Boom problems

How do I find out the cause of a crash in the boom engine? I have loaded dosbox and ran DTWID using freedoom and my custom wad setup. When I get to E1M3, the game crashes, gives a "segmentation fault" error, then for good measure dosbox crashes as well.

How do I find out why it is crashing?

If you want my exact configuration, let me know.

Boom is pretty fickle. When I was working on 5 Rooms of Doom, I found that Boom would crash because of anything from missing textures to (possibly) having a map compiled with a nodebuilder that Boom couldn't handle.

I don't know what source port DTWID was designed for, or if it's even vanilla, but maybe E1M3 was built using some fancy Zdoom nodebuilder? You say you're using a custom wad along with FreeDoom and DTWID -- any possibility some internal assets aren't being loaded properly?

my guess is my custom .deh

here is my boom folder: (link removed as it is now useless and out of date, not to mention dead)

...and here is my dosbox config, thought I doubt it has anything to do with the problem: http://pastebin.com/jQBEFxK4

No, I won't accept "Use a different port" or "stop being a baby and get rid of your censorship wads" as answers. Though I also use odamex and prboom-plus, boom on dosbox is nice for recording multiplayer demos that are consistent and usable on different platforms (odamex demos can only be run on odamex, possibly only specific versions; prboom-plus's multiplayer is a nightmare, both connection wise and in setting it up)

Sorry man, I can't help, but what I can suggest is to change your first link, as it contains both doom and doom2 IWADs, which may cause you some problem around here.

Anyway, I hope your problem is solved.

Good day.

Assuming that you mean it is crashing the moment you reach E1M3, I can confirm with boom in dosbox that using dtwid.wad, .deh and ultimate doom iwad that it seems to be functioning correctly. The dtwid deh only changes level titles on the automap so there's not much going on there.

I would start by replacing the freedoom iwad with the doom iwad. If it still crashes I would suspect your deh.

Zed said:

but what I can suggest is to change your first link, as it contains both doom and doom2 IWADs, which may cause you some problem around here.

'doom.wad' and 'doom2.wad' from that zip appear to actually be FreeDOOM iwads, so I don't think there's an issue there.


Edit:

I just tested those steps with your boom directory. The crash is because of your clean-fd.deh.

I don't know why it is crashing or how to find out what specifically in the deh is doing it, but without that deh it does not seem to crash.

Yes, doom.wad and doom2.wad are freedoom iwads, and yes, the problem is in clean-fd.deh. I wish I could find out what the problem is though.

What version of Freedoom?

git commit 4c9c8649dd4f1d5c203d016c56ac7811137b663d (as of this writing, the most recent), though I doubt using an older version will make a difference. In addition, the deh works fine in prboom and odamex, and probably all zdoom based ports.

Danfun64 said:

git commit 4c9c8649dd4f1d5c203d016c56ac7811137b663d (as of this writing, the most recent), though I doubt using an older version will make a difference.

It does make a difference, as there have been some recent fixes to Freedoom that relate to the DTWID WADs. Certainly if you're using a recent version it should work, though if you had been using the latest official release then you'd be likely to have problems. That's why I was asking; as you're using a recent version none of this should be an issue though.

clean-fd.deh contains a bunch of changes that aren't found in Freedoom's DEHACKED lump. What is all this stuff supposed to do?

BlueFeena said:

I don't know what source port DTWID was designed for

vanilla, of course.

fraggle said:

clean-fd.deh contains a bunch of changes that aren't found in Freedoom's DEHACKED lump. What is all this stuff supposed to do?

It turns off blood for monsters and replaces the death animation of most of them with the doom 2 fire animation. It also replaces some gory objects with sticks with fire on them. The deh does work on most (but not all) levels in the DTWID pwad, and it works with all levels on other ports, though I don't know why.

To me boom compatibility is essential for my custom deh.

And no, I am not going to get rid of it, or my related censorship wads.

There are many unprotected ptr references in the Boom code. It expects the wad to provide correct structure.

DoomLegacy has included some additional wad checks and has different DEH handling. It might provide an error message that might be useful.

Your DEH may be pointing an animation at a sprite graphic frame that does not exist in these wads. This is one of the things that will crash the Boom engine. Check this by including as a PWAD, before your other PWAD, other wads that you know have the sprite graphics. If it does not crash now, it is a missing graphic. DoomLegacy has softerrors with messages instead of an instantly fatal I_Error call for these situations.

A couple of suggestions:

I would recommend factoring out your own changes to a separate file, then run the game loading both patches:

boom -deh freedoom.bex fd-clean.deh

Keeping your changes separate will make it easier for you to update to the latest Freedoom BEX lump without needing to merge them into your file.

What Wesley says is correct: it's probably something in your changes causing an overrun of some kind or other. Maybe it's only a single line that's the problem. You might try bisecting the problem: comment out half of your changes and see if the game runs. Depending on whether it runs or crashes, you will then know which lines contain the problem. Repeat this until you isolate the problem line.

I isolated freedoom dehacked info with my stuff like you said. I found the problem, it was the MBF dog thing. I don't know why it only reacts to certain levels but...problem solved. Thanks!

You can close this thread now...