Zoos contiune to crash- can we create a database of unsafe files?

[Fern]

From Jay:

"the colony1.zoo" crashed for me on December 4 of Year 7. I confirmed it crashed around that time 3 times. As I mentioned concerning the previous zoo crashes, particle's exhibit fences cause ZT to crash eventually. This zoo uses 2 of particle's exhibit Concrete Fences. There is no such thing as a truly indestructible exhibit fence for ZT. So the configuration for any exhibit fence has to say what graphics to use when the fence deteriorates and breaks. particle's exhibit fences do not have that configuration. So when they deteriorate, ZT does not know what graphics to show and ZT crashes. particle's exhibit fences should not be used in a zoo when they do not have the needed configuration. To confirm the crash was caused by one of particle's exhibit fences, I made temporary changes to their configuration similar to what I did last time, which is to use their non-deteriorated graphics even when it deteriorates or breaks. That is not necessarily what should be done as a permanent fix because there would be no way to tell which are non-deteriorated, which are deteriorated, and which are broken. But it allowed the zoo not to crash. So after these temporary changes, I let the zoo run. I let it run until the middle of March of Year 8 and there were no more crashes. Of course fences deteriorated and broke, and animals escaped, being that there are no maintenance workers to fix the fences.

As for "blocked off" messages, there are several. I saw things like "Zookeeper 13 is having trouble getting to Exhibit 24.", "Zookeeper 14 is having trouble getting to Small Poo.", and "The entrance to Tank 14 is blocked and is not accessible to zoo staff.". I looked at the zoo layout for the first and third message. Zookeeper 13 could not get to the Exhibit 24 gate because the large elephant annex building is blocking the path. A way to help seeing things like that is to select the Tall Torch from the scenery purchase menu and move it slowly from the zookeeper to the exhibit gate. ZT shows the Tall Torch in green if it is over a location where it can be placed. ZT shows the Tall Torch in red if it is over a location where it cannot be placed and will turn the object red that is already at the location. That made it obvious to me that the large elephant annex building is blocking the path. Tank 14 is part of a combined land/tank exhibit. The tank ladder is inside the land exhibit. The gate to the land exhibit was blocked by a low wall. I saw that just looking at the zoo. Sometimes that type of problem cannot be seen if it is a piece of invisible fence. But in this case, it was a low wall and not a piece of invisible fence. Finding problems preventing zookeepers from getting to poo is more difficult because ZT does not appear to show where the poo is that is causing problems. I noticed that the marine specialist and most of the zookeepers are not assigned to specific exhibits. For zoos I create, all of my zookeepers, scientists, and marine specialists are assigned to an exhibit, and to only 1 exhibit each. That costs more, but it keeps the zoo staff closer to the exhibits when they need to do something in the exhibits. I also put exhibit gates in the center of a length of fence instead of near a corner. When zookeepers enter an exhibit to see if there is a problem, they can see more of the exhibit from that position and they can often reach the problem sooner.

[VNDragonV2]

On 2/9/2023 at 9:36 PM, Fern said:

From Jay:

"the colony1.zoo" crashed for me on December 4 of Year 7. I confirmed it crashed around that time 3 times. As I mentioned concerning the previous zoo crashes, particle's exhibit fences cause ZT to crash eventually. This zoo uses 2 of particle's exhibit Concrete Fences. There is no such thing as a truly indestructible exhibit fence for ZT. So the configuration for any exhibit fence has to say what graphics to use when the fence deteriorates and breaks. particle's exhibit fences do not have that configuration. So when they deteriorate, ZT does not know what graphics to show and ZT crashes. particle's exhibit fences should not be used in a zoo when they do not have the needed configuration. To confirm the crash was caused by one of particle's exhibit fences, I made temporary changes to their configuration similar to what I did last time, which is to use their non-deteriorated graphics even when it deteriorates or breaks. That is not necessarily what should be done as a permanent fix because there would be no way to tell which are non-deteriorated, which are deteriorated, and which are broken. But it allowed the zoo not to crash. So after these temporary changes, I let the zoo run. I let it run until the middle of March of Year 8 and there were no more crashes. Of course fences deteriorated and broke, and animals escaped, being that there are no maintenance workers to fix the fences.

As for "blocked off" messages, there are several. I saw things like "Zookeeper 13 is having trouble getting to Exhibit 24.", "Zookeeper 14 is having trouble getting to Small Poo.", and "The entrance to Tank 14 is blocked and is not accessible to zoo staff.". I looked at the zoo layout for the first and third message. Zookeeper 13 could not get to the Exhibit 24 gate because the large elephant annex building is blocking the path. A way to help seeing things like that is to select the Tall Torch from the scenery purchase menu and move it slowly from the zookeeper to the exhibit gate. ZT shows the Tall Torch in green if it is over a location where it can be placed. ZT shows the Tall Torch in red if it is over a location where it cannot be placed and will turn the object red that is already at the location. That made it obvious to me that the large elephant annex building is blocking the path. Tank 14 is part of a combined land/tank exhibit. The tank ladder is inside the land exhibit. The gate to the land exhibit was blocked by a low wall. I saw that just looking at the zoo. Sometimes that type of problem cannot be seen if it is a piece of invisible fence. But in this case, it was a low wall and not a piece of invisible fence. Finding problems preventing zookeepers from getting to poo is more difficult because ZT does not appear to show where the poo is that is causing problems. I noticed that the marine specialist and most of the zookeepers are not assigned to specific exhibits. For zoos I create, all of my zookeepers, scientists, and marine specialists are assigned to an exhibit, and to only 1 exhibit each. That costs more, but it keeps the zoo staff closer to the exhibits when they need to do something in the exhibits. I also put exhibit gates in the center of a length of fence instead of near a corner. When zookeepers enter an exhibit to see if there is a problem, they can see more of the exhibit from that position and they can often reach the problem sooner.

Sorry to revive this thread, but how did Jay detect which file caused the crash? Was it because he was already aware of problematic items and noticed their presence in the game or is there a way to log the crash-triggering file?

[Fern]

We can tell by when the game crashes what sort of things are likely to cause the crash.

DD also lists file problems. An animal with an "Error" is one that might. Not that I have been able to keep up with all the listings over there since I am the only one who does them.

Have passed this on to Jay to answer. We have been fixing files for more than 20 years.

[Fern]

From Jay

Quote from: Jay"the colony1.zoo" crashed for me on December 4 of Year 7. I confirmed it crashed around that time 3 times. As I mentioned concerning the previous zoo crashes, particle's exhibit fences cause ZT to crash eventually. ...

 

Quote from: VNDragonV2how did Jay detect which file caused the crash? Was it because he was already aware of problematic items and noticed their presence in the game or is there a way to log the crash-triggering file?

For this particular zoo, it was because I already knew that particle's exhibit fences cause ZT to crash eventually. So when I ran the Zoo Object List program for this zoo and saw those fences being used, I knew what the problem probably was. I still had to confirm it, though, as I mentioned. There is no way to have ZT log the crash triggering file because ZT loads lots of files into memory and the crashes are caused by something unexpected in memory. It is MS Windows popping up the crash messages. When crashes occur, sometimes it is easy to determine what caused the crashes and sometimes it is difficult. There are many tools that can be used to help determine the cause of a crash, but it is still often a matter of trial and error. The August 21, 2022 post by Cricket that came from me talks about how I went about finding out originally that particle's exhibit fences cause ZT to crash eventually.

[Fern]

Those fences are on my to fix list which is currently quite long.

Apart from being able to read the files Jay and I have various tools. Some I use to create the Additional information posts I have at DD.