Phantom errors

[amanta4ray]

Hello..I am using AGS 3.1 and the game I am working on is getting to the testing stage.  At one point, I have a cut-scene where the character walks down the steps and gets a cup of coffee.  But, on one occasion, my character walked in the opposite direction and there is no walkable area there.  I double-checked everything and not only can I not find anything, but could never reproduce the error again.  This also happened one other time and the game crashed.

My question is this...how can you fix an error that you can't find and can't even duplicate??  Is there any such thing as phantom errors or glitches that would make a game crash??  Also, if it happened once, what are the chances of it happening again??

Any insight would be greatly appreciated...Anne

[m0ds]

Hiya, there are phantom errors, sure. We consider the code of "The Cat Lady" to be haunted As such... we stopped messing around with it and respected that it likes to throw out a phantom error every so often.

That said, it's often possible that various combinations - for example - you as the developer know the route to solve a puzzle, but someone else doesn't, so they will try a different route or combinations to do so, can sometimes unlock a potential problem it never occurred to you could exist. Usually, if this results in a game crash - you can find and fix it. AGS chucks out a few errors but mostly when someone is taking a very odd route to a puzzle solution. Sometimes a character's line can get triggered, for example, and they're not in the currently loaded room, and bam - crash. A crash of course, gives you some indication (with a pop up box) of what went wrong and you can begin your search.

In my experience, the types of general errors in AGS games that occur are:

1. Start-up errors. Including black screens, stuttering sound, no mouse pointer, etc. All of these are generally down to the individuals system.

2. In-game errors. Usually inventory object use/combinations, dialogue triggered outside of a characters room, or old code calling something that no longer exists (ie a music track you used early on but replaced). Generally caused by developer oversight (but not in a nefarious way!)

When you're using a bunch of code that isn't the sort of bog standard point and click fare in AGS, yes, you can run into errors, and they may not be reproducable. If not because they're phantom, then simply because no-one can ever really keep full track of every click they make in a way that can keep track of how the code might react. So when you have an error that you can't seem to reproduce, just keep a note of it and stay alert for a player mentioning it. Players often remember what they did or can give some extra clue to help you solve it.

As for your specific problem, you probably want to doublecheck your code for the cChar.Walk eAnywhere flag, just in case it's gone rogue somewhere