Winning a game? Don't crash it!

from Demigod Forums

I don't know how many ppl who read the strategy forum also read the bug report forum so I thought I'd post this here.

You can find it  back in the problem report forum in the sticky under known game bugs.

 

Basically, when one of the teams manages to control all the flags on a map, the game will crash, you get the 10 second thingie and the game is gone.

 

How do you prevent this?

Well, do not capture all the flags, also make sure your team knows so they don't go capping that last flag.

I think neutral flags also count so make sure the enemy controls at least one flag at all times!

I also think the other team must control one of the middle flags, portals and the one in front of their citadel don't seem to count, read my reply below.

1,850 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

bah just happened to me again =(

we were winning, we capped all the flags except for their two portals and the flag in front of their cit

game said 'light side controls the map' while we didn't have those flags yet and BAM 10 second error :x

 

so I guess the other team must have one of the middle flags

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

i had this error several times in the past days and only ONCE! it happen when we (or they) controlled the map. i don't see any correlation with this event but it may be with the messaging system.

 

just for the last two days:

it happend

1) once right 15 sec after start

-2) 2 times when game ended just before the final score window had to apear

3) 2 times somewhere in between

4). once when the enemy had only 2 or 3 flags left (cannot remember if it happen right with the map-controll message)

as i have ssen this error several times in the past (sometimes after a palyer left the game) and it never but this specific one time happend near map-controll event i don't think this is the source. but it may be releated to some messaging cause it seems to allways happen when the game annonce a major event. but i am just guesing here.

 

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

I believe this crash/desync is related to a timing bug in the sound sub-system.  If a process takes way longer than expected to process it can cause the game to get out of sync and/or crash since there are no checks past that point in time to see if the sound event has completed or not.  It might also occur if a process takes way less time than expected.  (I'm a real-time software engineer, so these are educated guesses on my part.  I've never done any actual game programming, however).

From the reports I've seen, it does appear to be related to "announcements", with the map-control event being the worst one, since the CPU is typically very busy at this point in the game handling 100s of creeps.

This crash/desync is hardware specific since it depends on the efficiency of your PCs sound system.  So, on your machine, you are likely to see a crash/desync every time the map-control announcement is issued.  But, that doesn't mean it happens for everybody.  It only happens to me in 1 out of 10 games.  So, to ask every body to avoid map control in every game is overreacting.  A better approach would be to inform people at the start of the game that you will crash on the map control announcement, so the other players can avoid it in games that you are playing in.

You could try making your sound system more efficient (or play with no sound) and see if that fixes the problem.  See the sound problems threads for ideas.

Of course, the better solution is for GPG to fix the bug, but these types of bugs can be very hard to fix, since they are hardware dependent and almost impossible to reproduce without having the exact combination of hardware where the bug occurs.

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

letting the other team keep one flag, mana flag for example isn't a big loss :)

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

The sound system is very buggy.  If I listen to mp3s while playing, the sound gets poppy and lags.