Question Regarding H.sie Patcher

[radcapricorn]

Use the auto rollback feature, it's invaluable

Glad you've sorted it out. Happy hunting

[BigWalleye]

Auto Rollback works great - except, what happens if you experience a CTD? CTD does not exit via Commander. Are you now rolled back, or not? Does Commander know how to cope with this situation? If you restart Commander, it recognizes that Auto Rollback is enabled, and does not give you the option to manually roll back. If you then restart SH3 from Commander, it overwrites a new copy of the Commander changes, and saves the "old" files - which already contained the Commander changes. Then, when you exit Commander after this session, it "rolls back" - to the changed files.

So Auto Rollback is a fine idea, as long as you never experience an in-game CTD. A while back, I got myself wrapped around the axle this way. Had to do a complete reinstall. (I know, I know! I should have saved a snapshot! Din't.) Now I use Manual Rollback and always roll back before exiting Commander. If anyone knows a way to avoid this, I'd love to hear about it.

[Delta Wolf]

Originally Posted by BigWalleye

Auto Rollback works great - except, what happens if you experience a CTD? CTD does not exit via Commander. Are you now rolled back, or not? Does Commander know how to cope with this situation? If you restart Commander, it recognizes that Auto Rollback is enabled, and does not give you the option to manually roll back. If you then restart SH3 from Commander, it overwrites a new copy of the Commander changes, and saves the "old" files - which already contained the Commander changes. Then, when you exit Commander after this session, it "rolls back" - to the changed files.

So Auto Rollback is a fine idea, as long as you never experience an in-game CTD. A while back, I got myself wrapped around the axle this way. Had to do a complete reinstall. (I know, I know! I should have saved a snapshot! Din't.) Now I use Manual Rollback and always roll back before exiting Commander. If anyone knows a way to avoid this, I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks for the info Bigwalleye, ill keep that in mind

[radcapricorn]

Originally Posted by BigWalleye

Auto Rollback works great - except, what happens if you experience a CTD? CTD does not exit via Commander.

Are you absolutely sure that is the case? I never experienced problems with rollbacks after a CTD. And I wouldn't expect it since (from a programmer's point of view), Commander should wait for sh3 process to exit and perform a rollback no matter how that exit occured. Now in exceptional cases (like complete computer freezes, power outages, etc.) this wouldn't happen, and I am not sure if Commander accounts for that.

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by radcapricorn

Are you absolutely sure that is the case? I never experienced problems with rollbacks after a CTD. And I wouldn't expect it since (from a programmer's point of view), Commander should wait for sh3 process to exit and perform a rollback no matter how that exit occured. Now in exceptional cases (like complete computer freezes, power outages, etc.) this wouldn't happen, and I am not sure if Commander accounts for that.

No, I am not absolutely sure. But I'm not sure what Win7 does when a program has a pathological termination. I do know this: With Manual Rollback selected, I start SH3 from Commander. If SH3 terminates normally, Commander is restarted, displays updated patrol information, and gives me the option to do a Manual Rollback. But if SH3 terminates via a CTD, Commander is NOT restarted. I go straight back to the desktop. (CTD) I can manually relaunch Commander, and it shows no update to patrol data (expected, of course) and Commander gives me the option to manually roll back. That is, Commander knows that it has altered files and written those altered files to the active game folder, and that it has not replaced those altered files with the originals which it saved.

If a CTD with Manual Rollback selected caused Commander to resume, with the option to roll back available, I would believe you were probably correct. But that is not what happens. While I am not sure that Auto Rollback does not work after a CTD, I prefer to err on the side of caution and only use Manual Rollback. This became an issue at a time when I was having a lot of CTDs and trying to troubleshoot the problem. The CTDs are gone, but I still use Manual Rollback. Of course, I could do an examination of the files that Commander alters and see if they were restored after a CTD. But honestly, I just haven't bothered.

[radcapricorn]

Hmm. Well, I guess to be absolutely sure we'd have to ask JScones

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by radcapricorn

Hmm. Well, I guess to be absolutely sure we'd have to ask JScones

Actually, there is another way, as I mentioned above, and it is more reliable than asking the programmer to remember what he did 4 years ago. (I know from experience how reliable that is!)

We know (can look in the Commander files and see) what changes Commander makes to text files before overwriting them. Start Commander. Start SH3. Pause SH3. Go to the altered files and look at them, to verify that the files have been altered. Unpause SH3. Now force a CTD. (Your choice of methods....) Now check the altered files to see if they have been restored. You will know unequivocally whether they are or not. Neither documentation nor programmer memory is ever a guarantee of what a program is actually doing. The only sure way to know what a program is doing is to see what it does.

Personally, I have had my share of CTDs. I don't want to create one intentionally, even to further human knowledge. YMMV.