Loading issues while zoning: the UI loading hang up

[Igr]

<DIV>Igram here,</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As many of you who have been online in the past day or two know, both myself and Sephiro have been actively trying to recreate and pin down the nature of the "UI loading" crash bug that many players are seeing. The hitch in our results was that no one in QA had actually managed to crash; we were hearing about it, we were watching players disconnect repeatedly in test cases, but whenever we would get together and test it, we could never replicate the issue.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now, based purely on a few detailed testimonials and from what we were seeing first hand while testing with players, we have managed to cobble a bug together and send it out, but I wanted to have a place on the forums where our testers could jot down any information they feel may be helpful in zeroing in on this gameplay halting issue. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Hopefully we will be able to draw more conclusions with additional input about what you have seen. As always, any ideas you may have are very welcome. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Grimsore]

Miscellaneous info about it…I can hear the game as normal while I’m frozen at the UI resource screen. (At least it sounds like normal sounds, screen is black of course.)I have frozen at the UI resources screen before, got up and left my computer for well over 10 minutes- and it finally put me in game. It may be that all resource freezes will eventually continue to load but I’m not sure. I know that it can stay on the resource screen for over 3 minutes of actual “timed” time. 3 real minutes of staring at a black screen is forever, reset it after that.I find no pattern as to when and where it happens.

[Corlin]

Igram - when I get this I do not crash, or freeze really, but the Loading UI Resources thermometer bar never fills in, and my screen remains black.  There is no disk-thrashing, or other obvious signs of badly behaved code.  I am using a custom innterface (OCD from eq2interface.com) so my chat windows are already up and active.  I can hear game sounds AND I can see all normal chat scroll by.  I seem unable to enter chat by just pressing <CR> (normal for me), but have to blindly click about the black screen till I hit a groupmate and then use the right-click drop down menu to send them a tell (HELP:  stuck loading UI resources, be right back after relog!).  Once I have used the find blind / right-click tell trick, I can click in my main chat window and /g to the entire group.  Then I /camp to character screen (I do not find it necessary to repatch), and come right back in.  Never have any problems loading up from character screen, this only happens on the initial zone-in.  This issue happens to me when I have been zoning a great deal (to multiple zones, not just one or two) over a short period of time.  Next time it happens I will look at mem usage more carefully, and try Grimsore's trick of just waiting to see if it eventually fixes itself.I have a PCI express video card (ATI Radeon X600 XT w/ 256MB), 1GB of system RAM, and am running XP with sp2.<div></div>

[Shantee]

<div></div>I tend to get Loading UI resources when something forces us all to zone at the same time.  Today during the raid a good 1/4 of the raid would have this prob when we all zoned at the same time.  I just now got it trying to zone in to hidden cache with the group. I am now locked out of the Hidden Cache due to this lock up for 4 hours.  Last few times i have zoned with a group in to there i have crashed. <div></div><p>Message Edited by Shantee on <span class=date_text>10-23-2005</span> <span class=time_text>10:06 PM</span>

[Kwoung]

Happens almost exclusively when my wife and I zone together.. like when you enter an Instance. If we zone to the same place one after the other, it rarely if ever happens.

[EtoilePirate]

Raiding last night was a bear, every single time we zoned as a 24-person party, we left between 3 and 7 people behind in the bug. Interestingly, though, it wasn't always the same people.  I only got stuck once.  I thought I might be more susceptible to it, having just downloaded a custom UI yesterday, but it happened the first time we zoned into CoD and then I was fine for every other time I zoned that night.  Whereas other people got the bug nearly every time they tried to zone. Good luck sorting this one out, and I hope it's fast.  Raiding will be much, MUCH more pleasant without that happening. <div></div>