Aquaria: DEMO: First Save Point freezez the game after save

[StatikBit]

When Saving the game at the first crystal, the game freezes.

Here is a link to my debug:
http://armadainfo.50webs.com/debug.log

DEMO: 1400 1050 32 1 1 1 255 1 0 1 1 0

[Quemaqua]

I got a freeze somewhere around that general area, but it wasn't just at the save crystal.  Also, the game didn't freeze.  I thought for sure it had because it was maybe 10 seconds of nothing moving (music still going, though), so I ALT+TABbed out, and when I went back in again... it was back moving again like nothing had happened.  A bit odd.

This was the demo, mind, not the retail product, hence my throwing it here in this thread just as a side note.

[blackzeroflame]

I've been having the same problem, every time i save the game freezes.  It turns out that it's just a weird loading time, i waited about a minute or two, and then the game kicked back in.  No need to Alt-tab or ctrl-alt-del.

[StatikBit]

I tried it again.  Waited for about 10 minutes and still frozen.
Please help : (

I really wish to buy the full version, yet would love to make sure the demo is functioning.  ^_^

Thanks in advance.

[Alec]

Let's get to the bottom of this.

StatikBit: Are you using a gamepad at all? It seems like the game switches to joystick right before it stops. If you have a joystick connected you could try disconnecting it.

And for everyone, what resolution are you using? The game saves a screenshot when you save, maybe that's part of the problem.

Also if you haven't upgraded your video card drivers to the latest version, please give that shot.

[luciferin]

While you're on the subject of the save game screenshot, it only seems to take it of the lower left hand corner of the screen.  I ran it at lower resolutions and they took more and more of the screen.  Maybe your crashes are an incompatibility with whatever resolution you're running at and the (presumably 640x480) screenshot?  I'd test my theory out by my monitor wont support the 4:3 resolutions over 1024x768.

[Quemaqua]

I can confirm that a friend of mine gets the exact same error and said that yes, it was in relation to saving.  Mine must have been too?  I don't remember the event in specific, so I can't say.  I'm currently running the game at 1280x960, and I have the latest drivers for my 7800GT.  I've taken screenshots just fine, but I've been PRTSCNing them (would be using FRAPS, but still haven't downloaded it on my fresh XP install).   I assume Aquaria has an internal function for this since there's a directory for them?  I checked the readme to no avail.

[luciferin]

Why don't you try running Aquaria at a lower resolution to see if that's the problem?  I'm not a developer so I could be completely off track here, but I think it's well worth a shot.

[Alec]

Hey, does anyone with this problem have an instant messenger? We could try to debug it together.

[StatikBit]

A couple of things:
0)  The screenshot for the save point was a white box.  There was no actual image input, other than a blank white box.
1)  I no longer get this problem.  I suppose it happens upon the first saving.
2)  When I tried saving the first time, I looked at the "current processes" and noticed that Aquaria was at 400,000 K commit charge.  It wouldn't go any higher or lower.
3)  I bought a new video card today, and the game runs incredibly smooth  (nVidia 8800 Ultra 768MB  compared to the nVidia 6600 256MB I was using)  The saves are seemless along with graphics.

If you would like to contact me on msn, i can be located by:  aoSeven21 [_at_] hotmail [_dot_] com

[Quemaqua]

I have an update on this.

To reiterate, it happened to me only once during the demo, and even though the game "froze", it didn't last more than perhaps 15 seconds... then it kept going as though nothing had happened.  Another friend of mine confirmed that the same happened to him in the demo.  I can't recall the location, but it was somewhere around the first save crystal for me.  He seemed to think his freeze was related to saving, but I don't know his location at the time.  Also, this didn't happen to me right after saving.  It would have been a bit after.

Now the update: it happened to me again in the full version.  I've logged in about 6 hours now, and it happened to me in Naija's home.  I was just swimming around, nothing unusual, and the game froze.  Same as last time, it lasted about 10 seconds or something, then just unfroze and went on as normal.  This time, however, it did it a second time, though the second occurrence was maybe only 3 seconds long.  I played for a while after that and it didn't occur again, and hasn't since in any other time I've spent with it.

So I guess this proves it isn't just related to the demo, and it also doesn't appear to be related to saving.  I wish I could recreate it somehow, but there was no particular circumstance I can pin down either time it happened.

Also, my savegame thumbnail pictures also have the problem where they only display a small bit of the picture instead of what the whole screenshot should be.  I believe that was mentioned in this thread somewhere.

If you want any more direct information, Alec, or think a live body could be of assistance, feel free to throw me a PM and I'll send you my contact info.  My site also has a regular channel open on QuakeNet IRC, and I pretty much idle there constantly.

[Alec]

If you can reproduce it, yeah get in touch...

Not sure why it would only happen that one time. I know there's someone else that has it happening every time they save.

[Alec]

Can anyone give this a shot with the demo and see if it helps? Thanks.

(copy it to demo's install directory and run it)

http://bit-blot.com/files/aquaria_demo_debug3.zip

[Bongo Bill]

I'm experiencing a similar bug in the full version, even after having applied the patch linked to on the main page. The first time I save, the game saves successfully, and the music continues, but the graphics lock up entirely and the game becomes completely unresponsive. After this, I must force quit the application. However, when I start it again, I can load the save file successfully (although the screenshot for the save file is a blank white image). I am playing with a gamepad, at the highest supported resolution, in windowed mode. I immediately attempted to save the game again, and the exact same crash occurred.

I'll attempt it later without a gamepad, in fullscreen mode, and/or at lower resolutions, but for now I'm just enjoying it too much to stop.

Update:

I've tested it with a good combination of settings and it is happening in all of them. I started a session of play (640x480, windowed, gamepad enabled, vsync enabled, framebuffer effects enabled, mipmap enabled)  in which I immediately saved, and this is the part at the very end of the debug.log file that seemed relevant to the saving process.

Code: [Select]

pos [-1], file :gfx/save-point-glow
LOADED TEXTURE FROM DISK: save-point-glow ref: 1 idx: 737
pos [18], file :./save/screen-0000.tga
Unable to load TGA File!
LOADED TEXTURE FROM DISK: ./save/screen-0000 ref: 1 idx: 738
pos [18], file :./save/screen-0001.tga
Unable to load TGA File!
LOADED TEXTURE FROM DISK: ./save/screen-0001 ref: 1 idx: 739
pos [18], file :./save/screen-0002.tga
Unable to load TGA File!
LOADED TEXTURE FROM DISK: ./save/screen-0002 ref: 1 idx: 740
pos [18], file :./save/screen-0003.tga
Unable to load TGA File!
LOADED TEXTURE FROM DISK: ./save/screen-0003 ref: 1 idx: 741
save sized
saveSizedScreenshot
push
disable blend
wbit: 512 hbit: 384
zx: 0.8 zy: 0.8
w: 512 h: 512
width: 640 height: 480
copyw: 640 copyh: 640

pixel zoom
copy pixels

It cuts off just like that. I'm going to try updating my GPU driver next (although it's never given me any problems before).

Additional update: Updating to the newest version of my GPU drivers cleared the problem right up. No more such problems on my end - though I do hope, for the sake of people who might otherwise miss out on this game, that future versions correct this so that it fails gracefully on less up-to-date systems.

[Alec]

People should just update their drivers as was suggested in the ReadMe. They'll just run into other problems if they don't.