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Zap Crash Information! (Read)

by Pat Wilson · in General Game Discussion · 12/12/2004 (8:27 pm) · 1 replies

Want to help make Zap crash-free?

Run Zap like so:
zap.exe -jSave whatever.jrn

This will run Zap in journaling mode. It has almost no effect on performance, and if you should happen to crash, take that file and mail it to:
zapjournals@gmail.com

This way everyone on the Zap team can get to it.
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Associate Kyle Carter
#1
12/14/2004 (9:51 pm)
Journals are absolutely the best way for us to get crashes fixed. When we started doing automated testing of the game midway through development, we'd have a bunch of test clients connect to the server and start pounding on it, firing off random movements and events. Basically the automated equivalent of banging on the keyboard. :)

We had each "crazybot" keep a journal. At the end of a test session, we'd check to see which clients had crashed, and use the journal to play back the exact sequence of events that had resulted in the crash. Instead of having to try to try to reproduce a complex series of events to get the crash to happen in a debugger, we were able to click go and instantly and precisely get it to reoccur in the exact same way. Made finding the crash _much_ easier.

It also found a lot of really weird boundary conditions we wouldn't otherwise have thought to check for.

So, the moral of the story - send us a journal of a crash and you'll help us dramatically improve the quality of Zap!