Design question: why does the game crash when working with dialogs?

[bobby budnick 0]

From the wiki:

Warning: If there are syntactic errors in your description.ext file (e.g. incorrect spelling of keywords), then the game will simply return to desktop while processing the file, stating the nature and location of the error that caused it.

Why? The game does not crash with scripting errors so why does it crash with dialog errors? Are we expected to reload the game every time we make an error?

For me reloading the game takes about ten minutes to have a running game again. I have a fairly fast system with an Intel SSD. 8 hours * 60 minutes = 480 minutes / 10 minute reload = 48 attempts per day. I am a learning by trial and error person. When I started out scripting, I had to make many more than 48 attempts per day.

48 attempts is still fairly generous though. The problem is the 10 minute load time is a distraction to my thought process. For example: the game crashes. I make notes on what I should try to fix while waiting 10 minutes. Game crashes again. Notes were ineffective. Now I am making notes on something different to try and so on and so forth. With this example, you should be able to see how you could easily spend 8 hours and end up with almost nothing to show for it. On top of that, I edit Arma so I can learn and expand my mind. Staring at a loading screen for 10 minutes wondering "what if" just doesn't cut it in the mind-expanding department.

I don't want someone to give me something to copy and paste or some sort of tool to do it all. I want to do it all myself at the lowest possible level so no one can say I took anything from anyone else. There is absolutely no reason the process should be so potentially painful though. If the answer to all this is "just wait 10 minutes every time" then I will just have to implement a dialog with radio triggers or something like that instead.

Thanks for your understanding.

Edited October 30, 2014 by Bobby Budnick

[jshock 513]

Can I ask if you onow why your game takes 10 minutes to boot up? Because I don't run SSDs or anything fast and fancy, and my game loads up in a minute or two. Have you also looked into using some Steam Start-up Parameters to remove some of the "dead weight" in the loading process, like the splash screens and such?

And I would say the game CTDs when there is something broken in the description file, because it's just that, the game can't process the "broken" mission description, so it "has" to crash to deal with the issue. I may be wrong in that thought though.

Edited October 30, 2014 by JShock

[iceman77 19]

Are we expected to reload the game every time we make an error?

Yes. Welcome to dialogs. Idk about waiting 10 minutes. Why do you wait 10 minutes? When I CTD, I either A: start the game back up while I'm making changes or B: make the changes and start the game. Neither has ever taken 10 minutes and I've a crapy mechanical HD. Unless I'm busy with something else.

[killzone_kid 1333]

I have crappy system and no SSD and it does not take 10 minutes to reload the game, maybe 1 min, 1 min 20.

[Tajin 349]

Hmm, I can't even think of 48 different ways to make dialogs crash. ^^

Honestly, dialogs are a bit tricky and usually require alot of trial&error to figure out but those errors are rarely complete crashes. At least not unless you really mess up the syntax. (a good texteditor with highlighting can help to avoid that -> "poseidon")

Also, there's a built in GUI-editor in the dev-console, that can also help you with the basics.

If arma is taking so long to load, try disabling any mods and add the "-noLand" startup parameter that should speed it up a little.

Edited October 30, 2014 by Tajin

[iceman77 19]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?184768-Guide-Your-Guide-to-Dialogs

http://killzonekid.com/tag/gui/

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?144954-Dialog-Tutorial-For-Noobs-By-A-Noob

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Dialog_Control

---------- Post added at 05:36 ---------- Previous post was at 05:35 ----------

At least not unless you really mess up the syntax.

Hehe. Even one missed bracket or semicolon will CTD :eek:

[das attorney 858]

Dialogs are a config. Imagine that configs are the "skeleton" of Arma, and must be correct.

If you're making a mod and get a config wrong then the game won't boot. It's unfortunate that dialogs in missions aren't checked at boot (as they are part of the missionConfigFile) and are checked on mission init, so it quits out at mission load if you mess up your config.

There's no way round it so you'll have to suck it up.

The only things I can think of is:

1 - created a mod of your dialog. (The game will not boot if something is wrong so you don't have to boot up into the mission to check).

2 - Create a test mission in the editor with literally just the code for the dialog (plus a trigger or somesuch to load it) and boot straight into that (it will still crash if wrong but save you some time if part of a larger mission.

3 - Post your errors up here (rpt file) and someone might be able to fix.

Also, you should check why your game takes 10 minutes to boot. I'm on an ssd too and it boots in 40 seconds or so.

[iceman77 19]

To be fair ( and idk if it was a pre-hype A3 rumor ) but BI was supposedly supposed to fix the CTD business with A3 configs and the like.

[das attorney 858]

I see why it's the way it is. If the game let you run it with sloppy configs then we would have a billion errors (as script errors would compound on every config error).

Just got to dot those i's and cross those t's ;)

[dreadedentity 278]

I can load up Arma 3 in ~20 seconds with my SSD...

Not trying to be rude, but why are you having 48 CTD's per day? When I was learning dialogs, I followed a

, had the wiki open in the background, and had maybe 10 CTD's at maximum.

[Tajin 349]

The CTDs are there, to enhance the pleasure that you feel, when you finally get it to work. ;)

had the wiki open in the background

ps.: Working in windowed mode is also very useful when scripting.

Oh and (I'm sure many ppl don't know that) you don't have to start the game with "-windowed" you can simply press esc to open the menu and then switch between fullscreen and windowed with "Alt+Enter".

[iceman77 19]

The CTDs are there, to enhance the pleasure that you feel, when you finally get it to work. ;)

This is soooo true though LOL

[tryteyker 28]

ps.: Working in windowed mode is also very useful when scripting.

Oh and (I'm sure many ppl don't know that) you don't have to start the game with "-windowed" you can simply press esc to open the menu and then switch between fullscreen and windowed with "Alt+Enter".

I'd use Fullscreen Windowed personally, smoother when alt-tabbing (as it doesnt need to spend any time minimizing the process), especially useful with a double monitor setup. Alt Enter is only fullscreen or windowed unfortunately :(