Hey!

I don't have NXE on my 360, but a friend does. My game (Brain Party) is now approved for sale, and my friend kindly downloaded it and tried it out - and he said it crashed when the trial ended. I was under the impression that the trial stuff is basically out of my control, so I'm a bit surprised at the poor experience he's reported. Is this just the NXE beta being a bit weak compared to the final release?

Here's what he said: "It just hung on the “Trial is over!” screen, and didn’t show the buttons to exit/buy. It was part of the wrapper rather than the game proper, so I chalked it up to beta."

Can anyone with NXE help or clarify what happens/should happen?


Paul

I hit the same issue. The trial over screen doesn't even completely display from what I can tell as there are no options of available buttons to press. Not even the guide button on the controller responds, have to press the power button on the box to restart.

I wonder if this is an issue similar to the guide issue where you are blocking in your update or draw which prevents the guide from finishing its stuff.

Hello, I am looking at your issue and am seeing the problem as well. As mentioned are you not calling Draw after a certain amount of time or when the game is not active? I think this is because for whatever reason Draw is not being called in your game.

Please let us know!

EDIT: We're seeing the issue when the screen comes up while playing the game, but works fine in the menu screen. Does this ring any bells for you? Would you mind sending us your .CCGame file so we could look to make sure that this is not our issue?

Thanks
Michael

Hey!

<< I hit the same issue. The trial over screen doesn't even completely display from what I can tell as there are no options of available buttons to press. Not even the guide button on the controller responds, have to press the power button on the box to restart. >>

Yes, that's basically it - it just freezes as far as I understand.

<< Hello, I am looking at your issue and am seeing the problem as well. As mentioned are you not calling Draw after a certain amount of time or when the game is not active? I think this is because for whatever reason Draw is not being called in your game. >>

<< EDIT: We're seeing the issue when the screen comes up while playing the game, but works fine in the menu screen. Does this ring any bells for you? Would you mind sending us your .CCGame file so we could look to make sure that this is not our issue? >>

I don't see any reason why Draw() isn't being called, unless Draw() is called for me through base.Update(). I don't ever call Draw() myself, because XNA seems to do it all for me. I don't have NXE so I can't debug the issue or figure out where the code is. As far as I was aware, the whole trial thing was supposed to be done entirely in Xboxland - I didn't realise we had to make sure our code worked in a specific way in order to be compatible. I figured that as soon as the trial-is-over screen appeared, my code had basically stopped executing, but if you're saying my code still has control somehow, then I guess it could be a problem somewhere there.

My best guess - and I'm happy to send you the source code, if it would help (just tell me your email address) - is that base.Update() isn't being called because I return out of my Update() method whenever IsActive is set to be false because I don't want the game to do anything unless it has the user's attention. If base.Update() is what calls Draw() for me, and your guide stuff doesn't work unless I'm calling base.Update() (and thus Draw() and base.Draw()), then that would be the problem. But that doesn't seem to ring true to me because all the other guide windows (storage device, message boxes, etc) work fine despite the IsActive check.

Anyway, I've uploaded my .ccgame file here: http://www.hudzilla.org/BrainParty.ccgame - if you'd like the source code, just let me know. I would (obviously) like to get this issue fixed, and also put up some sort of notice so that other people don't have the same problem! But if I have to issue a fix, it means I may have to go all the way through peer review again :/

Take care,


Paul

Hudzilla:

My best guess - and I'm happy to send you the source code, if it would help (just tell me your email address) - is that base.Update() isn't being called because I return out of my Update() method whenever IsActive is set to be false because I don't want the game to do anything unless it has the user's attention. If base.Update() is what calls Draw() for me, and your guide stuff doesn't work unless I'm calling base.Update() (and thus Draw() and base.Draw()), then that would be the problem. But that doesn't seem to ring true to me because all the other guide windows (storage device, message boxes, etc) work fine despite the IsActive check.

Thanks, I grabbed the CCGame if you want to take it down. We'll take a look into it but the thing above may be the problem, but as you pointed out we would have expected all the other guide stuff to fail as well.

Thanks!
Michael

Hey!

I don't know how possible this is, but if you can somehow activate my Live account for NXE I can just run the debugger here and see what the problem is.


Paul

Hey!

Have you managed to track the problem down Michael/someone else? I'd really prefer my game not to crash if possible, and if I have to go through the whole peer review thing again to solve a problem I can't even reproduce on my Xbox, it's going to be rather tricky. If my game is live on NXE right now, it means people might be trying it and crashing their Xboxes, so I'd really like to get it fixed ASAP.

Take care,


Paul

Hi Paul, We are still looking at the issue. This isn't something you would be able to debug as you can't simulate the expiration screen from within your game. As mentioned the other things seem to work, if you want you have the option of taking your game offline and re-submitting but it may not be a problem you can fix (we don't know yet). As soon as we have more details into the issue, I'll follow up with you.

Thanks!

 

<< This isn't something you would be able to debug as you can't simulate the expiration screen from within your game >>

That was why I asked whether it's possible for me to get NXE for my 360 ;)

<< if you want you have the option of taking your game offline and re-submitting but it may not be a problem you can fix>>

Yes, but unless you guys can instantly re-approve my game, it means I have to bother all the peer reviewers again and ask them to re-check my game, and that might take a long time! :(


Paul

Hudzilla:

<< This isn't something you would be able to debug as you can't simulate the expiration screen from within your game >>

That was why I asked whether it's possible for me to get NXE for my 360 ;)

Even if you have the NXE, running the game in trial mode after deployed doesn't expire. The expiration timer only works after a game is approved and downloaded from XBLCG.

Ack! I am *so* sorry: I've just noticed that my Update() method uses try/finally, with the base.Update() method being in the finally block. So, when I use "return" to exit the method, base.Update() *should* be being called. So base.Update() is - at least as far as I'm concerned - being called, which rules that out.

Here's how it looks:

protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) {
    try {
        // don't update if something else (eg the guide) has focus
        if (!IsActive) {
            return;
        }

        // blah blah blah - game stuff here
    } finally {
        BP.Audio.Update();
        base.Update(gameTime);
    }
}

I don't know if this helps you or not. Like I said, I'm happy to upload the source code somewhere for you - if you send me an email at paul.hudson@gmail.com I'll upload the code and ping you back with a URL.


Paul

I am still having the same issue.  Obviously my situation is not exactly the same because I'm only running the vertex declaration once during run (at the beginning), but my game is still crashing after the 4-minute trial expires.

http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/20854.aspx

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated...this is most definitely having a negative impact on my popularity and sales!

yyr:

I am still having the same issue.  Obviously my situation is not exactly the same because I'm only running the vertex declaration once during run (at the beginning), but my game is still crashing after the 4-minute trial expires.

I think the problem is you are ONLY setting it at run.  I believe when the trial expires, the vertex declaration is getting changed by the runtime between draw calls (to display the trial menu) and not changing it back, so you MUST set it every draw call.

Thank you for the clarification.  I've updated the game and am submitting it for what will hopefully be its final peer review now.