Zugg Software :: View topic

Novice Joined: 06 Jun 2007 Posts: 30

Zugg, thanks for your artworks of CMUD/ZMUD seriers software.

It is really amazing software with excellect powerful function. However, I have one suggestion. Please pay much more attention to CMUD's stable/robustness.

When opening 4-5 sessions or running one session a little long time, CMUD/ZMUD is very very easier to be crashed. That's why so many of my firends start to use Mush, even Mush is much more complex than CMUD.

All of us admit that Mush is not easy to use and need a lot of programming basis by Lua language compared to CMUD. But Mush has one big advantage to Zmud/Cmud. Mush is very stable/robust, I never meet Mush's crash before.

Please imaging, after taking a lot of time to one mud games with a lot of settings, one day, CMUD crashed and every setting is gone. What an awful day:(

Magician Joined: 02 Feb 2004 Posts: 364 Location: USA

When was the last time you used Cmud? I'd say the latest (beta) versions are very stable.

On the note of losing all your settings, I wrote something a while ago that may help. It's a simple .bat script that backups -all- of your packages and saves them in a separate directory, organized by date and time. Normally cmud's automated backups are enough to save you, but this is more or less a fool-proof solution: http://forums.zuggsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=152493

Novice Joined: 06 Jun 2007 Posts: 30

I am using 2.37pro cmud now. Basically speaking, every version of Zmud/Cmud has robustness issue, more or less. The most stable version I've used is zmud 4.62 version.

Till today, Zmud/CMUD is very powerful with excellenct function. But, it seems you did not solve or improve its robustness issue. It always crash time from time. I understand probably it has ways to save the data from its crash. However, what I expect is that CMUD won't crash, instead of saving the data after crashing.

To be frank, most of my mud's players are programmers. They can use any kind of language to code, to use Lua, JSP, XML or other language is not an issue to them. But, robustness is an issue to them. They are very smart and they can reslove any programming issue but they cannot slove robustness issue.

For example, in cmud, I only need one simple command #wait to wait some time, #capture to open an new window. But in mush, you have to code tens of hundreds of lines to acommplish the same function by Lua language.

I try to focus that Mush only has one advandage to CMUD, strong robustness. But this advantage has already beat CMUD's everything else.

Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 3:36 am

While the public version may seem unstable, the Beta versions have fixed many of the bugs in that were present in 2.37.

Hopefully, there will be a public release soon, but if you feel like helping test for bugs in the Beta versions, feel free to download it. Just remember that Beta versions, while they may be a bit more stable, the goal is to actually TEST them for other bugs so that Zugg can release a public release sooner.

Charneus

Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 4:27 pm

The biggest cause of stability issues in CMUD is importing badly written zMUD scripts or zMUD scripts that have not been properly updated for CMUD. If you are importing zMUD scripts, be sure to run the Compatibility Report to find potential issues. If you have stability problems with a specific script, then post the specific script so we can help.

As you mentioned, CMUD is a *very* complex program. Because it's basically a programming language, you can do almost anything you want with it. That makes it impossible to debug issues without specific scripts that show the problems. It is possible to make *any* program crash when it includes a full programming language, even Mush.

Novice Joined: 16 Feb 2009 Posts: 38

Hi,

I'll just report that losing settings and window-layouts etc. has occured several times with both stable and beta versions of CMUD for me and friends of me.

/kg

Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 11:15 pm

Losing a window layout is not the same as losing settings (scripts). Settings/Scripts are stored in a database that is transaction processed. It is extremely difficult to lose settings from this database. While it is possible and some people have reported it in the past, no reliable way to track this down was ever reported, and I haven't seen any reports from recent Beta versions.

The window layout corruption was a common problem in the Public version because of how the command line was handled. It was very easy to accidentally drag/drop the command line and mess up the layout. The window layout is stored in a flat text file (*.xly) and can easily be corrupted if the layout is saved after getting a severe error elsewhere in CMUD that corrupts memory.

This problem has been greatly reduced in the recent beta versions because of the changes made to the command line.

So, issues with window layouts and settings are completely different. And if you are still experiencing any problems like this in the latest beta version, then you need to post details on the problem and when it occurred so that I can look at your files to determine the cause.

But just saying that "some version in the past" lost some settings without more details is not helpful to anybody.

Apprentice Joined: 03 Feb 2007 Posts: 170

As charneus already stated the beta version 3.16 is far more stable than 2.37 despite it being counter-intuitive (no one expects a beta release to be more stable than an official release).

Novice Joined: 16 Feb 2009 Posts: 38

Hi,

I've only had window-layout issues with the 3.12+ betas (dunno about latest, as I downgraded because of the keypad-issue), a friend of mine lost all scripts with the 2.37 stable version. And as this is not occuring every now and then, its extremely had to post anything about.

/kg

Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 6:41 pm

I still continue to get occasional exceptions/crashes even years after having converted my code from Zmud. But I have never lost my settings. I've had them slightly corrupted due to a bug that is now fixed, but never lost.

Zugg will perhaps understand that the fact that 'He' doesn't experience any crashes is small comfort for those of us that experience them on a regular basis. Of course I understand that being the owner of the code has its perks, one of which is that you've probably long ago fixed the bugs that would affect your code.

You mention here about how you can submit crash reports, but you've stated in other threads that the vast majority of these reports can't be acted upon. And that unless there are quite a few with similar characteristics, they aren't acted upon because of the time and extra information that would be needed.

I personally have submitted quite a few from my crashes and I have yet to personally see any difference from submitting them.

Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 8:02 pm

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 1:14 am

There are always 2 sides to every story.

Is it possible that some users experience a constant stream of error messages, while others have seamless performance? Yeah.
Can bugs be a pain in the rear to track down and fix, even with detailed reproduceable error reports, and forum posts? Most definitely.
Does Zugg's bug list have hundreds if not thousands of bugs, errors, and other oddity? probably.
Does each of them takes time to reproduce, track down and fix? I'm fairly sure it does.
Do I have bugs I wish were fixed? Everyone does.
Have I see mine and others bugs fixed? Many many MANY times.

That being said, there is rather significant difference between error handling/reporting, and crashes, Cmud's error handling/reporting is NOT very common, the only time firefox or opera and many other programs show an error is when they completely screw up. i'm not sure most people understand the difference, or even care. I'm fairly sure that some of the "buggy unstable" rumors are because of this. I have even caught my self swearing at cmud over an annoying report or two.

I know it was talked about in another thread to automatically trap and handle many of the docking system errors, maybe thats not a bad idea, maybe even expanding it, and add an option for MINOR errors to automatically handle them or post a report.

anyway, just my 2 cents.

Enchanter Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 511 Location: USA

I read the OP, and the first thought in my mind was "Zugg basher". I don't know why, but when you make a post just to comment on an issue and then immediately talk about how great another similar product is, you aren't providing any useful conversation.

It would be like going to a Microsoft forum and stating how Windows always crashes but Mac OS doesn't.

I find that the reason most people experience slowdowns/crashes/etc tends to be that they run very complex systems. And in the same sense that a complex program like CMUD may contain some performance issues or bugs, these complex systems do to. I personally have had very few instances of CMUD crashing no matter how long I've been playing, and they few times I have it was typically soon after an update and it was a common bug that others also reported.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 1:40 am

I freely acknowledge that you've fixed many bugs that I've reported. However, I wasn't talking about those, because those were by and large not bugs that randomly crashed the system and this topic is about bugs crashing the system. Regardless of how many of the non-crash bugs I report on and are fixed, I still see crashes from time to time. As they happen randomly there is nothing I can do about giving a repeatable procedure.

The portion of my post which really seemed to rile you up is factually accurate despite all the other bugs that you have graciously fixed. I have submitted dozens of these random crashes as crash reports (albeit without a procedure as noted above), and I still see the same crashes happening in newest versions of CMud.

So I don't quite understand what pisses you off about that statement. I hope you aren't saying that just because you've fixed bugs I've reported in the past I have some obligation based on gratitude to be silent about the crashes I still routinely experience. If it's a matter of time spend on the bugs I have many examples of bugs I've spent 10+ hours on each. So in terms of total time spent on 'my' personal bugs, I'm pretty sure I have you beat.

This topic is about random bugs that crash CMud. Everyone is responding to the guy like he's an anomaly to be experiencing this because its so stable for everyone else. I thought it very relevant to the topic that I too see this random crashing (albeit without the loss of settings). I'm happy for those that have found themselves in a position in which they never get Cmud crashes. I am unfortunately not one of those people. Why the vehemence when post that I see crashes just like this guy? These aren't rumors of crashes and instability, I see them with my own eyes first hand. Nobody is telling me via misinformation that Cmud crashes a lot, I see it myself.

Perhaps you are correct, and I am an ungrateful whiner because I posted in a topic about crashes that I too see this same crashing. Or perhaps I crossed the line when I pointed out that submitting crash reports most likely will not result in the cause of the crash being fixed.

Whatever arbitrary line I crossed, my apologies.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 2:43 am

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

I believe the problem is this sentence:

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:51 pm

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 5:27 pm