ME crashes tip ?

[jollyjack]

I had a constantly crashing mission i was working on in the ME.

Committed a resave in folder on it, BINGO, stable again ...

 

[Gambit21]

The editor is unstable.

[IckyATLAS]

Unstable is maybe not the exact term. It wobbles. It is an unstable wobbling piece of software.?

This ME defies all the attempts to find the root cause. It has a supreme form of AI that teases us, and that laughs at us crashing just when not expected.

And it has evolved over time to become very subtle and insidious. It has now escaped the control of its developers and is free.

It analyses our behavior, how we use it, how we create our missions and then will crash at the worst moment for maximum damage.

The only way is to protect yourself from the crash. And strangely when you protect yourself very well,  it does not crash so often or not at all for some time.

It happened to me. I had no crash at all for a complete week-end, and I started not to be as strict as I was, saving less often, copying from one map to another without closing and reopening the Editor when changing maps, and so on and so forth. The moment I thought that maybe the Editor for some unknown reason had become stable, BAM CRASH and a terrible laughter behind my shoulders I could hear.

The reason why there is no major evolution of the ME, and we have still version 1.0 (whereas for the game we are at 4.xxxxx) is that the devs are afraid this rogue AI may destroy the code.

Do not forget to participate to the Million Prize given to whom finds a way to regain control of this rogue AI and how to eliminate it without destroying the ME.

 

 

 

[jollyjack]

yep, but i was about to give up on this one - accidentally tried the resave all missions in folder, and it was stable again.

done a lot of editing to it, and it stayed stable.

 

My guess: could it be that the loading order of various mission content items be a cause?

Edited January 20, 2021 by jollyjack

[Gambit21]

 

No - there are many things that cause crashes. 

[Jaegermeister]

7 hours ago, jollyjack said:

could it be that the loading order of various mission content items be a cause?

 

It could be...

 

There are some things you can avoid to keep from crashing it with known issues. I would laugh at Icky's post, but it's too true. 

 

I spent over an hour on a mission the other day, got up early and I was making some great progress. I was hitting Ctl-S every so often like usual, and then I randomly had a crash. Turned out I lost an hour of work so I got up and left until the next day.

 

Very aggravating.   

[jollyjack]

My crashes are usually when moving to MCUs and zooming in the view port.

Often it helps to load a mission, then save it, and load it again, or even reload the ME after exit.

If crashes happen after adding stuff sometimes i group the new kids on the block (before zooming) and export them as a group.

Then re import the group and make it the working. But that's a last effort.

 

PS i noticed by doing a re-save missions in folder with an ME crasher mission, a counter changed ID number

Edited January 21, 2021 by jollyjack

[Jaegermeister]

The longer you work in the ME, the more circumstances you will find where the ME crashes. It's just not predictable. The only real solution for now, short of serious debugging is to hit CTL-S every 5 minutes. It's just hard to remember sometimes.

[Gambit21]

1 hour ago, Jaegermeister said:

The longer you work in the ME, the more circumstances you will find where the ME crashes. It's just not predictable. The only real solution for now, short of serious debugging is to hit CTL-S every 5 minutes. It's just hard to remember sometimes.

 

Yep, but even then I have had entire mission files get corrupted during a save unfortunately.

Fortunately I had backup copies each time, but that backup copy was a day old so I lost hours of work.

I've about reached my threshold. 

[jollyjack]

7 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

I've about reached my threshold. 

 

The crusader giving up? For us poor us simple minded then rests one thing:

 

[IckyATLAS]

On 1/22/2021 at 1:54 AM, Gambit21 said:

 

Yep, but even then I have had entire mission files get corrupted during a save unfortunately.

Fortunately I had backup copies each time, but that backup copy was a day old so I lost hours of work.

I've about reached my threshold. 

I have solved this doing a backup every quarter of an hour max of work and a second backup at the end of a work session. 

All the groups of a mission are also saved in that missions group library.  And I have a Common Campaign Library where I save the groups which can be of general use for any mission.

When I leave a session I have three copies in separate folders. I know it obsessive. But once I have lost many years ago a full mission and discovered no backup you learn and you can only afford once this kind of thing. I had nevertheless my groups library, so I could much faster rebuild a mission, the problem is that you have to rebuild all the links between groups. I have about 30 main groups 

But gee how much time is lost with all these saves and multiple copy backups.

 

Productivity is a real issue here. An if we have those issues then the Developers have also the same issues.

Jason you are throwing money out of the window. Your devs loose a lot of time. Investing a little to make the editor stable would spare a lot of time and money.

This spared money means developing more campaigns and making the game more attractive. Sound nice isn't it. 

 

So please:  JUST DO IT

Someone out there..... do you hear me...just do it.....Someone out there..... Someone out there..... just do it....do you hear me.....do you hear me.....Someone out there.....

 

Just the vast black emptiness of cyberspace, filled with electromagnetic echoes.?

 

Until Jason gets convinced and fixes it here is the recipe  I have to minimize crashes. And it works for me. I get now very little crashes, maybe one per session of many hours and sometimes a full evening without any.

And if I relax this way of doing immediately the number of crashes increase.

 

So here is my advice how to work when you are in 4K display:

 

(1a) Set the preference of the ME so that it opens the last mission you worked on. 

(2a) Open the ME and immediately do a ctrl-s or a save action just first.

 

(1b) If you have loaded a new mission in an opened ME then save it and close the ME.

(2b) Reopen the ME (it will open with your new map) and do a save ctrl-s.

 

(3) Start working but first wait 10 seconds or so, it will take some time for the ME to load all what has to be displayed. This is true if you have heavy maps like Kuban and Rheinland, and heavy missions. It takes time to load, and if you too quickly start to pan & zoom then you get crashes.

 

(4) Avoid to Pan and Zoom a too cluttered map. Use the object filter to have only what you need displayed. There is less crash when less stuff is displayed on the map. Pan causes more crashes than zoom, so when you need to jump to large distances on your map (I work mainly on Kuban) use the various possibilities to jump directly.

 

(4.1) You do not need to have always the map visible. Do an left-alt f9 and you will have just the icons and links. You can then better pan and zoom with little risk of crash.

 

(5) You can do a lot of work directly on the mission tree and the property windows of all entities. You should favor it if you can. I never had a crash when working on the mission tree elements, only when working on the map.

 

(6) Try always to have some visible ICON separation. Avoid Icons perfectly on top of one each other. In certain cases this will cause crashes.

 

(7) I will not go into details about designing the mission but you have two type of groups. You have mission level groups that you can select directly in the mission tree. These are the top level groups you see when opening the mission tree of your group.

Then you have all the other groups which are sub-groups and are hierarchically structured under these top groups. When you do modify something in your mission when done save specifically the top groups where a modification has occurred inside. 

 

(8) Always a ctrl-s after three or four small and simple actions max.

 

(9) A ctrl-s after every major action like deleting a group, or importing a group, let's say an action that has a big impact like creating a large set of links, duplicating groups etc. etc.

 

(10) A backup save after ctrl-s as in (8), or a backup save at least once every quarter of an hour max. Time flows very quickly when working so beware!

 

As a conclusion all this is time consuming, but at least my work is now secure and as I said I have very little crashes..

Just a small reminder just in case Jason tuned in ?

 

Jason you are throwing money out of the window. Your devs loose a lot of time. Investing a little to make the editor stable would spare a lot of time and money.

This spared money means developing more campaigns and making the game more attractive. Sound nice isn't it. 

 

So please:  JUST DO IT

Someone out there..... do you hear me...just do it.....Someone out there..... Someone out there..... just do it....do you hear me.....do you hear me.....Someone out there.....

 

No he did not tune in. Again I remain alone in the vast black emptiness of cyberspace, filled with electromagnetic echoes.?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 3, 2021 by IckyATLAS
Added 4.1

[jollyjack]

Icky, my man ..... this is the Holy Grail for the ME LoL. I'll print it out, and bejesus or sweetmary Jim_TM: make this a First Chapter in your Manual !

 

PS, if i use that 1a) option, (last mission) i loose surface and heitght/maps editing dropdowns, not that i often used them since trying in vain to correct item in the Rheinland map. 3) is the one i never did !, the rest i figured out already.

Edited January 22, 2021 by jollyjack

[Gambit21]

Icky, some of that (saving/backing up) I already do, some of it isn’t practical for me and would cost even more time.

[jollyjack]

PS maybe the reason is like Microsoft does it's publishing:

 

Create a so-called NEW OS. But leave it full of bugs and unfinished business.

All sorts of 3rd part supporters move in, especially clever ones sometimes, and publish tools and fixes.

The whole OS becomes a real card house building with users and 3rd party guys depending on each other out of sheer survival instinct.

A huge commercial success for the OS copyrights owner, and one mister Gates got filthy rich.

 

Atari and Amiga made good stuff .... switch it on and it worked. Alas nobody needed a new one and oops, they went belly up. IL2-1946?

 

Edited January 22, 2021 by jollyjack

[Jaegermeister]

3 hours ago, jollyjack said:

Icky, my man ..... this is the Holy Grail for the ME LoL. 

 

Don't be too surprised when you do all this and you still get a random crash for no discernable reason.

[jollyjack]

12 minutes ago, Jaegermeister said:

Don't be too surprised when you do all this and you still get a random crash for no discernable reason.

 

Well, right now i got surprised LoL.

[Thad]

As a Mission Editor user myself... I have a LOT of respect for all of the mission creators. They have to deal with all kinds of editor anomalies and frustrations during their creation efforts.

 

Salute!

[Jaegermeister]

3 hours ago, Thad said:

As a Mission Editor user myself... They have to deal with all kinds of editor anomalies and frustrations during their creation efforts.

 

WE... If you are on this particular forum, you are without a doubt one of the few that can put up with it.

[jollyjack]

not me :

 

 

 

ADDED: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF******************************************************CK, now with another steady crasher ..........

Edited January 23, 2021 by jollyjack

[Gambit21]

On 1/22/2021 at 12:18 PM, Jaegermeister said:

 

Don't be too surprised when you do all this and you still get a random crash for no discernable reason.

 

Yep

[IckyATLAS]

On 1/22/2021 at 9:18 PM, Jaegermeister said:

 

Don't be too surprised when you do all this and you still get a random crash for no discernable reason.

Absolutely right. After all I said you may still have a crash here and there but at least for me I have now some full evening sessions that is many consecutive hours without any crash.

And I even suspect that it could also depend on your PC memory configuration, but I have no real proof.

 

[jollyjack]

18 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

And I even suspect that it could also depend on your PC memory configuration, but I have no real proof.

 

How's that? OC-ed memory?

I keep my 32 GB at its default 3200MHZ. BTW I read somewhere that 3600MHZ RAM could be less stable even if your MB can handle the speed. Hear-say?

[IckyATLAS]

10 hours ago, jollyjack said:

 

How's that? OC-ed memory?

I keep my 32 GB at its default 3200MHZ. BTW I read somewhere that 3600MHZ RAM could be less stable even if your MB can handle the speed. Hear-say?

It is difficult to say what exactly but it seems that it crashes more often in 4K resolution than in HD.

[III./SG77S_Falke]

I have to completely agree with this thread's author...

 

I have been working with the Mission Editor for a while now and it just seems to get worse and worse.  The editor will crash at just about everything I do.

 

When I work with the "Groups" function, groups get deleted from the heirarchy tree after they were successfully implemented, You can't see all the groups all at once unless you can set each one to "working group" and the editor doesn't again crash on you, etc, etc...

 

Being a senior software engineer myself, I can see that this editor was not created to be released to the community at large but was designed for in-house development.  However, the developers decided to release it in any event with all its bugs and idiosyncrasies that drive mission authors completely nuts.

 

I am luck to get a single mission actually completed with this tool...

 

 

[jollyjack]

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHGG, AGAIN THIS SH*****T !!

continuously ..... especially on saving

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

 added: restarted the whole mission NEW, grouping from the start ... 4 hours long no crash so far, fingers crossed !

Edited January 29, 2021 by jollyjack