Did my Congo Crash?
First, it is important to define what a Crash means. To a developer, a crash means that the application crashes with some kind of error message. Most crashes can be intercepted to make it possible to save play data and to present a proper crash message. These are known as "handled crashes". Handled crashes produce an error message and also produce what is known as a "Dump file" containing important information about the console state when the crash occurred. In addition, a "Recovery File" is produced and is offered on a restart so that you can recover any data you programmed but had not saved before the crash. When you have restarted, please connect your USB stick to the console and use the BROWSER>FILES>COPY LOG AND DUMP FILES TO USB command to copy the dump file (Congo.dmp) and an additional file called the "Log" (Congo.log) to that USB stick. Please email those two files, a copy of your play file and a detailed description of what you were doing at the time of the crash to congo@etcconnect.com.
If the application hangs or misbehaves, this is not regarded as a crash (it may still be a serious problem however).
If the application seems to hang, please check the following things:
- Was the hour glass constantly on in the upper corner? If so, this is a real hang-up.
- Does anything work? Mouse, keyboard, some buttons etc? If an external keyboard is connected, is anything pressing down a key like a script or a headset?
- Was it possible to press <ESC> to unlock this state? (It is possible, in some very special situations, that a key could be "forgotten" in the down state, which blocks other keys. <ESC> should always fix this.)
- Does it say "Keyboard override" in the upper right corner? If so, there is probably a text cell open for editing somewhere on screen.
- Is there a focused tab (with the orange frame)? I have seen some situations where the focus got lost, meaning there is no tab focused, which can be confusing since some things don't do what you expect. If there is no focused tab, click on one using the mouse or trackball or enter a tab number and press <TAB>.
If you need to report a problem, please try to include as much information you can about:
- the software version number
- the configuration (standalone, server/backup, other connected devices on the network, etc)
- the situation the problem occurred in (what did the user do when it happened, open editors, special conditions etc)
- any other information that you think could be useful
If we get this information from the start, it makes it easier for us to provide fast and professional service to our customers.