iGame3D Status 062204 (Long detailed reply)

william griffin bill at igame3d.com
Tue Jun 22 19:42:22 EDT 2004


>
> Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 02:02:31 -0400
> From: Brian Yennie <briany at qldlearning.com>
> Subject: Re: iGame3D status 062204
> To: How to use Revolution <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
> Message-ID: <BF809832-C411-11D8-819A-000393AA08D2 at qldlearning.com>
>
> William,
>
> FWIW, your bug report appears to be left as "UNCONFIRMED" in BugZilla,
> so it doesn't look like anyone at RunRev duplicated it. I downloaded
> your test stack and confirmed it within a couple of minutes myself. I'm
> normally quite defensive of the Rev folks, but this one really is easy
> to see at work.
>
> What was the compelling reason to not return to the MetaCard IDE give
> so little luck with the Rev one?
1. Metacard crashed while doing nothing at all. Rev/iGame3D can run 48  
hours doing nothing without that crash.
2. The 3D scene didn't show up, without that, there is no 3D external.
3. After not using Metacard for a year it is an alien to me.
4.  Its not supported or updated.
5. Metacard test was done with a borrowed copy of it.
  I don't own a metacard license which was expensive, rev was purchased  
based on special pricing.
6. The metacard test was done after several hours of troubleshooting  
Rev that day alone, I'm burned out.

> I know you said certain features of
> the external failed, but the external interfaces are exactly the same,
> so there must be something more superficial going on, no?
Considering there are at least 4 bug reports besides mine dealing with  
rev pop ups, there is certainly
something flaky in Rev. I've just not been to keen on opening either  
application, day without frustration, is probably a few years I'll live  
longer.
>
> - Brian
>
> Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 02:07:33 -0400
> From: Brian Yennie <briany at qldlearning.com>
> Subject: Re: iGame3D status 062204
> To: How to use Revolution <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
> Message-ID: <737EC143-C412-11D8-819A-000393AA08D2 at qldlearning.com>

>
> William,
>
> Does the crash only happen with menus that are _both_ in the menubar
> and used as dropdowns?
I'll post the history of the bug situation after covering other angles,  
it might clarify things.
Essentially, crashing occured with plain old popups.
The popup menus were placed in the menubar, and the popups removed, to  
circumvent the original problem.
The doubling up of menubar and button objects in the bug demonstration  
was an attempt to see if the
menubar items even existed, since they didn't respond correctly.
Naturally this causes some confusion as seen in other posts.
>

>  From the looks of the crash report, Rev is  having problems finding  
> the menu in memory, which could be indicative  of it being already  
> allocated to the main menubar?

whoosh over my head there. I don't know.

> If so, is is totally  necessary to have the same menu appear in a  
> dropdown and modify them
> back and forth?
Nope thats just the test to see if adding items even worked. I was  
probably trying to reproduce two bugs.
>  It looks like from the test stack that you use the same
> "File" button as a menu, modify it whenever the mouse is over a button
> that might use it as a dropdown, and then modify it back when it leaves
> the button.

> That's some pretty gnarly stuff, although I'm only looking
> at your test stack...?
Right ,again just a test. The actual modification in iGame3D is filling  
the file menu with:
lists of various files in the submenu, these are dynamic of course,  
followed by finishing off the menu
with import/export options. This happens only once at start up, since  
It is time chewing.
It worked and then broke.
Another broken menu button is never modified, it worked straight out of  
menuBuilder, then broke.
That one only contains a menuPick handler. Then there is third one same  
issue.
>
> Just a stab...

I appreciate your hacking the bloody thing. die bug die!
> - Brian
>

> Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 10:44:05 +0200
> From: "MisterX" <b.xavier at internet.lu>
> Subject: RE: iGame3D status 062204
> To: "How to use Revolution" <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
> Message-ID: <ENEALNOCJBOOOHHCCEKNOENPGCAA.b.xavier at internet.lu>
>
> I couldn't crash your test stack on windows but there are many
> issues with menus and popup menus. I added some comments too the
> the bugzilla.
>
> By far the weirdest bug is trying to access the
> test4 menu, it makes the menu pop up anywhere on the IDE!
> But it's half understandable since you have a mousedown
> event handler within the menu button... ;)
Thanks. Yeah thats an extra mousedown, removing that and the mouseup in  
the button below that
seems to stabilize that particular button. The bug demo pretty much  
only shows one
method out of dozens I tried to get things to work. The original bug  
expressed
itself when the pop-ups only had a menuPick handler and affected all  
pop-ups in the REV UI.

>
> Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 04:39:19 -0500
> From: Chipp Walters <chipp at chipp.com>
> Subject: Re: iGame3D status 062204
> To: How to use Revolution <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
> Message-ID: <40D7FE47.3070008 at chipp.com>
>
>
> William,
>
> I, too, took a gander at your Broken Menus mouse stack. And while I
> didn't spend a lot of time with it, I did find some scripting issues of
> concern.
>
> For instance the script of btn "make a popup":
>
> on mouseWithin
>    if the mouse is down then popup cd btn "File" of group "menuBar 1"
> end mouseWithin
>
> on mouseLeave
>    lock screen
>
>    choose pointer tool  -----THIS was used because it SEEMED to fix  
> the problem
>    set the menuMode of cd btn "File" of group "menuBar 1" to pulldown
>    choose browse tool
>      unlock screen
> end mouseLeave
>
> Without going into detail regarding why you would do all of the
> mouseWithin/mouseLeave stuff instead of a mouseDown...

Simple MouseDown did not respond that is the reason for the above  
script.
Again the seemingly "correct default" method was breaking.

> A cursory reading of the docs specifically state:
>
> "Important!  The menuMouseButton property of a button used with the
> popup command must be set to zero. Setting it to any other value may
> result in unexpected behavior when the menu is used. To control which
> mouse buttons may be used to access the menu, use the mouse button
> parameter of the mouseDown message, as described above."

My documentation for the menuMouseButton doesn't match what you just  
posted at all.

>
> The cd btn "File" referred to has a menuMouseButton property of 1,  
> which
> we have been duly warned about.

"By default, the menuMouseButton property of newly created buttons is  
set to zero."

Obviously there is an error in documentation and actual implementation.

Pop-up, pulldown, option etc buttons default to menuMouseButton  1 on  
my machine.

"1 is the mouse button on Mac OS systems and the left button on Windows  
and Unix systems."
I only have one button. I've never set a menuMouseButton property ,  
since the documentation
I have matches the machine/mouse specification.

>
> This took me all of about 2 minutes of sleuthing. I would recommend you
> consider spending a bit more time with the docs and perhaps some help
> here online:-)
Would have taken me  infinity search for what doesn't exist.
When you read the first bug report below, you'll see only a fraction of  
how much time I spent
troubleshooting. When you read the reply to that post, you'll see why I  
don't spend my time
begging for help from the list and, of course, you see above  
documentation and implementation don't match.

> Perhaps you can isolate a specific instance of what
> you're trying to accomplish, and others here could help!
>

If you wanted to attempt what I'm trying to do, create a menu with  
submenus.
The create another menu, but dynamic, fill each submenu with a list of  
files, cap it off with static menu/submenu items. See if that works.  
The other "pop-ops kill REV UI" problem..I can't even begin to  
understand.
Recipe: make a project with 3000 lines of code and some 500 controls,  
stir for 11 months, report when your pop-ups freak out.
It worked the broke, basicly minute to minute. I would test, it would  
work, I'd report in instant message "It works!", go back to the  
application, test , it was broke. Lots of that kind of madness.

I'll have to run a script to set every button to menuMouseButton 0 and  
see where I stand then.
Thanks for posting "updated" documenation. At least that exposes one  
step towards liberation from
the arachnid threat.

> best,
> Chipp
>
> Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 11:55:53 +0200
> From: Wouter <wouter.abraham at pi.be>
> Subject: Re: iGame3D status 062204
> To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> Message-ID: <5958203E-C432-11D8-9981-003065CC999E at pi.be>

> Returning to Metacard is not going to solve this problem.
> Changing button styles is changing a group of properties at once.
The change of button styles was implemented error free in Metacard for  
the first
public release a year ago. There was never a reason to suspect that  
this caused a problem.
Again as will be seen below in the bug history, this isn't the only  
issue.
I think the button style change had to deal with pulldown menus looking  
like a garbage windows UI.
I get a enough complaint of "un-mac like" as it is, even though there  
is no application of this class on the Mac.
This is only a faint recollection of course, a year is a long time  
after thousands of lines of
code and three or four UI revisions.

> Which is not taken into account in this bug stack.
> There are some problems with buttons but the examples in the bug stack  
>  are not good code.
Yeah the buttons in the example are extreme tests. The only way I could
quickly come up with a sample, iGame3D is practically MAYA Jr. at this  
point, its
not easy to extract everything just to show off a bug.
Its like taking your car to the shop and only delivering the window  
that doesn't roll down.

> It is a pity that things like this would prevent a *very* nice addition
> like this external to the rev/mc environment.
> I hope that the responses to this thread will encourage them to carry
> on.
Well we spent four hours today trying some solutions, only for Rev to  
crash on a new empty menu group.
Thanks for checking this out and pointing out how bad my scripting is.  
:-) Go ahead say it:  "n00b" :-)

> Greetings,
> WA
>

> Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 16:49:53 +0100
> From: Frank Leahy <frank at backtalk.com>
> Subject: Re: iGame3D status 062204
> Cc: bill at igame3d.com
> Message-ID: <CDA27BC4-C463-11D8-88C4-000A9580FCCE at backtalk.com>
>
> Bill,
>
>  From what I can tell from this thread, I believe this is a problem  
> with
> the Menu Manager, not RunRev.
>
> A long time ago I wrote the Menu Manager for the Mac II (circa 1986),
> and as I recall (it's been awhile...) you cannot use a menu that
> appears in the menubar as a popup menu too.  And if you do, you will
> crash the Menu Manager.  (the problem is two competing data structures
> -- it's possible to do what you want using the toolbox directly, but  
> there's no way to do what you want from RunRev)
>
> If you want the same menu items to appear in a menubar menu and in a
> popup menu, you will need to create a separate popup menu and populate
> it with the same menu items.
>
Yes this method was also tried but does not address the original  
problem of pop-ups acting insanely.
The button populated with menu stuff gets choked. eventually by the  
evil bug.
The original bug effects popups that only has a menuMode handler, then  
effects the Rev UI itself.
> Make sense?
>
> Good luck,
> -- Frank Leahy

______________________________________________
Following is the complete bug history that I have on record.
Take into account I have every email sent to and from this computer &  
others since January 2000
That includes over 1470 run-rev list digests.
___________________________________________________________________

> -----Original Message-----
> From: use-revolution-bounces at lists.runrev.com
> [mailto:use-revolution-bounces at lists.runrev.com] On Behalf Of
> WIlliam Griffin
> Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 2:41 PM
> To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> Cc: WIlliam Griffin
> Subject: Menus Locked Menus Missing Menu Hell
>
> Spent hours googling searches for similiar bug, found
> nothing. Can't touch bugzilla with safari at all. So its up
> to you guys.
>
> My menus are locked or vanish.
> The file Menu only shows "New Mainstack" about 80% of the
> time my Development menu only shows objects and image library.
>
> Any pop-up or option menu fails to receive a click to open.
>
> This includes revs user interface and not just my stack, such as find
> and replace, and the inspector palette
>
> I have a popup menu that appears as a a stack for some reason
> then Revolution crashes. I copied its script out, delete the
> original button, and remade it, it worked great until the
> next time I opened the objects window.
>
> I don't know what command could be causing this behavior.
> Any ideas? I've lost 3 days of work, trying to solve this issue.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Mr Bill


Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 22:11:04 -0600
From: "Ken Ray" <kray at sonsothunder.com>
Subject: RE: Menus Locked Menus Missing Menu Hell
To: "'How to use Revolution'" <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
Message-ID: <006a01c40fc3$b4dba770$6601a8c0 at precision340>

Bill,

I would suggest reinstalling Rev... that might help.

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
_______________________________________________________________

Well I tried Ken's suggestion 16 times, including a total reinstall of  
the OS. No luck.
_______________________________________________________________

After all that I proceeded to move the problem buttons to the menuBar.
This seemed to work, so I continued this process to make the interface  
consistant
and hopefully cleaner, only to fall in the sticky trap of bug 1655.
_______________________________________________________________
May 4, 2004 2:52:07 PM EDT
bill at igame3d.com wrote:

> Below is the result of your feedback form.  It was submitted by
>  (bill at igame3d.com) on Tuesday, May 04, 2004 at 02:26:12
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----
> Name:  (my serial number removed)
> Organization: (my serial number removed)
> Edition: Commercial Studio
> Platform: MacOS
> systemVersion: 10.3.3
>
> Body: BUG REPORT/SUPPORT REQUEST
> Pop-Ups/Menu buttons breaking and crashing application!
>
> Sorry your bugzilla doesn't support the default web browser of 25  
> million Mac
> users, I can't even search the thing!
>
> Revolution 2.1.2
> Mac OS X 10.3.3
> Power Mac Dual G4 450 1.6 gigs of ram.
>
> I've put my 1.1 megabyte Revolution Crash log up for you to look at,  
> maybe that
> gibberish will make some sense to you.
> http://www.igame3d.com/REV/igame3drevolutioncrashlog.zip (no longer  
> available 062204)
> I've included the stack which has most recently been corrupted by this  
> epidemic
>
> http://www.igame3d.com/REV/Consolerev.zip (no longer available 062204)
> See the button labled "recent" at the top of the stack, it is  
> desplaying the
> symptoms at this time.
> The other two buttons to the left of "recent" seemed to fix themselves  
> when I
> saved this stack as a seperate stack outside my project.
> You will note the "recent" button is of type "menuMode"..which is of  
> course completely
> wrong.
>
> I requested help on the list and the best they could offer was  
> "re-install".
>
> Well trying that 4 times hasn't worked.
>
> Here's the problem:
> pop-up buttons are breaking randomly, and the problem seems to be  
> spreading,
>
> perhaps with each application crash caused by these buttons,
> of which I've had at least over 100 crashes caused by this.
>
> First the pop-up buttons stop responding
> The menuMode option button in the inspector palette relables itself  
> "menuMode"
> it also refuses to respond, at this time all menus in the inspector  
> palette refuse
> to work so long as I have a pop-up button selected on any one of a  
> number of
> my stacks.
>
> Occasionally but not always just before the crash the selected  
> button's contents
> show up, but inside of a pulldown menu to the far upper left of the  
> screen rect,
> then the application crashes.
>
> The last crash had some long content in the button, and instead of the  
> usual
> ugly Pulldown, it looked like a whole stack of the contents of the  
> button showed
> up before the crash.
>
> These buttons have worked perfectly until, perhaps the 2.1.2 upgraded,  
> thats
> the best that I can figure.
>
> The buttons are some how corrupting, because buttons that have worked  
> since last
> July, and have not been modified in any way shape or form,   have now  
> been infected
> with this symptom, 3 at a time!
>
> When I've gone through the trouble of recreating buttons from scratch,  
> with new
> names as a test against any scripts that might modify the particular  
> button,
> they sometimes work, and sometimes don't work. Eventually they stop  
> working all
> together, for no understandable reason, either during the same editing  
> session,
> or at some point after restarting the application for a new session.
>
> There is no connection between the stack being a palette or document  
> style.
>
> There is apparently no connection between the defaultMenu and these  
> buttons.
>
> Its honestly hard to troubleshoot this situation to provide more  
> details since
> the application crashes everytime I test to see if the buttons work or  
> not. I
> lose a lot of development time when a button suddenly becomes corrupt,  
> unexpectedly
> (since it worked last time I checked) and then I crash.
>
> Your help is appreciated.
>
> Bill Griffin
> bill at igame3d.com
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----
Dear bill at igame3d.com,

Thank you for your request. I am copying this to someone who can enter  
your
report into Bugzilla for you. I believe Runtime is planning an upgrade  
to the
system so that it will support Safari users in the near future. I am  
sorry it
isn't working for you now, but we are aware of the problem and we are  
taking
steps to resolve it. Meanwhile, your bug report will go into the  
database and
if you have any other browser you can check on its progress.

Jacqueline
Jacqueline Gay
--
Runtime Support Team ~ http://www.runrev.com
Runtime Revolution ~ User-Centric Development Tools
--
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----
My response:
May 5, 2004 1:36:11 PM EDT

Thank you. I pulled out an ancient version of MSIE and can't find this  
bug in the database yet.
I've uploaded a screenshot of one of the bugs symptoms:
http://www.igame3d.com/REV/buttonbug/ (no longer available 062204)

Please forward that link along to who ever is going to work on the bug.

Thank you,
Bill Griffin

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----

May 6, 2004 12:26:23 PM EDT
Bill,

I'll forward the link too -- but now that you have found an old copy of  
IE it
would be great if you could add to the report yourself. We'll do this  
one though.

Jacque
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----

Thats the last I heard from Runtime.
I tried my best to fix the bug myself, and waited for the previously  
mentioned  bugzilla inclusion.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----
Date: 	June 3, 2004 6:34:45 AM EDT
I entered the bug 1655 into bugzilla since there was nothing being done  
about it.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----
Date: 	June 10, 2004 8:16:55 AM EDT
Subject: 	Your Revolution Studio License has Expired
blah blah blah
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----
At this point I was just too bummed out to even think of opening Rev  
again.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----

> Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 15:00:55 +0100
> From: Kevin Miller <kevin at runrev.com>
> Subject: Re: iGame3D status 062204
> To: How to use Revolution <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
> Message-ID: <BCFDFA27.2D9F9%kevin at runrev.com>
>
> On 22/6/04 6:23 am, william griffin <bill at igame3d.com> wrote:
>
> I'm very concerned to hear about the problems you've been having.  I'll
> follow up with you off list, lets see if we can get this back on track.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Kevin
>
> Kevin Miller ~ kevin at runrev.com ~ http://www.runrev.com/
> Runtime Revolution - User-Centric Development Tools
>

Thank you for the quick response. I'm open to suggestions, but aside  
from
what is mentioned above, I'm all out of ideas.

Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 16:29:07 +0100
From: Kevin Miller <kevin at runrev.com>
Subject: Re: iGame3D status 062204
To: How to use Revolution <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
Message-ID: <BCFE0ED3.2DA25%kevin at runrev.com>

On 22/6/04 7:02 am, Brian Yennie <briany at qldlearning.com> wrote:

> FWIW, your bug report appears to be left as "UNCONFIRMED" in BugZilla,
> so it doesn't look like anyone at RunRev duplicated it. I downloaded
> your test stack and confirmed it within a couple of minutes myself. I'm
> normally quite defensive of the Rev folks, but this one really is easy
> to see at work.

With all due respect, one of our engineers did contact the iGame people  
over
a month ago requesting more information, and didn't get a reply.

Kevin

Kevin Miller ~ kevin at runrev.com ~ http://www.runrev.com/
Runtime Revolution - User-Centric Development Tools
___________________________________________________________

I'm sorry Mr Miller, but  that claim is in contradiction  with
the evidence provided above and  my extensive correspondence archives.
I've provided stacks, bug reports, screen shots, and as detailed  
descriptions as I possibly could.
Somewhere in the mad rush of day to day Runtime operations I got lost  
in the shuffle.

I never looked at Bugzilla until March 2004.
When I finally viewed some of  the 300+ bugs listed, It was not  
encouraging.

My impression is that there are far more bugs than there are people to  
effectively fix them.
Especially in the never ending quest for adding features.
This sense stems from my own one man labor on a larger than life  
Revolution project, where
adding an interesting new feature, or testing the lastest external  
update often
distracts me from cleaning some old funky technique that took hours to  
figure out the first time.
and has been around since the beginning.

Revolution is obviously galactic in scale compared to iGame3D.
I can barely fathom what pressures the Runtime engineers are under and  
how frustrating
each new valid bug report is.

With my small fry license representing less than a week of lunches for  
the Runtime team,
I didn't expect anything more than just having a product that works.
Which it certainly did for the longest time.


Ok well this took all day (between writing and potty training), time  
for a break, then I'll try to
make a sweeping "mouseMenuButton to 0" script and let you know what  
happened.

Thanks for everyone's support, input and concern.
If you got this far, thanks for your patience.

Bill Griffin
bill at igam3d.com
Team iGame3D



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