Troubleshooting/Blam: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 19:41, 20 December 2021

The Daodan DLL and OniX solve the most common causes of crashes in Windows, and the Intel build of the Mac app implements many fixes as well. But if you are still encountering crashes while using the most stable Oni available for your system, read on: chances are that your crash is documented below.

"Blam!" is a recurring phrase in Bungie lore with violent or otherwise impactful connotations. The Oni community mainly uses "blam" to refer to a crash of the Oni app, because of the dialog that pops up on such occasions. The actual "damn!"/"Blam, Oni crashed" dialog only appears for Windows builds, but the Mac Oni app can crash too, for more or less the same reasons, hence the general use of "blam" for whenever Oni runs into trouble and suddenly quits.

Blam at startup

This crash, the most notorious of Oni problems, has been traced to the overflow of a particular text buffer which is responsible for storing a list of available OpenGL extensions. When Oni was made, the OpenGL extension list dump was much shorter, and the developers did not allow for a larger dump. Modern graphics cards almost always overflow this buffer.

If your version of Oni just crashed on startup, take a look at startup.txt (it's in your Oni folder). After a successful run of Oni, there should be a rather big list of OpenGL extensions towards the end of this file. If the list cuts off abruptly or the last line in the file starts with "OpenGL version =", it means that startup failed due to this buffer overflow.

This bug is fixed with the Daodan DLL in Windows, and fixed in macOS by the Intel and patched PPC builds.

Below are other causes of crashes, though none of them should affect someone who is playing Oni in a normal way.

Other text buffer overflows

There are other occasions when Oni dumps large amounts of text, and when the dumped text is larger than the buffer Bungie set up for it, you'll have an overflow, and Oni will crash.

Examples: debugger.txt - another debug log located in the Oni folder; other debug logs enabled with the -debugfiles command line argument; console output in Developer Mode

Debug logs

What you should remember about them :

Some debug logs that can cause crashes are only enabled if you choose to do so. (See -debugfiles under command line argument.)
You can't disable the default debug logs (debugger.txt and startup.txt), so this cannot prevent the startup Blam. See the "Solution Links" below for patches for this.
Some other logs (debug files and console output) are either disabled in the executable you're using, or they're (re)enabled and in that case you may experience a crash.

Non-text buffer overflows

There are other fixed-size buffers that can also overflow and crash Oni.

Movie buffer: As explained here, recording a film that approaches half an hour in length can crash Oni.

Out of range errors

There are a number of situations where Oni will "Blam" that have little to do with buffers. Most often, the engine will attempt to address a region in memory but fail to find the expected data.

Pathfinding: Oni can generate too many pathfinding nodes if a pathfinding grid is inconsistent with the environment (rare).
Switching between characters: Oni will crash if you chr_focus to a character that's not drawn.
Conflicts: Oni will crash if you fire a gun while in control of an active AI; Oni will crash if you "talk" to a neutral AI while in control of it.; (it's a bit more complicated, but who cares?)
Non-existent BSL functions: Oni will crash if you call a non-existent BSL function with the strong syntax.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{|align=right
+{{UpdatedForOniX|1.0.0}}
-|http://geyser.oni2.net/blam/Blam.png
+{{fmbox
-|}
+  | text = The [[Daodan DLL]] and [[OniX]] solve the most common causes of crashes in Windows, and the [[FERAL|Intel build]] of the Mac app implements many fixes as well. But if you are still encountering crashes while using the most stable Oni available for your system, read on: chances are that your crash is documented below.
-This is a little bit technical. If you just want a solution go [http://oni.bungie.org/help/winxp.html here], or scroll to the bottom of the section.
+  }}
-==Buffer overflow==
+[[Image:Blam!.png|right]]
-An overflowing buffer is one that holds more than it can hold :)
+"Blam!" is a [[Blam (meme)|recurring phrase in Bungie lore]] with violent or otherwise impactful connotations. The Oni community mainly uses "blam" to refer to a crash of the Oni app, because of the dialog that pops up on such occasions. The actual "damn!"/"Blam, Oni crashed" dialog only appears for Windows builds, but the Mac Oni app can crash too, for more or less the same reasons, hence the general use of "blam" for whenever Oni runs into trouble and suddenly quits.
 ===Blam at startup===
-That one is due to the overflow of a very particular text buffer ; the one that lists the OpenGL extensions in the '''startup.txt''' file.
+This crash, the most notorious of Oni problems, has been traced to the overflow of a particular text buffer which is responsible for storing a list of available OpenGL extensions. When Oni was made, the OpenGL extension list dump was much shorter, and the developers did not allow for a larger dump. Modern graphics cards almost always overflow this buffer.
-If your version of Oni just crashed on startup, take a look at that file (it's in your [[Installation#Installation folder|Oni folder]]). At the end, there should be a rather big list entitled GL extensions. That list is broken, meaning that startup collapsed during its writing...
-Problem is : that list is ''too long''; that's what makes Oni crash. Bungie folks made Oni dump that list to '''startup.txt''' with a small list size in mind, but recent GFX cards (more specifically their WinXP drivers) tell Oni to write more than what Bungie expected.
+If your version of Oni just crashed on startup, take a look at '''startup.txt''' (it's in your [[Oni (folder)|Oni folder]]). After a successful run of Oni, there should be a rather big list of OpenGL extensions towards the end of this file. If the list cuts off abruptly or the last line in the file starts with "OpenGL version =", it means that startup failed due to this buffer overflow.
-;Solution
+This bug is fixed with the Daodan DLL in Windows, and fixed in macOS by the Intel and patched PPC builds.
-:One has to either make the GL extension buffer larger, or to disable the dumping of GL extensions to '''startup.txt''' altogether.
+Below are other causes of crashes, though none of them should affect someone who is playing Oni in a normal way.
+===Other text buffer overflows===
+There are other occasions when Oni dumps large amounts of text, and when the dumped text is larger than the buffer Bungie set up for it, you'll have an overflow, and Oni will crash.
-===Other text buffers===
-There are other occasions when Oni dumps large amounts of text, and in the case the dumped text is larger than the buffer Bungie set up for it, you'll have an overflow, and Oni will crash.
 ;Examples
 :'''debugger.txt''' - another debug log located in the Oni folder
-:other debug logs enabled with the '''-debugfiles''' [[Customizing#Command-line arguments |command line argument]]
+:other debug logs enabled with the '''-debugfiles''' [[Customizing#Command-line arguments|command line argument]]
 :console output in [[Developer Mode]]
-===Ian's patch===
-Ian Patterson (a professional coder, and the creator of OniTools, among other stuff) located the routine that writes to fixed-size text buffers (in '''startup.txt''' and elsewhere). Rather than making the problematic buffers larger or dynamic (adjusted at runtime), he completely disabled them. Thus he made the English version of Oni run without a "Blam" on startup on Windows XP with the most common GFX hardware/drivers.
-Then he proceeded with creating a universal patch that makes the appropriate changes not only to the English Oni.exe, but also to the executables of a number of other releases (German, Spanish...). For all those versions, the patch completely disables the problematic fixed-size buffers, making it possible to run Oni on XP with "those recent GFX cards that have too many OpenGL extensions".
-Ian's patch also makes the executable able to run no matter what its name is (the original Oni.exe will not work if you rename it).
-There are, however, a few issues.
-;Problems
-:One problem is that people who want to have a look at files like '''debugger.txt''' can't do so
-:(well, that's only a problem for fanatic reverse engineers who want to figure out "how Oni works"...)
-:A bigger problem is that Ian's patch prevents Oni from dumping output to the console in [[Developer Mode]]
-:(well, that has only become a problem after we got aware of the [[Developer Mode]] functionality)
-;Solutions
-:reenable the needed buffers (except the GL extension buffer)
-:make them larger, or dynamic, to avoid overflow
-===Recent drivers===
-The present status of Ian's patch is unofficial. Although Ian suggested to Take2 and Godgames to release an official patch, there was no response.
-However, action has been taken by GFX card manufacturers. Since Oni is not the only game for which the GL extension problem arises, the recent drivers provide a set of options that limits the list of GL extensions "seen" by the game. That's an alternative way to prevent Oni from crashing at startup, but it's highly manufacturer-dependent.
-;Nvidia
-:from your driver's interface, create an application profile for Oni.exe with "extension limit" set to ON.
-;ATI
-:well, my ATI FireGL T2 works fine without a patch...
 ===Debug logs===
 What you should remember about them :
-*It's up to you to enable extra debug log buffers (with the '''-debugfiles''' [[Customizing#Command-line arguments |command line argument]]) : that dumps extra debug files which may or may not cause an overflow
+*Some debug logs that can cause crashes are only enabled if you choose to do so. (See '''-debugfiles''' under [[Customizing#Command-line arguments|command line argument]].)
-*You can't disable the default debug logs ('''debugger.txt''' and '''startup.txt''') : '''startup.txt''' is the one causing the standard "Blam!" at startup
+*You can't disable the default debug logs ('''debugger.txt''' and '''startup.txt'''), so this cannot prevent the startup Blam. See the "Solution Links" below for patches for this.
-So if you "blam" at startup, then Oni's GL extension buffer, used when writing '''startup.txt''', is too short, and you ''have'' to disable (or extend) it in order to play Oni. The simplest way to do that is to apply Ian's patch, or to use one of the patched/derived executables (the one that suits you best).
+*Some other logs (debug files and console output) are either disabled in the executable you're using, or they're (re)enabled and in that case you ''may'' experience a crash.
-As for other logs (debug files and console output), either they're disabled in the executable you're using, or they're (re)enabled and in that case you ''may'' experience a crash.
-===Non-text buffers===
+===Non-text buffer overflows===
-There are fixed-size buffers that are not handled by Ian's patch, but can cause overflow just fine.
+There are other fixed-size buffers that can also overflow and crash Oni.
 ;Movie buffer
-:See [[Customizing/Binding#What you should be careful about | here]] for details.
+:As explained [[Customizing/Binding#start_record, stop_record, play_record|here]], recording a film that approaches half an hour in length can crash Oni.
-;Other stuff
-:filling in...
+===Out of range errors===
-You shouldn't encounter these situations if you play Oni "normally"
+There are a number of situations where Oni will "Blam" that have little to do with buffers. Most often, the engine will attempt to address a region in memory but fail to find the expected data.
-==Out of range==
-There is a number of situations where Oni will "Blam" although that has little to do with buffers. Most often, the engine will attempt to address a region in memory, although the expected data is not there.
 ;Pathfinding
-:Oni can generate too many pathfinding nodes if a pathfinding grid is inconsistent with the environment (rare)
+:Oni can generate too many pathfinding nodes if a pathfinding grid is inconsistent with the environment (rare).
 ;Switching between characters
-:Oni will crash if you '''chr_focus''' to a character that's not drawn
+:Oni will crash if you '''chr_focus''' to a character that's not drawn.
 ;Conflicts
 :Oni will crash if you fire a gun while in control of an active AI
-:Oni will crash if you "talk" to a neutral AI while in control of it
+:Oni will crash if you "talk" to a neutral AI while in control of it.
 :(it's a bit more complicated, but who cares?)
-;Inexistent stuff
+;Non-existent BSL functions
-:Oni will crash if you call an inexistent function with the strong syntax.
+:Oni will crash if you call a non-existent BSL function with the strong syntax.
-;Other stuff
-:filling in...
-You shouldn't encounter these situations if you play Oni "normally"
-==Downloads and links==
-===Ian's patch===
-*[http://ianpatt.hp.infoseek.co.jp/oni/onipatch.zip Ian's patch] (ZIP) (patches several Oni versions, not only the English one) (instructions and troubleshooting [here])
-*[http://ianpatt.hp.infoseek.co.jp/oni/oni_fixed.rar patched English version] (RAR)
-*a [http://mukade.bungie.org/cgi-bin/mukade/ikonboard.cgi?;act=ST;f=2;t=91 very useful thread] on Oni Central Forum (about Ian's patch and the "Blam" issue in general)
-* Ian's patch [http://script10000.oni2.net/patches.html on Script10K's page]
-* Ian's patch on [http://ianpatt.hp.infoseek.co.jp/ Ian's page]
-===Beyond Ian's patch===
+[[Category:Oni Support]]
-See [[Developer_Mode#Enabling_the_cheat|here]] for a beefed-up Oni.exe featuring :
-*a slightly modified Ian's patch
-**executable can be renamed (retained)
-**no GL extensions dumped at startup (retained)
-**dev console and other debug logs (reenabled)
-*the [[Developer Mode]]

Troubleshooting/Blam: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 19:41, 20 December 2021

Contents

Blam at startup

Other text buffer overflows

Debug logs

Non-text buffer overflows

Out of range errors

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Troubleshooting/Blam: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 19:41, 20 December 2021

Blam at startup

Other text buffer overflows

Debug logs

Non-text buffer overflows

Out of range errors

Navigation menu

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