Posting errors.

[PyTom]

Folks, let me just remind you again that when you encounter an error in your Ren'Py game, you should post:

- The _full_ traceback.txt or error.txt that pops up in Ren'Py. Just about every single line in these files is important. By only posting a small fraction of the file, you're making a false economy... as someone will have to then ask you to post the rest.

- The relevant lines of your script. Ren'Py does an okay job of isolating where in your script the problem occurs, but you should include a few lines from either side to be safe. Be sure to indicate what the line numbers are.

Please be sure to comply with this. When you you omit some of this from your problem report, you make it much harder (or impossible) for people to help you. And it's not fair to ask people who are generous enough to want to help you with your problem to spend their time puzzling out what that problem actually is.

[denzil]

What about adding to traceback something along the lines:

If you need help with this problem you can ask at Lemmasoft forums /link/
Please post there this whole file and corresponding lines from your script.

This could help with people forgetting/not knowing what to do when encountering problem.

[monele]

Just thought of something : how about having Ren'Py do that automatically on a crash? It would gather the error text, it would gather the code lines surrounding the crash, and then it could either show you the result ("ready to post" format) or even, if it's possible, directly open your browser with this as new post content if you click a specific button.

[Adorya]

Some people don't want to use their current project code (ph3Ar the secret uber leak$ ) so use examples instead.

It would be even better to make an error database, integrate it in renpy, update from renpy server everytime there are new errors, check for new renpy version, fix your game and release it automatically in the intarweb huh?

Joke aside it's a nice idea but it's better for the user to do it manually, in that way it's a good training in programming (properly explaining the error, how it was done and how to paste the faulty code).

[Jake]

Just thought of something : how about having Ren'Py do that automatically on a crash? It would gather the error text, it would gather the code lines surrounding the crash, and then it could either show you the result ("ready to post" format) or even, if it's possible, directly open your browser with this as new post content if you click a specific button.

I suspect that this would encourage inexperienced users to treat such errors as Ren'Py problems rather than problems with their script, since this is the kind of behaviour OSes like Windows perform when an application breaks. ("There was a problem running dodgyapp.exe; please click this button to send the details to Microsoft.") So we'd see lots of new threads in the Ren'Py forum for really trivial errors from users who have given up on the "broken" Ren'Py engine and gone off to use something else.

Probably better would be to write something in the traceback itself, like:

Code: Select all

I'm sorry, but an exception occured while executing your Ren'Py script.
If you cannot solve this problem yourself, feel free to ask for help on the Ren'Py forum at:
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewforum.php?f=8
Remember to post the whole of this file and the relevant lines of your script with your
question in order to help people to help you.

[PyTom]

Probably better would be to write something in the traceback itself, like:

That's a good idea, I'll probably add this to the next version of Ren'Py.