how many objects before your game is unstable?

[Larry]

Folks, my game is unstable.

Now and then the runtime crashes.

The debugger says we start out with like 411 objects, and it crashes at a certain point when there's only about 280!

My game is 256 colors, 300x200. I pared it down because I knew there would be a lot of objects.

So I would like to get a ballpark figure: for these specs (I'm running a mid-range system), how many objects is doable?

Note that one thing that may be crashing my runtime is the fact that some of the objects are VERY LONG (one is 17000 pixels). It's my guess that this alone makes the thing unstable.

Anybody?

[Tiles]

Having a 17000 pixel large Object may be the troublemaker. When it's this big you may simply run out of memory to handle this object. No good idea to have such big objects ...

Besides that when this large Object isn't the troublemaker: what MMF Build, what kind of Extensions in use, what code do you use?

[Random]

A crash doesn't nescessarily need to be related to the number of objects..

[Larry]

Thanks for diagnosing.

I'm using build R243, MMF2. I have both bonus packs installed, but the game I'm making doesn't employ any extensions. Nothing but garden variety active objects. Everything straight from the factory.

Not sure what you mean by "what code do you use?" You mean, the aspect of the game engine that is probably causing the crash?

Actually, the 18000x200 pixel active object is pretty stable. What seems to be crashing the engine (though this is intermittent) is the regular creation of 2-5 other objects (about 500x200 pixels each) in such a way that they partially overlap each other.

MMF doesn't seem to like that.

[Joshtek]

If you can narrow it down and try to make an example which will crash nearly every time on multiple PCs then post it and hopefully it can be fixed.

[Random]

Sometimes it helps to remove code, and test if it stil crashes until the crash is isolated in a couple of events. This can then be fixed very quick.

[Tiles]

Not sure what you mean by "what code do you use?" You mean, the aspect of the game engine that is probably causing the crash?

Exactly

Fastloop involved? Lots of Flags and Alterable Values? Then it may be too complex to track it down ...

Hmm, you say you create objects overlapping each other and then it crashes? Have you tried to create the objects offset outside the screen and place them to its position afterwards? Maybe this fixes it.

And if so you have isolated the problem. Next step is to create an example file how to reproduce the bug. With just the involved objects and the code for this. Yves is always happy to have such an downtracked example file. Gives him a good starting point to fix the bug

Oh, before i forget it. Just that i have asked: have you limited the create object event? Maybe it crashes because you create an infinite number of objects, and reach the maximum number of objects at runtime by this.

[Larry]

Thanks all for taking the trouble to comment.

After hours of tedious and unpleasant deleting and "nevering out," I have managed to isolate the bug.

First of all, I would like to say that MMF 2 performed quite handsomely with an active object that was 18000x200. It's a scrolling game, and this is the land we're talking about. Your ship is flying over it.

After all sorts of deletions and subtractions, I can tell you, it wasn't this.

The problem had to do with rapid creation of objects (about 15 in number), then playing with their semi-transparency effect. This, apparently, is unstable.

Once I commented that out, everything was fine.

And thanks, Tiles. I'm aware of the "only one action when event loops" necessity. Boy am I aware of that!

No flags, minimal alterable value stuff. It was the semi-transparency.

I believe I read somewhere else that if your game won't run right, eliminate ink effects? Don't know what the current wisdom is.

[Tiles]

Ah, Ink Effects AND such big objects. And you wonder why it crashes?

Try to decrease the size of your big objects. One of this objects is around 10 mb memory size. When creating 15 of it at once, you end in 150 mb of stuff that MMF has to calculate at once. Plus applying your ink effect to it too. I simply guess that you run out of resources with that ...

[Andrew]

Also send Yves or Francois the bug isolation code so Clickteam can explorer and hopefully fix the problem in a future patch.