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T3D 1.2 Cached DTS cleanup causes debug to lock up for extended periods

by Sean Rice · in Torque 3D Professional · 11/18/2011 (11:49 am) · 6 replies

Build: Torque 3D 1.2
Platform: Windows 7 X64
Target: Debug Mode
Issues: When launching the game in debug mode after cleaning the cached DTS files, the engine locks up and dumps errors to the log file.
Steps to Repeat:
1. Install the engine code.
2. Run DeleteCachedDTSs.bat and remove all cached DTS files.
3. Compile a debug build of the engine.
4. Launch the debug build engine.


pastebin.com/tvizRgit
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Associate Scott Burns
GG Alumni
#1
11/18/2011 (12:27 pm)
Curious, there's really no reason regenerating cached.dts's should result in a crash. I'll see if I can reproduce it. Which template did you use?

Torque Owner Sean Rice
HNGamers
#2
11/18/2011 (12:30 pm)
My apologies, I missed that, I had done this in the Full since that is what our kit is built off of. I will attempt to do so in the other ones to see if it has the same issues.

Torque Owner Sean Rice
HNGamers
#3
11/18/2011 (12:39 pm)
@Scott - it is less then a crash it seems and more of an extended lock up period as it attempts to regenerate the cached DTS files. Launched at 3:30 and generated first cached.dts file. It then was locked up for 6 minutes as it finished generating the cached files and once it was done it loaded the level. Since my patience ran out at the 30 second mark of the screen being locked up I assumed it was a crash. The screen is frozen the whole time and does not show a progress bar, with the cursor going to an hour glass.

Associate Scott Burns
GG Alumni
#4
11/18/2011 (12:50 pm)
Ah, ok, now it makes sense. 1.1 can do that as well. If you completely regenerate the cached.dts' it can take a while, mostly due to the Soldier's animations. What sucks is that now Win 7 and Vista try to "help" now and will flip the window into a Not Responding state during that. It can fool people and make them think the game crashed, and then if you start clicking around in the or Windows will end up making it crash out. Fooled me and my team last time as well when we first encountered it.

So now in 1.2 we added even more animations and made the animation system a bit more complex (but a bit simpler at the same time) so you can hit even longer load times when you're fully regenerating all your cached.dts'.

Torque Owner Sean Rice
HNGamers
#5
11/18/2011 (12:59 pm)
That's exactly what I am seeing it seems. In release the rebuild only takes 30-45 seconds for the files present in the Full; however, in debug it takes an extended time (6 minutes with these same files). Any possibility to get a screen of some form that makes it more explanatory for the end user(future releases)? Now that I know this is the case, I can tell my guys and we will just work around that time frame. I can see this causing an issue for end users running a release for the first time. Especially if there are hundreds of models to build out. Releasing them with the cached DTS would artificially increase the release size.

Associate Scott Burns
GG Alumni
#6
11/18/2011 (1:15 pm)
We might be able to make that a bit more friendly in the future. However, it would just be something would impact you and your team as a developer. When you package up for release you'll want to regenerate them and then remove the .DAE's. The end user then won't have the long load times and they won't be able to get into your source art.