Strange Aeons v5.4.1 Savegame Crash Split

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Okay, I am experiencing a rather serious issue with your mod. Sometimes, when I save at the beginning of a level, GZDoom will crash and I get a the following Zdoom Very Fatal Error report:

Code: C0000005 (Access Violation - tried to read address FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF)
Address: 000000013FB3C0D8

When I restart the game and I reload my previous save, everything seems to be working fine and I can save again without any problem. It is really weird.

[_mental_]

I probably know what it is but attach whole CrashReport.zip please.

[ImpieTwo]

What mental said. It has to be a gzdoom issue unless everyone else has dealt with this bug in SA and just never mentioned it for some reason. Did it save a log to post?

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Unfortunately, I forgot to save the crash report this time. I shall post it here once it happens again.

[Rachael]

@ JohnnyTheWolf:

Under no circumstances is a GZDoom crash a mod's fault (referring to Segfaults, "Very Fatal Error", or "This Program Has Stopped Working" crashes). These are bugs that have to be fixed on the engine-side, even if they do seem to be caused by the mod. The reason for this is for stability of the engine, itself, as a whole, for other mods, and not just the one that causes the crash. Inevitably, if a crash happens on one mod, it will happen on another that uses the same features which caused the crash.

Hope that helps.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Okay, after playing through Episode 4 in almost its entirety, I experienced another crash upon saving at the beginning of a map - in this case, E4M7.

[_mental_]

Yes, it's the same crash reported by others. However I cannot reproduce it yet.
Did you remember something specific? From what I saw in the report you selected existing saved game, pressed Enter and it crashed, right?

EDIT: The crash isn't related to Strange Aeons or any other particular mod, so related post can be split to a separate topic I think.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Yes, it just happened to me again minutes ago, this time while I was playing Freedoom Phase 1.

Again, at the beginning of a level, I sought to update an existing save game and the game crashes as I pressed the "ED" key on GZDoom's virtual keyboard.

I would post the crash report, but I do not want to hijack the thread with an issue that demonstrably has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

[_mental_]

I finally got why it crashed and fixed the problem.

Under no circumstances is a GZDoom crash a mod's fault (referring to Segfaults, "Very Fatal Error", or "This Program Has Stopped Working" crashes). These are bugs that have to be fixed on the engine-side, even if they do seem to be caused by the mod. The reason for this is for stability of the engine, itself, as a whole, for other mods, and not just the one that causes the crash. Inevitably, if a crash happens on one mod, it will happen on another that uses the same features which caused the crash.

It's right in general and I totally agree with this.
However there are few places in scripting system I already know about when passing bad values crashes the engine: SavegameManager and DynArray's have this issue.
In my opinion all scripting calls must have guards against such things, even at cost of performance.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

So what was the problem? And what do I have to do to avoid experiencing it again?

[_mental_]

Don't use mouse for saving a game. This is especially important if you mouse tends to constantly generate input events.
In general, the crash isn't so easy to reproduce: user needs to move mouse right after triggering an actual save, like you did by pressing ED. Selecting a save slot with mouse is fine.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

But you said you have fixed the issue. Does that mean it will be included in a future GZDoom build?

[_mental_]

Sure it will. I was talking about workaround for already existing versions like 2.4.0 in particular.

[Graf Zahl]

This is especially important if you mouse tends to constantly generate input events.

With mice like that it's advisable to set mouse control mode to 'touchscreen-like' because the constant generation of position events will make normal mouse control very hard, if not even impossible.
In that mode, movement events with released mouse button won't be sent to the menu at all.

[Rachael]

Split from the mod where this issue was discussed.