Rocks'n'Diamonds

Hi,
RnD crash on Win98 loading PUSHBLOCK_BURNT.PCX.
I look in the stderr.txt:
Fatal signal: Segmentation fault (SDL parachute deployed)
I have DirectX 8.1 installed.

Very interesting.... I noticed when loading snakebite that it scans and displays all PCX's fast, but it always pauses on the image "PUSHBLOCK_BURNT.PCX"

I was even going to rename this image to some kind of silly message like "Hi mum!" because it was the only filename you could read whilst they all loaded.

But I haven't a clue why it's crashing.....maybe you are running out of memory?

> RnD crash on Win98 loading PUSHBLOCK_BURNT.PCX.

Very strange. I've just tested Snake Bite under Windows 98, and it runs without problems. :-o

> I look in the stderr.txt:
> Fatal signal: Segmentation fault (SDL parachute deployed)

This looks like a problem with the SDL library loading PCX files on your system. No idea what might cause this. :-(

> I have DirectX 8.1 installed.

Shouldn't have a great impact here, as there shouldn't be any DirectX functions needed for loading a PCX file. (On my Windows 98 test system, I have DirectX 6.1 installed, which is probably which came with Windows 98 itself...)

> Very interesting.... I noticed when loading snakebite that it scans and
> displays all PCX's fast, but it always pauses on the image
> "PUSHBLOCK_BURNT.PCX"

I can confirm this -- it waits for quite a noticeable time at this PCX. :-o

Guest, could you try to load and save that PCX file with a graphics program capable of reading/writing PCX files? Maybe there's a problem with that PCX file? If the file gets newly created by a different program, this might help to work around that problem. In any case, I would be interested if this helped in your case. (The PCX loading code in the SDL library seems to be a bit buggy; I already submitted a patch to it for another problem that could crash the SDL PCX loader for certain PCX files... :-/ )

> But I haven't a clue why it's crashing.....maybe you are running out of
> memory?

Hmm, I don't think that this is the case here. I have the suspicion that the same thing that causes the SDL PCX loader to need significantly more time to load that PCX file is also the reason for crashing it in the reported case.

Alan, could you check if there's anything different with that PCX file, when compared to the other PCX files? I will also do some checks with it...

I just made two copys of it, then edited and saved one of them, did a file compare and they both have the same CRC.

I then deleted the image from the SNB folder, and replaced it with totally different image but renamed to PUSHBLOCK_BURNT.PCX. And it still pauses.

Hi,
after I installed some software and clean up the harddisk,
SnakeBite don't crashed anymore. I tried about four installations with Win98 and install Win98 from scratch. But I can't reproduce the error.
Trying with less diskspace is not so easy, but I think this is maybe the reason. (no space for swapfile)
I think you can close this item.

Hi,
After I edit a PCX with SnagIt the game crashes with the described error.
Loading the image in SnagIt convert it to BMP, edit with MS-Paint and convert back with SnagIt functions perfect.
No error is produced and game dont crash.

Hi HerzAusGold, welcome to the forum!

Hummm, I always used PaintshopPro which has never been a problem (until now).

Are you saving this new image as a 24-bit PCX? The original pushblock is 8-bit, which may be the only difference.

Do you know what version of PCX it's saving to? (there's V0,V2 and V5)

Does it still pause at that image when loading R&D? It does this in WinXP btw.

And are you the "Guest" that posted the original bug?

Alan wrote:Hi HerzAusGold, welcome to the forum!

Hummm, I always used PaintshopPro which has never been a problem (until now).

IrfanView can used for simple tasks.

Are you saving this new image as a 24-bit PCX? The original pushblock is 8-bit, which may be the only difference.

Upps, it's saved as 4-bit PCX.

Do you know what version of PCX it's saving to? (there's V0,V2 and V5)

Dont know how to get this information.

Does it still pause at that image when loading R&D? It does this in WinXP btw.

yes, it still pause.

And are you the "Guest" that posted the original bug?

Yes, I am. All "Guest" items in this topic.
After changing to another topic I have to login again. Sorry I forgot.

Sorry for the new "Guest" Entry.
But my WLAN lost the connection.
At it seems that i have to login again, even though i see my name .
And sorry for wrong quoting, i am use it rarely.

I just installed Rocks'n'Diamonds but the game didn't start.
I'm using Windows 98.

Crash happened when the RocksDoor.pcx image (located in graphics/gfx_classic/) was loaded:
Fatal signal: Segmentation fault (SDL parachute deployed)

First I tried to convert it to TIFF and then back to PCX. That didn't work, even if the generated image was not identical with the old one. I used Image Alchemy v1.11 to do the conversion. The new image was 8-bit.

Then I converted the TIFF image to 24-bit PCX.
Actually, you can convert the original 8-bit PCX image to 24-bit PCX directly; it'll produce identical image to the one converted from the TIFF image.

The 24-bit image loaded just fine, and the game started!
(Well, loading of the image takes about half a second longer than usual.)


After that, I tried Snake Bite. The pushblock_burnt.pcx image didn't load. I converted the image to 24-bit, and that solved the problem too. (Loading of the image takes a bit longer also.)

I think this have to be SDL problem solely.


--- edit:
I tried Snake Bite second time after I had played origal levels. The 24-bit pushblock_burnt.pcx image didn't load this time!

Fortunately the original 8-bit image did.

So this seem to be a random crash with some input, or what?
I also tried to start the game with the original 8-bit RocksDoor.pcx image, but that didn't work.

After I tried some things, the only thing I can say is:
Dont use SnagIt (modify the color depth to 4 bit, if you convert with no filters). I use IrfanView to correct this.