Right, lets get to the point. I'm making a game (duh). And well, it runs fine when I play it in coldstone, more than fine actually, I must tell you... it's the best game I've ever played^^. Whatever. Well so this guy (Pilky is his name, have you met him? He's a briton so you people who can't speak english will not understand him). WELL, so he plays for a few seconds (I bet those were the best few seconds of his life^^). And then, in the middle of the action... BAM! Game closes down. None of us have a clue why. So I was gonna try and fix the problem, even though I dont do that stuff very well, but that has absolutely nothing to do with this. So I click coldstone and... WTF?!?!? OMFG!!! AAAAAH THIS CAN'T BE TRUE! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?!? MY LIFE IS RUIned well you get the picture... All the coldstone windows are white! So I close coldstone and start it again and... more white windows! So I start to think... My brain is quite slow because I haven't used it in a while but I get an idea! WHY DON'T I POST THIS ON THE COLDSTONE BOARDS??!?!? So I open up safari, click this little "coldstone" link that I had prepared for myself, smart of me, no? So I click the "post new topic" button (or whatever it is.. something like that, anyway) and the rest you know... So, does anyone know why this is happening to me?? (WHY MEEE??? NOOOO WHY NOT PILKY?? HE ISN'T MAKING ANY GAMES ANYWAY!!! OR SOMEONE ELSE ON THIS BOARD?! OR PERHAPS SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T EVEN HAVE COLDSTONE?!?????, WHY MEEEE?!??!??! ).

So I figure I'll have to restart but I will want to release this game later on, so I dont want it to crash after 5 seconds, would give me a bad reputation, but I guess it can't get much worse than it is already^^. Oh well, is this a bug or what?!?

Thank you for your time and dont chop your legs off when cooking

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Life is a joke - death is testing your humour...

.....yea. I've had this happen to me a couple times with various things I've done (iMovie and Bryce are the worst offenders). The computer eats the data, I want to kill stuff, life is bad etc. Then one of several things usually happens:
1. I give up. It wasn't important anyway. Sounds unlikely in your case.
2. I find an archive copy on some obscure disk I didn't know I had. Bliss. Don't count on it.
3. I gather my wits and begin reassembling the project out of whatever materials I can salvage. Usually goes much more quickly and smoothly the second time since I've already done it once. Good luck.

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Cosmicrat - Ruler of the universe.
Cosmic Rat - A rodent in space.
You decide...

Quote

Originally posted by Ledorax:
**Right, lets get to the point. I'm making a game (duh). And well, it runs fine when I play it in coldstone, more than fine actually, I must tell you... it's the best game I've ever played^^. Whatever. Well so this guy (Pilky is his name, have you met him? He's a briton so you people who can't speak english will not understand him). WELL, so he plays for a few seconds (I bet those were the best few seconds of his life^^). And then, in the middle of the action... BAM! Game closes down. None of us have a clue why. So I was gonna try and fix the problem, even though I dont do that stuff very well, but that has absolutely nothing to do with this. So I click coldstone and... WTF?!?!? OMFG!!! AAAAAH THIS CAN'T BE TRUE! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?!? MY LIFE IS RUIned well you get the picture... All the coldstone windows are white! So I close coldstone and start it again and... more white windows! So I start to think... My brain is quite slow because I haven't used it in a while but I get an idea! WHY DON'T I POST THIS ON THE COLDSTONE BOARDS??!?!? So I open up safari, click this little "coldstone" link that I had prepared for myself, smart of me, no? So I click the "post new topic" button (or whatever it is.. something like that, anyway) and the rest you know... So, does anyone know why this is happening to me?? (WHY MEEE??? NOOOO WHY NOT PILKY?? HE ISN'T MAKING ANY GAMES ANYWAY!!! OR SOMEONE ELSE ON THIS BOARD?! OR PERHAPS SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T EVEN HAVE COLDSTONE?!?????, WHY MEEEE?!??!??! ).

So I figure I'll have to restart but I will want to release this game later on, so I dont want it to crash after 5 seconds, would give me a bad reputation, but I guess it can't get much worse than it is already^^. Oh well, is this a bug or what?!?

Thank you for your time and dont chop your legs off when cooking

**

I know that I say this all the time, buy I would reccomend reinstalling Coldstone(also delete the CS prefs).

If you experience crashing in your compiled game it is often ypur game's preferences that are corrupted. So if your game crashes a lot after being compiled, trash the prefs.

------------------
Thanks,
GrahamVH
graham@vhpublications.com
http://www.warcraftc...t/CGD/home.html

Quote

Originally posted by GrahamVH:
**I know that I say this all the time, buy I would reccomend reinstalling Coldstone(also delete the CS prefs).

If you experience crashing in your compiled game it is often ypur game's preferences that are corrupted. So if your game crashes a lot after being compiled, trash the prefs.

**

I don't believe that. All the crashes I've experienced traced back to a conflict in the game. And guess who was responsible for said conflict. My thought is that the engine has been given a directive it cannot complete, so it blows up.

These bugs are a devil to find, but they exist because of user error. I seriously doubt that the preferences are corrupted.

I'm sorry for your problem, Ledorax, and I sympathize because one such bug took me two weeks to find (and resulted in the loss of some hair), but I think you need to take the game apart, step by step, at the point where it crashes to locate the nasty culprit.

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My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG. (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/RD-DEL.jpg")RD-DEL(/url)

My game has crashed so many times, that now whenever I have a problem, I automatically assume it's my fault. And it is. So I fix it. I now test meticulously as I make the game. I just made a crafting system that I swore I was perfect at it. Then I tested every single dang item. Four mistakes out of 550 events and over 100 locations. The most creative mistake was giving the Player 20 pieces of armor instead of 20 arrows after the crafting was a success. I truly believe that if there's something wrong with a game, 99% of the time it's the builder's fault, not Coldstone's.

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-- Debra
Danillitphil Productions
(url="http://"http://www.danillitphil.com/graphics/index.html")www.danillitphil.com(/url)

The only thing that I can think of causing the bug is a corrupt NPC. I managed to play it and run around for about 10 seconds, but then it quits with no warning.

I don't know how many games that i have started that go wrong and won't work and then when I remake the game from scratch (in the same way) it works. Luckily it is usually at the beginning. One of the worst things to happen is a map file becoming corrupt

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Pilky
(url="http://"http://www.mcubedsw.com")M cubed homepage(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.mcubedsw.com/network")M cubed Network(/url)

Yayness! Bug fixed^^ took me exactly 5 minutes including the compiling time ;). I tried playing without moving and it didn't crash, but on the FOURTH walk frame it did, so I know why it did, hehe. I had put an event there with some "random actions" and portrait changes (to make the guy's portrait glance left and right and stuff, just like in wolfenstein 3D!) and coldstone dosn't seem to like that, so it crashed. I dont know if I could have done it for 2 weeks, in that case I'd probably start it all from the beginning again;p.

Thanks for the help everyone

------------------
Life is a joke - death is testing your humour...

Quote

Originally posted by Ledorax:
**Yayness! Bug fixed^^ took me exactly 5 minutes including the compiling time;). I tried playing without moving and it didn't crash, but on the FOURTH walk frame it did, so I know why it did, hehe. I had put an event there with some "random actions" and portrait changes (to make the guy's portrait glance left and right and stuff, just like in wolfenstein 3D!) and coldstone dosn't seem to like that, so it crashed. I dont know if I could have done it for 2 weeks, in that case I'd probably start it all from the beginning again;p.

Thanks for the help everyone **

I am so glad that you were able to find your bug and fix it. we are all looking forward to the release (well I am any way)

------------------
-Albadar-
- - - - - - - - - -
Just trying...

It looks good so far

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Pilky
(url="http://"http://www.mcubedsw.com")M cubed homepage(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.mcubedsw.com/network")M cubed Network(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by Rubber Ducky:
These bugs are a devil to find, but they exist because of user error. I seriously doubt that the preferences are corrupted.

I disagree, you can blame 'user error' for bugs like spelling mistakes, spells not doing what they should etc. but the fact is if the editor lets the user create events that could cause the engine to crash, then its the fault of coldstone.

------------------

Quote

Originally posted by crizak:
**I disagree, you can blame 'user error' for bugs like spelling mistakes, spells not doing what they should etc. but the fact is if the editor lets the user create events that could cause the engine to crash, then its the fault of coldstone.

**

I beg to differ. The engine just attempts to follow directions given by the user. If the user inputs conflicting data, the computer does not know how to resolve that. Sure, the engine could be designed better than it is, but the user has to learn what the limitations of the engine are as it exists now.

If Ledorax wants his character to glance left and right as he walks, he can build that into the walking animation without resorting to a change in player portrait which didn't work. One directive is "keep on walking" and the other is "stop and look both ways." The engine can't do both at the same time.

With any software you have to learn what it will do and what it won't. If Coldstone crashes with a new OS it needs to be fixed. If Coldstone crashes because we asked it to do two things at once, it's the user's problem to fix. Work with what you have, not with what you would like to have.

------------------
My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG. (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/RD-DEL.jpg")RD-DEL(/url)

I agree with RD. I use Dreamweaver when making web pages. If I enter something that conflicts with the application program and the code is, consequently, wrong, it will not work properly. That certainly isn't Dreamweaver's fault, but mine. This is true with any application program.

------------------
-- Debra
Danillitphil Productions
(url="http://"http://www.danillitphil.com/graphics/index.html")www.danillitphil.com(/url)

I have to say that I think you are both right. The engine is still very buggy but that is mainly big problems that we don't have much control over when we make the game. Though most of the time it is user error that causes the problems.

------------------
Pilky
(url="http://"http://www.mcubedsw.com")M cubed homepage(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.mcubedsw.com/network")M cubed Network(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by Debra:
**I agree with RD. I use Dreamweaver when making web pages. If I enter something that conflicts with the application program and the code is, consequently, wrong, it will not work properly. That certainly isn't Dreamweaver's fault, but mine. This is true with any application program.

**

Well, IMHO the editor should inform the user if conflicting data is entered. It shouldn't be possible to compile a game that doesn't work.

------------------

There are three main types of errors: code errors, logic errors and runtime errors. The engine should catch all code errors (illegal entries, such as attempting to use a number that is too big in a certain field, etc.) and many runtime errors (invalid data types, conflicting data, attempting to increment a variable by an excessively large/small amount, etc.). I program Java using the UNIX compiler with Terminal and I get tons of feedback on both coding and runtime errors. All code errors simply stop the program from compiling. Runtime errors will stop the program as it runs and inform you which line of code caused the problem (perhaps it could tell you which event in Coldstone...). Logic errors (infinite loops, etc.) you have to deal with yourself.

Anyway, my point is that Coldstone should provide feedback on code errors and runtime errors, as this makes bug-hunting a lot easier.

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Cha0s
(url="http://"http://www.world-of-cha0s.hostrocket.com")The Homepage of Cha0s(/url)