Bug hunting
You've probably noticed I've got a new chat box which I discovered after checking out the blog of a Woodenblog visitor. It's from CBox.ws and so far it's working nicely. It's got a very easy-to-use Admin control panel which include moderation options and spam control. As you can see, it's also fully customisable to the look of your site/page.
I've wanted a chat/shoutbox for a long time but never found one I liked, so this is an experiment that I'm happy with so far.
Crash [of] Course - followup
While trying to track down the bug and hopefully prevent it happening again, I think I've managed to pinpoint the cause, along with steps to reproduce. This is a habit I've developed from being a Flash beta tester over the last couple of years, so the steps below will give the development team something to go on.
OK I notice the crash happens rarely at the start of a day's work but it's reproducible almost 100% when I've been working for a longer period of time. This leads me to believe that the memory taken up by my History panel may be part of the problem.
The crash occurs when I've created a shape tween and I start to move vector points around using the sub-selection tool. Each time, the crash occurs when I then scrub the timeline on the shape tween.
So in summary:
However, I discovered that the delay is eliminated if my Library is closed! Not just minimised or tucked away.. I mean CLOSED completely). That's kinda understandable I guess, seeing how my Library for any major project contains thousands of symbols. Now I keep my Library closed all the time, only pressing F11 when I need it.
Therefore, it's probable that the contributing factors for the delay are:
OK here y'are! As you can see below, the storyboard is pretty much complete. Just a few layout, timing tweaks and scene juggling to go.
-lollygraph! Now with Audio thingy.
I've wanted a chat/shoutbox for a long time but never found one I liked, so this is an experiment that I'm happy with so far.
Crash [of] Course - followup
While trying to track down the bug and hopefully prevent it happening again, I think I've managed to pinpoint the cause, along with steps to reproduce. This is a habit I've developed from being a Flash beta tester over the last couple of years, so the steps below will give the development team something to go on.
OK I notice the crash happens rarely at the start of a day's work but it's reproducible almost 100% when I've been working for a longer period of time. This leads me to believe that the memory taken up by my History panel may be part of the problem.
The crash occurs when I've created a shape tween and I start to move vector points around using the sub-selection tool. Each time, the crash occurs when I then scrub the timeline on the shape tween.
So in summary:
- A full History panel
- Shape tween
- Sub-select tool, moving points
- Scrub timeline
- CRAAAAAASH!!
- Clear History panel before tweaking the vector points in a shape tween.
- Lower the number of Undos in Edit > Preferences > General. The higher this figure, the more memory used.
- [Workaround?] Avoid having vector points visible when scrubbing the timeline. To hide vector points, switch to a tool (brush, selection, paint bucket) other than sub-select tool.
However, I discovered that the delay is eliminated if my Library is closed! Not just minimised or tucked away.. I mean CLOSED completely). That's kinda understandable I guess, seeing how my Library for any major project contains thousands of symbols. Now I keep my Library closed all the time, only pressing F11 when I need it.
Therefore, it's probable that the contributing factors for the delay are:
- High number of maximum undos (and full History panel)
- Large Library is open.
OK here y'are! As you can see below, the storyboard is pretty much complete. Just a few layout, timing tweaks and scene juggling to go.
-lollygraph! Now with Audio thingy.
16 Comments:
And so it seems everything is back to normal, as long as you can remember your own steps of avoiding a crash. I know I probably wouldn't remember to do it every time, but I'm a very, VERY forgetful person.
I had just started a flash project I'm doing for my art assignment the other day, when my brother being annoying outside my door caused me to slam it in his face. The slam caused a wind to blow the 'bogie' hole in my room outwards and nudge my computer cable. The whole system shut off in less than a second.
Yeah... I threw my chair to the ground. Hopefully you were better at dealing with it than I was.
Looks like progress is coming along nicely with Waterlollies. I'm looking ever so forwardly to view it. Keep up the good work.
there are still many other ways for it to crash but great youve pin pointed something we should watch and avoid in the future.
lol @ lollygraph =D
cant waiiiit for your new animation mannnnnn aaaaakkk
Good to know that things are back on track since the crash. Interesting to note the cause of it too...
Anywho, Cant wait for the final product! yay !
I agree. Flash is a very buggy program. I've noticed with Flash 8 Pro, the program starts to slow down with a) too many symbols in my library b) too many symbols in my stage [graphic symbols, yes.. movie symbols, forget about it] c) testing the movie over and over.
But obviously you knew all these things already! My suggestion is to get an external hard drive (if you don't have it already), and to keep defragging your computer (seems like you're a PC user). Thanks to you, I WILL watch out for all you've mentioned.. every little bit helps.
Anyways, Waterlollies is looking fantastic! I show your animations to everyone I work with, and they're very impressed. Have you experimented with AS3?
Dude,
Whatya think of Flash cs3...worth it or no?
...and check out Twitter...so I can stalk you!
Much Marvlove to you and J!
I'm new to commenting/posting on this site, but I've been following your work since watching Bitey of Brackenwood a couple of years back, and man, I so can't wait for Waterlollies! Your animation and picture quality improves SO much with every new animation, and from the screenshots I've seen, I can see that Waterlollies will be no exception to this observation.
I've often turned to you animations for both inspiration and to find ways to improve my own flash projects, so keep up the awesome work! :)
when do you usually use shape tween in your animation? i understand that it can be used for inbetweening effectively only simple shapes.
its nice to know also that artists like you take time to give feedback on debugging and improving flash. i've been using flash 8 and have gotten used to experiencing problems while working.
excited to see lollies! have fun with the last part :D
I think I've come across your memory problem, Adam. I was using Flash 8, add eventually I got to a point where the program tells me there isn't enough memory to do anything that effects the history, while a quick Ctrl+alt+del tells me that I still have a gig of free ram and only one third of the virtual memory swap file is used up. The first few times I saved and restarted Flash, but the last time I just cleared the history and was able to keep working.
Is this similar to the problem you ran into? I think there might be a connection with how much detailed un-optimized graphics I've currently got on the scene, but I haven't run into the error message again after emptying my history.
Thats sweet.
Yeah just as julian said Im pretty excited about your new flash ^_^
Adam, you should have that graph on the front page of Bitey Castle. A graph made in flash that updates weekly. And then like at the bottum, screenshots of the movie that disopear and reapear like on YouTube where it shows what´s being watched. No need for any more updates on the blog, what we really want is just to see the graph.
LCameron
I dissagree with the above post, the graph does look very nice, it is very well crafted, and I could spend hours just looking at it because it is so beautiful, but it isn't what I really want to see, though it is very nice looking. What I believe we want see is Waterlollies, the graph is nice but waterlollies is nicer.
glad to see you're just about done with the storyboard! Keep up the good work and thanks for the update! :)
-evan
Hey Adam, (I'm not sure if you're reading this)
I just wanted to say that I diagnosed the same bug that you're getting on my own before I read this post.
It does seem to be shape tweens, and it happens to me even without using the sub select tool, even just moving the lines with the selection arrow seems to make it happen.
I don't think it has anything to do with the history panel because I can make a file crash as the first thing I do after opening it by scrubbing on a shape tween keyframe (even using the keyboard shortcut makes it crash).
It seems to fix it if you copy the artwork of each keyframe and paste them one by one on a new layer, delete the problem layer and then re-shape tween without tweaking it.
The problem seems to be editing the artwork with shape tween turned on, seems like you have to remove the shape tween first and re-apply it after editing.
Which is a royal pain! and I didn't have to do that in Flash 8!
Also, the undo seems to break for me where it stops jumping to the frame to show you what's being undone - kind of like blind undoing. it only seems to work properly 1 in 10 times for me :S
Hope they fix some of these things, at least we can paint in flipped symbols now. lol.
Best luck with Waterlollies
Ben
cool, I'm glad you got to see and confirm the bugs.. I'll definitely point the Flash dev team in this direction when the next beta starts.
Thanks mate :)
WL coming along btw. According to my schedule I've got 5 days to go!
I can't release it until the music guy is done though, so I'll tweak and fix stuff until he's finished.
Thanks again!
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