Loading the background map will sometimes crash the game

[DESTROYGIRL]

Build Info

20250510_33e8727

Description

The game will sometimes crash when trying to load a background map. It freezes at the main menu, and crashes.

To Reproduce

1. Select a background map in the options menu
2. Close the game
3. Start the game
4. The game may or may not crash when loading the background map

It's random and inconsistent

Expected behavior

It does not crash

Actual behavior

It crashes

Operating System

• Windows
• Linux

Version/Distro

Windows 11

Machine's CPU

No response

Machine's GPU

No response

GPU's driver

No response

Build's compiler

No response

Additional context and Screenshots

No response

[blaberry]

Some investigation into this was done, I think the last conclusion was that it's a race condition for loading the ambience sound files from disk?

[AdamTadeusz]

It happening only sometimes hints at a race condition, but I'm not gonna pretend I know exactly what the issue is.

[DESTROYGIRL]

I'm going to see if I can delay things being run in the map until it's safe to do so. Might be worth testing some HL2 background maps as well and seeing if they also cause the crash

[DESTROYGIRL]

Our background maps aren't doing anything differently from the hl2 background maps so I don't think it's that. Maybe the sounds aren't precached in time or something. Dunno

[Rainyan]

It happening only sometimes hints at a race condition, but I'm not gonna pretend I know exactly what the issue is.

@AdamTadeusz If it's indeed an enginesound related race condition, then it might be failing because of this file:

neo/game/neo/cfg/autoexec.cfg

Lines 1 to 6 in 8f0fee0

	//////////////////////////////////////
	// Fix potential sounds I/O stutter //
	// //
	snd_async_fullyasync "1" //
	// //
	//////////////////////////////////////

This was basically a hack I added because back in the day, I was experiencing some sound stutter with a really ancient PC. I tried flipping this to 0 now and I'm not getting any problems (and snd_async_fullyasync 0 is also the cvar's default value), so maybe we should remove this autoexec file from the repo and see if the problem goes away.

Although I'm not too sure how a Steam depot update would handle us removing a cfg file from the build - would the testers have to manually remove the local file, or un/reinstall the Steam appid to get rid of it?

[Rainyan]

@DESTROYGIRL Could you try flipping that snd_async_fullyasync in the autoexec to 0 and see if the problem is fixed?

[DESTROYGIRL]

@DESTROYGIRL Could you try flipping that snd_async_fullyasync in the autoexec to 0 and see if the problem is fixed?

The crash was very random so unsure if it actually changed anything but after starting the game tens of times I didn't get it.

[DESTROYGIRL]

Got the crash a couple times whilst testing #1232
Since it had that random-ness I am willing to bet it wasn't caused by that and is this same crash when loading the background map.
I can also verify that snd_async_fullyasync was 0