Game minimizes randomly

Montague · Sun 12/10/2008 14:51:28

I'm currently beta-testing my game, and one of the testers reported the following:

"the game would just minimise randomly, I was clicking around once and it minimised, I was talking to the woman in the opening house and the game minimised. It also happened again whilst looking at (inventory item)', when I was looking and walking around the old woman's house and pretty much anywhere. It didn't happen when I did the same actions so I guess it is just a freak bug. But it happened a lot, about once every fifteen seconds (regardless of what you were doing) after it originally started, "

"I couldn't do anything meaningful for the next few rooms as this bug happened more and more. "

He's an experienced beta-tester for AGS-games, so I doubt there's something wrong with his system.

Any ideas?

-Montague

Snarky · Sun 12/10/2008 15:18:55

If your game is trying to do something like set up an Internet connection or write to some part of the file system, his firewall/spyware blocker or other security features could be kicking in. That might cause something like this to happen.

Montague · Sun 12/10/2008 15:32:22

I don't know what that might be. It's a pretty straightforward game, it doesn't really do anything unusual.

-Montague

Pumaman · Sun 12/10/2008 16:32:40

There was probably some other application running that was trying to pop up a window or in some way stealing the focus away from the game.

If he tries it again now, does he still get the problem?

Montague · Mon 13/10/2008 10:58:19

He says the problem still occurs even though he plays with no other windows open at all. A different tester says there have been no such problems, and it has never happened to me either.

-Montague

Gilbert · Mon 13/10/2008 11:50:34

Quote from: Montague on Sun 12/10/2008 14:51:28
"the game would just minimise randomly, I was clicking around once and it minimised, I was talking to the woman in the opening house and the game minimised. It also happened again whilst looking at (inventory item)', when I was looking and walking around the old woman's house and pretty much anywhere. It didn't happen when I did the same actions so I guess it is just a freak bug. But it happened a lot, about once every fifteen seconds (regardless of what you were doing) after it originally started, "

Hmmm though the tester mentioned that the minimising was random, he did mention some particular actions. Would it be possible that something like playing a sound, a music, or a movie, etc. when such actions happened? Also, in such cases what format did you use for sound and movies? My best bet is, as AGS rely on some windows function to play movies (DirectPlay) and as movie clips may use codecs that are handled by drivers beyond control of the AGS engine strange things can happen.

Also, do you use any plugins or modules? Was the game saved with debug mode on or off?

Montague · Mon 13/10/2008 12:00:49

He said the problem first occurred while talking to a character. This is just a bunch of player.Say/.Think/cOthercharacter.Say/.Think-stuff, no voice-acting, sound-effects or anything fancy.

There are no movie-clips in the game. It uses MIDI-music and Wav-sound. There are no plugins or modules. Debug-mode is on.

-Montague

Pumaman · Mon 13/10/2008 21:58:26

This doesn't make sense, it's not a problem I've ever heard of before. What version of AGS did you compile the game with?

Does he definitely not get the problem with other games?

Montague · Mon 13/10/2008 22:35:05

I use 3.0.2 SP1.

I assume he would have told me if the problem occurred in other games as well, but I'll ask just to be sure.

Dualnames · Tue 14/10/2008 08:56:26

Well, I'm using the same version of AGS and it doesn't happen. If you could supply Chris or to the AGS forums(here) the link with the beta it would be better to form an opinion.

Montague · Tue 14/10/2008 13:06:20

He doesn't have the problem with any other games.

PM me if anyone wants to take a look at the file

- Montague

Pumaman · Tue 14/10/2008 22:33:55

If you don't mind PMing me the link, I'd be happy to test it and see if I can reproduce the problem; though I don't have much hope about being able to.

LimpingFish · Wed 15/10/2008 01:29:09

Definitely sounds like a media conflict, as I've experienced them. But the random nature of it is a bit perplexing. It could be any number of programs running in the background that are randomly stealing focus from the current window, I suppose.

For some strange reason. $:-\$

Pumaman · Sun 19/10/2008 13:17:46

Thanks for sending the game. I've played it for a while but didn't get any minimizing problems, so I'm quite stumped with this problem. There must be some other application on the tester's PC that is stealing the focus back, but I'm at a loss as to why it would only affect this game...

Was he playing full-screen or windowed?

Montague · Sun 19/10/2008 21:22:06

Full screen, I think. I chalked it up as a cranky computer-thing. I assume my game insulted his computer's mother or something. Thanks for the help, though

- Montague