I originally posted this to the dev thread but I think it's better discussed here.
Basic Bot is not checking the values again every so many frames on a failed loadstate, rather once it fails to load state it just checks every frame. Is that an intended failure or an unintended failure? (My use of BB is probably an unexpected use in that I'm using more along the lines of RNG Plays X as opposed to trying to bot-find a solution Y optimized for ram value Z)
EDIT:
Partial replication of the issue described in
Impossible to have TAStudio and Virtualpad at the same time? by phoenix1291. I was able to obtain the described crash using Octoshock running Civilization II (USA) [D25D7ECA Civilization II [SLUS-00792].cue] by opening TAStudio only and unpausing. Virtual Pad had no bearing on the crash in separate tests. I have not tested other PSX games at this time.
Attempting to frame-advance Civ II within TAStudio yielded an unhandled exception, followed by the aforementioned crash:
See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.
************** Exception Text **************
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at BizHawk.Client.Common.TasMovie.RecordFrame(Int32 frame, IController source)
at BizHawk.Client.Common.MovieSession.HandleFrameLoopForRecordMode()
at BizHawk.Client.Common.MovieSession.HandleMovieOnFrameLoop()
at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.MainForm.StepRunLoop_Core(Boolean force)
at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.MainForm.FrameAdvance()
at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.TAStudio.GoToFrame(Int32 frame)
at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.TAStudio.GoToNextFrame()
at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.PlaybackBox.FrameAdvanceButton_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.RepeatButton.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
Also, I'm running into out of memory exceptions while attempting to test TAStudio within the context of crashing this within N64 while using Virtual Pad; checking with SM64 Chaos Edition shows 1013828K Private Bytes and 818108K Working Set as of frame 552. Disengaging TAStudio immediately resolves the memory issues (it drops to 444364K Private Bytes and 244180K Working Set). Majora's Mask crashes with an Out of Memory at Frame 479. Because of the crash I can't get a live number but pausing with TAStudio open and bringing it to frame 478 via frame advance shows 975260K Private Bytes and 786088K Working Set, and as soon as I try to advance out of 479 it crashes. Frame 479 every time, too.
tl;dr: The issue seems to be with TAStudio, not with Virtual Pad. Partial replication under Octoshock.
E: And yes I'm running the latest version, I just double-checked that.