I've experienced this for a while now, after a decent period of editing in terragen (mostly when I'm using the node editor, but not always), the buttons stop functioning, I can press them, and they show the little press effect, but nothing actually happens. Sometimes I can navigate between the category tabs, but if I press any button, nothing happens, this is most annoying, because the save feature always goes along with it. I've tried ctrl + s, but that doesn't work either.
Oh, and I can't exit out normally under these conditions, and have to use ctrl + alt + delete, and end the tgd.exe process (it doesn't work if I end the program) and get the usual "This program is not responding" routine.
There does appear to be some kind of problem that exhibits the kind of issues you're experiencing. It occurs semi-randomly and is difficult to reproduce. It will certainly be addressed in the future, but in the meantime any specific steps to reproducing the problem would be helpful. We do advise saving regularly in general due to the pre-release nature of the product and the inevitable bugs you will encounter.
- Oshyan
i have the same problem too, happens most of the time when i add and afterwards remove a 'compute terrain' or 'compute normal'.
using terragen works, for example populating, but i can't close it, can't save work and so on. browser is working, but windows start-menu isn't working aswell, neither is the task-manager.
You know, assuming this is another manifestation of an apparent memory leak...
When I experienced the symptoms described in the 'crashing windows' thread I was working heavily with models and populations. It is recognized that large populations can cause problems (isn't it?), and there is the leak issue... I wonder if pointers to models are somehow being misdirected and becoming invalid, losing the memory they pointed to? Could be both issues are symptoms of a common problem.
Totally pointless speculation, of course.
::)
A memory leak is a possibility. What's odd though is that it doesn't necessarily appear related to memory use specifically. By that I mean that the reported memory use in task manager isn't always high when this occurs and there is invariably some free memory, in many cases a lot of it. The length of time TG2 is in use seems to have a greater affect - the longer you use it, the more likely this seems to occur. And although running other memory-intensive applications can seem to make it worse, shutting those applications down once the problem begins usually doesn't solve it. Only closing TG2 itself resolves it fully. This suggests it may not be strictly memory related, but it's clearly some kind of "leaking", lost handles, or similar type of problem.
We'll certainly be looking into this and will resolve it as soon as we can.
- Oshyan
Have you played with it on Vista? If it's a GDI handle that's leaking, it might become apparent more quickly there. Again, I'm just shooting in the dark.
Lately, I have noticed that when Terragen has this behavior, its memory use in task manager drops from about 300 Mb to 2 to 4, but the total memory reserved doesn't change.
Only thought to look the last 2 times it happened, so can't be sure if this happens always.
I can bring up the start menu, although I haven't tried to choose something. Any program already minimized can be brought up and works. Also last time, the first sign was that Irfanview when loaded (had not reached the no double-click phase yet) to paste a screen shot was missing its menus (file, edit etc.).
I hope the problem can be tracked and fixed.
Helen
helentr, I've seen the same thing and the memory issue you describe with the sudden drop in memory is accurate. I've seen it enough times to know this is consistent behavior.
I have found one function that works in Terragen when this bug occurs: New File, as long as you click discard and not save (shame).
All other functions work as expected afterwards.
It may not keep your file, but at least it stops you having to ctrl alt del it.
I think it does involve a mem' leak.
it seems to happen during a time of complex scene making where you delete or apply something in the scene that dramatically alters it(something that gets the PC thinking hard in the preview) and you run into the program becoming unresponsive.
and in worry of this you can either pause the preview and let the program sit and hope for it to get out of the its freak out, or what I've found to work is just hit exit and when it asks to exit and save. you tell it to save and it does. then start where you left off at. lol
New info:
On my vista machine it actually stops all buttons from functioning, including those on other programs. Pressing ctrl+alt+del comes up with the snazzy vista user account options thingummy, but upon pressing the taskmanager button it just puts you back to the desktop and the taskmanager doesn't load. Upon closing other programs that are running it (sometimes) fixes the issue and allows you to save the tgd and close. It is not wise to continue editing from this state as it it incredibly likely that another crash occurs.
I'm running Vista Ultimate with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz and 4 gig of RAM (although vista only shows 3.2 in the system properties).
Some of my observations (using XP):
It appears to be related to GDI resources rather than RAM usage, affecting interfaces of other applications.
It *might* be occuring more rapidly when working with heavy displacements... or lots of manually editing the node network
As a safeguard measure, I open another program before starting to work in TGD.. an Office app, or Photoshop... or IE (although something a bit hungrier for GDI resources can be more effective. When the buttons start to play up, exit the other program(s). This should restore sufficient resources to get the buttons/shortcut keys to work so you can save your work. You could keep working, but the problem will eventually catch up with you again, so to avoid frustration, log off and on and start again.
My work laptop has taken to crashing the video driver first (usually during a long render, reverts to standard VGA). I actually prefer this because the render keeps running just fine and everything else keeps working (except it needs a reboot to fix).
I have seen this on occasion and like many here suspected (At first) that it was a memory leak however I am now starting to think that the problem may in fact be either a Memory Buffer Overflow problem or a Memory Release Problem (Seen in software other than TG2) where a used memory segment isn't released after use and conversely using up available CPU circles and system resources causing the GUI to freeze and in extreme cases making the entire system freeze.
This can happen in TG2 for example if you try to stop a large render for what ever reason and can make the system freeze up to the point that a hard reset is required.
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
Hi,
Quote from: child@play on April 03, 2007, 01:21:42 PM
i have the same problem too, happens most of the time when i add and afterwards remove a 'compute terrain' or 'compute normal'.
using terragen works, for example populating, but i can't close it, can't save work and so on. browser is working, but windows start-menu isn't working aswell, neither is the task-manager.
I've just tried this out, and I can reproduce this problem. If you add a Compute Terrain node, hook it up between the heightfield node and the existing Compute Terrain node, and then delete it using the delete key, then the app does freeze up. This is a different problem to the one with the buttons not responding after a time, it's more like a crash. Interesting, it doesn't seem to happen if you delete the node with the context menu. I'll write up a bug for this and look into it.
Regards,
Jo
Hi,
I should add the problem I've just described only seems to happen with the Windows version.
Regards,
Jo
I agree with BigBen - having other applications open is a lifesaver.
When TG2 starts freezing, I shut down Firefox for example. TG2 is able to save a scene and to exit then most times.
Sometimes I need to shut down a second application and kill TG2 afterwards in the taskmanager. But saving always works.
Volker
I reported this (or a similar) one earlier: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=130.0
I guess it's the same problem.
(I use XP)
Of course I have the same problem,
Till now I was waiting, sometimes a lot, ant I was always able to save using the incon in the menu; then exit and restart.
I will try to shut down some application next time, it is may be faster.
I don't think it is a memory leak, the task manager do not show any evidence of it.
As a side effect, I have sometime windows with is affected: I cannot call the task manager, or switch to another application.
Last, very often, the keyboard is switched from french to english, very bad to type a number...
Quote from: chaps on August 07, 2007, 11:15:20 AMLast, very often, the keyboard is switched from french to english, very bad to type a number...
Some of the keys to navigate in the preview are used by windows to switch the locale. (this setting where you can choose the keyboard layout for your language)
You can turn these hotkeys off by right clicking the locale panel (a blue square in your task bar with an abbreviation of your country's name, in your case "FR")
Choose "Settings...", click "key board" "Change Hotkeys" and disable everything.
I hope this helps.. i have a german XP, so I had to try and translate those dialogs.
I made the change, didn't check it now, but i'll tell you if it is OK.
Thanks.
Hi,
On the subject of problems with key combinations and keyboards switching locales, we're very sorry to hear that. At the moment, strictly speaking, we only support TG2 on English versions of the OS. However we are making efforts to improve this. For a start, the key/mouse bindings will eventually be user configurable. The system is designed to work across different locales. The basics are there, but we still need to create a configuration interface for it. This will allow more suitable key bindings to be used on different OSes. Once we have it up and running, hopefully we can get feedback and build a collection of key binding sets for each locale and then load the appropriate set by default for that locale.
Regards,
Jo
It is LeftAlt+Shift to switch the Locale Settings and Strg+Shift to switch the keyboard layout in the german Version of XP... I don't think these are much different in other xp-versions.
The reason this wasn't noticed earlier might be, that the english xp probably doesn't install other languages. So switching the locale does nothing.
In the german version you get german+english, so you have about 50% chance to have the wrong layout, but you probably won't notice that unless you use the "z","y" or number keys to name a shader.
I guess you'll notice that much earlier on azerty keyboards.
I didn't know that before running TG2 in the university. They have about 20 locales installed to have the right one for foreign students too, so if you switch layout there, you'll get Chinese, Arabian and such.
Disabling the hot key is a good workaroung for the keyboard issue.
And you are right, it is a problem on azerty keyboard, when you want to type a float, the dot is replace by a "<" and you must type ":" to get it.... ;)
bye
Hi Chaps,
Quote from: chaps on August 09, 2007, 08:07:39 AM
And you are right, it is a problem on azerty keyboard, when you want to type a float, the dot is replace by a "<" and you must type ":" to get it.... ;)
Is that if you've accidentally changed to a qwerty keyboard layout without realising it?
I tried an azerty layout using On-Screen Keyboard on Windows ( after I changed my keyboard settings to French ) and I seemed to be getting the correct characters.
Regards,
Jo
I can't say exactly which operation I was doing in TG2. In average i was doing:
* right click in the node area to insert new shader or function,
* double click on these functions to enter parameters,
* connecting them (very often I connect one output to an already connected input to modify the network but keep it valid, I don't know if it is usefull, but it seems to me that network errors are not totaly handled in the current version?)
Alt and Alt+Shift to move around (with maybe some illegal entry?)
!!!!!!! I get it, while I was writing this mail, I tried the different operations, and it occurs. the combination Alt+Maj swicth to english. As I understand the configuration menu, I should do Ctrl+Tab to modify the keyboard, I will do some test later.
Sorry, I made you waste your time.
Chaps.