The general approach is to disable triggers until the freezing stops, then look at what those triggers contain to try and track down the cause.
If you have a powerful modern computer one can run multiple Warcraft III tests in parallel by using the LAN game functionality. When one of the clients freeze they become unresponsive and can be closed in which case you know that the map that client was running still has the freeze problem. In the case of unreliable freezes one can repeat the test in parallel to build confidence if the freeze exists or not. This can massively save the amount of time to identify the cause.
The “freeze” happens to all players in the map, not to only 1, so idk if u can disable triggers when it freezes, cause the game is already ended (u cant go back to the game, it is just frozen, u can just close it).
I could arrange test games with a few ones of my betatesters and check if the freezing is solved or not (it would take around 15 misn every game since it is when it freezes), it wont be too much time wasted. The problem is I DONT KNOW what triggers should i change to avoid the freezing. I mean, if you tell me a bunch of stuff that could be problematic, i can edit/remove them and do test games with my betatesters, and when it is solved i would come here and tell u all: “u were right, it was X.”
But without a “guide”, you know, a list of a few issues i should check, i cant do the tests, cause i have countless triggers, triggers that worked perfectly till last patch and caused 0 crashes or bugs. I CANT check them all and disable all of them to then arrange an online test game, is simply imposible. So if i get tips of a few triggers or events to track (like the “every 0.01” wich i dont use) i could help u a lot to figure out what is wrong, but without a summary of “posible causes” im useless
I am referring to testing in the editor. One disables triggers and then tests the map until the freezing stops. If freezing has stopped then that means that one of the triggers which were disabled is the cause. One can then try to isolate and recreate the freeze using similar trigger code until a demonstration map can be produced. This can then be sent to Blizzard for fixing in a future patch and based on this knowledge temporary/hacky mitigations can be applied.
The way to disable triggers is in a binary search style way. Start with large chunks of them until the freezing stops. Then out of that last disabled chunk work down the number disabled until they reoccur. Eventually doing this one should track down the freezing trigger. This can then be isolated and analysed as to why it is causing a freeze.
Unless user input is required, one can run these tests in parallel using LAN games as I described above.
a better solution is to just pay attention to the map and take note of when the freeze happens. i experienced a freeze when create tree was used many times, that is an ability that uses a trigger to cause an effect.
If i open my map in the editor and use “test this map”. It wont ever freeze. It would work perfectly with 0 crashes. The freezign only happens when playing it on battlenet with other guys. I might be not properly understanding u sorry.
2 more maps reported to be affected by Freezing bug:
Siege to Lordaeron City
First War.
Indeed most of the most played maps are affected by this bug that blizzard caused witht heir last patches. And months later still NO ANSWER or explanation from Blizzard.
They are not releasing any more patches for Warcraft III (RoC/TFT). The next patch/release will be Reforged. This is to make development easier because otherwise they would need to backport the fixes from Reforged to create a separate patch, a process that can introduce bugs of its own due to dependences.
What this means is the next patch will come in roughly 2-3 months time when Reforged is released. This patch will likely fix a lot of problems as well as add new features and even Reforged itself. Please be patient.
If you have compatibility problems with custom maps then try running the x86 version of WC3. There are known issues with the x86-64 version which have probably already been fixed internally but will only be deployed with the next patch (most certainly Reforged) for the reasons mentioned above.
So our thoughts were true and they confirmed it: they broke w3 to force us to buy reforged. AWESOME. They release unneeded patch for w3 after 20 years, that patch breaks our custom games and they say they are not releasing more patches to fix it, but release reforged.
What a shame. This could be reportable to customer defender.
No? Just that the fix will only come when Reforged is deployed… One must remember that all existing clients will be migrated to Reforged client once it is released, with a pay wall blocking one from reforged features. Like SC Remastered.
Reforged is a patch and uses the same code as what will be the standard game for everyone. If they had to back port fixes for an intermediate build it would waste a lot of development resources. Instead they are adding all fixes to what will become the Reforged release patch.
Still no fix to this game breaking bug.
My map is unplayable. Random freezes happen randomly. With no reason. My map has not been modified since the patch 1.30 and it did not freeze on 1.30, NEVER, but now it always freeze randomly on 1.31 and it is really anoying because it is a RPG map.
I pray for the issue to be fixed on Reforged, at least. Otherwise many maps will be dead because of Blizzard.
Reforged will bring more bugs, not fixes. The most probably scenario is we having to wait to 1.32.1 to play properly both Reforged and Warcraft 3. Just hope that 1.32.1 is fine and we dont need to wait for even more patches that could fix not only what they have already broken, but what reforged will break.
Patches will likely be released much more frequently with Reforged live. The only reason patches have arrived so slowly recently is that they were working on Reforged and back porting fixes to pre-Reforged code might require considerable effort if not be impossible.
From my experience, and in my personal case : my freezes have two possible reasons in my opinion.
My game is a turn-based RPG, attacks and skills both use “Floating Texts” and “Orders to cast” (from active units and dummies).
I am almost certain that the freezes I get ALWAYS occur at the moment an action is processing upon a target, that means when floating text is created and a dummy/unit is ordered by trigger to cast a spell. Many floating texts and orders are working fine then somehow RANDOMLY it freezes at the very moment a target is attacked or cast a skill on, for no reason.
To people facing these freezes : do you use floating texts and/or orders to cast a spell ?
I have uploaded a video to show you the precise moment when a freeze occur in my case. When the skill is hitting the target and a floating text appear. For no reason. Randomly. It is not because of triggers because it works fine until it freezes and never froze before the last patch.
VIDEO : https://www.youtube.com/embed/8AiJjbEq2BU?vq=hd1080
(freeze occurs at the very end, game is frozen and must be shut down manually or by windows itself)
They screwed this game so badly in the last patches. Here 2 bugs that were found and I was able to fix:
If a unit hasn’t an icon assigned (so you would see Sam Didier instead) it is not possible to multi select it (either mouse and drag or Strg+ click). The game will crash immediately. Very embarassing for Blizzard imo, as a programmer usually you check if a variable is 0 or null before it is used in order to prevent damage.
Another (annoying) bug since patch 1.29: It’s not possible to share units to brown if the map has 2 teams(team 1= Player 2-6, team 2=Player 8-12) and Player 1 / Player 7 (used for buildings for the respective team) are set to none (like in DotA).
So far it seems that what was causing my freezes was all the 0.01 time related datas.
If you have spells with 0.01 duration for instance, it might cause the game to freeze eventually. Check if you have any custom spell with time data lower than 0.10 and replace it by either 0.10 or 0 (cooldown, duration, intervals, etc…). Check if you have any trigger with 0.01 wait or elapse and replace by 0.10. Retry after that.
![:frowning:](https://dou48tnq0ocoa.cloudfront.net/en/warcraft3/images/emoji/twitter/frowning.png?v=6" ":frowning:")