Crash/Corruption w/ screensavers

[vesuvius]

At the end of playing a solo game...windows xp. HTML box score had just appeared.

walked away from machine, screensaver came up, which hangs the game (this has happened since v5).

Have to kill the program since you can now no longer get back to it once you deactivate the screensaver.

What has never happened before, was that now the league i was using is corrupted and completely screwed.

I can load it, but the league leaders are now blank on the main standings screen. Trying to go to any other screen causes the game to crash.

You can load another league and work with it fine, but the existing league got corrupted and is now unusable.

4 years of solo played games... I zip up the league file each season but shouldn't have to rely on that and lose my games/work for the current season because the game cannot interact with or simply disable the screensaver.

[Steve Kuffrey]

Either:

-Close the game.
-Don't sure screensavers.

[CPAScott]

I have similar circumstances. A necessary fix, perhaps? OOTP is crashing for me now everytime I start a game. Didn't do that before (only installed the game yesterday). I have another thread about this, though.

[cdheer]

I have never been able to run a screensaver with OOTP. It crashed OOTP4 (actually Season Ticket Baseball 2003), it crashed the demo of OOTP5, and it crashes OOTP6.

Essentially the game locks and I cannot switch back to it. I have to go into task manager and kill it. Happened on Win2K and WinXP with Direct3D disabled (I've never been able to enable Direct3D either; I get funky transparent illegible graphics when I do).

Happens on different PCs with different drivers, graphics cards, etc. etc.

--chris

[vesuvius]

"Either:

-Close the game.
-Don't sure screensavers."


Steve - no offense, but if you honestly think that is a customer support type answer you have some serious issues.

I'm here looking for a solution to a serious problem, and don't need candyland answers that a moron could figure out as a response.

Are you saying you think it is acceptable for a user to have his league corrupted because the game cannot interact with something as simple and common as a screen saver?

It was always fine with me that the game hung in those situations when I forgot to turn it off, but corruption is an entirely different issue.

I knew about the problem and always have my screensaver off when I play, but I don't have my screensaver off all the time, and obviously forgot about it at this moment.

This is just completely unacceptable, especially for a product that has been around this long, and for a bug that has been around this long.

[rdomico]

Hopefully when Markus gets code from SI Games, things like this will be fixed.

I love OOTP, but the game works like a DOS game from 20 years ago. Screen Savers should not crash windows programs. I shouldn't have to type out paths. Real windows programs use browse buttons....etc

[Steve Kuffrey]

OOTP has NEVER worked with screensavers, I felt that my answer "as the game is currently programmed" IS the proper tech support answer. There is NO WAY to use one currently and no days there really is very little (if any) need for them.

BTW, I seriously doubt that OOTP is the only software program that will not work with a screensaver. I'm not sure that calling it a "bug" is an accurate term as well.

[Steve Kuffrey]

Originally posted by rdomico
Hopefully when Markus gets code from SI Games, things like this will be fixed.

I love OOTP, but the game works like a DOS game from 20 years ago. Screen Savers should not crash windows programs. I shouldn't have to type out paths. Real windows programs use browse buttons....etc

In v6 there ARE some browse buttons used.

[sporr]

Though many windows programs will work with screensavers, it is quite common for windows games to tell you to turn them off before you play.

[cdheer]

Originally posted by Steve Kuffrey
OOTP has NEVER worked with screensavers, I felt that my answer "as the game is currently programmed" IS the proper tech support answer.

Fair enough, but the impression given is that no attention is being given to this.

There is NO WAY to use one currently and no days there really is very little (if any) need for them.

Now this part of your response is more troubling. Is there a need to avoid monitor burn-in like there used to be? No, not really. Are there other legitimate uses for a screen saver? Absolutely. I have ALWAYS run one with a short timer so that if I wander away from my PC it locks. I use my PC for work and want my stuff protected.

Others may feel the same. Or they may just want the computer to lock so that the cat doesn't walk across and do a hit and run with Alex Gonzalez batting and Moises Alou on first.

I've worked in customer service for a very long time. You NEVER want to tell customers that there is no need to do what they want to do.

BTW, I seriously doubt that OOTP is the only software program that will not work with a screensaver. I'm not sure that calling it a "bug" is an accurate term as well.

It's perfectly accurate. It may be a bug that is shared, but that doesn't make it not a bug.

And actually I challenge you to name one that is not a Direct3D game. In fact even some Direct3D games work fine.

It's a bug, Steve. Whether it's one that can be fixed, or is worth the effort to be fixed, or whether OOTPDev will even choose to fix it are all items that can be discussed. There's no doubt that it's a bug, though.

----chris