Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Fun with vid_restart

I mentioned a while back that I had a bug with the vid_restart command when issued from a disconnected (fullscreen) console. I've been doing a small bit of work on trying to track down and fix it, but have not had much progress.

Because I don't want to hold things up too much while trying to track down a stubborn bug that only happens in certain circumstances, I've decided to prevent the situation that causes it from occurring instead. So for the next release, if you try to issue a vid_restart command from a disconnected console you'll receive a message telling you that it won't work and that you should do it while running a map instead.

I know it's evil, but the alternative is to either spend time (and I don't know how much time) trying to trace it, or release with a bug that could trap people.

It is something that I intend fixing at some time, and the video code is continually getting a working over, so there's a chance that a fix could fall out of something else.

1 comments:

Coranth said...

Chances are this vid_restart "bug" experienced by some people is due to those people:

1. Not updating their Graphics Card Drivers.

and

2. Not keeping DirectX up to date. (Such a pity that we can't get DirectX 10/11 running on Windows XP... stupid Microsoft!)

In regards to fixing it, can't you start DirectQ with a tracer or debugger program running in the background, and then attempt to reproduce the bug, such that the tracer will pick it up, and highlight the erroneous code line that's causing it?

That would be so easy...