So, been following this game for years, and finally picked up the full version of Cortex Command via the Humble Indy Bundle.

I'm just using that stock version out of the "CCSetup24" executable, whatever that version is, and it seems the game is a lot broader and better featured, but it has picked up a nasty habit of freezing up mid-battle versus the shareware version I used to play back in the day.

Happens at random, has nothing to do with accessing the menu, CPU utilization appears to be the same (maxing out at about 25-26%, a single core on my four core system) music continues to play, no new sound effects are occuring.

So, here I am on the official forums thinking we've probably a lot of Cortex Command veterans who know all the secrets of how to kick this software in just the right places to keep the old girl running reasonably stable, asking for tips along those lines.

In summary: any tips to reduce or eliminate lockups?

Unfourunately we're all on the same ground here. The old build (B23, still available on the regular site) didn't lockup much. The new one (B24, duh) is pretty terrible at this. It's quite a hackjob, and there's nothing to do except download the old version and play that until Data releases a patch. Hopefully it doesn't take a year and a half again.

EDIT: Also in Data's wonderful foresight there is absolutely ZERO support for multi-core. The game will ALWAYS use only ONE core. It's terrible, and should be fixed, but at this point we're just hoping for a new build that doesn't crash.

Multi-thread support isn't a terribly easy feature to add.

When you compare making a game from the ground-up and adding multi-core support this far in then you can bet your ass it'd be a lot easier making a whole new game.

And 7 years ago nobody really saw dual, quad and so on cores coming.

Heh, it seems multicore support is a really touchy subject around these parts. I'm not asking for it, I only mentioned CPU utilization was 25-26% over my four cores to provide additional troubleshooting information that would hopefully lead to a solution to the lockups.

So, solution: track down the previous version? I can do that, although there is a bit of a coveat that my registration code for the humble indy bundle related to Cortex Command does not yet exist.

My choices appear to be:
1. Play the more stable 23 version in 6 minutes skirmish scenarios before the demo expires.
2. Play the less stable 24 version and enjoy more features/game modes and unlimited time, but the game may crash at any time.

Neither is ideal, which is why it'd be nice to have trick to at least reduce the frequency of 24 crashing, if such a thing exists.

Here is some actual advice: If you experience sudden crashes and lockups when playing, it may be caused by an old bug related to BreakWounds (wounds created when an actor lose a limb etc).

For me the crashing stopped when I disabled the BreakWounds of the Base.rte rockets and drop ship. If you don't know how to do this you can replace the original files with the ones below.

That's the kind of solution I was hoping for!

It hasn't stopped lockups completely for me, but it may have decreased frequency, which is very good.

Sorry to hear about the crashes/hangs.. the game is very much a work in progress and we try to fix any crash bugs as fast as we can reproduce them and track them down in the debugger. Unfortunately, as we are still actively developing the engine, new crash bugs are bound to be introduced.. it's a constant battle

As for multi-threading the game.. someone correctly pointed out: if the architecture wasn't designed for it originally, it's hardly an easy 'fix' to apply to an existing codebase. Instead of working on the same game engine for literally ever, we are instead hoping to do a better job with engineering our next project, which is built from scratch.

- D

@Data: Updating used libraries to at least their bug fixed versions should help with some of the problems
- Lua 5.1.3 to 5.1.4 (2008-08-22) - http://www.lua.org/bugs.html#5.1.4
- Allegro 4.2.2 to 4.2.3.1 (2009-10-29), updating to a newer version like 4.4.1.1 with AllegroGL included should do wonders to performance

In addition, I had to disable BreakWounds for the Coalition & robot actors to eliminate the lockups for me. By the way what do they actually do? I haven't noticed any difference with them disabled.

Unless I was just super lucky, the additional breakwounds removal on Coalition and Robots did indeed significantly improve stability on B24, I had a looong Skirmish match without it locking up... but it still locked up eventually.

BreakWounds cause massive damage and emit lots of blood etc when an attachable is destroyed, probably to simulate trauma from the loss of a limb.

If you use Windows 7 and still have trouble with occasional lock-ups, try running CC in Windows XP compatibility mode (found in the properties of the exe). It solved the problem for me.