Freeplay

[Performer]

I got a strange bug: If I press "C" to freeze the camera, the entire screen is getting white. o.O

[MxZz.]

Yep, it sometimes happens to me too. Dunno why though.

[Dannye]

I recall similar: the freeze-cam crashing the game. Didn't used to happen to me when I was writing/testing Freeplay. I am guessing it has something to do with said writing/testing (and compiling) taking place on a 32bit XP machine, and instead now using it on a 64bit win7 machine. I don't know for sure, and currently don't have the ability to try and figure it out. Sorry guys.

[FELIX]

It's no problem. Doesn't happen too often.

[Performer]

It's no problem. Doesn't happen too often.

Yep.

Not always, but its kinda annoying... But thanks for replying, Dannye

[Performer]

I'm working on my new movie. I need a custom camera position. But I dont work, because if I press "C" the game crashes. Is there ANY possible way to fix this or some other way to custom place the camera?

[Dannye]

I have just done a quick run-through of all of the Freeplay features to see exactly which ones are causing crashes. The only one I can get consistently is this Freeze Camera one. While I did have the game crash on me a few other times, I couldn't find a specific feature usage which caused it (inconsitent bugs are horrible!). Anyways, if I have a bit more time I might start peaking through the code (although I still don't have the ability to recompile it if I even knew what changes to make to fix it).

Sorry I don't have anything useful to offer up now, the closest working (as far as I can tell) feature to Freeze Camera is the really cool 'Custom Cinematic View' one. However, while the camera is indeed frozen, it will automatically change its angle to keep the player in the middle of the screen. This may not be what you want. Even if you don't mind this behavior, depending on the look you're after, it may take alot more work to get the camera where you want it (since you don't get access to Freeze Cam's "move the camera" buttons) - instead you'd probably be best freezing the replay (with 'X' - the one that lets you still move the camera), then enable the functions which increase zoom, tilt/rotation and 'jiffy' time, then ever-so-slowly trying to drag the camera (move mouse to get desired offset from player, then zoom like crazy) to where you want it.

(Important) EDIT:::

Spent a bit more time with it... Solution seems to be surprisingly/disturbingly simple! As far as I can tell (unless my VC is messing with me) Freeze Camera works fine as long as long as you don't leave the same instance of Freeplay running over multiple instances of VC. To explain: I built Freeplay such that it will notice if you close/crash VC and will wait patiently until you re-open it again (you will see a message along the lines of: "Vice City Game Closed. Freeplay will remain in standby until itself closed, or another instance of Vice City is opened." when VC is closed, and then "Freeplay has recognised and connected to new instance of Vice City. Welcome back." when it is re-opened). It would appear, in this scenario, if you open VC again, then and only then will Freeze Cam cause crashes. So if you have to close and re-open VC, simply close the existing Freeplay and open a new instance of it (probably best to do before the VC reopen, but I didn't double check if this is required).

(Assuming this post isn't too late and you've stopped trying) Best of luck, let me know how it goes!

Oh, and as for why this all happens, I am not sure, I guess my code for the "re-initialise on new game instance" is dodgy. Seems odd I never came across the issue back in the day when I was coding/testing. Perhaps for some reason it wasn't a problem back then (PC and OS changes on my end since), or I just plain missed it. Whoops!

[Performer]

Thank you. I will try this out. Hopefully I helps me and btw. I use only san andreas. I'm not familiar with VC stunting...

[Dannye]

Wow, that was silly of me to just assume VC. Well, it is quite possible that the solution I proposed wont work at all for SA, but hey, worth a shot!

Unfortunately neither of the alternate functions I mentioned ('X' and 'Custom Cinematic') don't exist in the SA version, so that fallback option is out the window, alas.

Let me know how you go, and if no luck I guess I might need to start looking into it again - this time in the right game!

[Rusch69]

ARS Pause feature

Wasn't there such a function for the VC version already? If ya ever get to work on this again, do ya plan to add that to the SA one also? Been missing this for ages already

[Dannye]

Yeah VC Freeplay has had that since the beginning, but never SA. Why? Gunner is smart! For me it was a fluke I even pulled it off for the VC one... I accidentally figured out a way to do it while trying to do the opposite - the Freeze Camera function. Digging through the memory addresses and assembly code is most daunting, and I never really knew what I was doing (and Freeplay was my first and only experience in doing such a thing)

Some Freeplay functions were (relatively) simple to figure out because they were modifying single values, and a subset of them required little work at all because the memory addresses for them were already discovered/published on the web so I didn't even need to find them myself. The 'Replay Camera'-related stuff on the other hand, that was very different... actually changing the code being executed, and none of it revealed on the web already (that I could find), because no-one else much cared for modding stuff for inside Replay-Watching mode (except us nutters! ).

Long story short, I stumbled onto it by accident for VC, but despite trying I could not get that same luck in SA. (And to be honest, I had a massive bias towards VC so my focus was always first and foremost on that)

[VenomX]

Hi Dannye, thanks for all the awesome work on Freeplay .  I have a quick question though - Freeplay doesn't seem to work at all for me on my PC, and I have no idea why.  I have tried opening VC and the FP, and vice versa to no avail.  Would running 64bit Windows have anything to do with it?  Even the debug mode doesn't appear to be coming up.

And finally...any plans to make Freeplay open source? 

[Determined]

I usually run both as admin & they seem to work just fine. I also have a 64 bit windows.

[A maid]

If just running as admin doesn't work, try some other compatibility modes. That always worked for me.

[Shingetsu]

What's new feature in 3.1 ? how to use it ?