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nforcer · Feb 7, 2002, 05:53 AM

I've been playing with both the latest versions of Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 in Mac OS X. The games play alright, except for a few issues, one of which is freezing.

In Unreal Tournament, the game freezes up at seemingly random points, and then the sound starts to stutter and goes into a loop. In Quake 3, the freeze happens when the level is loading, (also seemingly at random). I have not been able to attribute the freeze to any particular map, bot, weapon, or preference option for either of the games.

When the freeze happens, there is only one way I have found to quit the games and get back to X, and that is to perform a hard boot by pressing the reset button on the casing of my Mac.

Is there any way to force quit these games when they freeze without resorting to a hard restart? Command-Option-Escape, Return, Return does not work, and I never see it come up on screen when I do it (since the frozen game screen is the only one displaying). Perhaps these games intercept custom keystrokes, preventing the force quit command from ever reaching the system? For an OS with protected memory, this sure makes things unpleasant when these games freeze.

Any advice, information, or similar reports would be useful. I will be reporting these freezes to the developers soon...

a2daj · Feb 7, 2002, 10:06 AM

Could you post more information about your system? The only types of crashes I've heard about that had stuttering sound were systems with a hardware sound card in them.

nforcer · Feb 7, 2002, 10:29 AM

Originally posted by a2daj:
Could you post more information about your system? The only types of crashes I've heard about that had stuttering sound were systems with a hardware sound card in them.

Gaming system is a G4 450, 448 MB RAM, 16 MB VRAM (Rage Pro 128), 10 GB HD, no special sound card. I have some other devices plugged in (CD-RW, printer, etc.) but I don't see why that should be the problem.

P · Feb 7, 2002, 08:36 PM

Originally posted by nforcer:
I've been playing with both the latest versions of Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 in Mac OS X. The games play alright, except for a few issues, one of which is freezing.

In Unreal Tournament, the game freezes up at seemingly random points, and then the sound starts to stutter and goes into a loop. In Quake 3, the freeze happens when the level is loading, (also seemingly at random). I have not been able to attribute the freeze to any particular map, bot, weapon, or preference option for either of the games.

When the freeze happens, there is only one way I have found to quit the games and get back to X, and that is to perform a hard boot by pressing the reset button on the casing of my Mac.

Is there any way to force quit these games when they freeze without resorting to a hard restart? Command-Option-Escape, Return, Return does not work, and I never see it come up on screen when I do it (since the frozen game screen is the only one displaying). Perhaps these games intercept custom keystrokes, preventing the force quit command from ever reaching the system? For an OS with protected memory, this sure makes things unpleasant when these games freeze.

Any advice, information, or similar reports would be useful. I will be reporting these freezes to the developers soon...

I have similar (d*mn near identical) problems on an iMac DV/400. From what I hear, it's a problem with the driver for first generation AGP. I think Apple is aware of the problem, but you can post a blurb in the Feedback box just to be sure they know it's not just iMacs (and to light a fire under them).

Leonard · Feb 7, 2002, 09:30 PM

You mention Unnreal Tournament on Mac OS X, I assume your using Unreal Tournament X beta 2. I did have a freeze myself, but was able to get out of it with Command-Option-Escape. I have a G4 DP800 with OS X 10.1.2.

Ian Bullock · Feb 9, 2002, 12:33 PM

There have been a few reports recently of faulty RAM causing problems with the more demanding 3D games. Could be worth pulling any memory upgrades and giving it another try.

nforcer · Feb 9, 2002, 01:53 PM

Originally posted by Ian Bullock:
There have been a few reports recently of faulty RAM causing problems with the more demanding 3D games. Could be worth pulling any memory upgrades and giving it another try.

I've never had a problem with faulty RAM (Apple's firmwire upgrades have never broken my RAM, etc.). And the problem is exclusive to the latest versions of UT and Q3 for OS X, for what I've noticed anyway.

superlarry · Feb 9, 2002, 10:28 PM

if you have a OSX and at least another computer on a LAN, you can ssh or telnet in (you have to turn these servers on manually) and kill the game's process. feel free to ask if you don't know how to do this.. i'd say right now, but i'm sick and going to bed (sorry!).

P · Feb 10, 2002, 08:55 AM

Originally posted by superlarry:
if you have a OSX and at least another computer on a LAN, you can ssh or telnet in (you have to turn these servers on manually) and kill the game's process. feel free to ask if you don't know how to do this.. i'd say right now, but i'm sick and going to bed (sorry!).

That doesn't work in this case, sshd doesn't accept new connections because the kernel's so toast it won't let sshd fork.

mrcorwin · Jul 24, 2002, 03:51 PM

Bump!

I have run into this problem alot lately. It crashes every open gl game that I play and I have made sure I have all the latest updates.

G4 450 sawtooth
Rage 128pro
640M ram
OS X.1.5

::maroma:: · Jul 24, 2002, 05:35 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by mrcorwin:
Bump!

I have run into this problem alot lately. It crashes every open gl game that I play and I have made sure I have all the latest updates.

G4 450 sawtooth
Rage 128pro
640M ram
OS X.1.5<hr /></blockquote>Personally, I think it's the ATi card. I have a G4/500 Sawtooth that had a Rage Pro in it. I experienced the same types of crashes with UT(beta), Red Faction and RtCW. I recently got a GeForce3 and everything runs perfectly. No crashes whatsoever (not to mention how great things look).

If possible, I would suggest maybe borrowing a non-ATi card from someone and testing that. I have a feeling it's the ATi drivers coupled with OpenGL and AGP.

nforcer · Jul 24, 2002, 08:05 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />I have a feeling it's the ATi drivers coupled with OpenGL and AGP.<hr /></blockquote>

I think you're right. Since I started this topic, I have since upgraded to a new iMac G4. I have yet to have a single freeze or lockup in either UT or Q3 or any game for that matter on the iMac.

Hopefully 10.2 with updated OpenGL will fix some problems for older users, anyway.

[ 07-24-2002, 09:08 PM: Message edited by: nforcer ]

njf_osx · Jul 25, 2002, 03:40 PM

There is this app for ambrosiasw called Escapepod.

<a href="http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/freebies/" target="_blank">http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/freebies/</a>

<a href="ftp://ftp.AmbrosiaSW.com/pub/freebies/escapepod.sit" target="_blank">Direct link to app dl</a>

escapepod 1.0.0d1
"escapepod is a little application that lets you terminate the frontmost application by hitting Control-Alt-Delete, or do a force-logout by hitting Command-Control-Alt-Delete.

There are times that Mac OS X appears to be hung (especially in some games) when it really isn't -- just the frontmost application's GUI is wedged. Additionally, when the entire GUI appears to be hung, it is safer to do a force-logout than to simply reboot your machine (and it is quicker, too)."

It has worked for me anytime quake 3 or other games have frozen. Give it a try.

[ 07-25-2002, 04:43 PM: Message edited by: njf_osx ]

Codename · Jul 25, 2002, 05:11 PM

Escapepod won't work because the kernel is toast. I used to have a G4 450 and had this problem. If you notice that when this problem occurs, the keyboard's USB connection is also severed. One way to tell this is that the caps-lock light will not function.

I fixed the problem by buying a fast, bug-free PC running XP and linux and getting rid the slow buggy PowerMac.

mrcorwin · Jul 25, 2002, 06:00 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Codename:

I fixed the problem by buying a fast, bug-free PC running XP and linux and getting rid the slow buggy PowerMac.<hr /></blockquote>Ha ha ha thats pretty funny!

nforcer · Jul 25, 2002, 06:45 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Codename:
when this problem occurs, the keyboard's USB connection is also severed. One way to tell this is that the caps-lock light will not function.<hr /></blockquote>I noticed that as well. It's very weird. Plugging stuff in an unplugging it has no effect. I really hope 10.2 will bring some remedy to this, as my older machine would be a great gaming setup for some of my older games.

Vash · Jul 26, 2002, 09:05 PM

I had this same problem, the mouse, keyboard and anything would die. The optical light on the mouse even went out when ever I pressed command and option both at the same time during UT.....but this was in OS 9. Never happened to me in X