BugSplat 101
GeorgeGS
Member, PRO Posts: 478
Hey all,
We recently added a tool called BugSplat to Creator to help us track down crashes and I wanted to talk a little bit about what it does and how you can help us to fix crashes that are affecting you faster.
When you have a crash BugSplat captures some information about what Creator was doing when the crash happened. It's basically a list of function names that were called to get to where the crash happens and it lets us look at that sequence of events and try to figure out what might have gone wrong to cause the crash.
With some crashes just knowing where it happened is enough to try and fix it. If we're lucky it's enough information for us to make the crash happen on our computers so we can be sure we fixed it correctly.
Where you can help out is to give us a little more information about what you were doing right before the crash happened. If you've had the crash more than once, and know how to make it always happen, then telling us the steps would be great! If this is the first time you've experienced a certain crash, then just telling us whatever you were doing like "I was dragging an image" or "I was opening a project" would help.
You can also provide your name and/or e-mail address if you want to. This is completely optional but it does give us a way to get in touch with you if we need some additional information to figure out the crash. It's pretty rare that we'd need to contact you, but if we run into a really hard problem to figure out it could help a lot.
Comments
Awesome! Great stuff :-)
Really pleased to see such pro-active steps being taken! I've only had two crashes since BugSplat was introduced, and both time BugSplat opened, but didn't display any window. After a couple of minutes it quit itself. Not managed to submit a report so far.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Glad to see this! Thanks, @GeorgeGS, for the thread!
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Sorry you're crashing.
Hopefully for not much longer. 
Was that on Mac or Windows that you saw BugSplat but didn't get the window?
Happening very rarely now! This is probably the most stable I remember GS ever being!
Yosemite, 10.10.4 (14E26a).
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
I see that 10.10.4 is still in dev beta. Hopefully that gets resolved in the next update to Yosemite. Unless they introduced something new. 10.10.3 doesn't have the problem.
Yeah I accidentally installed a build through the App Store app software updates and now I'm stuck with them
10.10.4 should be out soon, so hopefully we get an answer then!
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
This is some of the best GS news ive heard for ages and welcome it with my arms open. Im still running 0.12.20 for most of my client work and only use 0.13.23 for clients who already have started the project in 0.13.X. However I have filled in the bug reports twice with crashes and it works fine running Mavericks 10.9.5. For me it was the infamous importing images bug thats been around for as long as I can remember. Ive just learnt to save before import, I dont know if I could ever attempt to import with saving im that used to doing it!
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Maybe a bug reporting button could be intergrated into the build. Bug Splat only opens when it crashes so unless it crashes you cant use it. Would be nice to be able to use bug splat without needed a crash to use it. @BlackCloakGS
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I can't check the Mac version right now, but in the Windows version there is a Report Bug item on the help menu, it links you to our bug tracker at http://bugs.gamesalad.com/
Same on Mac.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Thanks, @GeorgeGS
Bugzilla is a 16-man raid, after all.
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I've submitted two BugSplats today and both have taken me to the website saying that it has been fixed in the 0.13.22. I don't think your systems are clever enough to know what I've written to know that it has been fixed so I'm going to say that BugSplat seems broken at the moment. I'm using 0.13.23.
Crashes are automatically grouped together based on the callstack at the time of the crash, not anything you type in the box. Sometimes we'll also group issues together manually if we think they are related. Each group can have a message assigned to it if we think we've fixed something or if there's a workaround, but it's possible that either unrelated issues are grouped together or that there's more than one way to make it crash. The message doesn't mean your crash isn't being recorded or that we won't look at it again.
What you type in the box is to help us figure out how to duplicate crashes but it doesn't affect the automatic grouping at all. It is greatly appreciated when you take the time to let us know what was going on when the crash happened.
@GeorgeGS doh, I didn't think about the callstack that would get sent with it >.<
Still, it doesn't make sense to take me to a page saying that the bug was fixed in an earlier version of the software when it's clearly just bugged and crashed. That would give most people the impression that the bug was ignored and nothing was sent.
We should see the same page for all BugSplat submissions. A simple "thanks for the submission/feedback" screen
Since upgrading to the official 10.10.4 release, BugSplat doesn't even open for me.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
So, you're seeing crashes but no BugSplat window at all? We'll take a look.
Only one crash so far, but BugSplat didn't load. Previously it loaded but opened no window, now it's not loading at all.
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If I click on preview then click back to editor and then click preview again quickly
the whole GS just hangs with the play button pressed (dark green color)..and nothing else is responsive. I have to Control-Alt-Delete and end task so I don't see a BugSplat screen because it hung, I thought it was taking its time..I went away and came back and it still just hangs.
I can reproduce this bug with an empty project. just click play, then back to editor and play again.
I am windows btw.
Ok, I'll see if I can figure out what's up. I assume you're running version 13.28?
Yep, 0.13.28
I got another good bug for you (windows version 0.13.28)
Open up GS, and just leave it as empty project default.
Add an actor and drag the actor on to default scene.
Click preview, and see that actor is there.
Now go into the actor's prototype, add this behavior (accelerate towards to mouse position).
Now click preview, and the actor is gone. (<-- This is the bug)
If you now create an after 1 second timer and put the accelerate towards to mouse position behavior inside the timer and preview it works as you can see after 1 second, the actor does accelerate toward mouse pointer.
@Armelline what crash did you get without the bug splat ui? Was it in preview or what where you doing at the time?
While I was on the 10.10.4 DP I was getting no UI every time the creator crashed. I can't remember specifically what I was doing in any instance. Since updating to 10.10.4 stable a few days ago I've actually only had one crash. This time the BugSplat UI did load, and I wrote in the box, but then my internet went down and BugSplat ended up just showing the spinning beachball forever, even after my internet came back up later on. What would have happened if I hadn't ended up having to force quit it I don't know. It looks like the no-UI issue probably was related to the 10.10.4 DP.
The crash that happened since then though, with the frozen BugSplat, was when I was copying a bunch of images from one open project's images browser to another open project's images browser.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Just had another image import crash and can confirm that BugSplat is now working for me!
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Did you import the image through the image library or through a behavior?
I feel kinda bad liking that post, but I'm glad you were able to send the crash report.
I clicked the + in the image library and selected the image in the file select dialog that pops up. Crash happened almost immediately after clicking "Open".
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Just checked in a fix "i think" fixes the image import crash. Time will tell.