Zugg Software :: View topic

Novice Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 42

Hello,

I'm experienced zMud user (few years and a lot of scripts) - bought it in 2000 or 2001 I think. After 2 years of pause in playing mud I've decide to test new cMud (3.x) which is ... horrible (cMud 1.x/2.x also). I have never saw commertial application so unstable with so many bugs - 30USD??? Is that joke?
I've tried to import/convert my zMud settings - import was successful, but scripts havent worked as used too.
A lot of bugs with interface (buttons) and a lot of bugs in code/scripting (i.e. arrays). A lot of errors (dialog box with notification). I'm even unable to clearly close application - always get error!
After few hours of fixing scripts to new "features" (or should I call it bugs?) I can only admit... it is faster than zMud... that's all.

Rgds,
W.

Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 8:52 pm

3.0 is in beta. A lot of things are still being fixed.

I don't have problems like you're describing, and I use some pretty complex scripts. While it's true that the import settings from zMUD isn't all that great, it helps for the most part. However, CMUD is much more strict on languages, and truth is, many of the things that were 'features' in zMUD were actual bugs, like using %1 in trigger patterns instead of %w, etc.

CMUD is not unstable at all. Sure, it has a few bugs still, and they are constantly getting worked on. That's why we need beta testers who do complex scripts. Instead of complaining about it, why not describe how to replicate some of your bugs? Otherwise, they'll never get fixed. Each user brings to the table their own way of doing things.

Buttons got a revamp this version, too. You're now able to have floating buttons, which Zugg has asked us to watch and make sure everything is working well. Read up on it in the version history.

Lastly, are you even sending the bug reports to Zugg with an indication of what you were doing at the time? If not, then start doing so. And paste some of your scripts. I'm sure we can all work together to fix what is wrong with them so they can work in CMUD.

Charneus

Novice Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 42

I've used to send reports from error dialog box.
I'm using cMud under Vista SP2 - why unstable... so stupid things like:
1. minimalize cMud
2. lock computer
3. unlock
4. restore (un-minimalize) cMud and.... got error

Just one of examples. I will try to describe later some bugs I've noticed

Ah. And ofcourse I know this is beta version and decided to use it b/s 2.x dont have feature of colors for different button states (toggle one) and few other things...

Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 9:26 pm

Odd. I minimized CMUD, locked my computer, unlocked the computer, restored CMUD, and no error.

Of course, I'm using Windows 7. Does it happen 100% of the time for you? Also, keep in mind when posting bugs, you do show exactly what steps to take to reproduce the bug, like you've done here. :)

Charneus

Novice Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 42

:)) I know - but I think most crashes is done thx to importing zMud settings and my button settings (have it a lot).
Dont remember if it happens all the time...

I think this should be EOT - I will post specific bugs I've noticed

Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:43 am

One tip is once you've imported to CMUD, if you think your settings are iffy, export them and re-import them to a new session. If they are wonky then you some will get cleaned up automatically (depending on what they are) and others will import incorrectly giving you a clue as to what they are.

The compatibility report under File -> Compatibility Report should go a long way in helping you identify culprits. Another good place to check is if, where appropriate, the setting successfully compiles. If it doesn't then there is a problem with that settings. The syntax checker should be able help narrow this down for many settings.

Novice Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 42

Thx for advice for export/import setting to new session. Will try that.
Of course I've used compatibility report and I've fixed almost all problems

I have only 3 issues that not compile and still dont know why - will check it later and probably report bug.

Newbie Joined: 27 Jun 2009 Posts: 2

I've been using zMUD since 2003. Having recently purchased a new computer with Vista, I downloaded the cMUD Beta version. It look good, and everything was fine until after I had made one macro and 2 triggers. Then I started receiving an error message and could edit or make nothing else. I've e-mailed Zugg about it. When I went back to try and copy the error message exactly (the program wouldn't allow my to easily copy it before so I was going to do it by hand), it's stopped showing me anything at all in the windows. I can connect with the games and the three commands that I made work, but after that, it's just blank screens. I've uninstalled and reinstalled it about 4 times now. Oddly, the three commands are still working. I can't see them in the editing windows, but they're there. Help!

Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2009 7:51 pm

Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 12:35 am

Personally I think Cmud is extremely stable, and in my own experience the beta is far more stable than the public version, largely because of changes to the mapper and removal of ADO database.

Many of the crashes I have are directly related to something I did wrong in a script.

As for my scripts, they aren't simple, nor limited. I have almost 900 triggers, and 300 aliases, written in both lua, and zscript, with regex/zscript patterns. It's not uncommon for me to leave Cmud running for a week with out any problems.

It is unfortunate that you have the problems with cmud.

Melindalrm, what error message did you get, there are hundreds or thousands of possible error messages you could get. Also, please start a new thread for new bugs, makes it easier to keep on the same thought pattern.

Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 6:15 pm

ReedN: Please do not exaggerate and cause more false rumors about CMUD being "unstable", especially compared to zMUD. I don't remember seeing you involved in beta testing of zMUD. CMUD is about 3 years old now. That corresponds to early zMUD versions 5.x. If you were involved in the beta testing of zMUD 5.x, you would know that the CMUD beta testing and stability is *way* better than zMUD. Even during the zMUD 6.x series when the mapper was being rewritten to use the ADO/MDAC database, which took over a year and involved all of the zMapper stuff there was way more problems than CMUD has even had.

Yes, I've learned a lot over the many years and my programming has gotten better, so of course I can write CMUD better and quicker than zMUD. But even looking at the "stable" zMUD 7.21 version, you are mostly trying to do things in CMUD that you couldn't even do in zMUD.

For example, you reported a minor bug in CMUD about the syntax editor not handling local variables in some cases. Have you used the syntax editor in zMUD? It is horrible. It reports problems where there aren't any, and doesn't report many other syntax problems. That's because the parser used for syntax highlighting and checking in zMUD isn't the same as the parser used to execute your script. This causes dozens of problems in zMUD. Not to mention that the zMUD script editor is buggy and often puts your cursor in the wrong place or deletes the wrong characters and can hardly handle complex multi-line scripts.

Try to stay focused on the *current* beta version and stop thinking about all of the previous beta versions where bugs that you have reported have already been fixed. I've got dozens of bugs marked as "from ReedN" that have been fixed over the past year in various beta versions. I haven't seen any reproduceable bug reports for v3.08 that are serious enough to prevent anyone from using CMUD right now. I've only seen one "lockup" bug report from you that seems to happen very rarely and is mostly impossible to reproduce. That isn't the same as a completely "buggy and unstable" product.

Nothing is ever "bug free". Even zMUD 7.21 has hundreds of bugs (I still have the bug list from when I stopped working on it...and many of the bugs were dealt with in the rewrite of the architecture for CMUD, such as crashes that caused corrupted settings to be lost in zMUD). In zMUD you could completely lose all of your settings with a single crash. That doesn't happen with the database in CMUD. Even if CMUD can't load a package, you can still recover the data from a SQLite database program. You couldn't do that in zMUD.

CMUD added a complete crash-dump reporting system that allows users to send me every crash that they get. zMUD didn't have that, and zMUD didn't even use modern "exception handling" to trap most errors. Most errors in zMUD never resulted in actual popup messages...they just corrupted memory and messed up your scripts.

So let's stop getting carried away with these kind of posts. As Wrym mentioned, the #1 cause of problems in CMUD are with scripts, especially if those scripts were converted from zMUD. That is the main cause of the problems the original poster mentioned, as confirmed by the original poster. Things like the Compatibility Report can catch some problems, but the main cause of these problems is actually with zMUD and not CMUD. zMUD just allowed people to do all sorts of weird stuff that was never documented and never officially supported. zMUD has a weird scripting syntax that was not strictly enforced (which is why the zMUD syntax highlighting was so buggy and confused some times).

It's really just like any other programming language. I can do all sorts of stuff in any language (Visual Basic, PHP, Perl, C++, Delphi, etc) to cause all sorts of crashes and problems. If I call some application API with the wrong parameters, I can cause crashes. I can completely lock up Windows by doing something wrong in a programming language. zScript is a programming language, so it has the same issues. You can create infinite loops. You can create multiple threads that cause lockups. You can do all sorts of bad stuff. Since zMUD didn't have a strict syntax, it is worse than most languages in this regard. And since zMUD didn't have complete error trapping, most problems went un-noticed until you try to use the same scripts in CMUD.

As the original poster said:

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

Well I know Zugg got mad at me in the general forum and called me a whiner. :(

However, I just want to say that I think 3.08 is more stable than 2.37 too. I started having problems with 2.37 and since I switched over to the beta everything is running smoothly with no problem at all, other than I had to change all the loops where I had #n to #loop n.

I haven't tried scripting anything in Lua again, but the VBScript works fine too.

Oh and I love the changes to the toolbars and buttons.