Castle Paradox

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

While I was working on Okédoké (particularly in Wrongside, but I noticed it cropping up again on one of the maps in Chapter 3), I ended up bumping into a really nasty bug that ranges from "mildly annoying" to "instantly crashes Custom," depending on just what it decides to do.

From what I've seen, it only happens when I'm editing big maps (Wrongside is 105 x 70 or something up in that range, and the Haunted House map in Chapter 3 is pretty big as well; it only happened once or twice on smaller maps), especially when I resize the map to fit more stuff and then do a bunch of map editing immediately afterward.

Basically what it does is scramble the NPC data; sometimes just one NPC, and sometimes as many as three or four at a time. I've seen it change just about everything about NPCs that can be changed:

* the NPC's picture (a chest randomly became a Border Ranger)
* their tags (a chest that wouldn't appear unless "Tag 2378" was on)
* their textbox (an unused NPC got a "There were 12 pesos in this chest!" message)
* their vehicle setting (a Mexican guy who became a vehicle that doesn't exist, with a blank name... talking to him made your characters disappear and made it impossible to move)
* their item (a ghost that gave you a nonexistent blank item when you talked to it)
* their script (an unused NPC that runs Script 3275 or something like that)

Thanks to the "find broken script triggers" feature, I have a screenshot of one result of the bug...

Yeesh. Is it even possible to have that many scripts?? Thankfully, the NPC that this got slapped onto was a shop owner who you're never able to actually talk to (since he's behind the counter), but it's still a pretty scary bug.

I've even had a few that made Custom crash--I'm really not sure what the bug did to those, but whatever it was, Custom just instantly closed every time I tried to edit them!

The first time I ever noticed this bug was in Xocolatl+2; I tried a nightly version (June 5th's nightly, I think) to see if that fixed it, but then it happened again.

I looked through Bugzilla and I don't think I saw anything that sounded similar (though I could've just overlooked it, since it was 3 in the morning)... kind of surprising, since you'd think something like this would get noticed pretty quick (or maybe most people are just using small enough maps that it never happens?)

[Baconlabs]

This needs to go in the HELP! forum.

My two bits:
1) Save often.
2) Never seen this happen before.

[Bob the Hamster]

Sounds like memory corruption.

The fact that it happens after resizing the map is good information.

Based on your description, I am going to guess that the map resizing has a bug that causes some memory areas to overlap, and when you edit *something* right after a resize, the data for whatever you are editing (tilemap? wallmap? doors?) is overwriting the NPC data.

If you can figure out exactly what you do after resizing that triggers this, so I can reproduce it the same way, this should be easier to fix.

You might also want to try this nightly build: http://hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/nightly/ohrrpgce-wip-fb-sdl-debug-exx.zip

It has extra error checking that might be able to catch the memory corruption as soon as it happens. If so, it means that custom will suddenly close, but knowing the precise moment when custom suddenly closes will help narrow down where the problem is.

Also, the crashes that you are sometimes seeing when trying to edit the data of corrupted NPCs is probably a different bug caused by insufficient error checking in the NPC data editor. If you can mail me a copy of okedoke.rpg with corrupted NPCs that crash custom, I should be able to add more error checking for whichever data is causing the crash.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

[Bob the Hamster]

I have added extra error checking for the NPC editor. None of your corrupted NPCs should crash custom anymore with the nightly builds, and you will be able to see which data is corrupted.

I am eager to track down where the corruption starts next :)

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

Just tried out the June 25th nightly, and the NPCs no longer crash Custom the second I touch them!

It's actually kinda funny to see that all those crashes were because of... invalid pushability types, of all things. I never would've guessed that.

Still not sure about the cause of the NPC corruption in the first place; I did a little more testing (this time actually making a map bigger like I'd do if I was enlarging the map normally, instead of just spewing random tiles onto the blank space or making little "rooms" off to the side of the real map like I had been doing earlier), but I still wasn't able to trigger the bug intentionally. Hopefully somebody'll be able to figure it out, since it's an annoying bug even without the crashes.

[Bob the Hamster]

I have made a note of this bug here: http://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=738

[TMC]

After investigation, I discovered that Ctrl+R - replace tile - has a memory corruption bug that should cause a pattern of damage just like you saw. Did you ever use this? If not, then there's probably yet another bug; I've also found another non memory corrupting bug.

Edit: actually, you didn't enable the third layer on either of Frogbucket or Wrongside, which means that, since layer 2 exists whether you use it or not, it would have caught all out of bounds accesses from Ctrl+R on layer 0 or 1, and Ctrl+R couldn't have overwritten any NPC data. Oh well.
_________________
"It is so great it is insanely great."

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

I did use the paintbucket-fill tool (CTRL+P) and "select the tile you're on" (CAPS LOCK) quite a bit, but I never used CTRL+R... actually, up until just now, I didn't even know it existed.

I have seen CTRL+P crash Custom once or twice (when using it on a huge empty area), so maybe that's the one that's doing it?

EDIT: The bug strikes again...


While working on one of the last maps before I'm done with Chapter 3, I managed to trigger the bug again (for the first time since I downloaded the June 25th nightly.) And this time I kept track of exactly what I did before it happened:

1: Edited some maptiles
2: Opened up a blank map I had made earlier
3: Did some tilemapping (only Layer 0, used CAPS LOCK but no other special buttons)
4: Left the map editor, edited some maptiles
5: Placed some of those new tiles on the map
6: Placed a door on the map
7: Looked at NPCs; NPC 0 was corrupted.

Hopefully this might help narrow it down a little.

[Baconlabs]

I just got this bug. Tags seem to be easily corrupted; one of my NPCs suddenly had "Appear if Tag 18,654* = ON" which should be impossible since the max tag number is 999.

* - Not exact, just a 5-digit number.

[TMC]

[Baconlabs]

Okay I'll be honest, my problems may have absolutely nothing to do with the editor.
See, I've got these extra buttons on my laptop that change the volume, which causes weird things to happen sometimes. Acts like I'm constantly holding the 6 key down even though I ain't, so I have to restart the program. That's probably not a bug though.