Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !!

John Lewis wrote:
> You obviously have access to the source code, since you have such
> intimate knowledge of the problems with the game-engine and the fixes
> required. Why did you not volunteer your stellar programming skills to
> JoWood and the community team? Then the Spellbound team could
> have concentrated entirely on Gothic 4, knowing that all the engine
> bug-fixes in Gothic 3 were in your very capable hands.
>
> John Lewis

Please didn't feed the trolls or those with multiple OCDs ...
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

"John Lewis" <john.dsl.TakeThisOut@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:47aba6a4.154200@news.verizon.net...
> On Thu, 7 Feb 2008 16:22:02 -0800 (PST), johns <johns321.TakeThisOut@moscow.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>The main errors in G3 were caused by the leaf
>>buffer being HUGE !!! and causing stack crashes
>>because it needed to be in ram, and would write
>>over the OS and other ingame components. I
>>could never get anybody at Jowood to look at
>>that. All they know is "memory leak" jargon,
>>and G3 did not have serious memory leaks. It
>>simply had too much data in ram, and no stack
>>limits. ?? Maybe that is more of a Dx error than
>>an engine error. Easy to tell. Go to Bakaresh
>>woods and find out for yourselves.
>>
>>johns
>
> You obviously have access to the source code, since you have such
> intimate knowledge of the problems with the game-engine and the fixes
> required. Why did you not volunteer your stellar programming skills to
> JoWood and the community team? Then the Spellbound team could
> have concentrated entirely on Gothic 4, knowing that all the engine
> bug-fixes in Gothic 3 were in your very capable hands.
>
> John Lewis

That's the problem with PC gaming these days. All the talented people are
posting in forums and on Usenet leaving the game development to fools. If
only they'd listen to the likes of Johns.
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

They asked me to. I told them I had a day job.
Still the Community Patch team has actually
put out a better patch ( 1.5.2 ) than this 1.6
Official patch.

Last night, I started the campaign against the
Orc Patrol on the cliffs outside Vengard. As
I approached the main body of Orcs, my
hard drive tried to do a huge area load, and
the game crashed. Now, instead of a "invalid
memory access" error ... it is the same stack
crash ... I get a "failed debug" error. Same
stupid problem, only worse. Patch 1.6 is trying
to run most of the game from the hard drive.
They must think that gives room for all the
"memory leaks" ... just let it leak to the
hard drive, and that will stop the OS overwrites.
And then they load a whopping huge amount
of data at Vengard, and write over the OS.

So far, the only improvement I see is the much
faster saves. Quicksaves are 3 - 4 seconds.
Manual saves are about the same as before.
Quickloads are about the same as before ..
taking 20 to 30 seconds.

Tonight, I will swim over to Backaresh for
the big test. In patch 1.5.2, my FPS was
literally less than 1 fps in those woods.
We'll see if that is fixed by the big memory
management change in 1.6

johns
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow

This is pretty elementary, but it is exactly
what is happening in Gothic 3. The coders who
developed G3 in no way tried to stay within
well defined Stack-Buffer limits. Look at the
error messages described in this article.
Look familiar to those of you playing G3 ?

johns
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

On Fri, 8 Feb 2008 11:03:42 -0800 (PST), johns <johns321.RemoveThis@moscow.com>
wrote:

>They asked me to.

Really? Who? Names please..

> I told them I had a day job.

But your technician duties give you plenty of time
to do a little software coding on the side.

>Still the Community Patch team has actually
>put out a better patch ( 1.5.2 ) than this 1.6
>Official patch.
>

Unfortunately, the V1.6 patch seems to include
further community fixes.

John Lewis
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

Thanks to John Lewis.

Is this patch in fact worth installing ? I already have the 1.5 ver. in.

I'm certainly not starting a new game now...will this patch help (or
supposed to)
existing game-saves ??
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") mouse
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

Just to confirm that I have just installed the 1.6 patch & started up a few
existing
game saves from a 1.5 plus all earlier patched version & all seems to work
OK.

C2D E6600 at 3.2 Ghz Geforce 8800GTX. 3 Gigs Ram

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") mouse
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

On Sat, 9 Feb 2008 02:00:46 -0000, "Trimble Bracegirdle"
<no-spam RemoveThis @never.spam> wrote:

>Just to confirm that I have just installed the 1.6 patch & started up a few
>existing
>game saves from a 1.5 plus all earlier patched version & all seems to work
>OK.
>
>C2D E6600 at 3.2 Ghz Geforce 8800GTX. 3 Gigs Ram
>
>(\__/)
>(='.'=)
>(")_(") mouse
>
>

Beware the new memory manager is flaky. The first simple test I did
after starting up from a clean install with no saved games was to
start the game, then immediately exit to the menu screen and request
another new game. Crash to the game's internal error handler with
text stating a malloc bug, followed by an error exit by the OS
requesting the usual "report to Microsoft".

Also a very peculiar sound bug only affecting the "player's" voice
causing it to be distorted and bouncing Left-Right at random
turned up after about 20 minutes of play. (A8N32-SLI, 4400+, 2Gbytes,
on-board Realtek sound, 8800GT).

Also, the area-load hiccups when spooling new data from disk did
seem to be somewhat more prominent on V1.6 than V1.5.2. (I am running
2-disk RAID0 on Gothic 3.). And there seemed to be more short hiccups
not apparently linked to disk-loads.

Seems as if Spellbound's efforts on the game-engine are still a
"work-in-progress". At least somebody is trying to make a serious
attempt to fix Gothic3. More power to both Spellbound and the
"Gothic 3 community". I am very happy to continue being a
guinea-pig for all their efforts.

For the moment if you are serious about playing Gothic 3 and desire
reasonably predictable stability, I would recommend staying with patch
1.12 plus community patch 1.5.2 and await the next round of efforts
from the Gothic 3 team.

John Lewis
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

* John Lewis:

> You obviously have access to the source code, since you have such
> intimate knowledge of the problems with the game-engine and the fixes
> required. Why did you not volunteer your stellar programming skills to
> JoWood and the community team?

Because Nvidia again asked him to look over their drivers

Benjamin
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

John say; ".....simple test I did after starting up from a clean install
with no saved games was to
start the game, then immediately exit to the menu screen and request
another new game. (This) Crashed to the game's internal error handler with
text stating a malloc bug, followed by an error exit by the OS...."

I have just tried this on my 'Mature' (very) 1.6 v install & it works OK.

the jerkiness seems no better ...the drawing of distance detail is no better
(I have
everything on high with all the Ini tweaks).
C2D ...GTX8800 latest driver...Win XP ...3 gigs Ram (which the damn thing
does not use more than 2 gigs).

Oh well as you say John at least its encouraging to see an older game get
this sort of low level
tweaking & improvement.
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") mouse
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

I think new coders are more jargon coders than
knowledgable. If they would simply detect the stack
limits and not exceed them, they would stop writing
over game elements and OS elements ... but they
are never going to. Shame. This is one of the best
games I've ever played. They claim over 600 errors
fixed, and yet the game plays about the same as
before.

johns
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

You can crash it by turning quickly in a circle.
The hard drive will run away until you hit reset.
This greatly effects the combat technique ..
and I suspect your crash was at Ardea, and
you did that during the Orc battle. I was also
able to crash it that way when fighting the Orcs
on the cliffs above Vengard ... and once again
in the liberation of Cape Dunn. Something is
wrong with pre-fetch, I think.

johns
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !! 

Its posted at Jowood. Go look for yourself.
I'm a pretty good game coder and spent a
good deal of time fixing Far Cry ... go see
for yourself at both sites.

The problem, straight up, is they are not
setting stack limits on anything, and that
is causing write-overs, and just simply
code runaway. This new group can work
on memory leaks 'til a cow gives beer,
and they are not going to improve the
game play ... ever.

johns
 >> Stay informed about: Gothic 3 -- V1.6 patch is released !!