[SM] Random blackscreen

[dewhi100]

My hack sometimes softlocks into a black screen. The music still plays, and the HUD is still visible. I cannot reliably replicate it, and it is a rare happening. It seems to trigger when running towards a door and firing. What might I have changed that causes this?

[Munchy]

My hack sometimes softlocks into a black screen. The music still plays, and the HUD is still visible. I cannot reliably replicate it, and it is a rare happening. It seems to trigger when running towards a door and firing. What might I have changed that causes this?

Probably a good idea to list what custom ASM stubs you're using (e.g. "black falcon's blah blah blah")! also, try and isolate if this is occuring in specific rooms or just any location. In addition, if you find specific rooms that cause this behaviour, whether the problem rooms are pre-existing rooms that you've modified or brand new rooms. I'm by no means the expert on game run time issues, but I suspect others will tell you that It's a needle in a haystack without more information!

[Mettyk25jigsaw]

It seems to trigger when running towards a door and firing

Is it a door property tile or a door PLM you are talking about?
If it is a door property tile, might have an idea what is wrong.
If it is a PLM Door, could be something to do with a pointer to asm inside where the 2nd pointer points to from start of PLM instruction or the asm itself.
Is it a missile door, Super missile door etc? That would help.

Really would need to know these answers before I can help you any further.

Cheers.

[dewhi100]

It is in at least two rooms. Two locations over three incidents, pointing towards a blue door both times and roughly right after playing the shot fired sound. The shot has never made it to the door. I don't know if firing is even what triggers it. The rooms are built from scratch.

I'm using the "skipIntroSavesWork" patch by Phospho, BlackFalcon's chain blocks mod, Quote's boost ball, and the Arboretum tileset. I also used SMILE RF to set the missile door to take 1 missile instead of 5. I made a point to modify the boost ball palm and chain block PLM so they would not conflict. I also changed some CRE tiles, specifically the door tiles. Specifically the layer priority for the metal part of the door caps, the part which always displays.

IIRC RF's option to save PLM instructions could be bugged in the past. That is the first place I will look. The chain blocks seem to have slightly changed their functionality as well since I started seeing this softlock, but that may be a coincidence.

[Mettyk25jigsaw]

Something just occurred to me, I know something similar happened to me, not sure if this is what it is for you but it's worth mentioning.

I remember what the cause was fortunately, make sure all enemies are not out of bounds, for example if room is 3 scrolls wide and 3 scrolls in height. maybe they are placed like on a non existing X-axis scroll or a non existing Y-axis scroll, like 07 for example (X-axis or Y-axis).

I remember the room loading fine, but when I got to a certain spot it did a similar thing as you described.

PLM's might also do the same type of thing, might want to note that too.

[dewhi100]

I'm now able to reliably replicate the error. It happens when a shot hits the bottom tile of a door cap (blue door cap, missile cap did not crash it). What's going on here?

I noticed that in the base game, Doors use copy tiles with values FF, FE, FD. I've been using FF, FF, FF but I don't see how that makes a difference. It does though- I changed one of the offending doors to use FF, FE, FD, and the game still softlocks BUT without blacking out the screen. Instead, the black bar behind the HUD disappears, and the HUD graphics are showing above the level tiles.

SOLVED. Very stupid. Bottom tile of door was a shotblock instead of a v-copy. The perils of copy-flipY-paste.

[Munchy]

I wondered if it was something like that! Glad you nailed it!