Ridiculous amount of critical bugs. Randomly. Race condition?

[freibooter]

Thanks for this--this is sounding more and more like it's a video problem (at least for you).  Those characters all have short videos that are shown before they are played, so something about that must be messing stuff up for you.

You are right, this does sound more and more like a video problem, but I don't think exclusively. Especially since the "www.audio-surf.com" video doesn't play anymore on startup of the game (once again: was this removed in the latest update?) for me it seems to be much better. I basically use ffdshow to decode almost all me video formats. beta4a of the tryouts to be more specific: 
http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/
This has been an excellent quality release so far. I did put QuestViewer on the blacklist and even on the whitelist out of desperation - this doesn't fix or change much for me though.


I just found another bug and I guess no I won't be able to enjoy Audiosurf for a while again:
* No video played in QuestViewer.exe
* Audiobrowser and Track-preparation worked flawlessly
* The game started into Tunnelvision. The whole screen is black except for a few odd patches on the lowerbottom right of the screen. About one quarter of the screen is visible through these wholes. It's like playing Audio-surf really, really drunk (and I assure you, I'm not - don't drink and surf) or playing with some really bad cataract.

[lebeth]

You're breaking my heart here freibooter!

We are working on a solution and hope to be able to test it out with you soon.

[Sven]

I can confirm the behavior TheBloodyNine described. I hadn't played with Pusher yet. So I started Audiosurf and chose Pusher. I got the tutorial video explaining what's special about Pusher and afterwards I had the broken Audio Browser, its text off to the left. I restarted Audiosurf, selected Mono which I had already played with and there I had a working Audio Browser! Quite amazing.

So I thought I'd just have to start one track with Pusher to get rid of the broken Audio Browser. At least for Pusher. Or maybe even complete a track and not just start it. I restarted Audiosurf, chose Pusher and - as expected - got the tutorial and the broken Audio Browser again. I used the regular file browser to select a file and I played the track. However, in the end it said that I'm either offline or the scoreboard is unavailable. When I checked back with Pusher after another restart it still had the broken Audio Browser.

Alright, I noticed three things during this run. Apparently when you start a game with a broken Audio Browser the track doesn't get generated properly. Everytime my Audio Browser was broken, on the next screen it didn't show me the graph. I just got an empty grid. Plus with a broken Audio Browser Finalizing Environment Tempo takes several seconds longer than it should. And finally the Play button is unresponsive. I can't just click it, I have to keep clicking it until it actually starts the race.

I can't tell what's going on on the track since at least my in-game screen is still plain white. I see the score and artist and title. No track, no background graphics and neither the character nor any blocks. Just... white.

I tried something else. I restarted Audiosurf and chose Mono - I had already played with Mono so I could use it to make sure I got a working Audio Browser throughout this session. When I had entered Mono's Audio Browser I went back to the main menu, selected Pusher and - as expected - had a working Audio Browser there, too. I chose a song and started it. Finalizing Environment Tempo was as fast as it should be. However, I still had an empty grid without graph and an unresponsive Play button. I finished the track (on my plain white screen *gg*) and again Audiosurf reported I'm either offline or the scoreboard is unavailable. After yet another restart Pusher still had its tutorial displayed and therefore it still had its broken Audio Browser. As far as that is concerned I'm not any closer to a solution.

What I've also learned: With a working Audio Browser I may not get a graph displayed but I certainly get blocks and a track. Because when I played with a working Audio Browser I could see my score increasing. Well, I didn't see much else because of all the whiteness but the score increased. However, it didn't increase when I had a broken Audio Browser before.

PS: I checked the two topics you posted, lebeth. The ffdshow fix didn't help with my issues. The Windows Media codecs were already installed on my system. Even though I re-installed them nothing's changed.

[freibooter]

Also: I just saw the Tutorial-Video for "Eraser" with QuestViewer.exe on ffdshows Whitelist (i.e.: always use in QuestViewer.exe) - and yet, everything works perfectly: Audiobrowser is fine, Songs are analyzed without problems and even the "tunnel-vision/black-screen" disappeared. If the Audiobrowser worked at least once during a session it doesn't brake later. Most of the critical bugs (except for "whitescreen" and "almost completely black screen") seem to be decided on startup of the game.

Ok, I just saw that Sven described the exact opposite and the Audiobrowser did brake for him later. But I don't think ffdshow is the culprit, maybe another codec? And why the hell does QuestViewer.exe rely on or get affected by DirectShow codecs anyways?

[knarkles]

Ok, more clues to the bug. Seems to be a video-related issue for me too.

These bugs appear if I:
- Select full screen before the character selection screen
- Select a character with video as the first character. Ie. if I select Pointman Pro (a character w/video), the music browser is broken. But if I select Pointman (a character w/o video) first, then Pointman Pro, it works!

And as Sven said, the broken music browser is linked to all the other bugs.

[lebeth]

Yup the videos appear to be a major culprit. We are working on this and will either take them out in the next patch or modify it somehow so that it will not cause this trouble.

[freibooter]

And as Sven said, the broken music browser is linked to all the other bugs.

All, but "whitescreen" and "blackscreen" as far as I can tell so far (and some of the minor bugs).

[Sven]

Yeah, I further looked into my whitescreen issue and for me, too, it looks like it doesn't have anything to do with the broken Audio Browser. Right now each and every game is plain white. No matter whether Audio Browser and track generation worked perfectly.

One more info: I think I was wrong with what provokes a broken Audio Browser. When knarkles said it was a character with video and not - as I thought - a previously unplayed character I looked into this. Knarkles is right: I hadn't played Double Vision until now; a character without a video. I chose it and got a working Audio Browser. So yeah, whether I've played a charcter or not doesn't make a difference for me neither. It's whether there's a video being displayed or not.

//edit:
You may have already looked into this. For the videos themselves maybe it's an option to wrap them into a Bink container. I'm not sure whether Bink Video relies on decoders such as ffdshow to render videos. It may be worth a try. After all videos in thousands of games use Bink containers to ensure maximum compatibility with the players' PCs.

[freibooter]

I just did a few test-cases (all in windowed mode, some bugs seem to be triggered by switching to or from full-screen):

1) Start Audiosurf, select a character with video ->  audiobrowser broken -> song flat-lining -> game unplayable!

2) Start Audiosurf, select a character without video -> audiobrowser works perfectly -> hit back immediately select a character with video -> audiobrowser still works perfectly -> the songs flat-line -> game unplayable!

3) Start Audiosurf, select a character without video -> audiobrowser works perfectly -> select a song -> analyzed without problem -> select back twice -> select a character with video -> yudiobrowser still works perfectly -> the song analyzes without a problem  -> game works fine!

Now I know that there is indeed a direct connection between the videos and the broken audiobrowser and songs-flat-lining - and I have a workaround to actually play Audiosurf sometimes.

The "white screen" and the "black screen" in-game are independent bugs as far as I can tell, they even happen without a single video played, but they are quite rare in comparison and I cannot reproduce them reliably so far.

[TheBloodyNine]

Freibooter, great! Atleast we're making progress here. I have never had a whitescreen freeze or anything similiar though, so yes, that might be a separate issue... and to me seems very likely to have something to do with graphic cards/drivers.

I have discovered anotother bug: sometimes when completing a song, no name including my own shows up on the scoreboards and sometimes the "continue"-button are missing, and I am forced to restart the game to continue. I also had a new button once right on top of the scoreboards called "add a friend" or something similar... 

[Sven]

I can confirm all three cases. Works exactly the same for me.

//edit:
Except for the whiteness but that's another story.

//edit2:
I just get a feeling. My PC is running for a few hours now. When I first started to get plain white tracks I at least had a graph displayed in the top left corner and I saw color clusters being scooped upwards (towards the score). You can see it on this video. However, just now I realized that I don't even get the graph in the top left corner; nor the color clusters being scooped up. I'll turn off my machine and return in half an hour. See if temperature has something to do with this.

[freibooter]

However, just now I realized that I don't even get the graph in the top left corner; nor the color clusters being scooped up. I'll turn off my machine and return in half an hour. See if temperature has something to do with this.[/i]

I doubt that it is a temperature problem. The X1900 runs notoriously hot and AMD claims that even temperatures up to 120°C won't harm it. This card is cooled very well and even Bioshock doesn't get it above 68°C, with Audiosurf it runs at max 66°C. All other components are as cool as the other side of the pillow. And with 512mb graphics memory I doubt that Audiosurf runs out of that either. And I still experience random graphics problems (so far only completely-white-screen and black-screen-with-holes-in-it as far as I can tell).

[tlinna]

freibooter, thanks a lot! That workaround seems to work for me also.

That explains why I sometimes just got it working - it seems I happened to pick a character with no video, and afterwards the rest of them worked too.

Haven't had those white/black screen issues, so basically the game seems to work fine with this workaround.

[Sven]

Back after I gave my PC time to cool down to room temperature. In short: nothing's changed :)

[lebeth]

We are working on a workaround to all these video issues and will hopefully have an update for you to try soon.