Stablity problems on a PC, works on the Mac though

#1 You cannot create a distributable package for both PC and Mac on the same platform (either PC OR Mac).

You need to install TGB on each of the platforms (and the correct version of TGB for each of the platforms), and copy over your images and script files, test (as always), and then package a distributable for each of the platforms separately.

#2 Yeah but it won't work on the PC. I've tried everything and PNG images crash Game Builder on the PC. I realize it should work on the PC but it doesn't. I've tried it on two seperate machines with exactly the same crashing issue. Every time I try to load a PNG image it crashes. Very upsetting and I really have my back against the wall because I was supposed to pitch two proof of concept game levels today and I can't output the games. I also can't tell the parent company if or when I will be able to do it. Outputting Mac games gets me nowhere I need to have PC examples. Really put me in a bad position and I have a lot riding on this. The software worked perfectly on the Mac so I was shocked to find it didn't work on the PCs.

#3 Have you tried actually analyzing the images themselves?

No one else has had any issues, so my guess is your production of the png images on the Mac is not cross-platform (the images themselves).

Also, what is making you think it's the images in the first place?

#4 The images were actually made on the PC. I even tried loading them from the PC directly and not using anything from the Mac and it still crashed Game Builder. I use PNGs all the time and never had an issue. They were all processed through Photoshop so they should be fine. I'm building out a new machine tonight so I'll load Game Builder onto a fresh machine with nothing but Game Builder and the OS on it. If doesn't work then I'm not sure what I'm going to do. The only thing I can think is there's some kind of conflict with a software on both the PCs. It'd have to be Maya, Vue 5 or Modo because that's all that's on the one. Just remembered I have an install of Lightwave on it but I never use it so I forgot. I bought a little time but I have to resolve this in the next few days somehow. I may try another format but I need something that handles transparency. The odd thing is Game Builder comes with a lot of PNG images and they seem to be working. Got me.

#5 That's kind of why I doubt it's the images themselves.

Have you looked at your console.log at all?

#6 Another thought: If you are copying over your files directly from the Mac to the PC, make sure that:

1) You use the Windows executable, not the Mac one.
2) You delete all your .dso files--there is a cleandso.bat file in your top level directory.


Neither the executable nor the .dso files are cross platform, only the script and related game data.

#7 I thought the DSO problem was fixed in 1.4. Now that I think about it, I haven't tried it as I have all of my .cs files which will compile if needed (and if they do not, I clear the dso's so they do)...but I thought that the byte order was organized for cross-compatability.

#8 Good to know about the files that aren't compatible. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with the Mac. I took images that never got near a Mac and loaded them into a clean project file and everyone of them made the software crash. All I had to do was click on the image name to cause it to crash. I never got past trying to load images on the PC so there's no log file. There are for the Mac but they all worked perfectly. Still working on the new machine and I'm hoping that will resolve the issue. If it's a compatibility issue with other softwares that's still bad. Very few people can devote a machine to a single piece of software. I need to be able to at least run Maya and Vue 5 on the new machine so if it doesn't like either of those it's bad. I've got enough machines rendering already that my electric bill is getting impressive. It's one reason I like gaming, no more render farms. On the plus side I never have to turn on the heat in the winter. The machines keep it nice and toasty.

#9 I'll make a post after I try it on the new machine. Crossing my fingers and praying. Just don't know what else to do. There's a chance it's even the video cards. I have mediocre cards on those two machines since they are mostly for rendering. I have a better card on the new machine. Maya really hates the video card on the 4800 X2. Lot's of display problems with Maya. I tend to doubt it's the card though. I'd be more inclined to blame the cards if it loaded the image then crashed. Litterally i just have to click on the file to crash it.

#10 What were the PNG's created in? It is possible (and from the sounds of it) that there is a problem in how streaming is done in the platform layer. I don't know since I use Vue 5 on the Mac (not PC) and have not had a problem with images that I have exported. I have, however, usually run them though Photoshop CS2 for touch-up work. But I know that I've rendered textures for use in TGB on the Mac from Vue. That was what I was using when working with my (defunct and dead) RPG tutorials. It may be a problem with how the application exports the PNG file in expectation of how it will be read and processed. And Torque is not doing it in the same fashion.

I have a dual G5 and have not had problems with PNG files when moving between systems. My G5 is running 10.4, my Mini running the latest 10.3 incarnation (9?). I've been transferring between my Tablet PC, my Sony Vaio UX180P with it's weird-assed tiny-screen funky resolutions, and my Dell desktop without problems. Well, I've had a number of problems, but they were of my own invention, not GG or graphics file format problems. I ran into many of the version problems, but this doesn't sound like that unless you have added the zip encryption resource and the management is working in the wrong order and cannot open your PNG in an encrypted zip.

Can you replicate a precise workflow for the problem. For example, look at a problem PNG file that you know came from a certain application. Create a simple one (box with alpha channel around it). Both Vue and Maya can do this easily. Export the PNG and see if it loads. If so, then that app may be out of the question (at least for that operation. If not, then we can look deeper.

Also, are you running the latest version of the programs and their exporters? There may be a patch for munged PNG's that the platform layer in one OS doesn't mind but in the other OS runs into an EOF.

#11 I still haven't heard what it is that makes you think it's the images.

I can guarantee that if you aren't even getting a console.log file when starting up, it has nothing at all to do with the images, but a different problem.

Quote:
I'd be more inclined to blame the cards if it loaded the image then crashed. Litterally i just have to click on the file to crash it.

Click on what file?

#12 Cary:

How about posting one of the PNG files which crashes and the exact steps to recreate the problem? Then others can try it out.

This will confirm/refute the idea that it's a PNG issue and help you narrow it down a little.

#13 Sorry I was exhausted and had to crash, too many hours no sleep.

I posted the image on my site the link is at the bottom.

All the images were either rendered on Lightwave or Vue on a PC then processed in Photoshop 6.0, still haven't upgraded. The image I posted was rendered in Lightwave then assembled in Photoshop to make a tiling image for the sprite.

Step by step. Start a new project. Drag image into "images" folder. Go to Create in Game Builder. Click on the icon to add images. In the add image menu you see the image name. Click on it. Software shuts down. That's what happens every time. I'm assuming it won't for other people there must be a conflict somewhere but it's disturbing because the second machine I tried it on is fairly clean with very little software installed. Also it's only a few months old and has mostly been used to render with so it shouldn't have a lot of garbage built up.

I forgot I needed some cables for the new machine so it'll probably be noon my time before I know if the new machine will work. If it does I may dedicate that one to Torque. Just hate to tie up a fast machine for gaming.

http://newrealmpictures.com/png.html

#14 Found the problem but I don't know the solution. Had a thought so I clicked on a low res image I created. That one loaded. Well I went back and dropped the image res to half what it was on the sprite tile and that image loaded fine. The images that are crashing it are between 2 and 4 meg PNGs. The odd thing is it worked fine on the Mac. The only issue I had was when I exceeded the size allowed but that didn't crash it Game Builder just warned me that the pixel size was too big. I did some reading and it allows alphas to be used on 24 bit images so the only thing I can think to do is do JPGs with an alpha. The convention it gave was to use "name.alpha.XXX" and it'd load the alpha automatically. Wish I could figure out why it worked on the Mac but not the PC.?Seems to be a memory issue but the images just aren't that big. KInd of a pain if I have to go back to alphas. I'll have to rerender everything then rebuild the Sprites and it means twice the work because the sprites will need an alpha tile as well and they are already a hassle to make. Are there any other 32 bit image formats it'll handle? I can't seem to find a list of file formats I just found references to JPGs and working with alphas.

#15 Well the name.alpha.XXX didn't work. It just said to use that naming convention and keep both images in the same folder. Got to be some way to get the PNGs to work since they work on the Mac. I actually used some on the mac that were half again larger without problems. Cutting the images down to half there size will really kill the quality. BMPs and JPGs load fine but there's no transparency. I might be able to get GIFs to work with transparency but that's pointless since it's 256 colors. The artwork is all photo quality so it'd look terrible in GIF format. Frustriating.

#16 The ultimate solution seems to be to drop all the images below 2,000 pixels. All the images at that resolution, 1920X960 for the kid animation, work fine. Just odd that even larger images worked on the Mac but the PC seems to max at 2,000 pixels. Funny because even 2048 crashes it which is the limit for image height. At least I have a solution that mostly means resizing images. Just glad I don't have to cut them in half. That would have hurt. Most of the images we're talking a 5% reduction to get them to work. The kid was the worst and I had to drop it to 75% of it's size. I could probably keep the resolution but it'd mean redoing the sprite. Not worth it for a proof of concept game. Just have to keep it in mind for the future.

#17 Glad that you found at least a workaround, but a small warning:

Those images are way to big for any normal game market. From download size, to thrashing video memory on most video cards, to simply the time it will take to load the images from disk when the game is started, in my personal and professional opinion you should look very strongly at your art production pipeline and find a workflow that will reduce the image size and still provide a quality visual appeal.

For reference, think about streaming video and the quality that you can get today, and then compare your image sizes:

For a 10 second video, at 24 frames per second, that's 240 full frames. If one frame was 4 meg in size, you would be looking at almost 1 gig for 10 seconds of video.

Obviously, video streaming doesn't use frames of that size, and yet they still provide quite high quality visuals!

#18 I was trying to get the images long enough that the the fact it was looping it wasn't so obvious. Not rediculously so just hopefully twice as wide as the frame. Except for the background the images only covered a 1/4 of the frame and were acting as ground rolls. They all worked fine and played really well on the Mac but I ran into problems on the PC. I guess coming out of the CG world a 2 meg texture on an uncompressed format just doesn't seem that large. The quality on streaming video is extremely bad so I hate to use that as a watermark. I've done some really pretty stuff on the Mac like I said it only choked when I switched to the PC. I 'm really not going crazy with the image size and it sounds worse than it is. I went to a lot of frames on the one sprite because I was trying to test what was possible quality wise. I'm sure I can probably prune half the frames and still get a decent animation. Where it really hurts is the scrolling elements. After a lot of experimenting I found the images had to be square so an image 2K wide had to be that wide. In PNG fortunately it ignores the transparency so it wasn't a true 2K image. I wound up on the PC having to go 1024X1024. Kind of frustriating because if you watch the background elements it gets obvious fast it's looping. I want to see if I can work out the problems with getting alphas to work. I can drop the file size down to nearly a 1/4 of what it is and that's including the alpha. My first test was a bust so I'll have to do some more digging. I can unserstand slow playback but it's hard to believe trying to load a 2 meg image would crash the software. The joke is it works fine with any other format that it accepts it's just the PNGs where I run onto the problem. Sadly it's the only format it'll accept that includes transparency