Comments on: Havok™ 4 Regions updated with 11 fixes

By: Takuan

Takuan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:48:55 +0000

Hmmm… That kind of, sort of, almost makes sense, Colin.

But still doesn’t tell me anything useful. It’s just a very poorly done error message

I just realized, though, that neither are the C:SI customers who’ve experienced the problem. For instance, they never told me exactly what “my weapon broke” means. Did it quit working? Did it turn blue and refuse to block? Did it fail to draw or sheath? I guess I don’t really know, as they symptoms have yet to be described.

By: Takuan

Takuan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:58:17 +0000

I’m sure there must be a reason behind it, but like you, I can only speculate about how the server code works.

Regardless of the reason, it’s a very poor way to handle errors, and I should think that LL devs would do everything they could do to return valid and useful information.

To my way of thinking, even if it’s amazingly difficult to tie the error back to the object (or up the stack, etc), errors are by definition an edge case and would justify the effort.

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:52:09 +0000

Ok, well I just created a script that divides by zero. When it is sitting on the ground, it says “Object: Math Error”, but when I attach it to myself, it says “Colin Kiernan: Math Error”. In a way doing this makes sense, since if everyone is wearing the same AO, for example, it would be hard to figure out which one was having the error. Ideally, it should probably print out “Colin Kiernan: Object: Math Error”.

Colin’s last blog post..Go Board Updates

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:48:19 +0000

I wonder if maybe the error is happening when the execution has entered a system call (or some LSL VM equivalent) and as a result they only know the user but not the script it came from. This is just a wild guess since I have no idea how any of the server code is implemented. Colin's last blog post..Go Board Updates

By: Takuan

Takuan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:09:16 +0000

It is a pretty odd choice for any developer to make, I think. I can’t imagine a circumstance where I would have chosen to spit out a debug message that would seem to indicate that the user had a math error, when clearly it’s a scripted object that is having the problem.

By: Atrus Westland

Atrus Westland — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:45:50 +0000

Yeah the first time I saw the math error robby I was fairly confused myself when it stated “Atrus Westland - Math Error” Felt like the game was ridiculing my mathematical skill. Not that they’re all that great but still, It was completely retarded I thought.

By: Takuan

Takuan — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:07:14 +0000

However, on the sheath it only causes certain prims to be hidden or shown. We can’t know whether it’s coming from the weapon or the sheath, because the script error lists “Person Name - Math Error” rather than “Object Name - Math Error”, which is completely asinine.

By: Esprite Xavier

Esprite Xavier — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:54:40 +0000

Hmm, I would be inclined to agree with that as a possibility, but drawing the sword usually causes the entire weapon to appear at once, which isn’t something that would use individual faces or specify specific prims…

It would make sense if it broke while color customizing or the sheath itself when drawing, but I’m confused how that would cause a math error on the weapon itself.