I’m stupid

I just spent 2 hours fixing the alt-tab crash introduced in 0.9 when 10 minutes should have sufficed. Anyway, it’s fixed now.

For future reference: if all the symptoms point to one location in your code do look carefully at that location instead of trying to “fix” something else just because you have long-held suspicions that it might not be 100% correct.

109 thoughts on “I’m stupid

  1. Lol, we all make those silly mistakes, at least you only spent two hours chasing phantom errors! could have been a lot worse =)

  2. i just realized i’ve been having this problem (alt+tabbing crashed the game). i know how that feels. i do a little programming myself so i won’t be any hard on you since i believe i don’t even come close to your level, but i’m sure you’ll figure it out. best of luck tho. debugging is a female dog

  3. “I just spent 2 hours fixing the alt-tab crash introduced in 0.9 when 10 minutes should have sufficed.”

    Been there, done that. It happens to us all from time to time. Thanks for your hard work.

  4. ahh now i give up in this game….

    lately only thing that give me a cheap death is a frame rate drop suddenly while huge special effect happening. most are when the large amounts of fire (such as drake fire breath) happening and the worst is it always some thing that many boss gonna do to you (and me). when i face stutter, i can’t move and then…i die.
    but i not blame you. you do the best while you only have a very limited resource. if i gonna blame some one i blame the game developer that port this game in the worst possible of bad port.

    *i found another bug too, in pc version seem some enemy (especially mid-boss) can’t let me back stab them. and many time i found i can’t do back with some weapon that is not a sword or spear type. while in xbox i can do it with every type of weapon…… how many bugs in pc version, i wonder ?

  5. Hi, Petert.Is it possible to remove the framerate lock on Intelhd3000? The game should be playable with it, because my laptop can play just fine other games with higher restrictions.

    Or do I need to give up on my dream playing this game on 30fps..?

    If you can remove it I will be happy to donate some hard earned money.

  6. It seems to be a problem with Acer Aspire 5750G laptops. Any ideas about how could I fix the framerate problem (locked at 15 fps, I think that the GPU is not working properly)?

  7. “Minor gripe but the F5 screen shot doesn’t seem to function once you alt/tab out of the game then back in.

    This is with version 091″ (source:Neogaf forum)

    Durante, can you confirm this?

  8. Real thanx for all this fixes but the alt tab crash is fixed you said so i downloadet the mod again and did the same as always but it stil lcrashed at me did i understand it wrong or soemthing? please mail me :P

  9. If you don’t mind a quick reply, could you tell me your thoughts on the two issues I have been mentioning in previous posts?

    1. Adding the ability to configure our own hotkeys (with a config file etc.).
    2. Adding a hot key to remove / restore the HUD. (I know there’s an option in the menu, but having a hotkey would be nice, if it is simple to implement)

    A simple yes or no on whether these are planned would make me super happy.

    However, your patch has already made me very happy, so thank you either way :-)

  10. @Author/petert

    The only method I know of fixing the 30FPS limiter, is to still re-render the frames from videobuffer at 60 times/sec (or what ever value) even if the game just updates 15/30 times from CPU.

    BUT* it is mandatory to be coupled with the camera controls of the game, so that your camera rotation is updated at more than 30 ticks. Else there would be no visual difference of just running 60 FPS, while the camera is still updated only 30 times/sec in that 60 FPS…

      • So that you can you can increase the render aspect, to buffer the frame updates to camera.

        • Also the camera moves at a constant max speed on the controller (I guess, while I amusing it)

          Never played with the mouse, so it could be same/tied -> mouse camera sensitivity.

          (those values could be utilized)

  11. Lot of screenshot BMP files are auto-generated?

    from
    screenshot_2012-09-07_06-47-23.bmp
    to
    screenshot_2012-09-06_10-11-41.bmp

    I didn’t set it & don’t press F5. How to turn screenshot-making off?

  12. after installed fix version 0.9 I can’t use “Xinputemu 3.0″ (program that let common game pad to be a xbox360 gamepad) any more….

    may be because in 0.9 you add file “dinput8.dll” in your fix (xinputemu need to put its dinput8.dll in to game dir). and if i try to over write your file it cause your fix not work.

    *sigh* unlucky me…………

  13. It is very good. Discovering self as stupid is the first step to become a wise man.
    Fools usually think they are wise, and don’t see their foolishness.

    And I understand you well, same happened to me many times. I remember how spent whole day trying to find a bug in my C++ app, and I decided to rewrite it from scratch, and discovered that I just had to fix 2 lines of code. LOL.

    • With the heavy use of sunglare in this game, i dont think Bloom would work well at all. Though i am biased, i tend to hate bloom in most games.

  14. First of all, thanks for your outstanding work, Durante! As soon as I get this game on Steam I’ll donate some cash to you! I would like to know if you was able to address the stereo sound bug?

  15. Thank you a lot Durante for all of your time and effort! Waiting so far for this fix :)

  16. Would it be possible to implement something similar to this Skyrim mod to Dark Souls?
    http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3222
    “The aim of iHUD is to provide the immersive feel you get from having no HUD, whilst keeping the usefulness of having one. It takes the permanantly visible HUD elements such as compass and crosshair, and hides them when not needed.”

    • Possible, but hard. You’d first need to figure out where the game is storing values such as health etc.

      • If you can pull this off From should add some sort of extremely highres statue of you in their next souls game somewhere. Thanks for the mod and keep being awesome.

  17. Hi, I just wanted to ask if you could check when fighting Manus Boss the screen blurs and tears (not always). Thanks for DSfix!

    • This is the same issue that occurs in the Darkroot Garden/Forest areas. Looking through the trees at the sky in certain spots causes the exact same tearing/blue black and white filter to appear. It looks different at Manus because the particles are blue whereas in the forest the trees turn blue.

      I hope this gets fixed as well.

  18. Hey Durante.
    I read your comments about texture replacement with interest. If I could change one texture-related aspect of the game it’d be the health bars that appear above targets. I generally find them too small, but worse, since they have no borders (i think?) the “empty” dark part of the bar gets easily lost against dark backgrounds, making it difficult to see where the health bar actually ends.

    Once you get texture replacements working I imagine it will be possible to change the health bar colors, which could help the dark-background issue. I wonder if it would be further possible to scale up their size, or even add a frame such that their total length is always apparent?

  19. All websites said pc version was locked to 1024×720 internal rendering O_o
    but… but… is this really correct? I thought xbox360 and ps3 resolution was 1280×720!

    • Yes. The console versions rendered at 1024×720 and stretched the image to 1280×720.
      The PC version renders at 1024×720, stretches it to 1280×720 and stretches that to the display resolution. (Without my mod)

      • I have a long past of pc gaming and I find this resolution (1024×720) quite unusual, this is the reason of my question :)
        I thought standard resolutions were 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1920×1080…

        • I noticed this as well, though i couldn’t remember WHY it looked wrong. It’s been so long since i used my old CRT 4:3 monitor XD

          • 1024×720 is weird because if you do (lenght/height) you don’t obtain neither 4:3 nor 16:9 aspect ratio. O_O

  20. Seriously impressed with your progress, Just wanted to say thanks for trying to do what apparently baffled NAMCO. +5 US monies incoming. More monies for more cool stuff. Realistically, do you think you can do anything about the 15/30FPS lock? It sounds like it’s kinda built into the game. I like to think if it was as easy as changing a variable namco would have done it XD

    Also, how much work will it be to update your fixes when the game gets a new patch? I’m hoping they fix matchmaking and the gamebreaking bug related to killing a certain NPC.

    • He already knows, he JUST posted that he fixed it and will upload it in the next build. When he has more goodies for us. My advice is go back to .8 like me if you alt tab alot. You aren’t missing anything huge.

  21. Gonna paypal you 10 US monies (hey, the dollar is cheap!) in a moment. Sorry for the low ammount, but I live in a poor country. Have some nice quality beers if you can!

    ps: this game is AWESOME, and only made better by your time & huge effort!

  22. The best thing to do is open it up and let some more eyes take a look at it. I can’t count the amount of times a bug was staring me back in the face for hours. Someone comes along and either by explaining the situation I figure it out, or they point it out really quick. Thanks for all your hard work!

    • Yes, I just need to get it to a presentable state. It won’t be beautiful anyway, but it needs to be better than it is right now to show it to in polite company ;)

  23. I wrote it before, but perhaps you may have missed it…but is there any chance the Sun/Moon disappearing bug will get addressed? It’s hard to praise the sun when it disappears =(

    • There’s always a chance, but that bug has been there since 0.1 and I really have no idea why it happens. Maybe I’ll get some sudden inspiration at some point, otherwise the outlook is grim.

        • In some situations, the sun glare does not appear as it should when using the mod to change the rendering resolution.

          • That makes me sad :(. The Sun and the Moon are really important in the game, especially the Sun. The Sun is really an in-game character, and having the Sun absent for any reason is like playing a different game.

            It’s not just the Sun glare either, but the entire sun itself. The glare and the sun sprite disappear as long as they’re not onscreen.

            What about the texture dump…is the Sun in there somewhere?

          • @shingouki
            please can you get some screenshots of this sun/moon bug? I really can’t notice that, in my game the sun lighting effect/lens flare and the moon are always there.

          • @PeterT: I found out something interesting about the Bug. The bug will usually only occur if one of two things happen: 1) The Sun sprite goes behind an object with lesser depth (closer to the screen) OR 2) The Sun Sprite goes offscreen.

            So if my character’s body obstructs the sun, or any other object obstructs the sun (such as a plant) then it will change to one of those three modes I wrote above.If it goes offscreen, same deal.

            However, interestingly, as long as neither of those things happen, I can basically move the camera around at will and the moon/sun will never disappear from its “Full” state.

            So my guess is it’s something to do with how the game renders the sun when it’s not visible?

        • Here’s Some Screenshots:

          http://imgur.com/a/mJojb#6

          There’s three “modes” the Sun/Moon will Enter:
          Full, Partial, and Gone.

          All the modes are in that album. You’ll notice that with the Sun diminished, it makes a big difference on the image. Some of the light disappears as well.

          • Wait, its not supposed to be like this? I thought seeing the sun was supposed to be a rare treat O.o

          • No, the Sun is a really important part of Dark Souls; like I said it’s practically an in-game character. It shines brightly and knocks your socks off whenever you see it. That’s why Solaire stares at the thing forever.

            In my opinion, it’s the best looking Sun in any videogame. So it makes me sad if I don’t see it.

          • Honestly I think that this is as programmers intended: in real life, if the sky is cloudy, you cannot always see the full sun/moon and if you don’t look in the direction of sun/moon you obviously cannot see it. Again, in real life, if a building or a tree is between you and the sun/moon, it covers them. Imho this is not a bug at all!

          • No dude. It’s a bug. I’ve beaten the game on PS3. The Sun is always visible.

            It’s an important part of the game. It’s an in game theme, along with the fact that the flow of time in the game is distorted.

          • More specifically, of course if the Sun goes behind an object it stops being visible, but once it peeks out in-front of the object again, it doesn’t change it’s current state. If it was shining from before I put a plant in front of it on the camera, when it comes out from the plant, it’ll still be shining…

            Since you know….it’s the sun.

            But yeah the Sun is always shining in Dark Souls because it’s a crucial theme to the game. I know from experience, since I used to park in front of it and watch it too.

          • ok, understood. Are you sure the sun/moon behavior is normal when not using Durante’s patch?

          • Yeah the Sun/Moon behavior is fine while not using the patch.

          • Unlockily I cannot reproduce the bug in any way, my sun is always there, what resolution are you using? I have an ati, default catalyst settings, smaa level 4 enabled in dsfix, 1280×720, 810 dof.

  24. Awesome! Keep up the good work!

    I thought it was just a glitch I was having and figured it wouldn’t get fixed. Glad to hear it wasn’t just me and that it was an easy fix.

    When you took away the intro splash screens, you forced me to donate. :) Can’t thank you enough for making this great game work properly!

    • No, there’s other unfinished stuff I want to fix before the next release. I’ll get it done ASAP.

      • You have made this game worth playing on PC.
        And with each new release it keeps getting better and better.

        Well fucking done and thank you. You’re grand.

        In addition, a question for all of you; Does game recognize generic USB gamepads fine?
        Mine died few days ago before I got the game, so I never had chance to test it.

        • DS worked fine with Logitech RumblePad 2. Now i’ve switched to MS Xbox360 wired pad and all (still) is ok.

          • I use a generic usb pad + x360ce (xbox pad emulator dll) for correct buttons layout and vibration.

  25. Maximum respect for a man (Durante) who is doing this for free, only leaded forward by passion for gaming and the love for programming. Hail to the king baby!

  26. Want to say thank you for all the updates. I bought this game on PC in hopes of someone fixing all these things, but wouldn’t guess someone to do it that fast. Thanks!

    About the downscaling of the HUD, I know you’ve said it’s on your list, but do you think it will be a challenging thing to implement?

    • I already know it’s rather more challenging to implement than I had hoped, since I already tried. But hey, challenges are good ;)

        • If I manage to implement HUD scaling this will automatically make it look better. Font replacement should generally be rather easy though, it’s just a few textures.

          • Does the same apply to texture replacements such as the button icons? So that keyboard/PS3 controller users could get a nice, functional UI.

          • If we submit you some PS3/Keyboard images could you try to mod em into the game?

          • already working on it! hopefully get it to you by the end of the day. trying to find good quality ps3 icons if anyone can help. keyboard shouldn’t be a problem.

          • hey blargh, I think for your pse ones the far right stick ones should say RS/LS not R3/L3 for movement. Though you do have the R3/L3 buttons right. thanks for taking care of the ps3 one. Im almost done with pure keyboard, then ill move onto a mixed mouse one.

          • Could you possibly post the font texture files? I’d love to work up a high-res stylized font replacement, assuming you find a way to get the game to use it instead of the packed textures. Thanks!

          • Just a heads up the texture files DaS us are .tpf, it’s a DDS file that’s DX1 and DX5 encoded IIRC, and they’re packed in the .bdt files with everything else.
            Here’s some of the text texture files I ripped, they’re not all there, but it’s a start I guess for those who want to change font and whatnot:
            http://www.mediafire.com/?77us7e5tj7rx8ac
            And a random assortment of some more textures if anyone wants to start on a high-res texture mod – or just wants to look through them:
            http://www.mediafire.com/?9cnh7gdkuh2c8hq

          • Hmm. Is it possible to make some “override” folder from which your wrapper will load texture files?

          • Just curious. Are you planning on adding this feature to the next release, or will it probably be at a later point?

          • Hi, I have only the smallest amount of experience in regards to programming and stuff (I used to change .ini files of games as cheats when I was younger haha).
            Now I see you posted the PS3 gamepad button prompts here to replace the 360 prompts, how would I go about changing the 360 prompts using those PS3 prompts? As I use a PS3 controller to play.

            Thanks for the fix as well, your hard work certainly isn’t going unappreciated :)

          • Oh I see you implemented texture overriding via the .ini which, I imagine, solves this very problem.
            Thank you very much, you are a gentleman and a scholar.

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