Teenagent - Nintendo 64 Exception Error

[Morden]

I was testing the Nintendo 64 version of ScummVM yesterday, and I took Teenagent for a spin. It's not a long game, so my intention was to finish it in one sitting.

Everything ran smoothly up to the point when you lower the basket [using a spanner] for the little boy, trying to score a point. After I've done it, there was a short scene, during which the boy went inside the house, and seconds after that the game crashed, displaying the following:



I built the image according to instructions. I did it using the compiled binaries. Made the image of the directory containing all the game data, including teenagent.dat [the game data are in separate subfolder, but it doesn't matter]. Since everything was working just fine up until that one point, I'm guessing it's either a bug, my luck or there's something wrong with my files. Here's the list of files I put in my game directory inside the image, along with size and md5 sums.

Code: Select all

ADVERT.RES   712,500    A5B2DDA315EA82748201BDFE1892469A
LAN_000.RES  535,599    2B376797AF05A8A021A82D3D5ABF96D4
LAN_500.RES  9,538,457  0A1F0114B8F3450CCF5D908F0A5D78EC
MMM.RES      42,104     FC491322FF6C91232E719B06AC9C1CAE
OFF.RES      2,720,432  F91D019934D78905D2ACBC88FA56B1CF
ON.RES       153,907    C9207F1E31CB2A12BE26D9598412294C
ONS.RES      173,077    98CDF12D28297401381815D9725852FA
SAM_MMM.RES  229,636    D1BC477BD0F00E77D4D8D9495D644472
SAM_SAM.RES  769,552    76BF553AFBA9272457E759C6BAB030E7
SDR.RES      14,665     45A12561F17FE0143F52201FDFCF1D02
SOUND.SET    5          6B7CAF0B0BF7E3C4481F7CEC9AE429D2
UNLOGIC.RES  202,880    AC505F7117D577140E3AE14F19A32F1C
VARIA.RES    216,683    554699904D1469B32D11AE731003F8FC

I went by the ScummVM data files list to select what I should delete and what should stay, so everything of importance is there, or at least should be.

While other versions for more popular platforms go through a lot of testing, I'm not sure if someone played through Teenagent on a N64 to confirm whether it's actually completable.

Some info on what I used: NTSC US N64 console, memory expansion, Neo Myth with Diddy Kong Racing as a boot cartridge. I didn't have a memory card plugged into the controller.

The game is free, and is available at GOG.com. You can download it, build an image yourself, or use my image. It's the one I used when I got the error message.

[hkzlab]

Hi,
thanks for the test, last time i tried teen agent (and it was quite a long ago, the engine was recently added to the repository) on my port, it was crashing because of corruption caused by running out of ram... and since then i forgot to test it again.

From the output of the exception handler apparently the problem is still happening (see the stack pointer and heap end, they're very near to each other, and as there is no "out of memory" check on n64, there is the risk of heap overwriting part of the stack and causing corruption problems), so i'll have to try playing teenagent on pc and see if there is a leak i can plug somewhere, or if the engine simply uses too much memory for the N64 to handle.
I doubt it's a problem on your part.

Thanks for reminding me to look at it!

[Morden]

No problem. There doesn't seem to be that many people interested in the N64 build, so at least my time spent with the game did not go to waste.

Actually, once the Nintendo 64 version crashed, I connected a laptop to my TV, and completed the game using DOSBox. I just felt like playing Teenagent, and no lack of memory was going to spoil my fun.

Even under DOSBox, there's a noticable "crunch" during that particular moment in the game. Once you fix the hoop and the kid will score, he will go inside the house, telling his grandpa he promised to take him to the zoo, or wherever. Right then, the game makes an awkward jump, and goes from the kid and, apparently, his grandpa, being inside the house, to them driving away in a car. You don't see them coming out. I think the screen goes black for a second, too [in an attempt to make the jump between the scenes less awkward, I guess].