FG2 Crashes when placing a token

[goreaxe]

A friend of mine just got the full version of FG, and he experiencing a major bug. He can do everything except place a token on a map. The moment he does, a message says FG has encountered an error and must close. When I host a game and he joins, if I share a large image, or place a token on a map his FG crashes.

There is one exception. In the example campaign A tale of Dinor, he can place and move tokens on the mines_deep map. All the others crash when placing a token.

He is running windows 2000 and I believe he has direct x9 and the current driver for his video card.

Any ideas what could be causing the problem?

Thanks,
Joe

[richvalle]

Does it happen with any token? Even the generic ones that come with FG? How big is the map? Can you create a new image in FG and drop tokens on it? You say if you share a 'large image', does it work ok for smaller images?

What vid card does he have?

rv

[goreaxe]

1. It happens with any tokens, including the generics that are part of the core game.

2. I tried using the maps that come in the Tale of Dinor sample adventure. All crashed except the Mines_Deep map. All of them were less than 100kb. I also tried creating a new blank map in the game, and it also crashed.

3. The large image I shared was a 1mb jpg image, and it crashed his game before any tokens were placed. I sent a smaller image, and he could view it ok, but any token being placed crashed it.

4. His video card I believe is a Radeon 9600 with 128mb of video ram.

[Foen]

We use FG1 (we're finishing a campaign before switching to FG2) so this post describes an FG1 issue.

Like the OP, one of the clients has a problem with tokens and shared maps: if a large map is shared then the client crashes, and if more than a small number of tokens are present the same client crashes. We have had to work around this by dropping map resolutions and being conservative on token usage.

Beyond that, there are two other symptoms. Firstly, with very large maps (the 1mb example quoted above) all the clients crash, so I think this is a question of limits (memory, graphics card or system resources?) depending on the client. Secondly, the number of tokens in the bag at the client end seems to make a difference. When my 'weakest-link' client is carrying many tokens, the problem is more accute.

Any Devs come across this before, and is it fixed in FG2?

Stuart
(Foen)

[Griogre]

This problem was largely fixed in FG2. Tokens don't bring down the server but players will occasionally crash but mostly they just get a notice that so and so token failed to transfer. Typically the problem is just with a token not every token.

The OP sounds like he is running FG1. I would suggest a fresh install for him as he doesn't seem to be having a typical problem and FG may be corrupt. If he is running FG2 barring hardware wierdness I would say his install is corrupt. The fact the built in tokens crash him is almost unheard of. More info on his OS and what version of FG he is running and if he is using the default ruleset would help.

[goreaxe]

We are using FG2, we just bought at GenCon.

I reinstalled his FG twice, with the same result.

We were using the default d20 ruleset and tokens. In fact I stopped by his place, installed the software and was in the process of giving him a walkthru when it crashed. So at that point there was zero custom content.

As far as his system- I'm not sure, but I believe it is a P4 1.3Ghz processor, 1gb of ram, a 128mb radeon 9600 video card, 50 gigs of free hd space, and running windows 2000.

Could the copy of FG on that disc be defective in some way? We were going to try installing on another computer to test that, but haven't had the chance yet.

[Griogre]

Goreaxe, I would try installing FG2 on a different computer to check the disk. I would download the demo from the FG site and try to install it on the Win2000 computer. See if fiddling with the demo crashes also on the Win2000 machine. If the demo crashes on the machine also I would think your CD is probably OK and there is something about that Win2000 machine.

The Win2000 OS is a little probamatical with DirectX, though I believe people have gotten FG to run with it. I presume you have the latest version of DirectX not for Vista and have make sure the Video card has the latest drivers.

I would be more worried about the video card's drivers. If you have a hardware problem it is likely to be either the video card not being fully DirectX 9 compatible (through off the top of my head that card looks good) or the Win2000 Drivers for the card.

[Dachannien]

I rarely have trouble with DirectX apps on Win2k.