This is unbelievable.
I was working on a small platformer since last week, and it was starting to get really good, I think it was going to be my best game ever.
MMF2 thought "Let's fuck him" and suddenly some "bad object" shortcut showed up from nowhere in the events menu, and everything messed up, the actions were gone and some events too, so I had to work on the event list editor. Then I quit and when I restart MMF2, it says the only level I did (the template) was corrupted and it was going to be deleted.
Try breaking the habit of testing the game by pressing F8. Everytime you test the game, make a build of it, and save it. When you're up on 1000+ events (my project Parilis has a server with 400+ events, and the client has 500+ events and it crashes a freakin' lot!), you might want to consider this technique, testing the game with the exe you built.
I would also recommend getting the latest build, but I think you know that.
Anotherone who learned it the hard way. Save often. Under different filenames. Then there is always a way back. And you loose maximum a few hours of work.
I've had my first Bad Object error in 244. Really messed up my engine. Everytime I make a big change, or am about to copy over my 'global' events subfolder (thanks MMF2 for multi-level events folders) I make a new save for the game. For Tormishire I'm up to Tormishire32.mfa. It absolutely eats HDD space though. More so when you have auto-backups too.
Even with backups Bad Objects totally mess up work. Shame they're still present in MMF2 really.
"If this ever happen again, I swear I'll sue Clickteam"
Now now, don't be silly. You should perhaps take the time to read any disclaimers with Clickteams products - especially sections along the lines of "Clickteam will not be held accountable for any damage done to your computer or the software contained within".
Everyone has these problems, yes they can be annoying, but they serve as a helpful warning to frequently BACK UP YOUR WORK!
Ive never had a major problem because I usually give each new save a different filename. I end up with 100's of near identical files but at least ive got enough copies to go back to if if there is ever a problem.
One problem I had was moving frames, When i made Buzz the squirrel 2 (with TGF) i encountered a problem where I couldn't move frames without the whole thing crashing so i has to have my levels in a strange order. That was fine because i usually use 'Jump to frame' rather than 'goto next frame'.
I have absolutely no clue how people manage to screw MMF2 up so badly... I've designed many things with 800+ events, and as long as you know what the hell your doing, you shouldn't have any crashes. Even game performance will stay at a maximum if you have common sense and work cleanly.
For example... don't let events constantly loop if they aren't needed.
Don't do this.
Every 0.5
If Object Exists
--- Do something to it.
Do this instead.
If Object Exists
Every 0.5
--- Do Something to it.
Simple stuff like that will make the program have to make much smaller loops, and improve performance.
Well, the bugs and corruptions have to be caused by SOMEthing, right? I mean, I've learned a few things to beware in MMF 1.5...
Like, if you delete any qualifiers from an object, do it one at a time, checking each time that the qualifier's truly gone.
Or, if you're dealing with an extension object that stores its own graphics (like the Text Blitter or Alpha Channel), don't ever delete or create any of them during runtime, and always keep at least one instance on the level.
But still... seeing that bad object appear is always so horrifying. I always go into super-quarantine mode whenever I see one.
My MMF2 hasn't crashed even once since I got it, and I can't remember the last time it happened with MMF 1.5, because it was so long ago, and it's only happened a couple of times.
But yeah, it's been said many times before: Keep backups and save your work often.
n/a
DaVince This fool just HAD to have a custom rating
Registered 04/09/2004
Points 7998
27th March, 2007 at 06:08:01 -
"no he was kidding about sueing clickteam"
You take the fun out of everything.
Old member (~2004-2007).
Assault Andy Administrator
I make other people create vaporware
Registered 29/07/2002
Points 5686
27th March, 2007 at 08:25:52 -
Well you've learnt the hardway, like countless others, to back up your work! As harsh as this sounds, I find myself repeating it whenever someone loses important data. It's a real frustrating problem, but I hope you'll backup in future. I back up my work to USB and I also save multiple versions of each file as I go along. Simply go to File>Save As, as opposed to just saving. This way if one corrupts you'll have another version of it from not too long ago. It also helps if you make a major change and then decide you don't like it.
However it would be good if you could send that corrupted file to Francois on clickteam.com he's often looking for bad object examples to study so that he can try to fix the problem. Good luck with your next project.
Truer words were never spoken. I have been backing up Hasslevania with two files, and at the end of the day another file. So right now I have about 20-30 backup files that have the date in the filename (ex. BACKUP-HV-032707).
MMF1.5 crashes on me on occasion, but as long as you have the backups, you're golden.
--
"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
i've had the 'bad object' thing happen to me too. im not sure what causes it, but i thinks its when you delete something in some odd instance. idk. its a bitch
Oh crap, that sucks, the same thing happened to me when I worked on a new game for two days and it started to be pretty cool. I first killed all the people that told me to make backups (NOBODY makes backups of everything every day), then I just restarted the project and it actually turned out better than the first one, just like WillWill said. So in the end I was happy MMF2 fucked me.
I had a similar experience a while ago, making a game with an inventory system with TGF. I made quite a lot of backups, but all of the recent ones managed to become corrupted For some reason I had an error that wasn't giving me any hassle until a few days later... Now THAT was annoying.
MMF2 is much more reliable, it seems. Haven't had anything mess up yet, but I still make tons of backups
Not necessarily, say you suddenly get the bad object glitch, and you noticed it right away, as long as you have your backups set to 5 or more, you should never have to truly worry about it. Just save often, and assure everything is as you want it... before you save more then the amount of times you have auto backup set to.
Also, if you suddenly decide you want to try something completely new, don't rely on auto backup to save your ass if it goes wrong, save a completely new file through Save As, because most likely, if you really get into your new engine or what have you, you're going to save well over your auto backup, and if you do, you're old stuff is gone, and if you don't like the new engine, you're screwed.
I save very often once I get past the first few milestones of my project, I consider more then 5 events, a milestone worth saving for.
To be honest though, I think MMF2 would highly benefit off of an automatic timed backup. It wouldn't save over your file, but rather create up to 5 backups in a completely separate folder. This is what 3D Studio Max 9 does, and every once in a while, I'll accidentally jack the polygons to high and the program crash on me, but only around 5 minutes of work was actually lost, because it was all in a backup file.
As for engines, if I decide to experiment, I make a copy of the engine first, and place the copy in a deactivated group, which I can revert back to later if I must.
That's almost exactly what I, but I do it more so with less complex engines. This is VERY easy to do with MMF2 though, because of sub-groups. In MMF 1.5, this was hell to do, cause you had to deactivate a ton of groups, or build it all in 1 large group. Very in-efficient.
that's good to hear. I have got those corrupted objects in TGF and MMF both, but in MMF I've always solved them somehow. In TGF some good games got lost though
"I used TGF for 6 years or so, and I never got any problems, now I use MMF2 for a few months and it already made me restart a game from scratch"
Why is this world so backwards sometimes? I had to restart my projects almost all the time in the TGF days, due to crashes, corrupted files and strange bugs. Now, with MMF2, I haven't had any problems at all. Bah.
Back with the older software, a lot of people aren't skilled enough to push the software to it's knee's, now though... we expect the software to grow as fast as we learn, MMF2 is a great jump, but some of us still expect more. This doesn't explain why so many people are managing to crash it so easily though, like you Axel, I have yet to have any accidental crashes.
What I do is out of every 3 times I save, one I make a new, consecutive filename. With my current game, I'm up to 92 different backups. After you feel satisfied with your engine's progress, you can compress earlier backups into zips, or delete those that are very old.
make backups. I have a behavior problem where an object thinks that when it is referring to itself, it is referring to an outside object (has the little red bomb icon).
Isn't this why the whole auto-backup feature was added into MMF? So that when you save often (you should save often), you can catch issues before they get big, and go back a save file, to before it happened. I have mine set to 10. Does it make presently, unnecessary space? Of course, but will it save me from a possible hell hole in th future? Well do the math, I'd rather sacrifice 1 or 2gigs of a 160gig hard drive, then put myself through hell later.
I have my autobackup set to about 5-10 (change it depending on drive space, only gave XP 30gb ). I save a new version whenever I do anything potentially dangerous to the game. I'm up to version 61 of my game, at 61mb each file (snap!). A huge chunk of the old ones are archived to the external drive but still - I've got a lot of backups. If just to play through them sometimes to see how much my game has changed
If just to play through them sometimes to see how much my game has changed
Yeah, I was looking at some archived stuff (I save my file every day by the date), and it's funny to see just how different everything looked and was. I also make at least 3 backups whenever there's a big change, although I think my file is only 18MB. 61MB? My God, how long does that take to save? Mine takes a couple of mintues at least.
--
"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
I make regular backups of all the projects I work on. I have a standalone NAS hooked upto my wireless router which has its own partition just for development backups. Every night a backup of the folder I'm working in is made on this device and its dated. I don't bother with numbers as they don't make any sense for when you go back later.
I keep a full months worth of daily backups as well as pretty much permanent backups of major milestones, (you know in case you start working on something new and the whole idea really doesn't work out).
I know a lot of people couldn't do this but adapt the idea; if you have a second hard drive in your computer then use that for redundancy. Have another PC or Mac on your network? Copy over to that every now and then. Not only will you have restore points... but it also saves you in case your primary development computer's HDD fails on you. Backups - no matter how many you've made - are useless should you only have them on the one device that's just died.
1. NEVER EVER use an out dated build of MMF2 or any other clickteam product! N-E-V-E-R!
You'll notice the program will be more stable after upgrading, faster, less buggy and you will let newer extensions work (My extensions are limited to build 243 and higher).
2. Enable MMF2's built in automatic back up feature.
It will save another copy evenytime you save (3 extra copys are the default)
3. Back up yourself as another name everytime you do something major or critical!
4. Glue your fingers to Ctrl+S. SAVE WHENEVER YOU FINISH ANYTHING!
5. If your game still gets corrupted, email it to Yves or Francois and they might be able to fix it.
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Deleted User
4th August, 2007 at 16:18:01 -
I've never experienced the "bad object" thing in like 11 years. Am I the only one that's happy with MMF2 almost never crashing/malfunctioning?
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He's going to sue Chris instead!
Edited by the Author.
