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What. The. HELL?

Zorodius · 2002-02-26T01:04:26

I've been working on some fairly simple code, and totally rewriting some stuff I did a long time ago. I have encountered an error whose only logical explanation would appear to be demonic possession. If anyone can tell me why this is occuring, or give me the name of a good exorcist, I'd be grateful. First, a little information about what I'm doing: I'm trying to write a small sprite library that uses DirectDraw. To help me with all my coding needs, I've written a really simple function that takes a string as an argument and writes it to a file called ErrorRecord.txt. This way, I can easilly tell when and where problems are occuring. This function is called Rec(). I've written a program that uses DirectDraw to perform the adventurous task of changing the resolution. When a key is pressed, the program exits. Yes, I know, it's glorious. Thank you for that standing ovation. Now I'm attempting to add some code for manipulating sprites, one incredibly small step at a time. I have written a class, called Sprite, with almost nothing in it: class Sprite{ public: Sprite(); ~Sprite(); bool LoadBitmap(char * filename, LPDIRECTDRAW lpdd); private: LPDIRECTDRAWSURFACE imageSurface; }; The constructors and destructors look like this: Sprite::Sprite() { Rec("Default constructor for Sprite class invoked."); imageSurface = NULL; } Sprite::~Sprite() { Rec("Destructor for Sprite class invoked."); imageSurface->Release(); } Not exactly a lot of room for error so far. LoadBitmap() has been written, but isn't invoked anywhere, so I'm not listing it here. Now, in WinMain, I have something that looks like this: int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hinst, HINSTANCE ignoreMe, LPSTR arguments, int showStyle) { MSG recentMsg; ClearRec(); Rec("Program Launched. Beginning Initialization..."); // Attempt to initialize. if(!InitializeAll(hinst, showStyle)) { Rec("Error during Initialization."); return 1; } ...(other stuff)... ClearRec() just empties the previous Error Record. InitializeAll looks like this: bool InitializeAll(HINSTANCE hinst, int showStyle) { HWND hWnd; WNDCLASS wc; srand((unsigned)time(NULL)); primaryWindowHandle = NULL; // *** Window Initialization *** InitDefaultWindowClass(&wc, hinst); Rec("Registering class."); if(!RegisterClass(&wc)) { Rec("Error registering class."); return false; } ... (more initialization stuff) ... Rec("Allocating sprite."); exampleSprite = new Sprite; Rec("Sprite allocated."); Rec("Initialization Successfully Completed."); return true; } Now, here's the problem. If I take the EXACT code I have right there, and comment out the line "exampleSprite = new Sprite;", the code works perfectly . No problems whatsoever. However, with that line in, the program quits out earlier, and my Error Record.txt looks like this: Sun Feb 24 02:26:11 2002 Program Launched. Beginning Initialization... Sun Feb 24 02:26:11 2002 Registering class. Sun Feb 24 02:26:11 2002 Error registering class. Sun Feb 24 02:26:11 2002 Error during Initialization. HOW CAN THIS BE? The line exampleSprite = new Sprite; is found AFTER the window class registration! Through what occult powers has it come to pass that the existance of this line causes the code to fail BEFORE THE LINE IS EVEN ENCOUNTERED? Has this error mysteriously traversed the temporal continuum for the sole purpose of causing my program to fail? If anyone knows how this is happening, please, let me know. Alternately, if you agree that this is really weird, let me know that too The compiler I'm using is an older Metrowerks one. (Edited to switch the code tags to source tags) Edited by - Zorodius on February 24, 2002 8:29:13 AM

General and Gameplay Programming Programming

Started by Zorodius February 24, 2002 04:28 AM

23 comments, last by Zorodius 22 years, 1 month ago

Jason Zelos

211

February 25, 2002 04:00 PM

Have you declared exampleSprite as a type (of class) Sprite ?

Metrowerks is very poor (my opinion), Try DevC it seems to be a popular choice round here.

,Jay

Anonymous

February 25, 2002 04:18 PM

What it sounds like to me is that the change in code causes the memory values to change, which ends up setting an uninitlized varible to be right sometimes, and not right othertimes.

So, where''s the uninitialized varible..? The only one I see is in InitDefaultWindowClass, you never initialize wc->lpszMenuName, nor do I see anything clearing the entire structure or otherwise indicating it''s set to NULL or some proper value...so that varible not being initialized is my guess.

incin

205

February 26, 2002 12:25 AM

All of you are wrong! The code is an ancient satanic ritual...

Zorodius

259

Author

February 26, 2002 12:42 AM

quote:All of you are wrong! The code is an ancient satanic ritual...

Close! I''m attempting to resurrect the ancient Babylonian God of Chaos to wreak untold havoc and suffering upon those unfortunate enough to be imprisoned in this mortal plane.

However, that''s not it.

quote:The only one I see is in InitDefaultWindowClass, you never initialize wc->lpszMenuName

Crow tastes like chicken

You''re right, that was the problem. Today, I have learned a valuable lesson in respect for the importance of all the fields of the mighty WNDCLASS.

I really had no idea. I just assumed that, because the problem was so repeatable and could be changed by things totally unrelated to the code itself, it wasn''t caused by anything like that. But it was, and it makes sense now.

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sjelkjd

171

February 26, 2002 01:04 AM

You might want to give MSVC another look. I''m using visual studio.NET and have used visual studio 6, and I have to say that the development environments are unmatched in quality. The compiler proper is pretty decent, although there are some conformance issues. You can always plug in the intel compiler though.

Plus, MSVC is the industry standard for windows programming, so you get good experience for a later job too =)

What. The. HELL?

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What. The. HELL?

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