The past few weeks have gone by with long and tedious hunting for the cause of the sound system error.
I have also built a mini-mod that can perfectly replicate this crash - in Windows Vista and 7. However, on XP, the error does not show - I know that the error also occurs on XP, but according to my tests it is far less frequent, so this implies that TSH also has compatibility problems with the Vista kernel (Vista+7). Compatibility modes are of no help for Vista/7 either.
It seems that, as far as our luck goes, when TSH was compiled by the very original developers at Digital Reality, they made some sort of mistake, and there is a fatal programming error in the whole game, hardcoded deep within the exe file. Unfortunately, it is way beyond my capabilities to fix that.
I can offer some advices, though:
To minimise the rate the error occurs:
- If you are running Vista or 7, try to install a Virtual XP. I have been using VirtualBox, and if you give the virtual system enough power, TSH might even work (assuming you install some add-on which enables the virtual system to use your graphics card).
To kill the error completely:
- You have no other option but to go to options and completely disable all sound and music. You will need to restart the game to make sure that the sound system does not load. Also, you can try turning on music - as far as your luck goes, that should have the smallest impact on the system, allowing you to play at least with background music.
While testing on Win7, which proved to be incredibly unstable when it came to the sound system, the game worked absolutely fine (with music running) up to the point a fighter was built. I'd say the thing might have to do with engine sounds and similar effects.
We are in need of people who have skills at debugging applications. We welcome any sort of a solution, exe offsets, hooks, anything. If you know a person who has such a talent at his disposal, please help us by asking him to do this favor and look into this fatality.
Good luck finding skilled people :D
Hey thanks for trying to figure this out. I get this crash about every half an hour to twenty minutes. And it's a shame because Vector Prime mod is fun enough that I'm still trying to play it, but it's a serious pain.
Well today I played for several hours without getting the crash. It seems like it doesn't happen in sensor view at all. This time what caused it was zooming in on a space monster. I don't know if that could help.
it's likely effects which require volume transitions. This error is also present in default TSH. But not in LOI. Might be a hint ;)
Negative folks, I already got past that, unfortunately.
When you zoom on a space monster - technically, switch from the starmap to 3d mode or vice versa, what you do is press space.
Pressing space shifts the focus from the game window to the error window.
Strictly speaking, the error message is already there, you only "activate it" by pressing space.
Hmm, come to think of it, I got an idea. What if you change the key mapping from space to anything else (except for enter) - this won't trigger the focus shift and you might be able to keep playing.
Anybody care to test?
Oh. As an addendum, the only thing that beats this solution to the punch is finding a way to remap the starmap switch to a different key.
Standard external remapping tools won't work because even if you switch say, space ( )and asterisk (*), hitting * will also trigger the focus shift.