Author Topic: Error running function 'room_Load' - null ptr ref  (Read 4407 times)

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yurik

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Error running function 'room_Load' - null ptr ref
« on: July 11, 2014, 12:54:03 AM »
First game screen, just started, exhausted Udo conv, looked around, walked to the right screen. Got AGS error. ACI 3.3.0.1160. Windows 8.1 x64.

BTW, I'm surprised you don't have "submit error to devs"... would have been so much easier than doing a forum post.

Thanks for a good (I hope) game! :)


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Solution found:  Running game as Admin.... To say that I'm a bit shocked is to say nothing... what year is it to require admin rights? We are not writing a virus here... Brings back memories of pushing things up to himem.sys to run Sierra games...  Please fix :)

nidoking

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Re: Error running function 'room_Load' - null ptr ref
« Reply #1 on: July 13, 2014, 11:28:10 AM »
Windows 8.1

Microsoft doesn't want people USING their operating systems - just buying them, installing them, yelling at the devs when they learn all the things they can't do anymore, and throwing them away and buying iPads or something.

Just to be clear: Not trying to be flippant or speak for the programmers about what might possibly be an actual issue, although I'm hearing a lot that running from Program Files requires admin privilege and installing it in another directory might fix it... but Microsoft really haven't been very user-friendly lately, have they?

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Re: Error running function 'room_Load' - null ptr ref
« Reply #2 on: July 13, 2014, 12:21:11 PM »
In all fairness, it is a damned if they do, damned if they don't thing. There are very legitimate reasons to lock down the OS. Leaving it wide open is just asking for problems. Encouraging users to have regular user accounts and protecting system files and folders from being tampered with puts limitations on what malware or bad programming can do. All modern OSs protect these as well. It is up to all developers to keep current with modern best practices.

In this case, the fix, not just the workaround, is fairly simple and should be addressed with the next version/patch. The other point is that for something as complex as this game (and these kind of games have always been and always will be more complex than the average adventure game) it can be extremely hard to catch all of the bugs at first go. Think of how buggy the QfG games were. This particular bug would have absolutely been caught if some of the beta testers had been running Windows with defaults, i.e. regular user with UAC on.

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Re: Error running function 'room_Load' - null ptr ref
« Reply #3 on: July 13, 2014, 07:22:23 PM »
I run the game on Windows 8.1 and have tested it extensively on this OS, as well as my Windows 7 computer and my old XP laptop, and I'd never run into that null-pointer problem. So to say that it would have "absolutely" caught if someone had been running Windows with defaults isn't correct as my 8.1 machine is basically out-of-the-box factory settings.


EDIT: Sorry if that sounded harsh, it's early in the morning and I don't do mornings well! I really just wanted to say that we did test the game on various systems, including Windows 8.1 and other versions, and never encountered this issue (including 100+ reviewers and sites who had access to it.) That's the thing about beta testing though, no matter how much you do there's always something missed!
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Re: Error running function 'room_Load' - null ptr ref
« Reply #4 on: July 13, 2014, 10:28:32 PM »
No insult was meant. Of course there will be missed bugs, especially with something as complex as with this kind of game. I was not trying to accusatory of your code or beta testing process. On the contrary, I am impressed with what you have accomplished. Also, I have done a lot of debugging and know how elusive some errors can be. It was just the observation that I would have expected it to be revealed with someone running it on a non-admin account with UAC on. It is far from the first time that the redirect to the VirtualStore failed in its intent. A lot of Windows users seem to use admin accounts, often with UAC turned off. I have butted my head up against this one many times.

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Re: Error running function 'room_Load' - null ptr ref
« Reply #5 on: July 14, 2014, 04:37:19 AM »
No insult taken mate! I realised later my initial post seemed a little harsh. It's just one of those pain in the ass things that actually really annoys me because it's like "why wasn't this noticed before?" I actually came across the solution to this one on Dave Gilbert's forums because someone else had that problem with one of the Blackwell games, so I have him to thank for doing the hard yards in tracking down the issue!
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