SCRIPTS ALL GONE!!!

This SUCKS!!!!! I have had this problem before, but I am doing some realy elaborate scripts for the GalCiv2 UI. I have reported this bug to Alberto, and he is looking in to it.

Hopefully we will have this fixed ASAP. For the moment i dont know of any fix. Becuse this error is very rare we are having a hard time tracking it down.

There is a round about way. Back up, often. I also run Keepsafe. witch backs up all my dxpacks everytime I save.

PS. you might look in the "Current Theme" for the scripts but it is probobly to late.

PS. This is not offical support. I just work at stardock. I will send this on to Support as well, incase there is something I dont know.

PS. To the best of my knowlage, you are the onlyone I have ever seen get this error, besides myself. Trust me I feal your pain.

We've received the email you sent to [email protected] and have forwarded it to the development team as well as the manager of development.

For future reference, emailing [email protected] is the best approach to resolving any issues you might be having and is the #1 line of communication to the developers.

We apologize for the inconvenience this issue has caused you.

-Mike
[Stardock Support]

Double post.

Yea, this issuse is a really annoying one as well. I've been looking in DX's temp folder and using file recovery programs in attempts to restore lost scrips. But I've eventually had to go to the practise of saving often and taking backups. (though, now I use KeepSafe.) All though, it seem to happend when you have finally managed to get it all working as it should and before you save... Murphy's Law I suppose....

wow! so many comments all of the sudden... where did they come from...

bugger... double post...

I have seen this happen before, more than once. I've taken to a double save technique, where I save the desktop AND export the objects.

I have a theory about why this happens - It seems to happen when there are quite a few objects in the theme, and DX does an auto-save (in the background), if you save the desktop explicitly and it happens to be during the auto-save, which takes longer with lots of objects, then wham!

I once permanently lost a theme I was working on this way. Also, I think there is an issue with programatically changing transparency in multiple objects. I've had things go south on me multiple times when trying that.

I've talked to Alberto about the auto-save issue and requested he make an option to turn it off. He said he would, but so far...haven't seen it.

hm... I happend to me when I was working on my Textbox object, that that's only 4 objects on total....

Hmmm indeed ... well, it's just a theory

We should try to determine what the common elements are when DX builder crashes. What other software was running? What action directly preceded the crash?

Happened to me before. I was so not happy...

I now export object each time I make more than few lines, and keep backup of previous save too. Basically I have object on desktop, and exported object obj.dxpack and oldobj.dxpack.

Aparently this is a bigger issue then I was aware of, all the more reason to get it fixed fast.

I've seen it to, at least 20 times (no exaggeration). Now I export to widget or dxpack at least every 5 minutes.

Problem is that it's impossible to reproduce on demand. I've tried to remember what I've been doing when it happens, but I can't seem to find any similarities. When I have tried to do exactly what I did when it happened, it never happens again.

What is Keepsafe? Anyone have an URL to it? I tried to google it but all I got was a lot of hits for a glass and physically archive company.

I too have had this happen. It has only happened to me a couple times, but after the first time I became much more redundant in saving methods. I haven't been able to reproduce it, but it is such a massive failure and potential loss that I haven't tried too hard to reproduce it either. I now export frequently and any script of any complexity or length gets pasted into ObjectEdit (notepad) and saved from there as well.


Barring actually figuring out what is happening it would be nice to have easier methods of ensuring you've got a backup. If scripts could be saved as txt files from the editor, that would make it easy to at least have it backed up. And the export process itself could be more user friendly (what's up with the full path in the final box, leaving me about 4 spaces to type a name for a file that probabluy has a 6 character extension to begin with?). OK, that's another subject, I guess.

What is Keepsafe? Anyone have an URL to it?

It's part of Think Desk. You'll find it in SDC.

Well I just had this happen to me as well.

What I've found is that it occurs just after I make a large change in a script. I have more success by disabling the script before I edit it. Then, I re-enable it after I save and apply through the File menu. I have noticed that there is no pattern to the crashes. Maybe its a timer issue? Like applying right when a timer fires. Any correlation there?

I still think one problem occurs when applying a change at the same time DX is auto-saving.

For instance, I have had problems occur several times when making a change to a number of objects, by bringing up the properties for each one that needs the change, making the change in each, but not applying until all are done, then apply the changes to each. If I apply as fast as I can (as fast as DX returns control), eventually, after maybe 5 or 6 applies, it will crash. I've learned to apply a couple, wait a bit, apply a couple more, etc. I think this relates to applying in the middle of auto-save.

I have no way to really verify this, I know, but something is going on.

I also want to say re jvandebeck's post: It is not my experience that DX is that shaky. I routinely have errors in my scripts that are caught by the system with no problems. I fix them and continue.

If scripts could be saved as txt files from the editor, that would make it easy to at least have it backed up

Yes, that would be a nice feature to be able to load and save files from the script editor it self. I know it's not hard to copy and paste, but it is extra steps. And if the script editr had load and save script feature it could also include templates of snippets you often use.

If scripts could be saved as txt files from the editor, that would make it easy to at least have it backed up

Ditto,also it would make it easier to edit scripts outside DX and then import them back in. That would be a way for DX not to crash so often when scripts are involved.

I had this a while ago and reported it. Things with DX are generally more stable but this does happen occassionally. From memory, when I reported this, I seem to remember I thought the issue was caused by several scripts that interact with each other all running at the same time following a script change.

Hmm.... I'm pretty sure I've had this issue even with just one script running... but I wouldn't bet my life on it...

Yeah. last time it happened, it was a single centralized script. My linear object was scriptless after crashing, wiping out my entire changes to it. Newer version is much delayed because of that.

I suspect it happens somehow when it repackages the object after the changes is made to it. Maybe at one point, it has a new script file it's supposed to repack into object, replacing the old script. If it deletes old script and was about to move new script in and it crashes, that may be the reason the scripts go poof.

Word, for example, uses a temp file to save changes, if you crashes, then opens same word file again, it will check for that temp file to see if it crashes while file was being edited. It may be good idea for DesktopX.