Bug Killing Quest (Version 4.24)

Simon,

I would look at drivers or some other system specific issue as the cause then. There were no changes made at the point that you first reported this that could have caused this problem.

I would suggest uninstalling the drivers currently on your system using the control panel add/remove.

Then I would look for andquot;newandquot; drivers in this order:

1) WHQL certified drivers from manufacturer of video card
2) NVIDIA WHQL certified drivers
3) NVIDIA non-WHQL certified drivers.

Richard

Yes, i have a TNT 2, so i can test it for you. I have cable so i can download it in a minute or 2. Ill try it right now.

Simon

Ok Richard I visited the site and found later drivers i think.

They are in a zip file and im not totally positive where to place these dlls / inf and help files.

Could u advise me where i drop these into ?.

Do i hurl them all into the system folder and prey for the best! <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>.
Plz excuse me as im not quite sure about this method of installing the drivers.

On Windows Me it is:

1) right-click on desktop
2) pick andquot;propertiesandquot;
3) select andquot;settingsandquot; tab
4) click andquot;advancedandquot;
5) select andquot;adapterandquot;
6) click andquot;changeandquot;

Then follow the instructions from there.

Or you could try right-clicking on the file andquot;NVAMLandquot; and selecting andquot;Installandquot;. Can’t say whether it will do it properly or not.

If you can’t get this to work you could try the NVIDIA drivers. They have an install program that does it all for you.

Richard

Oh, other two things:
first, I have DirectX 8.0a too
second, I’ve uninstalled the 4.22 with the option andquot;Kill all the damned filesandquot; <!– s;) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!– s;) –> so isn’t installed from scratch but near…

bye.

My latest machine has a tntm64 until i get money up for a geforce 3.

I have a fast enough line to download it and try for you.

Is there anything i should try to do whilst testing the beta.?

ok here is what i did.

I downloaded the beta.

uninstalled 4.2.3

said yes to remove all componenets.

restarted

installed beta 4.2.4

restarted

So then i opened 3DC and tried to place a cube into the scene and as soon as i did it crashed 4 times in 4 attempts everytime after this a black screen would only fill the 3d display areas and a restart was required.

Win 98 se
Dir x 8.0a

PIII 933 asus MB
512 meg of ram
tntm64 daytona 32 meg.

What else do I need to make 3DC more stable again Richard, did i remove something by saying yes that i should not have.?

Im going to restart again and see if its corrected.

I hope this information helps, sorry it wasnt good news on my system.

here is the illegal operation if this helps

3DC caused an invalid page fault in
module [unknown] at 0000:ecc9e802.
Registers:
EAX=00ed1f00 CS=0167 EIP=ecc9e802 EFLGS=00010287
EBX=00d5d520 SS=016f ESP=00d5b964 EBP=00000000
ECX=00d5ba80 DS=016f ESI=ecc83d00 FS=0ebf
EDX=00d5d520 ES=016f EDI=00000210 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
0f 12 00 0f 12 0b 0f c6 c0 44 0f 16 09 0f 5c c8
Stack dump:
00000200 eb02d040 ecc83d00 3000101c b0105353 00000420 00d5ba80 ecc83d00 00000000 11220440 03000404 b00dec7b 103e79c0 b010c1c4 ecc83d00 00000003

I dont know if you need that info but i guess it cant hurt to show you what i experienced.

rem some time passed…….

Ok having restarted twice and reinstalling my video card drivers has no effect, I cant drop any primitive to the display area without a crash.

I guess im missing something critical for 3DC to behave in this manner.

il_barbudo,

Keep me posted on your general impression. (also, you might be able to speed things up by turning off two-sided rendering).

indi,

That doesn’t sound so good. I have to ask… Do you have the most recent WHQL certified drivers from the maker of your video card?

Richard

The two sides where in the past (until 4.22 at least, this August I have reinstalled Win ME form scratch so I can’t compare with an old installation) I’ve seen freeze or crash were Boolean Operations and Paint Tool.
After many tests (1 hour circa, this time I don’t add an attach, you must believe me on my Word… <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –> ) I have seen that 3DC is more stable (I didn’t tested the version 4.23, so is possible that the 4.23 is stable as this one).
The only bad thing is the lack of speed, even with the Two Side Rendering set to off <!– s:( –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt="" title="Sad" /><!– s:( –> )
Well, tomorrow is another day… <!– s;) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!– s;) –>

bye.

Good to hear.

I have published a new version with one more bug fix:

[img:24x3etn9]http&#58;//www&#46;amabilis&#46;com/downloads/3DC424&#46;zip[/img:24x3etn9]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amabilis.com/downloads/3DC424.zip">http://www.amabilis.com/downloads/3DC424.zip</a>&lt;!– m –>

Hopefully this will be andquot;the oneandquot;. A rather rapid release after 4.23 but I didn’t think of this particular thing until 4.23 was out the door. But whether this one is andquot;the oneandquot; or not depends on whether I can be sure that NVIDIA video cards are ALL working well with it. Esp, TNT which I think is the most likely to fail.

Simon: You have a TNT don’t you?

Richard

Well, that sounds positive.

Unfortunately to achieve the improved stability I had to do some things that affected performance. It was an unfortunate necessity.

Richard

Indi,

There should be readme file with the drivers that explain how to install them. You don’t want to be moving files around manually. The installation procedure will copy/move everything it needs to.

Richard

Well, just downloaded and tested, with textures and boolean but all work fine, slow as ever andnbsp; but fine.
Seem, for the textures front, more stable and andquot;robustandquot;.

By the way my system is:
Celeron 800 with Win ME, Creative Geforce 2 MX and Nvidia Detonator 12.41

Please forgive me but I can’t resist. I must add an image andnbsp;

Richard,
Ok, I downloaded the v4.2.4beta, and got it installed.
The first thing I noticed was that it didn’t ask if I wanted to replace the Comdiag32.dll as it did in previous versions. The install was fast and went smoothly.
Next, I had been running the v4.2.3 in compatibility mode due to crashes, so I did some testing before switching out of that mode. I did multi-selction of faces, using Ctrl-Click, and Ctrl-Drag-Click to select as many faces as possible on one of my more complex models, with absolutely no problems. I performed painting of multiple faces using the paintbrush tool. In both of the above, I either selected or painted as many faces as I could possibly get to without stopping, and had no crashes or problems of any kind.
Next, I placed one of each basic primitive on the grid, merged/unmerged, boolean subtracted, and reversed each subtraction with no problems at all.
After switching out of compatibility mode, I tried several of these functions again, and still had no problems.
It seems as though, for my machine at least, that you have killed several of the bugs you were after.
Keep up the great work……..
Les

Hi all,

I am on a quest to kill bugs. I thought of a way of detecting and repairing some nasty situations that can cause crashes. So far I have found and fixed 4 of these sorts of bugs.

I also found something that may be causing lack of acceleration with NVIDIA based video cards.

And best of all I am now using the most up to date version of the software that I use to write scenes to disk (and read them back in).

A beta of the new, and hopefully improved, 3DC is here:

[img:397f3yhc]http&#58;//www&#46;amabilis&#46;com/downloads/3DC424Beta&#46;zip[/img:397f3yhc]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amabilis.com/downloads/3DC424Beta.zip">http://www.amabilis.com/downloads/3DC424Beta.zip</a>&lt;!– m –>
*** see below for updated version

It is 18.7 MBs. Pretty big.

Who should download this:

o) You don’t mind downloading 18.7 MBs and would like to try it out.
o) You are experiencing a considerable amount of crashing.
o) You have a NVIDIA based video card and are not getting accelerated 3D.
o) You have a NVIDIA ***TNT*** based video card that is accelerated and want to see if I have broken your 3D acceleration (quite possible actually)

The negative of all of this is that you may occasionally get a message pop up saying something like andquot;MeshBuilder wasn’t Nothingandquot;. If you do get this message and can repeat it, please let me know since you have found a bug that could potentially cause crashes.

Richard