Does BYOND really care about us :S

Page: 1 2 3
Feb 25 2008, 2:13 am
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
Latoma wrote:
I admit this was unfounded and I admit I was stupid, hence why I haven't posted since I did, I was just pissed off cause of the whole Byond was crashed thing (which *gasp to my annoyance* IS HAPPENING AGAIN!) which is now occuring two days in a row :S

Problems with the hub don't make us any happier than they make you. We've had some kind of recurring issue there that is worrying, but it hasn't been tracked down yet.

PS: I am sure it's the server, but it's getting damn annoying now doing it two days in a row, it's like ya'll are hosting Byond on Byond's Dream Daemon :S (Duel Monsters Unlimited Players get the idea). Still there is the problem from the mysterious crashes from inputs. There's been 2 topics about this over time which were completely waysided because they were mysteriously unnoticed by most, and others considered it bad practices on the coder(s).

http://www.byond.com/developer/forum?id=611076 <<< Went completely unnoticed before.
http://www.byond.com/developer/forum?id=607863&display=1

Neither of those threads said that using input() about 10 times or so directly causes a crash. In both cases input() seems to be possibly connected to the crash yet could be entirely tangential to the real problem. In both threads the crash was said to be intermittent. Those are hard bugs to find on a good day; and neither report was crystal clear, although I think he did his best to give us all the details he could. Intermittent bugs are notoriously nasty to fix.

This program has been haunting me and my coder for months now, and we basically had to abandon the game because we couldn't fix it period. There's no In-Programming errors (I had a copy of the source myself and it showed no errors). It gave no warnings in game, it just crashed out of thin air. This was the reason we both basically gave up on the "Next Great Game(s)", because Byond Crashed on us when we were making one of them. This bug has existed for 2 months now, and there's absolutely no signs of any errors suggesting that it's his coding practices.

During that time we've been scrambling to get the updated site online, keep it running (when it was still on DreamHost), debug new issues that arose from the change, and accommodate feature requests that users have pegged as urgent or important. It's not that we don't care about such a bug, but that we haven't been working on the software for a bit. It's not really feasible to keep switching between the software and the site.

But if you're convinced input() was your problem, why didn't you try a workaround? BYOND's browse() proc and new interface-based techniques are both good alternatives.

Lummox JR

I don't know what it is, what HE is sure of is the fact we used a lot of images in it (I think it was transferred JPegs or Gifs, forgot which, it's been months since him and I Discussed it).

All I know is that it was going haywire since the first Alpha testing when two people actually began, however the more we 'debugged' the more 'bugged' it was. Before it would happen half-way through a "turn" and everything would freeze, the next thing we knew it happened whenever we pressed one of the built in macros to choose our Attacks in preparing for the first turn.

If you want, Kakashi will gladly send you the source (as he has stated) so you can personally review it, because this one's totally out of our hands.
Feb 25 2008, 2:16 am
In response to Jamesburrow
Jamesburrow wrote:
If I remember correctly, Mecha Destroyer JD fixed it in one of his games by using HTML input instead. Can't remember for sure, so you'll have to ask him.

Yeh, we turned basically everything except the Chip Select Screen into HTML (Because the Chip Select Screen is one of the cosmetic favorites of BN Fans). Ironically that's one of the key crash points, although before that the key crash points happened to be whenever we utilized a weapon (which de-equips it from your equipped inventory), often freezing one or both players and freezing the turn gauge. It's hard to explain it without the reading party to know in detail how the BN Series works.
Feb 25 2008, 6:14 am
In response to Latoma
Latoma wrote:
I don't know what it is, what HE is sure of is the fact we used a lot of images in it (I think it was transferred JPegs or Gifs, forgot which, it's been months since him and I Discussed it).

It doesn't sound, then, like you're sure input() is the culprit at all. That's a far cry from the tone of your original post which suggested that in some games it takes a mere 10 rounds of input() before DS explodes.

To be sure, I think there is some old issue when input() is used an excessive amount in a game. I'm not sure what could be causing it, though I'm looking some more right now. The reason I suspected this is that Masterdan was having major problems with GOA for a while before he did some changes.

All I know is that it was going haywire since the first Alpha testing when two people actually began, however the more we 'debugged' the more 'bugged' it was. Before it would happen half-way through a "turn" and everything would freeze, the next thing we knew it happened whenever we pressed one of the built in macros to choose our Attacks in preparing for the first turn.

That freezing sounds most suspiciously like an infinite loop.

If you want, Kakashi will gladly send you the source (as he has stated) so you can personally review it, because this one's totally out of our hands.

I'll leave that option open, though for now it's probably best to refer any bug-related discussions back to those threads. This thread has gone on quite long enough.

Lummox JR
Page: 1 2 3