Post Game Assessment

[TRIAD4Evr]

Okay, ran a session tonight and after a few glitches getting everyone installed and updated (the Vista system, in particular, was a pain in the butt). Everything worked reasonably well except for that darned dice rolling script error bug- it's easily as bad as it was before the last update- in fact I'd say it's worse- now people are having a really hard time even bringing _up_ the die roller after the script error. We may have to switch to purely the token-dice if this keeps up. Nearly every time somebody rolls the dice with short animation and sound effects in place, at least 1 of our systems if not all six have script errors. Most are Windows XP but we have 1 Vista system and 1 or 2 Windows7 systems. Next time I'm going to try turning off dice animation and sound altogether and see if that helps. I did have 1 crash when I tried to rotate a figure not belonging to me, and then the auto-save gave me a script error upon trying to auto-load on restart, but after I closed it out and fired the program back up I was able to load an autosave manually that was from a turn-step earlier, so I lost almost nothing. Anyway, not a bad session. Looking forward to the fix on the dual-tokens, too, we had to avoid using a couple of them tonight, I just hid the original and replaced it with the transformed shape and gave it the same name. Nobody noticed. And that's good. Anyway, I'd say 7.5 out of 10.

[heruca]

What version of BRPG were you using? v1.6g?

Did the die-rolling errors occur regardless of who initiated the roll, or was it only when one particular user rolled dice?

Is anyone else (not in TRIAD4Evr's gaming group) getting script errors when rolling dice macros? If so, is dice roll animation enabled?

[Kazander]

No, no script errors for me on dice macros. Last night's session on 1.6h was over 250 die rolls, and no script errors.

I generally play with dice roll animation off, but I turned it back on this morning just to test and still could not produce any errors with a client attached. Both on Win7_x64.

[heruca]

The mystery deepens.

TRIAD4Evr, are you using any other software in conjunction with BRPG, such as a VOIP app, that everyone else in your session is running as well?

[fb66]

I carried out a test of 1.6h with one client connected and had no script errors when using the dice roller. I was the Gm client using a windows vista based machine.

[TRIAD4Evr]

We are all using Ventrillo and some of us had Trillian loaded (though not all of us). And we were all using 1.6h, with dice animations turned on and short sound/animation. Didn't seem to matter the color, size, or macro of the dice, and it didn't happen every time, just off and on. I really like the sounds and animations so I don't want to turn them off if I don't have to...

Edit: It didn't seem to matter who initiated the die roll.

[heruca]

If you are using Ventrilo, dice rolls will not be received in BRPG if Ventrilo's text chat window is open. Yeah, that's a very weird bug.

That quote is from the ReadMe, and is a known issue. Perhaps the errors you are receiving are somehow related to this weird incompatibility?

Try a few dice macro rolls in a multiuser game without Ventrilo running (or at least with Ventrilo's text chat window closed) and let me know if the errors go away.

[TRIAD4Evr]

Well we didn't _have_ Ventrillo's chat window open, but I will see what happens- maybe Vent needs to be totally minimized. We don't use any sort of text chat, either BG or Ventrillo because we handle everything via voice. I will investigate further for you, though- would love to lick that bug!

Also- the die rolls _were_ received some of the time, but there seemed to be no predictable system as to when they _wouldn't_ be. Will try again with Ventrillo minimized.

[heruca]

If the problem persists, try again without Trillian running. Sooner or later, we should be able to isolate the cause of this problem that only seems to be affecting your particular gaming group.

[TRIAD4Evr]

Okay did a bunch of testing with one of my players that's using Vista. We used the black dice only, d100 only, and I tried it with Ventrillo minimized, minimized to system tray, and with Ventrillo not even loaded. It happens under all circumstances on most die rolls. Sorry, I guess it's not Ventrillo. We also tested it with the Chat Window up on BG and not up on BG. Same results either way. Must be some other culprit. I've run into a similar problem on ScreenMonkey with iTunes and Quicktime but my test player does not have either, nor do I. So I guess that's two suspects down.

Edit: Also tried it with no dice rolling sound effect at all.

[heruca]

What about with die roll animations disabled?

[markuwp]

What about with die roll animations disabled?

We're on an old version (1.4-something) so this may have been fixed. We often get script errors when a player rolls a macro that he has created and attached to his character. If the GM attaches the macro to the character it doesn't seem to cause any problems.

We'll probably upgrade soon, so will see if that fixes things.

[TRIAD4Evr]

You know, I never saw an option for animated die rolls... I saw the sound length... but not the animation thing... will try that tomorrow... where's it located?

[heruca]

The animation option is on the second or third screen of the Preferences panel.

[TRIAD4Evr]

Thanks! Found it! Will check that tonight with one of my players! Will let you know how it comes out!

[TRIAD4Evr]

Okay, more testing revealed that with a Windows 7 system, no Ventrillo, linked to my XP system, animated die rolls caused script errors on the remote computer pretty much every time. I'm hoping to try to test this with a Windows Vista system tonight to see if that holds up. The errors only seemed to be one-way, even with my system having animated dice, long sounds, Ventrillo and Trillian running, my friend with Win7 couldn't cause the script error. Is it possible that whatever is causing the error you mentioned elsewhere with multiple-stage tokens could be causing this?

Edit: I was the host computer the whole time.

[heruca]

Is it possible that whatever is causing the error you mentioned elsewhere with multiple-stage tokens could be causing this?

No, that bug only occurs when the remote client doesn't have the media it needs to display. And remote clients already have the dice graphics pre-installed.

Ask one of your players to press the "Inspect Macro" button after dismissing one of these error messages. Does doing so cause another error? Perhaps that will yield a clue as to what is wrong with the dice roll.

Do you, the host, ever get an error when a client rolls a dice macro? Or are the only dice macros causing errors ones that originated from your computer?

[TRIAD4Evr]

Most of the time we aren't using a predefined macro, we are just manually selecting d100 from the dice roller table, selecting 1, and clicking the "roll" button. Not sure there's even an option to "Inspect Macro" since when they get the error, they don't get the dice tabletop _or_ the results of the die roll- they have to look it up in History. And, yes, I've gotten the error a few times as the host, though I kinda figured it was because a bunch of the players got it, too. When we get the error, it just says "Script Error: Continue Yes/No". If we hit "no" BG shuts down, if we hit "yes" then we can continue to play, but as I said, we have to either ask the result of the die roll on Ventrillo or we have to look it up in History after bringing up the dice table- and sometimes my players have trouble bringing back up the dice table after the script error, too. I hope this helps!

[heruca]

If they can bring it up in the Roll History, they will have access to the "Inspect Macro" button. It doesn't need to be a saved macro in order to Inspect it; it can just be any impromptu roll.

Does this error only ever occur with the d100? If so, that would be a major clue.

[TRIAD4Evr]

Okay will explore that "Inspect Macro" thing- no, it's not _only_ the d100, it's also happened with d10 and d6 of several different colors. And, again, that's manually putting in the die formula rather than running a premade macro. My players can bring up a die roll History after answering the Yes/No script error prompt.

[TRIAD4Evr]

Okay, lotta info... I tried it with one of my Windows XP players tonight- we could not get a script error to go unless we used a predefined macro combined with "Animated" die rolls- I have a percentage die macro using the blue d100s and I could crash him after four or five rolls. He could likewise crash me using the Weather macro after about 5-10 tries. When he did the Roll History and looked up one of my Percentile macros that crashed, he was able to see the macro. When I brought up the history and looked up his Weather macro, the dice table crashed out and I couldn't look at it. This happened whether or not we were using Ventrillo. And this was with "Animated" die rolls and long or short rolling sounds. We turned off "Animated" die rolls and used the Weather macro and neither one of us could cause a script error, but as soon as we put "Animated" die rolls back in effect and rolled a few times, we'd get a script error. When he tried to inspect the Weather macro, the dice table blinked out for him just like it did me. So, at least thus far, I have learned that with "Animated" die rolls turned off, I can't force a script error on an XP system- will see if I can get my Vista and Win7 guys on tomorrow to test that further. It definitely seems to be "Animated" die rolls with the non XP systems and "Animated" coupled with a macro for the XP systems. Hope this helps.

So it looks like a workaround for us is no "Animated" die rolls, possibly no macros and we are safe. As I said, I will explore this a little more if I can get my other guys on tomorrow.

[heruca]

Sounds like we're close to isolating the cause.

I will experiment with "Animation" enabled for percentile dice rolls to see if I can get it to happen on my XP box. Once I can reliably duplicate a bug like this, I can fix it.

[TRIAD4Evr]

I will also try to cause a script error with _just_ macros on the non-XP machines if I can get their owners online tonight- if things go like I'm thinking and they only get the script error when animation is enabled, then we are pretty much golden as far as a functional workaround goes. I will let you know how it comes out.

[TRIAD4Evr]

Okay, more testing. With "Animated" die rolls on my friend's Win7 system, the only thing that crashed him was if I used the Weather macro (the only macro we both have). I couldn't crash it using macros alone, nor could I crash it using the raw die table with "Animated" die rolls on but _not_ using macros. So it's pretty much golden if we at least turn off "Animated" it seems. I will, however, see if I can get my friend with Vista on and try the same thing with him.

[TRIAD4Evr]

Yes, by "Crash" I meant script error- I was a little too exuberant in posting that and let the precision of my language slip a bit! And, yes, I think the Weather.txt format is fine- I've used it quite a bit without script error. Even tonight, it only threw a script error if "Animated" die rolls were on- I made a mental note of the Weather results that caused errors at the time, and there didn't seem to be a pattern. The table looks just fine to me, and the system I tested yesterday also had script errors when I had "Animated" die rolls combined with a dice macro (percentile) of my own, which I tested. I switched over to the Weather chart because I wanted to see if anything totally "vanilla" would cause the script error to me, plus that was the only macro some of my testers even _had_.

I just retested some things with my Win7 guy, and a different Macro, a home-made "Percentage" using the blue dice caused him script errors after a dozen or so rolls then kept throwing errors. This was not at all involving the Weather table. I was able to get 20 clean die rolls with a d12 Macro that _does_ have a lookup chart, though- I honestly expected a script error but didn't get one. This used the cyan 12-sider.