Instant death game overs for no reason
Zaghoul
Member, Moderator Posts: 3,938
Anyone notice how the newest version of BGEE sometimes kills the CHARNAME off for no reason. I am figguring it must be some kind of bug. I see it most often in BGEE but it happens in SoD as well. Seems to trigger when off screen explosions take place sometimes such as SoD crusader camp/ fort bombardment.
In BGEE I have seen it in many a place, Durlags, thieves maze,etc. Seems random. No death screen, straight to the game over, CHARNAME killed must start over. When looking at the background combat log behind that, clearly no damage was done to CHARNAME, period.
This was with NO MODS. Just straight up V2.3. Never had it happen with years of playing previous versions.
It often seems as if the program mistakes another creatures death for that of CHARNAME and does you in.
In BGEE I have seen it in many a place, Durlags, thieves maze,etc. Seems random. No death screen, straight to the game over, CHARNAME killed must start over. When looking at the background combat log behind that, clearly no damage was done to CHARNAME, period.
This was with NO MODS. Just straight up V2.3. Never had it happen with years of playing previous versions.
It often seems as if the program mistakes another creatures death for that of CHARNAME and does you in.
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I used to think it was caused with perhaps a buggy marek parameter with his geas quest ( where you have 10 days to find him) where it would just go off automatically for no reason and kill ya ( I found that every time that it did happen to me it was always after I started that quest) although it would only happen once in a game and after I reloaded it would never happen again that game
so I have no idea
I think I have seen it most often if after discovering an enemy group, retreat, then firebomb them from a distance. But, just random for the most part, not often but at least every two or three runs. But again, has happened in several places and at various points in the game.
There is some bug that exists, digging it up will probably be difficult.
Sometimes the THAC0 changes are due to armor type modifiers of CHARNAME vs enemy or enemy vs CHARNAME.
I usually just go through the game feeling lucky if some non-existent GRUE doesn't take me out without damage or mention.
@Grond0 definitely some detection sequence gone awry.
Just will be easier to keep it on the matter at hand for both our separate issues. The instant death thing bugs really bugger up a no-reloader like myself.(can't help it after so long)
TO get right down to it I could actually talk myself into thinking it is not a bug but an invisible GRUE resurfacing from ZORK that pops up and gobbles me down, no save. Well, I guess restartis woulda hit eventually, may be it is to keep me from getting out of BG(my favorite part of the series).
Cheatin it is.
I've completed the poisoned quest so that's a check on my list and right before I took the gameover I was in the middle of having Dynaheir cast a fireball via wand. After reloading the game I'm not able to recreate it. I've experienced random crashes before but I believe this is my first random death.
Here are a couple of links that give more detail. It may help to save more often, esp. on that lvl of D'T, then quit the game entirely, and restart the game at the same point. It may cut down on the problem a little, if the game indeed logs in too many projectiles at one time, overloading it. The same issue has come up in the Bridgefort area in SoD for me as well, with the constant bombardment going on all the time.
I now consider it a reload allowed death in my no-reload runs.
@JuliusBorisov mentions this here:
For all no-reloaders
The public report:
Bug 32843
Now wait a minute, you just reminded me of something. Think back this probably isn't the first time I took an instant death. I believe you're onto something about projectiles and fireballs. The floor above where there was a teleportation floor, I experienced a death there while triggering the multiple traps in the little room while taking away the next ward stone. Because at the time I was a solo fighter I didn't realize it was a bug. When taking the bombardment of fireball traps I was actually recovering health because my fire resist was at 125 but ended up dead regardless. I just thought it just wasn't allowed.
I'll look for ways to recreate this and follow with the bug report as well.
It looks like your bug report is closed now? Anyways I've narrowed down the cause and it's simply just the fireball animation that is causing the death.
I was able to reliably recreate the death within a short amount of time. I set up a full party and equip them all with a shortbow and arrow of detonations then all fire at the 2nd character who is maxed out in fire resist and using a potion of regeneration. In less than the amount of time it takes for two potion of regeneration to run out (3 turns each) you should get the death message.
Feel free to test the saved game yourself. I've also tested using normal arrows and after the 5 shooters expended 1,000 arrows each, nothing! So the problem isn't projectiles as a whole but mainly the fireball animation effect.
As @JuliusBorisov mentioned in the no-reload thread I posted" "Developers have tried to fix that problem (an object id overflow) but any fix turned out to be just too dangerous. The knock ons and consequences would greatly outweigh the number of people it helps, which is really unfortunate
Save often, and if it happens restart the game (close the whole application and relaunch) which should fix the overflow for that session."
Yeah those little flame particles really adds up quickly. I was wondering how garbage collection works so I did a few tests. I set the firing squad to shoot for one potion duration then traveled to another area and continue firing the got the game over at the expected time. I did the same test except I had them rest instead of traveling and same results. So it appears the fireball effect does not get rid of itself when ended which is causing the overflow.
I was wondering if other effects would cause the overflow so I modified my shortbow to shoot 5 magic missiles with increased attacks per round and then conducted the test.
After a long long time nothing happened! I'm very convinced that fireball is the only offender as there is a problem with it's memory management and I'm not aware of anyone mentioning other effects causing these deaths.@JuliusBorisov
It would be great if the devs can find a solution. It's a real killjoy when you get a game over without a just cause. Especially if you're doing a no death run or someone along that line, even if it's a known bug and we can just reload, it spoils the mood with having lost progress and redoing things. I agree it's not a big deal but it just isn't the same.
This test consist of shooting "Arrows of Detonation" until right before the sudden death then switch over to regular arrows and after shooting a few rounds it also triggers the death. It takes each shooters 83 "Arrows of Detonation" (total 415) to overflow and I changed over to regular arrows at about 5 off. This is consistent and the numbers and results are fixed throughout multiple iterations.
The only way to free up memory is to reload a game, so if you've been playing for a while or have seen a lot of actions it's not a bad idea to quickly save and reload before further progress. Well, happy gaming everyone.
Most projectiles will slow down the game to un-playable levels and then crash before they overflow, which prevents any practical occurrence.
Excessive Ring(0x230) animations are causing the overflow, while excessive Spread(0x228) animations causes the game to slowdown and eventually crash if they get to heavy.
Both could likely cause the other(overflow/crash) given time, but the overflow/crash prevents them from getting the chance.
Color Spray, Prismatic Spray, Red/Purple Fireball, Red/Green Dragon Blast projectiles are just some of the fastest to produce it, because they have no spread animation, but it can just as easily be reproduced with custom projectiles.