Atomic Systems

I like on Youtube when it crashes; "A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation"

How about this for the sound of the Something Bad Has Happened instead of the standard windows crash sound? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTqt0kQcxi8

"Sorry, we divided by zero again"

"Something went wrong, unfortunately this is due to *Insert random biscuit joke*"

A good point, Why not tells us what's wrong. I have noticed a few time that, when I save my progress and run a message tells me that my senerio or consist is broken and asks if I would like to edit or exit, I choose edit, then run and all's well?!!. As much as I love this software, I have never got so frustrated with any other, as I do with this.!

So, developer's, make a note.... Give us a clue in your messages and leave us a happy bunch.

The point is, there's a million things that can go wrong. An exception, as it is called in programming occurs if something that should not happen happens. Before the introduction of the exception concept, you would see a blue screen or some other sudden programme termination. Now, you see a polite dialogue. Putting information into that is a long and tiresome process, which of course must be done, in the long run.

However, the way forward for me is to improve checks on the input data to ensure that only correct and coherent data is loaded. Because while you load it, it is very easy to generate helpful messages. In fact, there were quite some improvements over the old days when LogMate just showed "some blueprint is missing something". In addition, there will be the odd bug somewhere in the software contributing to such "surprising, helpless situations".

To find out where the hotspots are, RSC need all the crash logs they can get. Maybe they will include an option to automatically mail them these files if you opt in. Or is there already such an option? I don't remember and always play offline anyway.

As for "something bad happened", I quite like it, because I like honest answers. When you see the message, the programme does in fact not know what happened. It only knows that it was bad.

The other interpretation of the genesis of this message would be this: Marketing guy (or user interface designer) goes to core programmer, asking what is happening here.
"An exception occurred."
"A what?"
Programmer explains for 15 minutes.
Marketing guy (or user interface designer) takes note "something bad happened" and walk away, head spinning.

All this talk of replacing SBHH has awakened a strong desire to have any scenarios I release as freeware to feature a message saying Something Good Has Happened when an instruction is completed successfully and on time

I think the issue with me is the word " BAD ". Just plain " Something has happened " will indicate that there is a problem and you just accept that you have lost everything you have done since the F2 being pressed. Something BAD just ticks me off.
Having something drive into the back of your car is BAD, someone stealing your wallet out of your pocket at the local boot sale is BAD, Having your mother-in-law round for dinner, twice in one week, well, BAD for me!!! I guess your getting my drift!!!
At least with the blue screen, or better known as the " Blue Screen of Death " had information that you could look up and try to get a clue as to what is wrong, but "Something BAD has happened " tells me that, who ever designed this little white box, is laughing at me in my moment of despair!!

Objection, Sir!
By all PC that permeates our lives, let a bad thing be bad, and let it be called bad!
I mean, something happens all the time, in the game, too. You couple, you go round a corner, you stop at a station. SBHH never happens because of that. Of course, you could replace "bad" by "suboptimal". As in
"The recent course of events was so suboptimal that termination of the programme appears to be the only option."
or
"What happened now was not good enough to permit the continuation of game play."

But just "something" would alienate us one step further from truthful language usage as in "interesting idea", "challenged person", and "thank you for your suggestion".

How about, instead of a warning box, it plays a video of a recording of your work, backwards, from the moment you got the crash to the start of the session, just to get the idea that it has been undone forever to really sink in.

Regards
Chris

"Apologies for the Inconvenience, but your Game has just crashed. Why don't you do something more constructive, like go out and breath in the fresh air, or shout at something and take out the frustration of seeing this error message. We again apologise. Have a nice day."

Just a suggestion?...

Dark.

How about some old BR lines like "Something bad has happened due to the wrong type of asset on the line", it would keep me amused every time they occur.

"Something bad has happened, please try again once your hair has grown back because you'll need a full head of it the next time this happens"

Hi all

This is all very funny to read but I guess for you developers of routes and scenarios this must be a nightmare. For us drivers it is just a nuisance compared to what you guys are going through when SBHH appears, with or without Brenda Lee singing "I'm sorry" (I like that ).

Just a thought: would it not help if RW (3?) had an 'autosave' option, that perhaps could be switched on or off and possibly with periods of time between saves that can be set?
Jos

Two points of thought on this Jos, Yes, it would aid in not losing, what could be hours of work when all comes to a crashing halt but the flip side would be that it could save a mistake which then prevents you from opening the route. All is ok when you have a backup copy, maybe created at the end of each session, but the backup is going to be minus what you have done since.
Maybe a alternative could be a message that pops up reminding you to save. This could be setup in options as to how frequent you want the message to appear, say, every 15mins or every hour with the option of turning off the warning all together.
The issue is not the crashing but the lost work.