We have many beta testers running a game successfully, but just a rare few seem to have trouble at startup. The acknex.txt shows everything is fine until "main loop.." at which point no more is logged. We tried creating additional diag() logs in main() to isolate the problem in our own code, but we found that not even the first line of code in main() was being executed. The first line in main() was diag("main:1") but "main:1" was never output to the log.

I've read here that there are issues with Windows Server 2003, but this user has XP Pro (32-bit). The hardware is all up-to-date (1GB RAM, DirectX 9.0c, an 8800 graphics card, etc.) We're completely stumped here about what could be causing this. We've completely replaced every file in the instalation to make sure corruption isn't the problem.

The game is running on CScript using A7 v. 7.06. If anyone has even a guess as to what might be causing the problem, that would at least give us something to investigate. Thanks.

(FYI - I put this under bugs because it appears to be an engine bug rather than something with our code, since our code never starts executing.)

Three advices here. First, upgrade to the current version, that's 7.07. Second, your description sounds like the DEP problem listed under the "Starting with gamestudio" support FAQ - let the tester check his settings. And third, the DEP problem can only happen with the development version. Distributing that version to beta testers is illegal unless you own a team license. So always create a release version for testing.

JCL: Then it's not likely to be a DEP problem, since we're not exactly in the habit of releasing games (even betas) that requires development environments. However, I'll have the user check his DEP settings anyway, just to verify that DEP's not the cause.

Is there any reason to believe upgrading to 7.07 and re-releasing a new beta version of our game to hundreds of beta testers will actually solve this problem? (It's a lot of work affecting a lot of people to do this and could introduce new bugs as a result of migration, so I'd just like to know it's not just a stab in the dark before we do it.)

Thanks.

Just tested with user. As it turns out, you nailed it, JCL! (Thank God.) The problem was the DEP setting.

Now the only question remaining is about the dev vs. public versions. Here's exactly what's in the game install (and what's causing the problem with DEP):

{app name}.exe (automatically created during Publish based on acknex.exe)
acknex.dll
d3dx9_30.dll
acknex.wdf
{app name}.wdl (used to launch game with other wdls in wrs files)

That's it. The rest of the installation includes various wrs files with wdls and graphics/sound resources, a third-party dll used to change the app icon after the game engine starts, and some raw media files (ico, pcx, tga, wmv).

Again, all of the above files come straight out of the output .cd folder after using Publish.

Is it possible the icon-changing dll is the culprit? If not, you may want to check into this, since it would mean that non-dev files are resulting in the DEP problem.

Many thanks, JCL, for pinpointing this one so quickly.

No, running a script is the problem. The user has set up his DEP to prevent executing on the fly compiled scripts. He should leave DEP in its default settings and everything is fine.