Tannenberg freeze bug

[Franciscus]

After the tutorials (BTW, got a CTD in the end of the 2nd), I tried the Tannenberg scenario as German, WEGO.
I planned an interception with VIII army, and after I hit End turn, the Russian army advances and I get the intercept window to choose. I chose half forces and the game just froze. Nothing more happens, although I was able to select all forces (minimum, half, full). No interface button works.

See attached pic

I am playing gold upgrade kit, in a PC WinXP SP2, 4GRam, ATI 5750

[Frode Larsen]

Got the same kind of freeze during army interception as well. One of the Austrian armies in Galicia intercepting the Russians. I'm playing the full two player campaign as the Central Powers.

Using WWI Gold, by the way. (Not the upgrade kit.)

[Franciscus]

Yes, it must be something wrong with interception.

[Frode Larsen]

Interceptions did work for me when I tried the Tannenberg scenario though, so the freezes does not happen all the time. I guess one just have to make sure to save before hitting the end turn button in the Military Phase.

[calvinus]

Just an important question, as I do not succeed to reproduce the freeze: does it happen if you run the scenario just after having launched the game executable? Or does it happen only when you play the scenario as a second game?

Edit: other question... all of you are you playing the Gold Upgrade Kit?

[Frode Larsen]

The one time it happened to me, in the full war scenario, it was the first scenario (a save game) I opened.

I am using the full WWI Gold game (not the upgrade kit), purchased over at Matrix Games.

[Franciscus]

Gold upgrade kit

Strangely , now I am not able to reproduce the bug, either launching the scenario right at the beginning or in a second try. Will try again later.

Regards.

[LarryP]

After the tutorials (BTW, got a CTD in the end of the 2nd), I tried the Tannenberg scenario as German, WEGO.
I planned an interception with VIII army, and after I hit End turn, the Russian army advances and I get the intercept window to choose. I chose half forces and the game just froze. Nothing more happens, although I was able to select all forces (minimum, half, full). No interface button works.

See attached pic

I am playing gold upgrade kit, in a PC WinXP SP2, 4GRam, ATI 5750

I posted this same identical freeze (except for the tutorials part) over in the Matrix forum. I thought it was just me...

I haven't been able to reproduce it though.

[calvinus]

I tried several times, even playing several scenarios in the same game executable session, no freeze

I play logged in as PC Administrator. The UAC is off.

[LarryP]

I've been trying to reproduce this all day long and can't. I have tried with XP and Vista. It happened just once so far. That's good I suppose, but it's always nice to NOT have an elusive bug too.

[calvinus]

I'm trying too. I believe it's a freeze caused by the operating system, which puts the game in stand-by for some absurd security reasons.

In fact, if I install without UAC, and play it always without UAC, absolutely no freeze. For XP users, I think you should be logged in with Administrator priviledges.

Then I try to run the game with UAC, yet no freeze.

Now I tried to install the game with UAC (after having it uninstalled): impossible!!!!
Windows prevents me even to launch the Setup.exe!!! After 25 minutes I get a popup window that asks me the permission: I say yes, nope! And again and again the popup...

So my advice is: forget, kill and bury the UAC filter!

[Tamas]

I'm trying too. I believe it's a freeze caused by the
So my advice is: forget, kill and bury the UAC filter!

For that, here is a handy link, I recommend method #4 http://www.petri.co.il/disable_uac_in_windows_vista.htm

[Franciscus]

It's not due to UAC. I got the interception freeze in XP (see my first post), and I am administrator.

[Jorrig]

It is a weird thing, I can tell you. I had the same error like you, but then suddenly it worked. I had a different freeze, ran the game as Administrator (really log in as "Administrator" in XP, not just with admin rights), no freeze anymore. Ran the same savegame afterwards with my normal user - no freeze anymore. If this is really some bug in the game, it will be hard to trace!

[Franciscus]

My guess (for what it's worth) is that it has something to do either with the interface (notice in my pic how I was able to choose simultaneously all the interception options - minimum, half, full forces - I was able to roam the map, but the ok -or the cancel - button in the interception window did not do anything, and neither did the other interface buttons) or with some AI loop. The game was not exactly frozen - in ctrl-alt-del it showed as "running", not as "not responding" - just nothing happened.

[Jorrig]

Yes, I observed the same, I had the same phenomenon like you. The game is not running and occupying system resources in the background, it just doesn't move on. But that's why I say it's hard for Calvinus to trace as it is probably not reproduceable in his environment. Let's hope he gets some illumination and can tell us why this happens.

[calvinus]

On my desktop (Win Vista, development environment) it's almost impossible to reproduce. I'll try on the laptop (WinXP SP3) as soon as possible.

[calvinus]

No way to reproduce the freeze also on the WinXP SP3 laptop, where I remember there was something similar but rarely happening. I don't belive it's a related matter, but I have no such behaviours since I successfully removed Windows Genuine Advantage from the PC...

[calvinus]

My guess (for what it's worth) is that it has something to do either with the interface (notice in my pic how I was able to choose simultaneously all the interception options - minimum, half, full forces - I was able to roam the map, but the ok -or the cancel - button in the interception window did not do anything, and neither did the other interface buttons) or with some AI loop. The game was not exactly frozen - in ctrl-alt-del it showed as "running", not as "not responding" - just nothing happened.

I hope it's so, because in such a case it could be easy to fix. But the game application is multi-threaded, so it can be you see the main thread running fine in the task manager, while an inner thread (that one managing the interception) is locked... this is why I'm really puzzled, also because it happens on your PCs in some not apparently-not-regularly-reproducible circumstances!

[Nerumir]

I have met same kind of freeze with interception (serbia + full campaign scenario).
Playing Germany I have got a freeze by intercepting French 3rd army.

You will find savegame attached (I am runnning game with XP SP3)

Thanks and beside this gold version is nice

[LarryP]

My guess (for what it's worth) is that it has something to do either with the interface (notice in my pic how I was able to choose simultaneously all the interception options - minimum, half, full forces - I was able to roam the map, but the ok -or the cancel - button in the interception window did not do anything, and neither did the other interface buttons) or with some AI loop. The game was not exactly frozen - in ctrl-alt-del it showed as "running", not as "not responding" - just nothing happened.

Same here exactly.

[Frode Larsen]

My guess (for what it's worth) is that it has something to do either with the interface (notice in my pic how I was able to choose simultaneously all the interception options - minimum, half, full forces - I was able to roam the map, but the ok -or the cancel - button in the interception window did not do anything, and neither did the other interface buttons) or with some AI loop. The game was not exactly frozen - in ctrl-alt-del it showed as "running", not as "not responding" - just nothing happened.

Same here exactly.

Same here as well. I am also using Win XP, SP3. I only had this freeze happen once, so it is not a game breaker for me.

[Franciscus]

I think I found a way to reproduce the freeze, as I managed to have it 2 times in a row. Both times as first scenario, Tannenberg. The key seems to let the clock run and click OK in the interception window only when a few seconds (eg, 5 seconds) are left to make a choice. Both times I also clicked minimum, then full, and then finally half forces (which was my default) before clicking OK.

Regards

[LarryP]

I tried suggestions from above and it would not freeze. However, the last three times I went to play Tannenberg, it froze twice! The first time I waited until 10 seconds and clicked the check mark. The second time I clicked at twenty seconds. Quite a bit different.

Both times I had gone into the upper left flag and read the first four pages of information. The fourth page has no info but I went to the fourth page anyways. I don't know if that is a trigger or not.

So shoot, now I get freezes during interceptions more than I want now.

[calvinus]

Well, even if "blind", I'm doing some brain storming to find a solution.
An important question: does the freeze occurs always after you click the yes/no intercept button???

[Franciscus]

Well, even if "blind", I'm doing some brain storming to find a solution.
An important question: does the freeze occurs always after you click the yes/no intercept button???

When it occurs it does after I click the ok button in the intercept window (the one with the counting seconds).

Regards

[LarryP]

Well, even if "blind", I'm doing some brain storming to find a solution.
An important question: does the freeze occurs always after you click the yes/no intercept button???

Yes. Only after I click the check mark box or OK. Until then the timer is counting down and everything is fine.

[calvinus]

Ok, thanks.

I'm studying a solution.

In the meanwhile, you can do the following test:

1) Open the WW1.ini file (game dir) using a text editor (a double-click should be enough)

2) Change the following parameter from

SecureConfirmInterception=1

to

SecureConfirmInterception=0

Tell me if you still have freeze on interceptions.

Thanks,
Calvinus.

[Franciscus]

Limited testing (3 attempts in a row, Tannenberg) after your proposed changes: No freezes

Althogh a small map graphical glitch occurs during the movement pre-interception (see attached pic - related ??)

But things are improving, I think !

Thanks

[calvinus]

On my side I'm developing new security check in order to avoid such freezed.

The graphic glitch occurs because the map engine thread is loading the map bitmaps in background and it's locked in that particular moment in order to avoid crashes caused by RAM access concurrency. So it's better to have this glitch rather than a crash!