2022-03-09 Windows Update Broke a NL game
 

The March 9th, 2022 Windows update (either KB4023057 or KB5011487) broke the SFOD mod I'm doing some work on. The game has a JO and DFX2 version of the .exe with it, and neither one functioned correctly after I installed the above named updates. Missions would sysdump at about 40% load bar, and clicking on "Profile" (that's the player info button on the main screen) sysdumped the game immediately.

I suspect it's the old compatability problems again, but after unsuccessfully tweaking things for an hour or two, I decided to just roll the updates back, pause Windows updates for a few weeks, and to post here warning the clever ones there's an issue and hope for some guidance.

I'm kind of tired of how Windows keeps trying to murder my favorite crappy old games. Especially the ones I'm trying to fix.

And wow, the SFOD mod has an SP/coop mission called "Street Justice" that's set up on the Kutu Arms Market map, and this Gen-X metalhead DFBHD fan was emotionally affected by the construction and assets in that map. That one little red two-story house with the ground floor parking niche under the one room apartment and wrap around balcony? I think that is such a cute little home, and I would have been so happy in a place like that when I was young and unmarried. It doesn't even have an interior you can get into as a player, it's basically a house-shaped block, but I'm imagining my bed in the north-west corner being flooded with light from the south-east windows in the morning, and a decent espresso machine in the tiny kitchenette, and scrambled-egg breakfasts with buttered ciabatta on the loveseat with my girl...

This is my emotional response to a biggish box with stairs in a grotty first-person shooter. If Windows keeps breaking my crappy games and I have to move on to better, more detailed ones, the stories I'll tell myself will break my heart.

Gotta have a care, you know?

It would be good to know what processor you are running. If its a new intel with the chiplets or a new AMD with high thread counts. or something older.

It most likely comes down to threading a schedulers. One way to fix that kind of problem is lock the game to a specific number or core/threads for AMD and for intel, prevent it from using the E cores and only use the P cores

Copy-Paste from the PC info: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz.

I just added the .exe to my nVIDIA control panel and deactivated "Threaded-Optimierung" which is german for threaded-optimizing (I think). That's probably not what you mean, though.

How do I tell the game to stay away from my E cores?

Not what I meant but it does not matter that processor is from 2012 so it should not be a thread problem.

Does not mean its not a thread problem but it should not be.

Update on the update: I had WinUpdate paused 'til today. The update is now installed, and the SFOD mod seems to be working fine. There was a thing with the MEd freezing while saving/exporting, and creating RIDICULOUSLY large .mis files, and I lost a test map, but I kept messing with it a bit, and now it seems okay. I think it had something to do with how, at one point, I closed the MEd before it could crash, and that may have reset something, Iunno...

I recreated the test map, too. I'm cautiously cheerful about the situation, for now.