Walthros game crashing glitch

I was playing through Walthros recently, and when I tried to enter the eastern cave on Dinosaur Island, GAME.EXE crashed. I was playing this through Windows 7 through Ypsiliform+3. I tried to put Walthros through older OHR versions, but got the same result. Anybody else encountering this problem?

Yes, I've encountered that exact same problem. Several years ago, in fact. This is why I've never finished Walthros to see that spectacular ending everyone was bragging about back in the day.

It's kind of distressing that this error is still around. I wonder what the deal is.

This definitely didn't happen back when the game was new, so I have no idea.

Who said the game has a spectacular ending? It doesn't, it's a rushed ending that summarizes most of what happens in text.

---

Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

Could somebody send me a save game right before the crash?

I just tested it with a recent nightly and it didn't crash for me, but there is a TON of slowdown inside the cave that wasn't there before.

Also, you guys should be playing the game on the version of game.exe included in the ZIP file. If that still causes problems, I'll be very confused.

Edit: Whoops! Looks like the game.exe included in the ZIP doesn't run on Windows 7. I'll go through the game and update it for compatibility with a new version when I get a chance.

Also I wish this had, you know, been brought to my attention years ago if this problem has existed this long.

Double Edit: I uploaded a quick and dirty, half tested version that will open fine and shouldn't crash on Windows 7, but there's still a lot of slowdown. When that's solved I'll upload a new one.

You might need to rename your save file to Walthros.sav if you want to continue using your existing save.

---

Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

I got the debug copy, and I will chjeck out the slowdown as soon as I get a chance.

How old was the old version that didn't run on Windows 7? Was it a DOS version? I would expect anything newer than Hasta-la-qb to work okay on Windows 7

Let me append my comment earlier, I had trouble in the exact same spot as the OP, but I was running everything in Windows Vista, using the game.exe included with Walthros. I now run Windows 7, though, so I can't go back and test that.

I'm glad to see Surlaw has noticed this thread. To clarify, there was a specific scene in Walthros involving a golden chamber and some crystals that had impressed a bunch of people whose names I can't remember, either on a forum or through Hamsterspeak. I figured that was part of the ending, but apparently it isn't. Anyway, looking forward to hopping back into the game so I can pick up the story where I left off.

I was just testing on my Linux box, and I could not reproduce the crash or the slowdown with either the current nightlies or Zenzizenzic. That means this could be a windows-only bug, and I will test further as soon as I have both some free time and and access to a Windows 7 box simultaneously :)

Yeah, it was a DOS build. A couple of my other games used the same build, I'll update those when I can.

Thanks! The slowdown occurs on maps # 23, 24, and 25. It doesn't seem to happen anywhere else I've tested yet. If you have a second could you just look through any general bitsets in the RPG file on those maps to see if there's anything suspect that I could try fixing? I personally didn't see anything weird.

---

Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

Oh! I was testing map 7. Maybe I went through the wrong door?

Glancing through those three maps, I can't see anything unusual about them... and the only obvious thing I can see that they have in commin is that they all have the same music, MU.

Can you test with the music_silence backend? http://hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/nightly/ohrrpgce-wip-directx-silence.zip

If it is a music-related problem then that would certainly explain why I can't reproduce the problem on Linux, since the music backends have platform-specific differences.

Oops, forgot I had two files in the save I sent you. Save #2 is the one that starts outside of the Mount Slowdown.

I went in, silenced that song entirely, and now the maps run fine. I'm... shocked and confused.

---

Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

It's always the strange things, ain't it? lol
Just like one time I had a plotscript named gameover run just fine but on the current OHRRPGCE it refused to acknowledge the script name, and continued until I shortened it to gover....
Weird things. I wonder why your game got happy with the music gone ._.

---

dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

I've updated Walthros and a bunch of other games whose game.exe files didn't run properly in Windows 7. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, JC! Hope to hear your thoughts on the game. James, hopefully you can find something useful in that debug file.

Weirdly, if you go into the .RPG file and go to this broken song, only silence plays, even though there's a 20 kb file there. I didn't outright delete it out of fear of breaking something else, but I replaced it on the problem maps.

Also, the music in this game is... really, really bad. Let me know if you find anything else screwy.

---

Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

The song wouldn't happen to be a midi or a bam, would it? There's a goofy crash bug with midis that seems to pop up based on how many times the midi has repeated, which means that games with really short repetitive midis are affected pretty heavily. I've run into it in Don't Push the Button, and more recently, Escape from Strong Castle. I'd swear that TMC had said it was fixed at one point, so it's weird that it's coming up again.

It was a BAM, and I honestly can't remember what the song even was, so no clue if it was a short one.

---

Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition