Just before releasing a game... (help!)

I'm almost finished with a very large project in Construct - a platformer of sorts. Almost everything is working, but I've run into a bug and could use some advice.

The bug occurs when going from one layout to the other. The game crashes completely. But the thing is this - I haven't been able to figure out a pattern. Running the same thing twenty or thirty or even forty times may produce only a single crash. Sometimes it doesn't crash for ages, then it crashes three times in a row. Any idea what could be going on? Anything I could try?

Furthermore, would you suggest that I use the current version of Construct to compile, or should I go for one of the unstable builds? Sounds kind of obvious, actually, but... yeah. Just wanted to know what you think. (I'm going to try and see whether the bug still occurs with a new build, but I don't think I can test everything else in the game again... it's a very large game and I'm out of strength.)

Thanks.

Is this with a transition?

Is this with a transition?

No. There used to be one, but I stopped using it because it was causing the occasional problem. On the other hand, I hadn't actually removed it from the project file, so I will do that now. Do you think that might have been it? (It's hard to give an immediate result, given that the crash is so rare.)

No, it still crashes. Damn.

Is it just certain layouts that cause the bug?

Also what version of Construct?

Is it just certain layouts that cause the bug?

Also what version of Construct?

At first I thought so. It only happened when I tried to skip over one of the game's two intros - a feature that would be disabled anyway. (That's the intro when you're starting a new game, just to be clear. Otherwise it would be pretty annoying.) But now it's cropped up on other layouts, and those have nothing in common. And it's only when going from one layout to other, it never happens on its own.

I'm using 0.99.62.

Might try the latest unstable .99.72. It sounds a bit like Davios collision bug.

How are you handling sound when you change layouts? I've noticed that sometimes there is an issue with changing layouts if you don't stop all sounds completely first. It's just a suspicion at this point (might have something to do with loading on the new layout), I haven't been able to reproduce it faithfully yet so I haven't made a bug report on the matter. Just specifically stop all sounds playing one tick before you change layouts and see if that helps.

Of course, if you have sounds playing across layouts then this plan might be a problem

Are you using the audio converter in the layout? I have had strange crashing issues with the Audio Converter plugin.

Have a look at open bugs on the tracker and see if any of them sound like something you're doing.

My geuss is that it's caused by sound. I'm also working on a large game and it appears that switching layouts while a large .wav sound is playing (maybe other types too) causes a crash on rare occasions. I'm going to try stopping all sounds before I switch layouts and see if that alleviates the problem. My crash situation is identical to yours, so I believe it's the same thing causing it for the both of us.

Thanks everyone! Lots of useful advice - time to try it all out. Will let you know what happens.

I have no idea what the hell is going on with XAudio2. It keeps making things sound all tinny, but with no understandable pattern. At first I thought it was because I was using mp3s and the "play music" command, and switched to just "play channel" and oggs. But now it's starting again.

I wish I could find a pattern in this, but I can't.

(Originally I was using separate XAudio2 objects for my intros and the game itself, but thought that might be causing problems somehow, so I switched to one global object. This caused everything to go wonky. What on Earth am I doing wrong?)

Edit: To make things more bizarre, it now takes ages to skip the introductions. Before it was quite simple: when hitting any button, the game would take you to the next layout. This was pretty much instantaneous. Now it takes several seconds. WTF? Shouldn't what I'm doing now be cleaner and simpler?

Maybe every layout should have an XAudio2 object of its own? Don't make the thing global, just have a copy of it in every level? Sounds kind of insane, but maybe that will be more stable?

Despairing a little... so close to releasing this game.

Edit: Nope. Separate non-global XAudio2 objects still having the same effect. Everything becomes tinny at random and going from one layout to the other takes ages.

Can you reproduce these issues in a new .cap and post them to the tracker? I haven't heard anyone else having that kind of problem.