drneau.com

ERicJ

I searched around and this thread is the closest thing to what I'm seeing, but I don't see any resolution to the issue.

I was using the free version of TM for five tournaments and never had any problems. I recently upgraded to the paid version and have since run two tournaments. In each of those I had 5-6 occurrences of the countdown timer stopping and the entire TM application freezing! In each case I have to use the Windows Task Manager to kill the application, then restart and load the .drnt.BACKUP (or .drnt.BACKUP.BACKUP (or .drnt.BACKUP.BACKUP.BACKUP, etc)) file.

In the first problematic tournament I was running both client/server mode, with wireless on, in a hot garage. So I chalked it up to simply overworking my laptop. But it was embarrassing to be running the show and have the app continually locking up.

The second tournament was last week in a better controlled enviroment, nice air conditioned house; I ran TM standalone and turned off wireless on the lappy. The only application running was Dr. Neau. I still had the lockups. Grrrr...

PC Info:
Compaq Presario R4000
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
1GB RAM
Windows XP Home SP2
Java 1.5.0 (build 1.5.0_06-b05)

Tournament Manager Info:
Dr. Neau TM build March 21 2006 - 08:08

Manage Players, Blinds, Seating, and Chips

One Buy-in, one Rebuy

Countdown (rarely used)
15 18-minute Levels w/ a 6-minute break after every third level.

Four chips in use.

One payout schedule with top four finishers getting a percentage.

Ten players, one with a bounty on him.

Seating: one table with one player locked, others randomly assigned.

Player Interface Config Properties: Hand Nicknames (core) checked for Pre, Break and Post. Disabled in mid-tourney; didn't help the problem.

Player Interface Config Images: two internal, six external images.
One image is an animated gif.

Player Interface Config Alerts/Audio: Seven internal, 46 User Default sounds. I guess TM loads everything in the App Prefs Audio directory.

Player Interface Config Console: Three custom consoles (pre, play, break)
The only modification from the core versions is to change the rotating pictures from Dogs/logo to Dogs/CatOnGuitar(animated).

Tonight's javaw.exe Memory usage debug:
45MB for Start TM, loading App Prefs defaults
50MB for open last (completed) tournament
51MB for viewing console with scrolling finishes
59MB for loading custom consoles
60->87MB for simply waiting 15 minutes

[img]http://tinyurl.com/zu476[/img]

[img]http://tinyurl.com/frx4j[/img]

Any help or advice?

Thanks,
ERic

rumackay · Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:02 am Post subject:

Eric, I'm far from an expert on the app but I recently had some slowdown/freezing issues myself. I found that once I removed several images (I still haven't figured out why they and not others caused probs) everything worked fine. I'm not sure it's the same as your situation but one of them was an animated gif...removed it with the others and it's fine now.

For the record I currently have (working) about 30 images of all different sizes/formats and a half a dozen or so audio files in use. It just seemed the app didn't like some of the removed images for some reason...
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drneau · Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:48 am Post subject:

Well, there's no difference between the "free" version and the "paid" version...except that the "paid" version lets you do more stuff like customize the console, etc.

Seems extremely fishy that it worked fine for you on 5 "free" tournaments and then suddenly starts freezing when you use the password.

I'd focus on everything you did that required entering a password. What are the sizes of the gifs and audios. Each one you load in takes more memory.

If you have a scrolling console component AND an animated gif, your system is going to be spending a LOT of resources redrawing the screen. A LOT.

I also wouldn't *guarantee* that everything works fine with Java 1.5. I haven't tested it myself.

As far as the jump from 60 to 87MB, that doesn't concern me. Getting a loaded image prepped for display on the screen uses memory.

I guess I'd start with axing the CatOnGuitar.
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MaxPower · Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 9:00 am Post subject:

I had a similar experience when I had an animated gif running - but this was before the Good Doctor programmed in support for the animated gifs. But ever since then, I've stayed away from the animations, and haven't had an issue (knock on wood).

I'm running a 16 seat tourney this weekend, so I'll run through a test one in the next few days...

Max
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ERicJ · Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 9:20 am Post subject:

ERicJ · Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:34 pm Post subject:

I kicked off a demo tourney tonight with the same setup as before but with no user interaction, just let it run with the play console. I let it run while I watched "Layer Cake" (good flick, BTW). I made it through almost the whole movie before TM locked up at 1h45m. When the lockup occurs the javaw.exe memory usage was up to 105MB and the CPU was constantly maxed out at 100% until I killed it with Windows Task Manager.

I ran my Timex Ironman stopwatch in parallel with TM and occasionally checked in. After about ten minutes of runtime the TM timer was ~5 seconds late. The TM timer continued to lose time at an increasing rate, at the 60 minute mark the TM timer was almost 60 seconds late. Shortly before the lockup around 90 minutes the TM timer was almost 120 seconds late. That's not a big deal for me, but I thought I'd mention it.

I'll run the same experiment later without the animated GIF.

ERic

drneau · Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 6:01 am Post subject:

Doing a little thinking this morning, and animated gifs are probably even more costly than I had feared.

Whenever I paint an image, I'm scaling it to fit the component in which it lives (if it is bigger than the component).

Scaling essentially copies the image into a new one. Not cheap.

An animated gif needs to be repainted (and probably therefore rescaled) many times per second.

Memory is not the issue here. It most likely has to do with processing speed and graphics card speed.
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ERicJ · Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 11:26 pm Post subject:

I haven't had a chance to run the experiment with my old consoles minus the one animated gif yet. But I did run a real tournament for which I changed the consoles to use one single non-animated gif. Happy to report no freezes in the 2h20m tourney duration.

ERic

ERicJ · Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2006 5:41 pm Post subject:

Ran another one last night with the same consoles, i.e. one non-animated gif, and no freezes in four hour tourney. Gonna stay away from animated gifs in TM from now on.

ERic

Nanny · Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 8:39 pm Post subject: same issue on my mbpro

Using a Macbook Pro with Intel Core Duo 2.0Ghz and 2GB RAM, the software continues to lock up every time I eliminate a player and movement is required. It freezes for 1-5 minutes and then finally unfreezes. Obviously this is a big issue when running tournaments with 50+ people and requiring a lot of player movement. I am not using any animation other than a single scrolling marquee with the order of knockouts.
I will try turning off all audio clips and the scrolling marquee and have a go with it.
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Nanny · Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 9:16 pm Post subject: hmmmm

I cannot seem to figure out what the problem might be. I continue to run simulated tournaments with 40-50 players. The first 5 or 6 eliminations work fine, it immediately removes the player, performs any player movement, and timer continues. However on about the 6th -8th elimination it begins to freeze up after I hit apply. The first freeze is only a few seconds, with each subsequent elimination causing a longer freezes, eventually freezing long enough that I get tired of waiting and force quit the application.

I have removed all audio files, all scrolling marquees, and I have no animations or pictures. I am simply running a tournament with auto prize money(by percentage) and tracked seating. I have no league attached to the tourneys, which I thought might be a problem. I can't understand why it would lock up longer after each elimination? Could it be something with trying to balance the tables or something? I am lost here.
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ledge · "Cowboys" Joined: 06 Sep 2005 Posts: 31 Location: Canada

I too am having the same problems as EricJ and Nanny. I am currently using the app in it's default mode: with a valid password, and I am also experiencing periodic lockups. Hopefully the good Doc will be able to provide us with a cure for our problem.

Has anyone else ran into this?

Nanny · Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:52 am Post subject: more info

I removed Tournament Manager from my computer and then re-installed it. I used the default core layouts and ran a simulated tourney with 25 players. I tracked the seating and was able to eliminate players all the way down to the winner with no freezes or problems at all.
I then immediately bought in 40 players and tried it again. When I eliminated the 6th player - short freeze. 7th player - longer freeze. 8th player - complete lockup, I couldn't even force quit the app.
Note, when this happens I can still run any other program on my Mac with absolutely no problems, so it is definitely the app, not the cpu.
Maybe it is having problems tracking seats for >30-35 players?

Right now I simply can't use this software for our tournaments. I may have to install Windows(gag) on my Macbook so I can run "the other" tournament software that I know works well.

Dr. Neau, I'd really like to use this software with all it's great features, but without some help on this issue I may have to kill my subscription.
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--Nanny--

drneau · Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 3:29 pm Post subject:

Unfortunately this is very hard to debug from here. I know there are several Mac users and hundreds of Windows users using it without issue...and it really *shouldn't* have anything to do with the number of players in the tournament.

The silver lining is that with v3 will be much easier to debug because you'll be able to send me your repository and I'll easily be able to tell if it is a repository problem, an app problem or a system problem.

What version of Java is on your Mac?

And please don't threaten...that's not a way to get help from me in the long run.
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http://drneau.com
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drneau · Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 3:40 pm Post subject:

drneau · Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:19 pm Post subject: Re: more info

Nanny · Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:27 pm Post subject: no worries

I am using the default consoles that come as the core consoles with the software. I'll send you a saved file of the tournament I have been simulating.

Sorry if I sounded threatening. That's what I hate about chat/email, there is no tone of voice. I am actually really upset that I can't get the software to work properly, and would hate to have to cancel my subscription. I really love all of the features you have in it. I wasn't threatening you with canceling my subscription, I was just stating the facts of what I would have, but definitely do not want, to do.

Thanks,
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--Nanny--

jalsing · Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 9:30 pm Post subject:

Rewind · Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 11:49 am Post subject:

I had a problem like this a while back, but I haven't tested my theory since then.

Last tourney I ran, I had just reformatted the wife's laptop. So of course I install all the biggest and best software out at the time, including the newest Java (I think 2.something)

Java 1.4 - it worked fine.
New Java - crapped out.

Again, I still have to test this, but my theory is that something in the newer Java systems cause the lockup.
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