Reason for Cutscene Freezing?

[Alkorri]

Hi there, everyone. I have a problem that I hope more experienced folks can help me figure out.

In my game, Tinkles Must Die, I have this Player Touch event that triggers the final boss battle. After the battle, roughly one out of 10 times during playing/playtesting, the post-battle cutscene will freeze. Which you can imagine is pretty embarrassing. I had to record the post-battle and endgame cutscene for the two poor people who came across it. (ksjp and my spouse)

Now I want to expand my game (with cut content and a Luna UI!) but that worry still niggles. Every feedback I get from someone, I pray they don't come across this glitch which is a bit stressful XD

Can some kind soul shed light on this? Admittedly this event has a LOT of commands in it. Here's the sequence (Edit: Added Screenshots at the end of this post!)

Spoiler

• Player triggers the event.
• Some 30 lines of dialogue between two people.
• The boss shows up with TWO minions. Move Route has them approaching the two people and stopping.
• 10 lines of Show Text between three people.
• Boss battle! Default Ace battle system, using only Venka's script to display enemy status icons, and Fomar's Substitute edits.
• With boss defeated, the boss sprite is set on a Move Route to run some distance at high speed, before turning around and talking trash at the hero. In three instances of it happening, the cutscene ALWAYS freezes when the sprite is running midway to intended destination.
• If it goes right, an animation plays with the hero getting rid of the boss, then goes straight to the endgame cutscene.

I playtested the boss battle in the Editor numerous times, but was only able to recreate it if I reload a save before the Boss Battle, and fighting that same boss over... and over.. again. Then during that critical boss running moment, I would hit every key on the keyboard imaginable to get them to freeze, but the cutscene continues as normal. One time, I myself was able to get that glitch, but at the time I wasn't even doing or pressing anything. When I replayed that boss battle, I wasn't able to recreate the cutscene freeze. Puzzling!

Because this is a first script-lite project, the only other scripts besides Venka and Fomar's edits are Rachael's Random Encounter Indicator and Yanfly's System Options.

Ksjp speculated that perhaps it has something to do with a minion's Wait command before the boss battle, so I experimented moving around a minion's Move Route command and toggling off the Wait checkbox to see if that might help. My spouse still came across the freeze however, although it might be significant to note that halfway through, an updated version of the game was played, using a save file from the previous one.

Apologies for the wall of text. Perhaps I should take screenshots of that entire event if someone wishes to see!

Edit: Decided to make it easier for folks and just paste the whole thing, story spoilers and all ;P The fifth screenshot is where it freezes.

Spoiler

If you made it this far, congratulations, you poor soul XD

 

[Dymdez]

Yes - Screenshots please.

In my experience, random freezing generally has to do with event positions or move routes clogging. Always test with new games and not old save files.

 

[EternalShadow]

Put through: on onto the freezing event, then turn though: off again at the end. There might be something on the map moving around and making it freeze.

 

[Alkorri]

@Dymdez - Thanks, screenshots posted in original post!

So far in the new games I've not come across this issue, but I worry, you know?

@Hotfirelegend - Never thought of checking Through On, although I did check that nothing got in the sprite's way. Does it matter turning Through back off if this is literally the last event in the game before the epilogue?

 

[Dymdez]

@Dymdez - Thanks, screenshots posted in original post!

So far in the new games I've not come across this issue, but I worry, you know?

@Hotfirelegend - Never thought of checking Through On, although I did check that nothing got in the sprite's way. Does it matter turning Through back off if this is literally the last event in the game before the epilogue?

Sorry, I would love to help, but I just can't believe it. Is it true? The king is dead? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Just kidding, yea, in my first post I said things about event positions. Temporarily remove the queen's movement where it freezes and see if it happens again. If it doesn't we know some events are colliding. This is probably an easy fix. Just need to test every permutation of the event to see wheres its clogging.

 

[Alkorri]

Lol I know it's a simplistic, cliche story, Dymdez. Just wanted a simple first project while I learned the engine

I could test removing the queen's movement. The thing is I wonder how many times I have to recreate those conditions and replay the boss battle before I lose my sanity ;D Will try that.

 

[Dymdez]

Hmm? Just delete the boss battle for now. Why would the freezing have anything to do with the battle processing? You agree? and no I like the story - teared up a little

 

[EternalShadow]

@Dymdez - Thanks, screenshots posted in original post!


So far in the new games I've not come across this issue, but I worry, you know?


@Hotfirelegend - Never thought of checking Through On, although I did check that nothing got in the sprite's way. Does it matter turning Through back off if this is literally the last event in the game before the epilogue?

You don't need to bother with turning through off again then.

 

[Susan]

I played through your boss battle twice but didn't come up against any freeze during the cutscene.

Here's my humble opinion :

Spoiler

You mentioned that your spouse is using a save file from a previous version of your game.
I heard this can cause problems if used a later version of a game even if there were only minor edits.
It may be due to the difference in file sizes and the location of the various information in the files.

Also, the save file may also contain tiny infos such which page the map event(s) are on, switches, variables etc. so that when you load a save file the game will be just as you left it, not back to square one.

Probably what they are encountering in this case is something like a 'ghost' event. It isn't there anymore in your game file, but the save file says it is.

I would recommend deleting the old save file and restarting the game from the beginning in the new version.

 

[seita]

I didn't look through the whole event, but my suspicion is what Susan brought up. Old save files with new versions of the game are always something to think about.

I wouldn't delete it just yet though, in case it is the problem and you end up a nervous wreck from not being sure if it was the problem or not.

I'd suggest putting in prints during the whole process to make sure the events are going along fine.

For playtesting, see if you can replicate it by removing the boss fight, with and without the save file.

put in script calls such as

p "after boss fight" (this prints out the line >> after boss fight << in the console window without affecting gameplay)

p "boss moving"

p "boss finished moving"

(you can do this in move routes to, if you want to put it after each step).

etc etc, so you know at what point it freezes. Do this for all events that are actively processing at the time of the freeze.

 

[Alkorri]

Thank you, Susan and seita, for the suggestions If it's just save file issue, that would relieve some anxiety.

Seita, errr, this is my first game which I used to learn the engine, but I'm afraid I still don't know what a "script call" is. So I'm afraid the following is a bit Greek to me, sorry.

p "after boss fight" (this prints out the line >> after boss fight << in the console window without affecting gameplay)

p "boss moving"

p "boss finished moving"

 

[seita]

Seita, errr, this is my first game which I used to learn the engine, but I'm afraid I still don't know what a "script call" is. So I'm afraid the following is a bit Greek to me, sorry.

p "after boss fight" (this prints out the line >> after boss fight << in the console window without affecting gameplay)

p "boss moving"

p "boss finished moving"

No problem~ On the 3rd page of Event Commands, bottom right near the cancel button you'll see the "Advanced" area with a single event command "Scrpt..."

Click on that and just type in the following:

p "after boss fight"

When the event running hits that point, it'll just show "after boss fight" on the console.

This is to just make sure that the game is processing the event properly. If you notice that it doesn't print something out when it freezes, then the freezing is happening some time after the last line printed on the console, and before the next line that wasn't printed.

 

[cabfe]

I used my saved game from the same version (I didn't delete the game) and tried a few times the final fight to see what I could find.

I had no problem in 99% of my tries.

The remaining 1% consists of two bugs:

1 - The one told by Alkorri. The queen stopped moving after 2 tiles and the game hanged because of that. Maybe the Through ON could work, even though there were no visible event in the queen's way.

2 - This one was really strange. It occured before the fight. The soldier on the left side of the screen was the one who didn't move completely. It happened only once in my tries.

Maybe (but I have no way to check) there is an event in the way that we cannot see (like the rain splashes events) and is not set to Through ON?

 

[Alkorri]

I love you, guys! Cabfe, that was sweet of you to go back and help find the problem. I will try putting Through on for the queen sprite event, and check any rain splashes in the way, thank you

Oooh, seita, thank you for taking the time to explain what a Script Call is. That sounds like a very useful playtesting feature! I'll be sure to try it. 

 

[Susan]

Just to keep this post looking too long :

Spoiler

@cabfe :
- sounds interesting. I'll try to fight that battle a few more times to see if I'll run into any of those freezes, or new ones.
- it may be true about an invisible rain splash event getting in the way of the cutscene, especially if they were randomly moving and, after being 'switched off', their priority were changed to 'same as character' and happened to stop right in front of where the NPCs were supposed to be moving.

@Alkorri :
- maybe you can try switching your rain effect (switch 69, was it) on then off before the cutscene, and try walking around during playtesting to see if there are invisible 'barriers' on the map. Those could be your 'switched off' rain effects.
- you could then hunt down the possible 50+ rain effects you have on your map, to switch each one off. Or, you could just re-edit one, delete the rest, and copy-paste it all over again.
- even if that's the case, you may want to do what cabfe suggested as there may be other invisible 'barriers' haunting your map.

It is Halloween after all. Happy Halloween everyone!