Finally trying out FG - *love* it... if it weren't for the crashes & other bugs.

[dr_venture]

Here are the issues I'm having so far (configuration info is below). Any info on things I can do to fix these problems, or if they're on the developer's radar screens would be great. I'm trying to find a solution for a number of people to use, but I'm having trouble justifying folks investing in the software if we're going to constantly crash and lose the contents of the battlemat or the state of the 'fog of war' layer. When it's working, FG is pretty cool, though! Thanks in advance for any assistance or info.

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

FG crashes about every 30 to 120 minutes - I've never gotten through even a short game session without at least one, usually multiple crashes.. Crashes are sometimes accompanied by out of memory errors, but checking Windows Page File memory shows the system still has half of it's RAM free - I can only assume that FG is over-running it's own memory buffer.

The only thing I can observe in terms of what I'm doing in the game is that it's usually during combat, and I'm messing with the combat tracker. I can't say that is always the case, though.

Usually little data is lost, and the campaign restarts. The only thing that is consistently lost is anything drawn onto the blank image image I'm using for an empty battlemap - the figures will usually be in the correct places, but any drawing is lost, even if the session has been saved.

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

Rolling any of the percentile dice options at the lower left often rolls two '2-digit' ten-sided dice and adds them together, giving totally inaccurate results, of course. I have to watch out for it.

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

Once the dice just stopped showing any results in the chat window - they rolled, but no result appeared in chat. After messing around for a while, it came back on it's own.

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

I can't find the sections right now, but there are at least two subsections of Rolemaster rules which have titles and links, but the links just lead to blank pages. Luckily they not critical rules, as I haven't *had* to refer to them, but it's kinda annoying.

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

Configuration:
-------------
Fantasy Grounds 2.6.5
Rolemaster Ruleset Addon
The crashes occurred on a single machine running as a gamemaster/server - there were no clients connected.

Windows XP service pack 3
Dell Inspiraon 546, AMD Phenom 9750 Quad-Core
2.4 GHz, 3.25 GB RAM

FWIW, my computer is only a few months old, so it isn't just peppered with the kind of junk that infests so many older machines.

[Czarisyn]

Have you tried a different ruleset?

I just grabbed my license last night and I was on it for 4 hours at least on my machine without those issues. But I was using the 4E ruleset.

[EugeneZ]

This is quite a mind-boggling list of issues. I've never used the Rolemaster ruleset but I doubt it can single-handedly cause memory leaks or stop the dice from working, temporarily.

FG2 does have some *known* memory leak issues (as do many applications), but they shouldn't cause OOM issues, just constantly increasing RAM usage. I've had FG2 crash on me when my db.xml file was too large; what size is your db.xml file? It's located under the FG2 Data Dir, in the campaigns folder, under the campaign you're playing.

[Viz]

Have you tried FG II on a different computer? I think you should try this to rule out your particular combination of hardware and software.

I've used FG II with Windows XP on multiple computers over the last few months and don't recall any crashes for quite some time. That doesn't prove that FG II is not at fault in your case, but I think you have not done sufficient troubleshooting to know for sure.

[ddavison]

Hello Viz,

I am sorry to hear about your difficulties. Your system specs are more than adequate to run FG2 smoothly. Do you experience any unusual crashes when playing other games which use DirectX? Do you know the video card you use and which version of the driver you are currently using?

-Doug

[gmkieran]

Just a note on the possibly-CT-related crashes - while running a 4e campaign last week I attempted to populate NPCs to the CT from an encounter entry while the CT was not open. FG locked and never un-locked; I had to shut it down. This is the first time I have encountered this issue - prior to this latest version I was able to perform the same action without issue. Given an entirely different rule-set, it may not be pertinent to your problems, but it's similar enough to be worth mentioning.

good luck!

[Sigurd]

I'll tell you that on my lowly dual core, with 2gig, FG is very solid. One of the reasons I haven't upgraded is the FG experience is just fine.

Here are a few ideas.

Are you running DX9 or Dx10?

Next time you play could you leave the task manager up and watch the memory consumption of FG2?

When the program tanked what did the event viewer say?

Sigurd

[Foen]

I believe the RM ruleset is memory hungry because (for the GM at least) it loads some quite large lookup tables. While this may not exceed physical memory limits, I think it might challenge the FG engine a bit.

The burden can be reduced by only loading the modules you need, and by keeping tokens etc tidy.

Foen

[dr_venture]

Thanks for all the replies, folks!

On reflection I suspect that Foen is probably spot-on. Since I am learning how to use FG to both GM as well as build characters (and since I haven't run RM in 15 odd years and am re-learning the rules), I am normally running FG with all of the Rolemaster modules selected... which takes several minutes to load. My gut feeling is that FG is really taxed by having the RM ruleset loaded... which is pretty shocking, given the software & hardware resources available with modern computing. While that's disappointing, I don't mean that to really be a dig, as I'm guessing that this software is far more a labor of love than a money-making proposition (although I'd like to think I'm wrong there). Even with the warts and frustrations, it a very full-featured and useful tool! :)

I'm totally guessing here, but I suspect that the funky die rolls are result of some kind of funky scripting the custom interface that the RM rule set comes with.

My graphics card info:
ATI Radeon X1600, 256mb DDR3
Direct3D Version: 6.14.10.0647
OpenGL Version: 6.14.10.8543
DirectX version: 9.0c

I'll try to follow up on some of the suggestions here, especially keeping track of the memory usage and the events log.

So my follow-up to all of this is: how do I conserve program resources when GMing? I do have a lot of tokens - never even occurred to me that this these small image files would be a burden on the program... but in the end, I don't really need 'em.

What modules do I need loaded to run the game? Will the game rules work correctly if I don't load *any* modules, or do I need Character Law and Arms Law loaded to run combat?

Thanks again, folks!

-Craig

[dr_venture]

Oh, and my db.xml file is 311k... which I assume is not large.

[dr_venture]

I don't know if you guys want this kind of debugging info here - let me know if I'm just clogging 'the works' by posting this, or if you find the event log info useful.

So went to document the program's page file memory usage and got the following:

USAGE DESCRIPTION
------- -----------
1.03 gb Before FG is launched
1.04 gb After launching FG
2.17 gb After loading campaign (CPU usage at about 26% during loading)
1.61 gb After closing all Rolemaster modules
2.11 gb Loaded Arms Law module (apprx. 2 minutes)
2.10 gb Loaded Character Law module (apprx. 2 seconds)
2.14 gb Loaded Creatures and Treasures module (apprx. 30 seconds)
2.21 gb Loaded Spell Law module (apprx. 25 seconds)
2.20 gb Opened the combat tracker...

At this point FG crashed - a regular ol' Windows crash, with no FG error message. The Application events log contained the following message:

Application event: Faulting application fantasygrounds.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module fantasygrounds.exe, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x000cc958.

0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 66 61 6e ure fan
0018: 74 61 73 79 67 72 6f 75 tasygrou
0020: 6e 64 73 2e 65 78 65 20 nds.exe
0028: 30 2e 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 0.0.0.0
0030: 69 6e 20 66 61 6e 74 61 in fanta
0038: 73 79 67 72 6f 75 6e 64 syground
0040: 73 2e 65 78 65 20 30 2e s.exe 0.
0048: 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 61 74 0.0.0 at
0050: 20 6f 66 66 73 65 74 20 offset
0058: 30 30 30 63 63 39 35 38 000cc958
0060: 0d 0a

[dr_venture]

K, one more crash report - 2nd one tonight, and I'm not even running a real session. I won't post any more until I know if this is useful.

Running my first combat of the evening, all RM modules open.

Rolled an attack by double-clicking on the dice icons in the combatant's pane in the combat tracker., the roll result appeared in chat, but before the result window could be displayed, FG displayed a "Script error: out of memory", and Windows crashed, displaying some form of error dialog (which the closed along with FG when I clicked away to the text editor to write up the bug). The Page File memory usage was at 286 gb at the time of the crash, the dropped to 965 mb after the application closed itself.

There was no error message listed in the Application even log.

If this is just the reality of running RM in FG, and the only viable workaround is that I just can't have all the rule sets open, then it seems pretty useless to me. If I need to look up any information in either Arms Law or Spell Law, I have to wait to load the module, copy the info I need, then wait for the module to close... assuming that if I add a weapon or monster to my game session that the RM module it came from doesn't have to be open to access that data later, like when a weapon is used or the monster is moved into the combat tracker after the module it originates from has been unloaded. I could copy data from the paper rulebooks, but that seems to defeat the purpose of having all this game data drag-able in the first place, and just kinda lame.

I mainly chose to use RM from the available rule sets for FG because I'm the most familiar with it. I never got into D&D beyond 2nd edition - seemed unnecessarily complicated and an excuse to sell me hundreds of dollars of books and add-ons. However, I have read good things about 4th edition... perhaps I should just bite the bullet and upgrade to that? And buy the rule books. And learn how to run it. Sigh.

Thanks for reading this far in all my travails, folks... any input is much appreciated.

[ddavison]

Something is definitely wrong there and I can repeat the problem locally. Let me see what I can find and hopefully I can get to the bottom of it quickly.

-Doug

[dr_venture]

Damn. I just blew $105 I don't really have on the D&D 4e core books in the assumption that you developer guys had other fish to fry, or that my issue was unique and/or unrepeatable.

So ddavison, Developer, I salute you! Let me know if there's anything you need from me. Though I'm out of the line of work right now (*breaths sigh of relief*), I actually spent about 20 years in software testing, most recently at Adobe. I'm used doing my part to track down stuff like this, so I'm happy to help if I can.

I hope those new D&D books are as good as I keep hearing they are... *sigh*

[ddavison]

Well don't salute me just yet. I still have to find a good fix for it. ;)

[EugeneZ]

I hope those new D&D books are as good as I keep hearing they are... *sigh*

On the bright side of all this... they are. :D

Although having lots of modules open might not really advisable on any ruleset, I think. Especially if they're quite large (chock full of images).

[Zeus]

This is very true. I play D&D using the 4E ruleset and when DMing a game I usually close everything apart from a couple of essential books like the PHB and DMG.

I had major problems last year with FG crashing on me whenever I had my MM2 module (19MB) open and players connected. Since discovering the issue I now fully prepare my adventure modules so that they are self contained and not dependent upon other modules being open. I haven't experienced any crashes since employing this approach and my groups have enjoyed trouble free gaming.

[PhilFischer]

Appreciate the advice but I'm curious as I still have not run a game. If I don't have all the player books open, i.e. PHB 1,2,3 and a player wants to view a card. Is it possible? It seemed like the correct PHB needed to be loaded to click the 'open card' feature.

If that is the case, well rather 'anyway'; I hope that this issue is at top of development issues. It would seem with computers today this shouldn't be an issue.

...past developer and PM.
-Phil

[Moon Wizard]

You can enable a module for player's to open, even if you don't have it open. Of course, they have to have their own instance of the modules (since the parser creates "client" modules, which are not shared during game time).

With the wonderful work that Tenian has done with the parser and the popularity of the 4E ruleset, we've actually seen that FG is starting to run into some limits when having 12+ modules all open at once (depending on the size of the modules). Also, large numbers of tokens and images can use up lots of memory as well. I am currently in the process of reviewing those systems to see how I can improve the memory performance.

Cheers,
JPG

[dm-crazy]

Well, in i got some crash with my 4e rulset, but something wit Combat Tracker, now i closed every module and dont have any crash!!!! If i want to see a specific fluff i onpen ,read and close module, bcuz thats FEED my memory usage too! :) Try to close all modules! :D

[dr_venture]

Soooo... haven't heard anything about this getting addressed since ddavidson's kind post in March... any progress on this? I know this is a small company with limited resources, but as a very low income person, it *is* a bit irritating to spend $20 on a FG rule set that I simply cannot run in any practical sense. Has anything changed in either the FG core app or the RoleMaster rule set that could have resolved the situation?

Thanks.

[joeru]

There's this (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showpost.php?p=93356&postcount=83) post by moon_wizard that shows they're working on memory leak issues, which might be of help in your case.

[dr_venture]

Memory leak issues sounds about right. Any word on any of this? The new D&D is great in some ways, but I kinda hate it in others - there are just too many little one-off abilities to keep track of (thank God for FG on that issue).

However I recently had one of my main potential Internet players request that I restart my Middle Earth campaign using the old classic RoleMaster rules. I told him I'd love to, but it's impossible as long as FG crashes right and left every time I try and run it.

Is there any sense of when this might be addressed.. or if it's even being worked on? Considering I bought an essentially unusable product (the RM add-on - D&D4e runs wonderfully), I think I'm being pretty patient here... all I'm asking for is some kind of idea about when or if this is getting looked at, guys.

[Griogre]

I hate to tell you I doubt the leak Moon is working on would have much effect on your case - it has to do with changing tabs on the character sheet and while I'm sure that happens some every game I doubt it would have a real large effect on the RM ruleset.

There is some hope for you in that the upcoming 2.7 version has fixes to have modules use memory more effectively. The rolemaster ruleset is very large so this might help your problem. I think Moon just said 2.7 is likely to release next week (barring finding any major problems with the beta) so you'll be able to see then.

[Moon Wizard]

There are a lot of stability type of issues that I have stomping out as part of the next release. It was one of my core focus areas.

If you can give me a step-by-step walk through of how to create the issue starting from creating a campaign, I can take a look at it on my side. The Rolemaster ruleset was built by another developer for ICE, and I'm not familiar with how to use it. Also, I'm going to ping the ruleset developer to see if they can help as well.

Thanks,
JPG

[dr_venture]

Many thanks for your updates. I'm guessing that you guys are doing a lot of this for the love of the hobby, and that there's probably more work than the development team can reasonably tackle. I really want to thank you guys very much for your work, and for taking the time to respond, and really thank the FG community for the friendliness that I have always experienced on these boards - sadly, a rarity on the web these days!

moon_wizard, I shall endeavor this evening to do my part by putting together a step-by-step that is as complete as I can stomach.

[dr_venture]

I can give you step-by-step on how t basically get around and run the rule set through its paces, but I can't really give you a repeatable sequence for the crashes - they're totally random - please see the previous posts I made in this thread about when I have encountered the crashes. I actually got one tonight just dragging a Barrow-wight from the monsters list into the Combat Tracker. You may want to check with ddavidson/Doug who was able to reproduce the problem on his machine, too.

Using the below steps you can create some dummy characters and put them & some monsters into the combat tracker to mess around. The only thing I can identify that I strongly suspect is contributing to the crash is just combat-tracker activity, especially related to dragging things around inside of, or in or out of the Combat Tracker window. The 'Player Rolls' window may be involved too, as well as the scripting engine, as I seem to get occasional of scripting errors when trying to drag items around between windows.

Nothing has changed in my configuration from my previous posts.

Also, FWIW, I spent about 15 years doing software QA (last gig was on 3D annotations in Acrobat at Adobe) - not trying to sound like genius (I'm definitely not - and I haven't done any QA in several years) but just trying to convey that I do have some background hunting down hard to reproduce errors and communicating to engineers. I'm happy to pitch in as I can and try to help improve the product for everyone. I hope I've covered everything here - let me know if I can provide further information for you.

Config hilites:
Fantasy Grounds 2.6.5
Rolemaster Ruleset Add-on
The crashes occurred on a single machine running as a gamemaster/server - there were no clients connected.

Windows XP service pack 3
Dell Inspiraon 546, AMD Phenom 9750 Quad-Core
2.4 GHz, 3.25 GB RAM


CREATING THE NEW CAMPAIGN
-------------------------
1) Launch FG. (went from 1.42 GB of memory usage to 2 GB)
2) Click on the 'Create New Campaign' button.
3) Name the campaign 'crash test'.
4) Select the 'RoleMasterClassic' option.
5) Click the 'Start' button. FG will go through it's gyrations to launch the new campaign - this takes about a minute or so on my computer.
6) Open all 4 of the RoleMaster modules. (memory usage: 2.62 GB)

CREATE A COUPLE CHARACTERS
--------------------------
I think this is a safe minimum to create characters that mostly makes the program use a realistic amount backgound functionality to calculate a variety of bonuses... just my best guess. Repeat these steps for each character you want to create. Also, is it possible for me to just zip up and email you the characters I've been using? I'm happy to do so if you think it'd help.
1) Open the 'Library' window.
2) Open the 'Character Law' book.
3) Open the 'Character Creation Walkthrough' window (this has links to other useful pages in creating some dummy characters).
4) Open the 'Characters' window.
5) Right-click in the Characters window and select the 'Create Item' option.
6) Name the character 'Character 1' or something, and set their stats all to 75.
7) Move the cursor over the 'Total Hits' field so that its contents hilite, then type 75 for a Hit Points value.
8) From the 'Character Creation Walkthrough' window, open the 'Section 3.0: Professions' window.
9) Expand the section titled, 'Professions of the Reals of Arms', then open the 'Fighter' window.
10) Drag the title 'Fighter (Warrior)' onto the 'Profession' field in the character sheet.
11) Close the extra windows back to just the character sheet and the 'Character Creation Walkthrough' window.
12) From the 'Character Creation Walkthrough' window, open the 'Table 04-01: Race Abilities' window.
13) Drag the title 'Common Men' onto the 'Race' field in the character sheet.
14) Close all windows except for the character being created.
15) Select the 'Combat' tab from the right edge of the character window.
16) If it's not already open, open FG's 'Library' window.
17) Open the 'Arms Law' book.
18) Open the 'Standard Weapons' window
19) Drag a weapon or two into 'Weapons' section at the top of the character sheet.
20) Set the 'OB' value (Offensive Bonus) for each weapon to something between 35 and 75, just for some variety.
21) At the bottom of the character sheet is a field for 'Armor Type' - enter a number between 1 and 20. A text description of the armor type chose should be displayed next to the number you have entered.

SET UP THE COMBAT TRACKER
-------------------------
1) Drag characters from the 'Character' window into the 'Combat Tracker' window as I believe you do in any game system with FG.
2) Open the 'Library' window.
3) Open the 'Creatures and Treasure' book.
4) Open the 'Monsters' topic.
5) Drag a few monsters into the 'Combat Tracker' (I actually crashed out of FG to the desktop when dragging a 'Barrow-Wight' in this step).
6) Look at the 'Notes' column for each Monster attack - if there is a little diagonal red line through the little brown 'table' icon, that means that there is no attack table associated with the attack. For instance, the Barrow-wight has an attack called 'Weapon [Cold]' - that weapon can be any weapon in the game, so you have to define the attack table. To do so:
6-a) Click on the 'Tables' button - it's the bottom right button of the top group of buttons. This will display a list of tables from the various modules. If some of the tables are greyed out, then that means that the module that they reside in hasn't been loaded (and this is one of the main reasons why RoleMaster required that all of the modules be loaded whenever you play)
6-b) Open the category of attack table you want to use - this will normally be either 'Arms Law Attacks' or 'Claw Law Attacks'.
6-c) Drag the attack table you want to use from the 'Tables' window to the little table icon with the red slash in the 'Combat Tracker' window.

RUNNING COMBAT
--------------
Note that the 'Arms Law' module (at least, maybe other modules, too) must be loaded to run combat, as the necessary combat tables reside there.
1) Click on the shield icon for the Attacker.
2) Drag the name of the Target to the 'Attack vs.' column next to the Attacker's weapon of choice.
3) Double click on the dice icon i the 'Att. OB' column for the Attacker's weapon of choice. The dice will roll, and the 'Player Rolls' window will open. Most of the window is filled with the extensive attack table that RoleMaster was infamous for (and which FG makes a total breeze!). In the bottom left corner of the window is a stack of rolls that each attack roll is appended to the bottom of.
4) Find the attack roll that was just made, and double-click on it. The attack table will be displayed (which sometimes takes a few seconds the first time the table is loaded) with the final attack roll row and the armor column hilited.
5) If the attack result includes a number, then damage was done - the result can be dragged straight onto the 'Damage' field for the Target in the Combat Tracker.
6) If the attack result includes letters, then some kind of critical occurred. Right-click on the attack result - one of the options will be to resolve the critical that occurred - select this option.
7) A critical table will open below the attack table in the 'Player Results' window. Results on this table must be generated manually.

[Moon Wizard]

Installing the Rolemaster ruleset right now. Thanks for the detailed steps. I'll give them a run.

Let me also take a moment to respond to the other items you have mentioned so far, to make sure I'm looking at everything.

* On the percentile dice, are you sure that you are not seeing the ones die with the "10" result? When that happens, it looks like two tens dice might have been rolled, but you can still view the single digits on the sides on the ones die.
* When roll results stop showing in the chat window, it's usually because the chat window has been scrolled. This can be done by using the mouse wheel on the chat window, or the PgUp/PgDn keys in the chat entry box.
* In you can remember the sections with the bad links, I'll see if I can get them patched.

On memory conservation, images are not typically the culprits. The total memory usage of images/tokens is typically 2x the on-disk footprint. The primary memory hog is the LUA interfaces required to support the high-degree of scripting that FG supports. In the case of Rolemaster, the sheer number of objects creates heavy memory usage.

Here is what I'm seeing on memory usage from the Processes screen:
* Ruleset with no modules open: 282M
* Ruleset with all modules open: 956M

BTW, this is actually less memory usage then the 4E ruleset, with 12-15 books open.

Let me walk through your steps now.

Thanks,
JPG

[Moon Wizard]

OK, I just got through your steps. I didn't see any obvious huge memory bumps while walking through the steps. I was able to get a blue screen Windows crash after trying half a dozen attacks. I assume that is what you were seeing. If not, please let me know.

In this case, I'm about 90% sure that the error is specifically one that I addressed in the v2.7 beta. Have you tried the beta yet?

Essentially, DirectX crashes when you give it an uninitialized rectangle, which seems like something that DirectX should fix but that's what we've got. The fix was to make sure all the rectangles are initialized.

Regards,
JPG

[dr_venture]

* On the percentile dice, are you sure that you are not seeing the ones die with the "10" result? When that happens, it looks like two tens dice might have been rolled, but you can still view the single digits on the sides on the ones die.

Nope, I'm sure it's 2 'tens' dice - the results will be something like '20' and '70', and you can see that all of the die sides have a trailing '0'. Had it happen 4 or 5 times while writing up the steps yesterday.



* When roll results stop showing in the chat window, it's usually because the chat window has been scrolled. This can be done by using the mouse wheel on the chat window, or the PgUp/PgDn keys in the chat entry box.

Well, of course I wanna say that scrolling wasn't the case, but the reality is that it could definitely be pilot error on my part. I'll keep an eye open on that front. Gracias.

MHO is that I wouldn't suggest spending much time on this one - it's been very inconsistent. It we get the crashing issue alleviated and if possible the percentile issue solved (and even there, as long as you pay attention to the dice, you can always just re-roll as a workaround), then everything else is really gravy, as at that point the sw is stable and very usable.



* In you can remember the sections with the bad links, I'll see if I can get them patched.

I shall make notes when I see them and post the items. Where is the best place to note said linking bugs: here or the RoleMaster topic?



BTW, this is actually less memory usage then the 4E ruleset, with 12-15 books open.

That is excellent to hear - I have run a fair amount of 4e and have had an excellent experience with that rule set. Several people have mentioned that the unnecessary modules should be closed, but you *have* to have most of them open if you're going to have combat or use spells. Those combat and spell tables are very expansive (I'm sure you've heard RoleMaster's alternative name, 'TableMaster'), pages and pages full of, like, 7 point type in the original hard copy rules. I assumed that that was part of the culprit - an overabundance of XML.

Thanks so much for looking into this - very, very much appreciated! Please let me know if I can provide any further information or debugging.

[dr_venture]

OK, I just got through your steps. I didn't see any obvious huge memory bumps while walking through the steps. I was able to get a blue screen Windows crash after trying half a dozen attacks. I assume that is what you were seeing. If not, please let me know.

In this case, I'm about 90% sure that the error is specifically one that I addressed in the v2.7 beta. Have you tried the beta yet?

No, I have never gotten a blue screen with FG. I am getting crash dialog that closes the app and drops me back to the desktop. When I relaunch I invariably get the warning about teh database possibly being corrupted (which it never is). About 20% of the time the crash is accompanied by a script error in FG.

I haven't tried the beta yet. Given that this is not a blue screen error, is that something that you want me to try? Is there a page with the details of upgrading/using two instances of FG?

[Moon Wizard]

OK, I was trying it out with v2.7. The memory usage appears to actually have grown with the update, which is unusual. All the module memory usage is smaller, except Arms Law which has ballooned up to about 1G. I'd have to look into that more. However, I made 40-50 attacks without any issues or errors, 2 PCs and 3 NPCs attacking each other.

You can try the beta version by downloading the Test Mode Manager tool from the Downloads page. All you need to do is run the tool, select the Test button and close the tool. Then, next time you run FG, the update button will light up, and will update to the test version. To switch back, run the tool again, select the Release button, then update FG.

Cheers,
JPG

[dr_venture]

Upgraded to the beta 2.7.0, ran a combat between 4 fully filled out characters and 2 monsters - ran well for about 30 minutes, then the program crashed upon dropping a value dragged from one window to another (I *think* it was dragging a roll from the chat window to a character's Initiative field in teh combat tracker). FG closed immediately and I got a system beep and a Windows error dialog that said something like "Runtime C++ error - the application Fantasy Grounds has requested that the program quit in an unexpected way" or something like that - before I could write down the error text (about 5 or 6 seconds), the dialog closed itself and I was left on the desktop.

I had the Combat Tracker open, a couple character sheets open, and a 'battlemap' with 6 tokens on it open in the BG.

The crash generated no system event. However, I did find this event from a session two days ago - dunno if it's the same crash or not:


Faulting application fantasygrounds.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module fantasygrounds.exe, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x000cc958.

0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 66 61 6e ure fan
0018: 74 61 73 79 67 72 6f 75 tasygrou
0020: 6e 64 73 2e 65 78 65 20 nds.exe
0028: 30 2e 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 0.0.0.0
0030: 69 6e 20 66 61 6e 74 61 in fanta
0038: 73 79 67 72 6f 75 6e 64 syground
0040: 73 2e 65 78 65 20 30 2e s.exe 0.
0048: 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 61 74 0.0.0 at
0050: 20 6f 66 66 73 65 74 20 offset
0058: 30 30 30 63 63 39 35 38 000cc958
0060: 0d 0a ..

FWIW, I didn't see too much instability the other night when I used the simple characters that I gave you steps to create (although I did get a crash). I have a hunch (nothing more) that the complexity of the characters, might matter, as well as a lot of dragging and dropping between windows. I also opened and closed each of the character sheets and monster sheets several times to get Quickness bonuses to add to initiative rolls.

[dr_venture]

Soooo.. any updates on this? Everyone here has been very nice and I'm trying to do my part to be patient... small company, labor of love... I understand. FG works like a champ with 4e for me (although the two computers that I'm using here *both* about 15% of the time are getting the error where rolling percentile dice results in two 'tens place' dice are being rolled - i.e., the first die is '30' and the second dies is '50', with a result of '80'... I can't believe we're the only one's seeing this).

It's bee 6 months since I paid for Rolemaster and still can't play it. I'm still running the pre-release version (which is also running like a champ in 4e - I much prefer it to the standard release). Is there any idea of what's happening with this issue, when it'll be addressed, anything? I'd still dearly love to play with it, but if we're looking at another 6 months or something, and as I'm pretty low income and it not a small purchase to buy role playing stuff, can I get my purchase money applied to something else that actually runs on my machine?

I understand I'm not dealing with big company here, and I truly appreciate the work that goes into something like this. If there's anything I can do to help debug this issue I'll surely try. Does someone have a debug copy they want me to install to log out program data? Specific things you want me to try? I'm here for ya. I've got a software QA background which, though I've been happy to leave that behind, I'm willing to dust off and take a bullet for the team!

Thanks for your time, guys.

[ddavison]

Hello Mr_Venture, I sent you an email on the subject.

[dr_venture]

Just a quick update on this issue. I just downloaded the latest Rolemaster ruleset that I received an email about today. I did notice some positive stuff on teh drag & drop side of things, specifically, the critical hits are now draggable to empty effects slots. Maybe that was there before & didn't notice, but whatever the case, it's way-cool! If it weren't for the constant crashes, I think this would be very close behind 4e for the most usable ruleset for combat.

Sadly, the crashes have not gone away. Tried a test skirmish with 4 characters & 4 orcs - the farthest I got was the 3rd melee round before getting teh same hard crashes that are documented previously in this thread.

Also, I still get the double "ten's place" d10 rolls (i.e., I roll percentile and get a d10 with a "20", and a d10 with a "50", for a total roll of 80). I didn't notice mentioning this above, but this problem is *not* specific to this ruleset - I occasionally get the double "tens position" dice in Rolemaster, 4e, Castle & Crusades, and 3.5. Annoying, but if you keep an eye on it, easily worked around.

All that said, I want to again thank the developers of this software. For it's zits and warts, it's still a fantastically useful program and for the most part works great. Thank you for the work of the program, and for the excellent support that I have received.

[ddavison]

The problem seems to be isolated to Arms Law. The db.xml file is 22.7MB and just opening the XML file in Visual Studio balloons the memory usage of the IDE to 530MB. This was built by Digital Adventures before we acquired it, so I need to further acquaint myself with the file. I will let you know if I find something actionable.

[dr_venture]

It's a shame that it causes so much trouble, as Rolemaster goes from being a huge PITA on the table top to a real dream to run in FG. The other problem is that you have to have both Arms Law and Spell Law open if you have anyone using directed spells... not so sure about whether or not Character Law needs to be open for any equipment info.

Anyway, thank you for giving me a head's up. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help. If you want to shoot me some test builds as you work on it, I'd be happy to help out as I'm able.

[dr_venture]

Just FYI, I noticed that the latest update (2.7.4) mentions that the FG engine was optimized to use memory more efficiently, especially in regards to modules, so I tested out my same old sandbox campaign to see if this issue got better.

I started up the RoleMaster campaign, then put it in the background while I did other things. I wound up getting distracted for an hour or so, during which time FG just sat in the background in its 'just opened' state, which includes the 4 main game rulebooks.

When I noticed that it was running, I brought FG to the front, opened a blank image that had a grid and some figure linked to combatants in the combat tracker (this is the same campaign that I have been testing with, so there are already participants in the combat tracker). I freehand drew some room boundaries on the battle grid.

Then, I clicked on the combat tracker to start up a battle - BOOM: crashed right out of FG before I could even see the contents of the combat tracker.

I hope this helps shed a little light on what's going on: this time, there was no combat rolls or messing with the tracker at all beyond simply opening it after some time had elapsed with the program sitting open.

FWIW, when I relaunched the program and immediately opened the combat tracker, it opened just fine.

If it would be helpful for the developers for me to spend some more time trying to further isolate the circumstances, I'll do what I can.

Thanks for all your hard work guys - despite my woes with this ruleset, FG is a great product, and I have absolutely no problems with the other rulesets.

[Moon Wizard]

Perhaps some more specifics on the exact actions, specifically when you clicked on the combat tracker to start the battle.
* Are you talking about the button on the upper right to bring up the tracker?
* Or clicking a button/control on the tracker after it opens?

Any time we can get a reproducible scenario and/or campaign files, that is the holy grail of troubleshooting. If you can get it to reproduce every time, I would like to get the campaign files and the steps to reproduce.

Thanks,
JPG

[dr_venture]

Hey moon_wizard, thanks for the reply!

I haven't been able to pin down any sequence of events so far that has caused the crash (I've done more software QA than I'd care to think about, but at least I can be helpful on that front). It's been pretty random, other than it's always occurred while the combat tracker has been open. Yesterday I simply clicked on the combat tracker button (in order to open the CT for the first time during the session) in the upper right hand button cluster, and it immediately crashed. So in detail:

1) Launched FG.
2) Opened my sandbox campaign, which has 4 characters and 4 monsters loaded into the combat tracker. All 4 of the core RoleMaster modules are set to open with the campaign.
3) Minimized the FG window in order to diddle around with other programs while FG opened the campaign... but forgot about FG and left in running in the background for at least an hour (probably a lot more - the "Campaign saved." messages scrolled off the top of the chat window).
4) Noticed that FG was running, so I clicked on its task bar button to bring it to the front.
5) Opened an empty image file that already has a grid and tokens on it for the characters & monsters in the CT. By 'empty', I mean that I originally created it by simply selecting "Create item" from the radial menu in the "Maps & Images window," then put a grid on it and some tokens.
6) Used the drawing tools to draw a simple room outline with a couple corridors running from it.
7) Arranged the tokens to be ready for a test combat.
8) Clicked on the Combat Tracker icon in the upper right hand button cluster.

RESULT: FG closed with a crash dialog (the one with the option for sending crash info to Miscrosoft... which I assume never gets sent to you guys).

Now I'll also add to yesterday's bug that right after I posted my previous message, I relaunched FG and did the same thing as above (except without the drawing of the walls, not that I think that's the issue here) and ran a whole 12 or so round combat without any hitches... so dunno what to say. I will try to reproduce the bug I just described in detail in this post. If I can reproduce it, I'll try it with a new campaign file, too.

Thanks for checking in on this issue, my friend :D

[Moon Wizard]

I really appreciate the details. When I hear about items like this, I usually try to recreate several times, and also keep an eye out for issues I can't create as well.

That said, I've been working for the last year (ever since I joined) to revise a lot of code that can possibly cause crashes to occur. Usually a null pointer that isn't checked. I've cleaned up a LOT of code, but there are still some in the wild to track down.

Thanks,
JPG

[dr_venture]

Ok, ran another test - let the program sit open in the background overnight and ran a combat this morning and got a crash... *sigh*. I wrote up all the gory details, but I don't know if it'll help, as my sense is that this is back to the kinda 'random' crashes. Anyway, here you go:

1) Opened up Task Manager to the page file usage window - PF usage = 1.14 GB.
2) Launched FG & waited for it to load.
3) Brought up Task Manager - PF usage = 1.17 GB. Minimized Task Manager.
4) Opened my sandbox campaign (contains very little - 4 characters, a 'blank' battlemat, a few monsters in the Personalities window. This campaign does load with all four Rolemaster modules/rulebooks opened). Waited for the campaign to load.
5) Brought up Task Manager - PF usage = 2.14 GB. Minimized Task Manager.
6) Minimized FG at 6:07 PM on Monday evening.
7) Brought up Task Manager at appx. 8:30 AM on Tuesday morning - PF usage = 2.17 GB (had been using computer, so small change in memory footprint not unexpected). Minimized Task Manager.
8) Maximized FG.
9) Opened 'blank' battlemap (see previous post for description of what I mean by blank).
10) Deleted all of the tokens.
11) Opened the Combat Tracker, which was empty.
12) Dragged 4 characters from Character window to Combat Tracker, then closed Character window.
13) Opened Personalities window.
14) Dragged 5 monsters into the Combat Tracker, then closed Personalities window.
15) Opened the Token Box.
16) Dragged tokens onto all 9 Combat Tracker entries, then closed Token Box.
17) Drew some walls on the battlemap with the FG drawing tools.
18) Arranged the tokens for combat.
19) Started a combat between characters & monsters, involving the usual: rolling initiatives, cycling though characters in the CT, rolling attacks & criticals using several weapons, dragging critical results onto combatants in the CT... the usual.
20) On the 2nd combat round, a combatant got a 2H heat critical on a firebolt attack. The result showed up just fine in the attack table. I selected "Resolve Heat Critical" in the radial menu.

RESULT: A 2nd FG button opened in taskbar connected to what looked like a C++ or other programming dialog which read:


Runtime Error!
Program: C:\Program Files\Fantasy Grounds II\FantasyGrounds.exe
This application has requested the Runtime to terminate in an unusual way.
Please contact the application's support team for more information.


PF usage at time of first crash dialog = 2.57 GB (9:03 AM)

Clicking the Ok button on the crash dialog brought up a 2nd dialog, the usual Windows crash dialog with the "Send Error Report" button and the text, "FantasyGrounds.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

PF usage after both crash dialogs were dismissed and FG closed = 1.17 GB.


--- EVENT LOG DATA ON FIRST CRASH DIALOG ---


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 2/1/2011
Time: 9:06:25 AM
User: N/A
Computer: RIVENDELL
Description:
Faulting application fantasygrounds.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module fantasygrounds.exe, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x000db998.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 66 61 6e ure fan
0018: 74 61 73 79 67 72 6f 75 tasygrou
0020: 6e 64 73 2e 65 78 65 20 nds.exe
0028: 30 2e 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 0.0.0.0
0030: 69 6e 20 66 61 6e 74 61 in fanta
0038: 73 79 67 72 6f 75 6e 64 syground
0040: 73 2e 65 78 65 20 30 2e s.exe 0.
0048: 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 61 74 0.0.0 at
0050: 20 6f 66 66 73 65 74 20 offset
0058: 30 30 30 64 62 39 39 38 000db998
0060: 0d 0a ..


--- EVENT LOG DATA ON SECOND CRASH DIALOG ---


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1001
Date: 2/1/2011
Time: 9:08:31 AM
User: N/A
Computer: RIVENDELL
Description:
Fault bucket -2001428666.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 42 75 63 6b 65 74 3a 20 Bucket:
0008: 2d 32 30 30 31 34 32 38 -2001428
0010: 36 36 36 0d 0a 666..

[Moon Wizard]

Can you ZIP up the campaign folder and send it to me?

I'm not very familiar with the Rolemaster ruleset, so this will make it much easier to recreate for me. Send it to : [email protected]

Thanks,
JPG

[RKBrumbelow]

DV, I don't know if you followed up with JPG, but could you try something? get a trial copy of VMWare or parallels and install windows, FG2 2.7.4 and RMC 1.2. I know it is a fair amount of work, but it would allow for better isolation of the issue.