Thread: Tracing pointers

I have an odd occurance I found while doing some testing in my game today. If I go through and kill the slimes - did this while testing dodge/hit algos - then leave the map and re enter to have the respawn occasionally - not every time and never to all monsters just one - they seems to spawn with 1hp or maybe less than 1hp because one hit will kill them. I think this may be a lingering pointer poiting to a dead monster from the previous load - which should be deallocated upon map change - now I am wondering if anyone can tell me how to track the pointers so I can figure out why it blips like this occasionally.

I do want to say one more thing I delete the map everytime and reallocate the memory so this should be a fresh load every time.

To test your hypothesis, set the HP of monsters you just killed to some known magic value.

Also make sure that as you delete things, specifically set the pointer to NULL.

Which OS/Compiler are you using?
VC++ for example has a debug options for memory allocation
- freed memory is not actually freed, but appended to a free list. Unless you run out of memory, you'll never see this again disguised as another allocation.
- freed memory is filled with known junk (0xCD IIRC), so you instantly recognise "use after free" issues.

Win Vista
Code::Blocks compiler
Allegro
I will try setting the pointers to NULL after the deletes and see if that helps the situation.

The HPs are set in the map file along with sprites and other attributes so thats not an issue - the checking I mean.


Now I have an even more intermitant problem - almost like data is getting changed out in the middle of nowhere its really odd has caused crashes on two seperate accounts dealing with different parts of the code. Worse yet I am unable to reproduce these crashes at all - same map same item same code did same things. How do you all deal with errors like this?

I would try using a debugger. Start tracing values etc. Salem had some good ideas...

Which OS/Compiler are you using?
VC++ for example has a debug options for memory allocation
- freed memory is not actually freed, but appended to a free list. Unless you run out of memory, you'll never see this again disguised as another allocation.
- freed memory is filled with known junk (0xCD IIRC), so you instantly recognise "use after free" issues.

Originally Posted by mramazing

I would try using a debugger. Start tracing values etc. Salem had some good ideas...

Debugger fails to start as stated in another post on this forum. Being intermitant makes me think the logic is good just that somehow someway part of the time some error occurs. I know all the files are properly formatted - checked by hand.

I have only had one occurance of one crash where many tiles loaded then I went over to an object in the game interacted with it checked inventory (object gives an item) had item so all was good exited inventory screen displayed properly but with some tiles displaying transparent then crashing for no reason have not been able to reproduce this error at all.

Normally a debugger isn't a bad idea, but if you can not recreate the issue - then it becomes a mute point.

I keep playing with the game here and there still have not seen the same issues I am not sure if it was just one issue one time maybe a memory blip on the computer's side. I did check the memory in this laptop since one stick has a problem staying in the slot both sticks were in their slots. Still dumbfounded on this error as I said before I have not seen it nor has anyone recreated it again. I will post more when I get some more data to post sadly with I think 3 people with .exe files or the code and .exe files this might take a while.