Stargunner Save and Quicksave Issues (Dosbox 0.65) \ VOGONS

Stargunner Save and Quicksave Issues (Dosbox 0.65)

Topic actions

First post, by joeman

Posted on 2006-10-24, 13:28

joeman Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 5
Joined: 2006-10-24, 12:51

Hi just noticed this site a few days ago, thought i'd give it a crack
and hopefully you guys can help me out 😀

ps: !This is not the Plasma Bomb Issue!

The STARGUN.SAV and STARGUN.HI Plague!
Recently downloaded the Full Freeware version of StarGunner v1.1
Opened Dosbox 0.65, mounted SG's directory, and started playing.

Everything seemed fine, but the next time I tried playing it, it stalled
at the start up where it says "Use /? for help" for about 15 seconds and then the Screen Goes Black and Nothing Happens, no apogee logo no main menu, nothing.

I found out that the Game Refuses to Start Up when there is a STARGUN.SAV and STARGUN.HI file present in the directory, this worries me since the .sav file is needed to save any progress made in the game. If the two files are removed from the stargunner directory, the game starts up normally, but of course this means I have to start the game all over again each time.

Here is the second prob. (Don't worry the post is almost over 😉

QuickSave (F6) = Quicker Program Exit!

If this button is hit during the game and a Slot is chosen for a Quicksave,
the game crashes, and DosBox produces the following message:

Can't open save file [2:star0000.sav]

Call Stack:
Save::save ssave.cpp
save_game save.cpp
check_keyboard_save keyboard.cpp
do_gameloop gameloop.cpp
do_mainloop2 stargun.cpp
do_mainloop stargun.cpp
do_main stargun.cpp

I've also tried running with Dosbox 0.61, same results...

Any thoughts or suggestions to this Save Restricting Madness
are more than welcome.

Thanks for reading!

😀

Last edited by joeman on 2006-10-25, 09:52. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 23, by MiniMax

Posted on 2006-10-24, 13:39

MiniMax Offline

Rank Moderator

Rank: Moderator
Posts: 5128
Joined: 2004-01-18, 04:15
Location: Stockholm, Sweden, Europe, Earth Interests: Old games & young women

joeman - could you post a link to that freeware version? It might encourage someone to try to reproduce the problem.

Reply 2 of 23, by h-a-l-9000

Posted on 2006-10-24, 14:29

h-a-l-9000 Offline

Rank DOSBox Author

Rank: DOSBox Author
Posts: 4511
Joined: 2005-02-23, 00:14

Did you apply their patch?

1+1=10

Reply 3 of 23, by Qbix

Posted on 2006-10-24, 16:47

Qbix Offline

Rank DOSBox Author

Rank: DOSBox Author
Posts: 11324
Joined: 2002-11-27, 14:50
Location: Fryslan

write acces there ?
I recall that stargunner worked fine at one point

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 4 of 23, by joeman

Posted on 2006-10-25, 00:25

joeman Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 5
Joined: 2006-10-24, 12:51

@MiniMax
The link to it is on this website,
http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html
just scroll down to Stargunner

@h-a-l-9000
Do you mean the v1.0 to v1.1 Registered Patch? I didn't think
it would do much as the Freeware version is already v1.1

Reply 5 of 23, by h-a-l-9000

Posted on 2006-10-25, 00:33

h-a-l-9000 Offline

Rank DOSBox Author

Rank: DOSBox Author
Posts: 4511
Joined: 2005-02-23, 00:14

I downloaded it there too but the game crashed when "plasma bomb" hit the ground. The patch fixed it.

1+1=10

Reply 6 of 23, by joeman

Posted on 2006-10-25, 09:49

joeman Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 5
Joined: 2006-10-24, 12:51

I had a go with that v1.0 to v1.1 Registered Patch, still no luck...
Dosbox has me seriously puzzled on this 😖

Reply 7 of 23, by MiniMax

Posted on 2006-10-25, 15:43

MiniMax Offline

Rank Moderator

Rank: Moderator
Posts: 5128
Joined: 2004-01-18, 04:15
Location: Stockholm, Sweden, Europe, Earth Interests: Old games & young women

I can not reproduce the STARGUN.SAV and STARGUN.HI plaque here, nor the QuickSave error.

But I did get a stacktrace when I had been killed a number of times (and run out of ships?):

1spr out of range [1477/271 group=starg51.spd]
2
3Call Stack:
4        Flames::load         ship.cpp
5        Ship::load           ship.cpp
6        Save::load           ssave.cpp
7        do_gameloop          gameloop.cpp
8	do_mainloop          stargun.cpp
9        do_main              stargun.cpp

I gues the spr is a Stack Pointer Register??

I will try with a different DOSBox core (this was with core=dynamic) and see if that changes anything.

Reply 8 of 23, by SysGOD

Posted on 2006-10-25, 16:02

SysGOD Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 174
Joined: 2006-05-16, 11:09
Location: Halle, Germany

I can not reproduce the STARGUN.SAV and STARGUN.HI plaque here, nor the QuickSave error.

same to me. played that game for many hours without any errors.
semes to be completely stable with simple/normal core and cycles=auto.

when i have time, ill try it with dynamic core and manual cycle settings.

Last edited by SysGOD on 2006-10-25, 16:08. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 9 of 23, by MiniMax

Posted on 2006-10-25, 16:08

MiniMax Offline

Rank Moderator

Rank: Moderator
Posts: 5128
Joined: 2004-01-18, 04:15
Location: Stockholm, Sweden, Europe, Earth Interests: Old games & young women

Seems like Stargunner and DOSBox don't like each other very well 🙁

I had it run in demo mode with core=normal, and on several occasions DOSBox (not the game) would crash with a

1Exit to error: IRET:Illegal descriptor type 0

message in the console.

Reply 10 of 23, by wd

Posted on 2006-10-25, 16:15

wd Offline

Rank DOSBox Author

Rank: DOSBox Author
Posts: 10813
Joined: 2003-12-03, 21:23

spr might be sprite.
Maybe try with loadfix and sound disabled, and ems/xms off.
Another possibility would be trying it with msdos+dosbox but
not sure if that'd help here (could be using some unimplemented
dos table, or some memory corruption is happening).

Reply 11 of 23, by MiniMax

Posted on 2006-10-25, 17:39

MiniMax Offline

Rank Moderator

Rank: Moderator
Posts: 5128
Joined: 2004-01-18, 04:15
Location: Stockholm, Sweden, Europe, Earth Interests: Old games & young women

Simple core will not work. Got this message, and the the IRET error:

1CPU core simple won't run this game,switching to normal
2Exit to error: IRET:Illegal descriptor type 0

I will try your suggestions wd, and see if some combination will make the demo stable.

Edit: Tried with core=full, and initially it look good. I ran several demo-runs, without errors, but eventually 'full' also died with the IRET error.

Last edited by MiniMax on 2006-10-25, 17:57. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 12 of 23, by wd

Posted on 2006-10-25, 17:42

wd Offline

Rank DOSBox Author

Rank: DOSBox Author
Posts: 10813
Joined: 2003-12-03, 21:23

The simple core doesn't work with paging games at all, thus it
switches to the normal core if paging support is switched on
(the message you got is therefore from the normal core).

Reply 13 of 23, by MiniMax

Posted on 2006-10-25, 18:38

MiniMax Offline

Rank Moderator

Rank: Moderator
Posts: 5128
Joined: 2004-01-18, 04:15
Location: Stockholm, Sweden, Europe, Earth Interests: Old games & young women

It is a bit boring, but this combination seems very stable in the demo-runs:

core=dynamic
xms=false
ems=false
umb=false

and then StarGunner is launched with

stargun /logo- /intro- /vesa- /lfb- /fade- /sound- /nomouse

Time to see if I can get the sound back while keeping it stable.

Reply 14 of 23, by h-a-l-9000

Posted on 2006-10-25, 18:54

h-a-l-9000 Offline

Rank DOSBox Author

Rank: DOSBox Author
Posts: 4511
Joined: 2005-02-23, 00:14

Played a bit through it and appears to work nice..

Title screen says v1.1a

dynamic core
25000 cycles
other settings default
in directory E:\STARGUN
Dosbox CVS

1FILE_ID.DIZ  - CRC32: 2C2551F9
2PATCH001.EXE - CRC32: 27338F75
3readme.txt   - CRC32: 0E7C2986
4SETUP.EXE    - CRC32: 892D7D56
5sgmanual.pdf - CRC32: F71D0428
6STAR0000.SAV - CRC32: 0AF72AC2
7STARGUN.CFG  - CRC32: D7446C87
8STARGUN.DLT  - CRC32: 78E2F294
9STARGUN.EXE  - CRC32: 99A857EC
10STARGUN.HI   - CRC32: 59B2CA0C
11STARGUN.SAV  - CRC32: B41107BF
12STARGUN0.DLT - CRC32: BD750955
13STARHELP.EXE - CRC32: 52A1C782

CRC tool: http://www34.brinkster.com/dizzyk/crc32.asp

or maybe you have to play hours to find the bug?

Reply 15 of 23, by MiniMax

Posted on 2006-10-25, 19:08

MiniMax Offline

Rank Moderator

Rank: Moderator
Posts: 5128
Joined: 2004-01-18, 04:15
Location: Stockholm, Sweden, Europe, Earth Interests: Old games & young women

Nice Apogee!!! I didn't notice it before, but the stack trace (which I agree with wd is probably a problem with a sprite) was caught by the StarGunner runtime system, and the nice programmers at Apogee had it write to an error log:

1                                                                 StarGunner
2System Configuration                                     (C) Copyright 1996
3___________________________________________________________________________
4#
5# CMDLINE  = C:\STARGUN\STARGUN.EXE 
6# STARGUN  = 
7# version  = 1.0b
8# compiled = Nov 12 1996 @ 21:19:59
9# memory   = 3570k : 4194300k (3660156, 3660156 max)
10# ULTRASND = 240,3,3,5,5
11# BLASTER  = A220 I7 D1 H5 T6
12# COMSPEC  = Z:\COMMAND.COM
13# dos      = 5.0
14# vrs      = 17025
15
16___________________________________________________________________________
17Error Log.. If this file contains any data below this            StarGunner
18line then please forward this to the Stargunner Team.    (C) Copyright 1996
19___________________________________________________________________________
20#
21Mission 5 Zone 1 Stage 1 Level 0
22Time 0 AuxTime 0
23
24SeqList 0 0
25
26Nodes = 0
27------------------------------
28
29Anims
30
31Nodes = 0
32------------------------------
33
34BulletsList
35
36Nodes = 0
37------------------------------
38
39BulletsList
40
41Nodes = 0
42------------------------------
43
44BulletsList
45
46Nodes = 0
47------------------------------
48spr out of range [1477/271 group=starg51.spd]
49
50
51Call Stack:
52	Flames::load         ship.cpp
53	Ship::load           ship.cpp
54	Save::load           ssave.cpp
55	do_gameloop          gameloop.cpp
56	do_mainloop2         stargun.cpp
57	do_mainloop          stargun.cpp
58	do_main              stargun.cpp

Reply 16 of 23, by h-a-l-9000

Posted on 2006-10-25, 19:16

h-a-l-9000 Offline

Rank DOSBox Author

Rank: DOSBox Author
Posts: 4511
Joined: 2005-02-23, 00:14

# version = 1.0b
# my version = 1.1a
If you downloaded it from their homepage it is not as 1.1 as they think.

1+1=10

Reply 17 of 23, by SysGOD

Posted on 2006-10-25, 19:35

SysGOD Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 174
Joined: 2006-05-16, 11:09
Location: Halle, Germany

1CPU core simple won't run this game, switching to normal

ups ok guys your right, didnt notice the message when testing.

but i get no IRET:Illegal descriptor type 0 error.
i have tested SG (patched to 1.1a) again with a default dosbox.conf. only changed it to normal (cycles=auto) and dynamic core (cycles=25000)... runs good so far.
the game itself is set to GUS for sound and vesa 2.0.

if i understand that error log correctly, the sprite problem occurs in mission 5 in zone 1 with v1.0b, is that right?

Last edited by SysGOD on 2006-10-25, 19:48. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 18 of 23, by MiniMax

Posted on 2006-10-25, 19:36

MiniMax Offline

Rank Moderator

Rank: Moderator
Posts: 5128
Joined: 2004-01-18, 04:15
Location: Stockholm, Sweden, Europe, Earth Interests: Old games & young women

h-a-l-9000 wrote:
Played a bit through it and appears to work nice.. […]
Show full quote
Played a bit through it and appears to work nice..

Title screen says v1.1a

dynamic core
25000 cycles
other settings default
in directory E:\STARGUN
Dosbox CVS
1FILE_ID.DIZ  - CRC32: 2C2551F9
2PATCH001.EXE - CRC32: 27338F75
3readme.txt   - CRC32: 0E7C2986
4SETUP.EXE    - CRC32: 892D7D56
5sgmanual.pdf - CRC32: F71D0428
6STAR0000.SAV - CRC32: 0AF72AC2
7STARGUN.CFG  - CRC32: D7446C87
8STARGUN.DLT  - CRC32: 78E2F294
9STARGUN.EXE  - CRC32: 99A857EC
10STARGUN.HI   - CRC32: 59B2CA0C
11STARGUN.SAV  - CRC32: B41107BF
12STARGUN0.DLT - CRC32: BD750955
13STARHELP.EXE - CRC32: 52A1C782

The free version says version 1.0b and has slightly a different CRC32 for STARGUN.EXE:

1readme.txt   - CRC32: 0E7C2986
2SETUP.EXE    - CRC32: 892D7D56
3sgmanual.pdf - CRC32: F71D0428
4STARGUN.DLT  - CRC32: 78E2F294
5STARGUN.EXE  - CRC32: 24A87645 << v1.1 appears to be 99A857EC
6STARHELP.EXE - CRC32: 52A1C782

h-a-l-9000 wrote:
or maybe you have to play hours to find the bug?

The demo is self-running. I just let it play for 10-20 minutes.
I can't say for sure yet, but it seems like disabling XMS/EMS/UMB and maybe the loadfix'ing makes it stable. I have had it running for a long time using GUS without the demo crashing. Currently trying with SoundBlaster sound.

Reply 19 of 23, by h-a-l-9000

Posted on 2006-10-25, 19:41

h-a-l-9000 Offline

Rank DOSBox Author

Rank: DOSBox Author
Posts: 4511
Joined: 2005-02-23, 00:14

Well use their 1.1 patch?

1+1=10

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to DOSBox Games/Apps