Green analyzer causing Links to freeze (and other issues)

[Adelade]

Dan Helped me privately test my own course and he had no issues with the GA on it, with the two confirmed accounts from the two of you it indeed seems setup matters and dgvoodoo was the prime suspect. Now that I see mainertodd's test, it should be safe to say its confirmed. If anyone who uses dgvoodoo and gets the Green Analyzer to work consistently, do let us know.

I have spoken to Roy privately over at LSPN, who does not use dgvoodoo. He uses the GA now and then, fairly regularly, and experience issues occasionally, unconfirmed if they are identical to my own but he mentions both the freeze issue as well as the (for him very rarely) zoom-out issue. Edit: He's on win 7.

I am using windows 10 and dgvoodoo.

[Adelade]

Oh and mainertodd, if you really care about using the GA, you could always try this if you want:
-Start Links
-Press "Quick Start" > pick any fast loading course that you think has low risk of messing up the GA > "Begin Play"
-Instantly open the Green Analyzer. No issues? Good. Close it and press End Round.
-Go on with whatever you had intended to do in Links normally.

Takes me 20 seconds.
If Im right it should then work for the rest of that Links session, if the GA fails, well it likely would have done so in normal play anyway? And this way you have the option to try again. I dont know how you play but should be a good solution for online play at least where crashes during play probably are the most inconvenient.

[Adelade]

Crap, sorry for the ugly tripple post, but I forgot to respond to this:

One thing I can tell you, never been any mention of it on the forum but I have found you appear to get a higher reliability of the game opening successfully using LinksLauncher.exe over LinksMMIII.exe
If you conducted your tests launching Links with LinksMMIII.exe or a LinksMMIII.exe shortcut, may be worth trying the launcher.

I found this really interesting. I normally always use a shortcut to the LinksMMIII.exe, so I intended to test it out thoroughly, but after I got a freeze opening the GA on the very first attempt I felt like it was safe to assume results would be the same.

[mainertodd]

Oh and mainertodd, if you really care about using the GA, you could always try this if you want:
-Start Links
-Press "Quick Start" > pick any fast loading course that you think has low risk of messing up the GA > "Begin Play"
-Instantly open the Green Analyzer. No issues? Good. Close it and press End Round.
-Go on with whatever you had intended to do in Links normally.

Thanks, Adelade! I'll try that, though I'm not sure if it'll work as well for me. Yesterday, for example, I was able to get the GA to open (albeit with weird behavior) using one of your courses, but after opening another course, it froze again immediately.

I'll note that I finally had the chance to play a full round tonight, and it was fine without the GA. Perhaps I've just been too reliant on it. :-)

[mainertodd]

I have no idea exactly what kind of a "partner" you are talking about. Whether it be a computer opponent, or if you play online with a live human friend, this comment may not pertain to you at all, but I'll toss it out here for anyone that has never heard of this issue.

Sorry for not being precise. I play only with my best computer friend, not real live humans online. ;-)

[Adelade]

Yesterday, for example, I was able to get the GA to open (albeit with weird behavior) using one of your courses, but after opening another course, it froze again immediately.

Oh that surprises me since we otherwise seemed to have very similar issues and dgvoodoo seeming the culprit or at least a big or major part of whats going wrong. Maybe I'll get around to test the method myself in actual normal play instead of just practice mode, but I did try my hardest to get it to crash before and it still wouldnt. Again I dont use the GA at all normally and have little own interest in trying to get it to work so we'll see.

Make sure not to exit the game (just the round) between the steps in my suggestion if you try it.

[Still Linksing]

While on this topic, anyone ever found a way to set the GA so it is facing toward to the front of the green from the tee? I had to always rotate it 180 degrees every single time.

[Adelade]

Another followup, Dan had a good idea for something to me to test: animated flags setting turned off. I tested it and at first it seemed to lower the frequency of the issues but on other courses I tested it was just as much (or more) compared to my earlier tests. It might need more testing to say for sure but Im thinking it was just randomness in the test results at first and that it has no effect to the issues Im experiencing in the long run.

(@Still Linksing I've no clue)

[Still Linksing]

(@Still Linksing I've no clue)

There was always complaints in the past that it opens up facing 180 degrees in the wrong direction. People wanted to see the green from the golfer's viewpoint, not a view from behind the green. One of those things that would've been corrected with the next PC Links version I guess.

Edit: Just found something I didn't know. You can click, hold and drag the view 180 degrees in one single sweep. Here I was for years thinking you could only sweep to the edge of the GA display window with the cursor so I clicked 3 or 4 times to get the view turned around when I could've done it in one single sweep.
OMG, the things you can miss.

[Still Linksing]

-I found that IF the GA opens without problems, no matter how hard I tried, I could not get it to crash or display any flaws whatsoever until I restarted the game. I even tried swapping courses to some of the ones with most frequent crashes. Did not matter. It all seems to depend on how it acts the very first time you load it.

I can tell you I know I opened successfully in the past and it would crash at some point during the round. Wentworth West is the course I remember most. Issues depended on the hole.