The Last Comer Crash

[TresserT]

Hi. I've been trying to play this game for a while now, but for some reason it just doesn't want to work for me. I can play up until Mary's first spell card, and then my computer freezes. It's not just the game that freezes either; I can't move my mouse, I can't ctr+alt+delete, all visuals stop working (I've tested it with a youtube video in the background, and the video froze as well) and I can't give any input. Oddly enough, the bgm continues to play. No sound effects (no bullet creation or Pichuu~n) so I can only assume the game stops working as well, save for the music. I've tried it on both lunatic and normal. On lunatic it freezes at the start of the stage 1 midboss spellcard, on normal it freezes at the start of the stage 1 mainboss 1st spell card. Since normal lacks a stage 1 midboss spellcard, this leads me to believe it has something to do with spellcard activation. I've tried it on 2 different computers and with 2 different versions of TLC including the latest version. I've also tied running other scripts on danmakufu 0.12 and I haven't experienced any problems.

Also, at the start of stage one there is a 5 second break in the music between the intro segment and the main looping segment. This doesn't really bother me, but I don't know if it has anything to do with the freezing issue.

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP
RAM: 1014
RAM Type: DDR2
Microprocessor:  Intel Pentium 4 521

[Necrotek]

Did you try to run it under Linux using Wine?

[Arcorann]

Wow, your system is underpowered. I would suggest getting a new system, particularly since TLC has quite high system requirements.

Having said that, could you post the specs of your other system?

[Necrotek]

I'm not sure that low specs can cause complete freezing of the system.

[Agent of the BSoD]

They might. That RAM that you have, only 1GB, that's pretty small, and a Pent 4 is one CPU under mine (I have a Pent D). An upgrade to something there could prove useful, especially that RAM. You can always post specs using Speccy.

[TresserT]

Okay. Doesn't work with Linus (Wine) either. The same thing happened, freezing at the first spell card.

I don't have the specs for the other system as it isn't mine, I just have the opportunity to use it every now and then (it's my cousin's). That said my cousin just got her computer last December as a newer IBM model with windows XP.

I'll try getting more ram, but it's never given me a problem before. I can play all the real touhou games, as well as their second game Mystical Power Plant without a problem.

I could be wrong, but I think it's something I'm doing as opposed to something wrong with my system. I just don't know what I'm doing.

[Necrotek]

Hm, that's interesting. At this moment I can think of two possible reasons - hardware (low specs so it can't handle some very resource-consuming function or maybe the function tries to call something that your system doesn't support for some reason) or software (something wrong with the script of danmakufu, or, unlikely, regional settings). Can you try to use latest revision of danmakufu 0.12m and if this fails, post both danmakufu and tlc versions? There is one more option to test but it might be difficult with your specs - try to install virtual machine (for example VirtualBox or VMWare Player) with some operating system, of course, and run the game there. If it hangs there too, then it's 99% software fault.
Meanwhile I'll try to take a look at the game myself (I've never tried to run it before).

[Agent of the BSoD]

Running a VM on a machine with a Pent 4 and 1 GB RAM is probably a very bad idea. Most likely, there won't be enough RAM for both OSs and the CPU would probably be hurting too much to do that much work. (it only has one core too)

I wouldn't mind testing it out either to see what happens on here. (since my system is not that far ahead of theirs CPU- and RAM-wise)

[Necrotek]

I tried the game under Wine and it worked *fine* (there is an issue with music), it didn't hang on spellcards.
Try to play a spellcard in spellcard practice mode. I attached (not sure if it's the necessary file) a save where easy spellcards are unlocked for stage 1. Replace your file with this one. If it still hangs even in spellcard practice mode, try to check different options in danmakufu config (only one option of those 8 each time so 8 tries) and see if one of them helps you (you don't mind to get some more of freezes).
I don't know well how exactly danmakufu works but if it get a freeze while trying to play a spellcard in its practice mode, it would mean that the issue is one of lines for spellcard file (so it's quite possible to localize the mean part of the code). If it really hangs at the start, then the problem would be in variables declaration block or in initialize block. But it would require a lot of your patience and reboots (I'm not sure if you're ready to spend that much efforts for this game).

[TresserT]

Okay, I downloaded the reimu scorefile. On practice mode I can play the spellcards themselves, but the game crashes once I finish the spell card with a message saying my ialmrnt5 driver has stopped working. So do I just need to update my graphics driver? It's odd because my cousin's computer is practically new, but it didn't work on that either.

[Necrotek]

There is something really strange about your situation. I can understand if the game didn't work only on one computer but two where one of them is quite new... Just to be sure, I can upload my TLC version which definitely works so at least we can be sure that the game itself isn't bugged in some way.
By the way, did you extract the game properly (so there are no bugged names for Japanese files) and did you try to run the game using Japanese locale (yes, without applocale if you used it until now)?

[TresserT]

My computer is in Japanese locale and I don't see any bugged japanese file names. I actually haven't tried it in Applocale and I could try that, though I doubt that would help.

[Necrotek]

Well, using Applocate is unlikely to help, I thought that using Applocale could cause some issues if you used it.
Anyway, first of all, try to update your videocard drivers to the newest one if it's possible (but there is a possibility that your GPU can't handle some TLC function). And try to run the game from here - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4527301/TLC_test.zip. At least I can guarantee that this one works with wine.
And it would be helpful if you can provide specs of your cousin's computer.

[Agent of the BSoD]

Well dang. I just played through most of it, but something weird happened. During the stage 4 boss fight (on what I think is her last card, the one with the yellow zigzagging bullets) my controls completely froze. After dying to it, it's got the option to continue, but I can't select it because my controls are still frozen. The rest of my computer is fine (it's still running as I'm typing this), it's just danmakufu doesn't take inputs for some reason.

[Necrotek]

I tried and played till start of stage 5 and didn't have such issue with last spellcard.