Hi everyone, I'm having serious issues with decals in the latest public preview build of GG. Not only do they freeze/crash Game Guru but they even have the ability to disable my display drivers crashing other 3d rendering software.

I have not seen an acknowledgement of this issue by TGC yet. I know I'm not the only one experiencing it. Perhaps I've overlooked it somewhere. I have reported this issue a long time ago.

Problem: Shader decal_animate4.fx.

Reverting to older GG version for now.

Hmn, hat's an interesting one, and to be honest points more to an issue on your end than an issue with GameGuru, as far as i know (and i may be wrong) the decal in of itself can't crash a PC or its drivers, it's just a model and a set of textures, what would be more likely to be crashing the system/drivers would be the software that is trying to read it and render it, if you are experiencing driver crashes with these decals using other 3D software, then it sounds like the issue isn't isolated to just GameGuru, which points more towards you having a driver or dll issue on your machine.

It's the GG shader - doesn't happen for everyone it seems (though definitely to me).

Reported in the beta board and a temporary fix posted there - it's not official fix and can't be as I just removed the depth aspects that seemed to be causing the total graphics lockup when GG animates the decal. I left it there hopefully as a clue for Lee over the issue.

Cheers.

This only happens with the DX11 public preview and 4 others experiencing exact same issues. I have reverted and am not experiencing these issues. Its directly related to the 2 shaders.



Only crashes if running in Game Guru, but crashes all over software that may be currently running that has 3D rendering.

Only occurs with Game Guru if the decals are present that use these 2 shaders within the editor and test play. It also temporary jitters the display drivers causing havoc and sometimes complete computer freeze. Unable to end tasks requiring a hard reboot.



Of which doesnt work for me for me unfortunately.

Ah ok, that wasn't clear in your first post, it read as if you were loading them into 3DCoat and they were making it crash, hence why i deduced that it might no be GameGuru that is the issue.

There have already been numerous posts on this.
The preview is simply not a finished version ... Once Lee returns I'm sure he will get to it and many of the other reports
Its probably going to be fixed in the Beta long before the next public version ...

This is a strange one, they do work but they cannot be placed in the public preview version.
Placing a decal indeed crashes the graphics driver, however opening a map on which a decal is already present is no problem.
I had a flame decal and a fire decal (stock items placed on the map with the 5-12 version) on the testmap which did work without problems.
So this can't be the shader which causes the problem.

If the shader issues is not fixed in future versions, I will not be able to use future versions. So hopefully this is addressed in the next public non-beta release.



Have you tried clicking "Edit" on them? I had one map open them fine within the editor but once I clicked edit on the widget everything went chaotic and it closed my map.



Sorry about that... I was very frustrated when I first posted.

I've removed the animations from all my decals that used the problematic ones, from the store. Don't want to get my inbox full of people saying my animated arrow heads of crashed their computer again.

I have a feeling that if i do that it will result in a crash.

I'm using Preview ( Beta ) 13-12-17 and non of the decals load in at the moment ...
It doesn't crash either .. they just no longer show up at all in the editor so it seems Lee has disabled it at the moment ...

Soon we will have a beta update where Lee has fixed it and they will load in anims and all ..
Why get frustrated and edit your decals ... It makes no sense to me .. Just roll back for the moment ?

Well that explains why my game started to crash! As soon as I put down a few of the stock (level) decals. Crash after crash. After deleting them no more crashing. Why now? I previously had the stock smoke decals running on the same map. Every thing was running fine. Hmm Maybe? Because they are running a different Lua script? I spend most of the time looking for fixes, than I do actually working on my game! I hear you Teabone! I get sick and tired of all these bugs. We need this stuff fixed. The Dx11 does look pretty good. It is a lot faster. I'm going to stay using the preview. I actually have way more problems with the other versions.

I have seen this with the mega pack 3 screen decals. But not all decals do this for me.

I've had a large amount of decals physically cause my computer to reboot, no joke.
If I open one up it locks up gameguru for about 8 seconds then bloop, pc restarts. I have the latest and greatest Nvidia drivers for my gtx 960. I gave up on them because aside from their usual performance hit it was too much to risk losing all my work consistently over an animated picture.

Something's definitely fubar.

Mod hat off !!

ITS A BETA PREVIEW !!
Seriously I'm beginning to think these previews are doing more harm than good ... Lee released it for Feedback ..
IE ... Report any issues .... Not throw dummies and complain about bugs that are not actually there ..
Its still being worked on ... If you having serious issues ... Don't Use It !!

I had the same decal problems with the decal_animate4x.fx file that comes with the public preview beta.
I took a look at the code for the decal_animate4x.fx file and compared it to the same file from a previous beta. This comparison showed the public preview file contains a section of code that was not in the previous fx file.
I made a copy of the public preview so i didn't lose the original then removed the section of code from the original that does not match previous fx file.
All of my decal problems went away.

Note of caution: I don't pretend to know what I'm doing but it seems to work. I have been able to continue to work on my current map without the crash problems created by the subject file
EDIT:
I am not identifying the subject code because all I have proven is that the decal problem is with the new animated fx file. Wait for a fix from Lee!

It was the people that purchased my arrowhead decals from the store that first reported the problems. So there are Steam users using the public preview receiving the exact same problems I am. I've had to completely remove the animation components from my decals off the store.



The only edits that prevent the crashing for me has been completely removing the animation components from them within the shader. Which renders the declas useless from what they were intended to be used for within the store. In the event that a customer runs them in the public beta preview. Which has unfortunately happened and has affected some machines. I did have a disclaimer running on those products for a while, but they were overlooked.

I get it was a preview, so I sort of look at this type of complaining as bug reporting

All I'm trying to say is ... we only need to test and give feedback ... We know its broken as its only a beta

Lee Wants things like .. For Example ...
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Cant load my old maps getting error ( Runtime 0000 )
Decals locking up my machine and not showing in editor .. However some maps load in fine with existing Decals until you click on them ?
AI improved on zombies but still need more work I think ...
Levels load a lot faster ... will try multi level next ...
Have noticed longer loading times when forceloadtestgameshaders=0 is enabled to 1 ( anyone else noticed this ) Perhaps its normal
PBR Looks Amazing ...
Reverting back to Public release as its just to unstable for me at the moment ... will wait for next update ... Hopefully the Decal issue will be sorted asap as its causing me to crash constantly .... I can then continue testing
Hope this info so far helps ..

Then roll back and continue with your maps until the next updates announced ... Or keep testing but don't give yourselves heart attacks over it ..
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Is that really that hard instead of comments like ..

That's just not going down to well I'm afraid ..

I think its a problem when general public on steam is using the public preview and they are purchasing content from the store that crashes their computers. That is the initial bug report i sent out. No build should be publicly released that could cause harm to one's computer. That should never happen. Despite being beta or test version anything public should not negatively affect someones rig without a proper disclaimer of the known possibilities.

The preview is a choice not automatic install or a requirement.


It doesn't .. if you think it does why keep using it ?
Its also easily preventable just don't touch decals until Lee confirms the fix ..
Locking up if you add a decal isnt a computer killer so lets not exaggerate with disclaimers.. IE11 does that for me once a week at least but if you really want something to go on then here is Lees Notice


" No guarantee full legacy compatibility has been maintained " can include the Decals or anything in the Public Retail release.
Have you considered the possibility Lee is working on Particals / Decals as requested with the DX11 update and has had to disable them for now .. Or he simply hasn't implemented them yet ... so many reasons they may not be working deliberately at the moment.

Teabone your a great asset to this community and usually your posts are well constructed but I don't understand why your so particular about decals in a beta preview and need it fixed right now when you can continue using the preview like everyone else without the need to touch them or just roll back until they are implemented correctly ..

I completely understand what you are going through Teabone, it's frustrating when you just can't do what you want to do because of bugs, but I also agree with syncromesh to a certain extent. Lee needs feedback and bug reports, it's an important part of the process, but being one man he needs clear and concise reports, without ranting and emotion to make it easier for him to sort through them.

Take my misunderstanding earlier for example, that's a perfect example, the way it was worded made me think you were saying that if you loaded the decals into 3dcoat it crashed that too, if Lee had misunderstood it that way too he could have spent hours or days trying to track down the issue from the wrong angle, and likewise I see other people complaining, with long eloquent rants, and almost no description of the actual problem, Lee would spend hours reading through those kinds of posts with no more information gleaned, wasting those hours of time.

What he needs and what we all need to do, is to post clear, concise reports, with step by step explanations, and as much relevant detail as possible, and avoid including personal opinions and emotional tirades. That's the only way he will be able to understand where the issues lie, and be able to start fixing them quickly and efficiently.

@synchromesh OK, but are you sure it's a quiet situation?

I'm talking to Lee by email, and he said "The public preview is the latest good version. The beta can be unstable and only for users who don't mind things breaking a lot".
So he's saying that Public Preview is the best available.
And he doesn't seem to be aware of these kind of crashes, especially when I said that Test Mode freezes and crashes many times when I'm simply editing Settings during the test.

The most stable beta for public preview maybe ... The beta we have has been updated since so yes it could be worse than the version your using . But the Preview you have is the Beta we had before that .


I agree with Belidos 100% ... but In the retail release situation .. I will back your complaints till my last breath .... But not an unfinished beta preview test version with still so much to be added .. That would be just ludicrous which is why I'm struggling with this ... I stopped testing decals once reported and went on to AI as you can see in my thread ... Otherwise its a whole test period wasted ..
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219140#msg2592852 ..

Well its in bug reports now ( not my doing )
But its not the retail version and they work fine in that so I can only see it being dealt with as Lee continues with the official beta updates

I brought up this major issue in the beta closed stages very early on, months ago. I was in complete shock to find the public release with these issues still there. The causes were also detailed by others thankfully to help isolate the issue. A part from myself there are many decals in the store that are affected. So its very possible more people over on Steam are going to experience the same crashes of their computer if they decide to op in. Hopefully they understand the risks. Or hopefully GG releases an update quite soon to at the very least turn those problematic shaders into dud files till they are fixed.

I'm still curious why a simple shader script would cause a whole computer to crash? Find that to be a bit silly. But I also don't understand the technology. Wondering why the videocard can't handle it, when running under DX11?