before I get into any details.

You ARE using DirectX9.0c, right?

And did M4 work for you okay? This is a new symptom from M5, yes?

[Strike]

Um... The last version that I can find is M2 :: embarrassed ::

dxdiag reports version 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904); if there's anything more specific you need me to check let me know.

Tried it again today after a fresh reboot and it didn't switch to fullscreen, still got the error three times before it would go away.

[RonHiler]

Okay Strike, I've taken a look. Here's the problem:

[2.84658]Unable to Create Direct3D Device Direct3DClass::InitD3D(): Invalid call - D3DERR_INVALIDCALL

Not a ton of help, unfortunately. Stupid "Invalid Call" is by far the most useless D3D error message in existance. But if your device isn't being created, the program will definitely not work, heh. At least we know where the root problem is.

Couple of questions:

[0.251834]Keyboard Device Acquired DirectInputClass::InitDirectInput()
[2.5224]Direct3D Object Created Direct3DClass::Enum()


This may not be relevant, but if there's something in the log I don't understand, it may give us a clue (or it may not). There's over a two second dealy here. I don't see that delay in any of my other log files. Any ideas why that might have happened?

[2.84658]Unable to Create Direct3D Device Direct3DClass::InitD3D(): Invalid call - D3DERR_INVALIDCALL
[267.012]


This is the other one. Right after the failed call, there is almost a five minute delay! Was the program stopped for an error box and you didn't see it for a while perhaps?

You might try to delete your ini file and see what happens (it's in the main directory and is called MDestiny.ini). Don't worry, it'll come back (if the program doesn't find it, it will create a default one for you. I don't even ship one with the published build, so everyone always creates one the first time they run).

So I take it that M2 worked okay for you. If you have the time, it would be useful to know when this issue cropped up. On the download page are all the previous versions. Grab M3 and/or M4 and see if they work or if you get the same problems. If you have a chance.

Your DX version is good, so no worries there.

[Strike]

OK, deleted the log & ini files & ran it again.
No obvious changes; pasting relevant lines from the new log file:

[0.381006]Keyboard Device Acquired DirectInputClass::InitDirectInput()
[1.05554]Direct3D Object Created Direct3DClass::Enum()

Still almost a second delay there. Need me to run it some more times and get some sort of average from my machine?

[1.51619]Unable to Create Direct3D Device Direct3DClass::InitD3D(): Invalid call - D3DERR_INVALIDCALL
[3.54029]

I probably left the error box up while I was copying the dump from it into my post. This time I guess it took me 2 seconds to realize I was supposed to close the box, and then click on the "close" button. Guess I'm not completely awake right now

I'll check back in later this week with reports on the last couple versions.

[RonHiler]

Still almost a second delay there. Need me to run it some more times and get some sort of average from my machine?

Nah, upon further review, there is a delay there even on my machine, although not generally as much as that.

[0.270967]Keyboard Device Acquired DirectInputClass::InitDirectInput()
[0.30022]Direct3D Object Created Direct3DClass::Enum()

Which is 0.03 seconds (which is pretty long for a single call, so there is definitely some behind the scenes work going on there). It's probably video card dependent on how long that takes. I'm going to assume it's normal for right now.

[Strike]

OK, went back and re-tested the other milestones:

M1 gives me a "A required DLL file, cc3260.dll, was not found." error.

M2 and upwards give the same error I posted earlier for M5. Lemme know if you want error logs from any of those.

So maybe it is my machine after all? I've only got 16MB vid-card memory.... (told ya this thing was ancient... the vid-card is the oldest piece of tech in it that still gets used)

[RonHiler]

I'll take a closer look at your video card cap dump and see what I can find. I'm sure the log files in the older versions are all going to say the same thing.

The bummer about the game crashing is that the logger can't finish out of the log file, which means I can't open it in Word, which is really what it was designed for. It's much easier to read when its got all of its line breaks and is color coded, heh.

16MB might be the issue. I'll look at the code and see what I have in there as far as reserving memory. It could be you are just running out of vid memory. Not sure why it would crash at device creation, though.

[Pix]

The bummer about the game crashing is that the logger can't finish out of the log file, which means I can't open it in Word, which is really what it was designed for. It's much easier to read when its got all of its line breaks and is color coded, heh.

colored log files? Geez. At any rate, you could try flushing the stream after every write if you don't mind some performance issues. Or write a second process that acts as a log sink; the game process could use IPC to send log messages to the second process. That way it wouldn't die when the game crashes.