Down in the dumpfile

[OldProf]

How many times have you seen a box pop up after TS2013 (or its predecessors) crashes offering to create a dump file? I accepted that offer a couple of days ago in the wake of an SBHH and then sent the dump file to support@railsimulator.com, asking for a translation of its contents.

Here's the reply I received this morning: "The dump files are a relic of the early development of the game, I am afraid that we do not have the facilities examine them any longer.
"An SBHH error is a fairly non specific error message that could be caused by literally anything that the game does not expect to find."

So there it is: a kernel of truth, an admission of uselessness. So why is the bit of code that leads to the possibility of saving a dump file still present? I've asked that very question, so tune in for the next thrilling episode of ...

Down in the dumpfile

... the program that asks the question, "Can a coder from a small Montana town find happiness in the wilds of the British Isles as an eraser of useless relics?"

Down in the dumpfile is brought to you by the makers of Scrubbing Rubbles, the code scrubber guaranteed to remove relics or half your money back.

[PapaXpress]

That is insane. I have loaded their dump file, and I posted about it here.

And they are very much in use today as it is part of the Window Error Reporting mechanism built into Vista and greater.

[OldProf]

Could you provide a link to the post you mentioned? Thanks!

[PapaXpress]

I am still looking for it...

If I can't find it, I can load it up again. Honestly, there is not much that can be done without the PDB and source code. If I had both then I could break to the line of code that caused the failure.


Then again, if I had the source code RSC would be paying me to fix bugs for them.

[peterhayes]

OP and PPE
This is the method that I tried to use without much success:
To read the TS2012/13 dump files aka .dmp files this is the procedure: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263 although written primarily for WinXP it still holds for Vista & Win 7.
I've tried but it was just too hard (for me) plus you cannot seem to inetrpret the TS2012/2013 dmp files because AFAIK you do not have access to the source code.
Good luck on this one.
PeterH

[OldProf]

Holy Moly, Peter! That's way too complicated for me, too. If we mere mortals could manage to decode one of these dumps, it would probably read, "Eat this message and immediately perform a cache verification". If RSC can't decipher these goodies anymore, why should we bother?

[PapaXpress]

The point is, if RSC does not have anyone that can load up a dump file, then they don't have a developer. I can't believe this is the case, so it has to be that this support person has no idea what they are saying (much more believable).

[peterhayes]

Yes .dmp files are just a "normal" windows dump file and if you have the source code and the knowledge to read and interpret such files then it should be easy peasy. But it maybe that the dmp files tells you nothing particularly if the error has been caused by a third party addon that has nothing to s do with RSC!
Old Prof:

Holy Moly, Peter! That's way too complicated for me, too!

I agree! LOL!
pH

[PapaXpress]

Peter, if they know where the crash is happening then they can write a better exception handler around it. To crash the application because the XML in the BIN, or GEO, or whatever was malformed is lazy.

[peterhayes]

PapaExpress
Good point!
pH

[Chacal]

it has to be that this support person has no idea what they are saying (much more believable).

Even more likely: this is the answer he's supposed to give to anyone offering a dump file.
Possibly the devs have been submerged by dump files that give them no new information because everyone has the same problems or because the crash is not due to a bug in the game code.

[PapaXpress]

Meh. I got a SBHH last night because I forgot to add a shader to a face which the game requires a shader (working on a skybox). If the game requires a model to have specific characteristics then you can and should write an exception handler for it.

[OldProf]

The point is, if RSC does not have anyone that can load up a dump file, then they don't have a developer. I can't believe this is the case, so it has to be that this support person has no idea what they are saying (much more believable).

I think that you've really gone overboard. RSC support simply said that dump files are a thing of the past for them, a relic of some previous debugging process. I wrote back, suggesting that they remove whatever code leads to the now outmoded dump file creation. In their response, RSC support acknowledged the validity of that idea and that they would look into removal.

[PapaXpress]

You mentioned they said they no long have the facilities to examine them anymore. I contend that they do.

Fine. They remove dump file creation. One less tool the developer has in their arsenal to help them figure where something went wrong. I call that *genius*.

[Chacal]

If the game requires a model to have specific characteristics then you can and should write an exception handler for it.

This. Even if the error comes from external code like PhysX, it should be caught.