Should I Be Worried?

[Robert]

Hello, I am hoping someone can give me some insight into what is happening though I realize my question here is likely too ambiguous to really answer. Yesterday while playing my game it froze up after around 10 minutes or so. It completely locked up and I had to force close the application, however GM didn't report any errors or problems. So I didn't think too much about it and moved on. Later on it happened again after around 10 minutes and then I started to get a little worried. It totally locked up again with no errors in GM. After this I cleaned the target and tried again, sure enough after around 10 minutes or so it hung up with no errors. I should mention that it hung up during different events, twice while fighting and once while just moving around.

So after the third time I restarted my computer. Since I have restarted my computer I haven't been able to recreate the error and I have played for probably around two one hour sessions with no issues so I am hoping that it was just some bug with my computer or GM and by restarting things it's been fixed... But, I am worried that maybe there is som bug or problem with my game but I am just not hitting the right circumstances to trigger it. But how likely is this? I mean wouldn't I get some kind of error or notification if there were a critical error like this?

I should also mention that my game runs very good, it's highly optimized and I get between 200 and 500 fps with vsync off. I get no stutters or lagging, and last time it hung up I was watching the memory usage and it was at only around 15mb when it hung up, which is nothing. So if it were a memory leak or something I figure I would see a huge spike in memory before it hung up. When it hangs up it's instantaneous, there is no preconceived problems, it's just an immediate and instantaneous locking of the game.

Any ideas?

 

[Mick]

Hopefully just a glitch in the Matrix. You should try the game on different computers and see if you can recreate the crash. I recently had a bug with the level generator of the game i'm working on, once in about a hundred there was a level generated that couldn't be completed. Luckily I found the bug, just saying that sometimes there can be sneaky bugs. If the game hangs without errors there is a possibility of an endless loop.

 

[anomalous]

I would be worried. And no, it depends on the issue as to whether or not it will throw an error.

Run in debug mode for the next X days and if it's never occurred again...perhaps, if you are lucky, it was some system issue unrelated to the game.
Performance is irrelevant, the issue could be for practical purposes, anything.

Get familiar with the time your various objects take by looking at the average time per object.
You should be familiar with what takes time in your game. After you play for 30 minutes or so, check it again, and see if anything has started to go out of control. You may only know this if you first check and get familiar with times, else it may be too slow "watch".

 

[Zerb Games]

Despite what it is about the answer is always: YES; you should be worried.

Maybe a memory leak?

 

[TheouAegis]

Double check all your loops. GM won't catch all infinite loops, especially in FOR loops. Also make sure you're not accidentally setting a variable to some super large number. I've had GM freeze on occasion if a variable gets too high.

 

[Robert]

Thanks for all the responses, thankfully I haven't encountered another freeze and I have put quite a bit of time in since this post. At the moment I am going to write it off to some system glitch as this has never happened before and when it did happen it wasn't as if I had recently done or added anything which I would even suspect would cause that type of thing (not as if that is really a good argument lol).

@anomalous what do you mean by "Get familiar with the time your various objects take by looking at the average time per object." can you maybe explain that a little more?

 

[anomalous]

Its just random debug advice. In debug mode, click on average time (the "t" underscore), and with the game playing normally (you playing it, or whatever), check out the times.
Slowest will be on top, fastest on bottom. Basically just get familiar with what takes the most time in your game, and how much time they take.
Like, I know my light controller will be at top, at 200, followed by a number of draws, and then the foe ai, etc. This way when you change things, you have a feel for what's looking wrong.
I recommend this just because its easy and fast, and is generally a good reference point for understanding what your game is doing time-wise.
Also, every time you add a new "system", run a quick check to make sure its not a leak, runs efficiently, etc.

You can also check your memory usage over time, don't be crazy with it...but if it obviously keeps building up and up, and shouldn't, you can then hunt for a memory leak.

Glad your issue didn't come back up!

 

[ph101]

By far the most frequent (only) time I have had similar is when I am using Do, until or While loops as they have potential to lock the game in that state until the condition is met. I would say it probably is a code issue not some random mystical glitch in the matrix, however if your pc is unstable, it could be your gfx card overheating for example.

 

[Robert]

Oh... My... GOD!!! It happened again... nonononooo... I mean wtf this is scary. This was the first time since I reported this a couple days ago and I have definitely put a lot of time into the game so really unsettling that it is so random. Now I have had GM open up since yesterday so I am going to restart it and see if I notice anything. Also I only have 1 while loop and that is to setup some stuff when the game starts. I don't have any do or until loops either. My memory usage is super low and it isn't spiking in any way. The game just instantaneously locks up, everything, immediately, no errors, nothing, just the screen frozen in place... w..t...f

 

[JacPete]

better check youre HDD and ram of the computer before going crazy on the software.

 

[Robert]

Hmm if it were a hardware problem what is the likely hood that only this program would be locking up? I did somewhat recently update video drivers so I was thinking maybe that could be the problem. However I play other games without this problem, even other gm games... But at the same time it's so random it's hard to say for sure that it's not a problem.

 

[FrostyCat]

Then have you tried rolling back your video drivers?

 

[Robert]

No not yet, I just thought of that when I made the post. The is so infrequent though I am not sure how I would go about determining if it's fixed or not.

I suppose what I want from the community, the reason I posted this, is to get an idea of what types of things could cause your game/application to freeze up like this. Just some general ideas on where I should try and look first because honestly I am at a loss as to what would actually even be able to cause something like this to happen.

 

[Jon]

This sounds like some kind of a resource leak and/or garbage collection.