Cake Mania nightmare crash

[istara]

This has happened twice, but this last time is particularly horrific, because I was near to finishing the game.

The game crashes mid-play, and my Tungsten makes a horrible buzzing/clicking noise. I restart it, and all is fine, except when I restart Cake Mania, all my save games are wiped.

As you can imagine this is pretty frustrating. I don't mind it crashing, but taking my data with it is kind of icky.

[Kieren]

Hi istara,

I'm sorry that something like this has happened, and I've been trying to work out how this could possibly happen since it's perhaps the most extreme issue I've seen in a long time!

From your description of the actual crash itself, although the noises and symptoms are quite unpleasant, it has all the hallmarks of a classic "Fatal Exception" style crash on Palm, when something which was running at the time has used memory already being accessed by either the operating system or another running application (the Palm equivalent of a Blue Screen of Death). That in itself tells me quite a lot about possible causes, and gives me a starting point.

With all our games, we always test them *heavily* to try and work out how much memory they need to run without graphical glitches or crashes, and implement checks at the start of the game to ensure that the game will not run unless it has that minimum amount of memory, and we also check for memory leaks within the application itself (to make sure that when it says it's using X amount of memory, it really is using that much memory).

Cake Mania is no different in regards to the memory requirement testing, but the way it actually allocates memory is a bit different - rather than checking for a specific amount of free storage memory and free heap memory (the latter of which is, as you may know already, used only for running applications) as most of our games do, Cake Mania instead tries to make use of as much free heap as possible, only delving into storage space on the device if it absolutely needs to. We do this because as such a graphically intensive game the memory requirements are quite meaty, and we wanted to keep the amount of storage space the game needs to run down to a minimum.

The reason I think this may be relevant is that when Cake Mania is running the device is using as much heap memory as it can, which should be fine unless something in the background suddenly allocates additional memory without checking it's free (which is the normal colloquial definition of a memory leak, although I think it's got a different "proper" term :)). If this happens, there's the possibility that it will do so by writing into an area of memory being used by the operating system or the game...and that's where the Fatal Exception could come in, causing a crash in such a spectacular and worrying fashion.

My current theory is that possibly some background aspect to an application (many modern Palm OS apps include elements which run in the background, either because they modify the behaviour of the operating system, or to trigger when certain events happen), and that one of these may have a memory leak which caused this. Tracking thse down can be really, really hard - you only see the symptoms when running some other application which uses a lot of memory, so it always ends up looking like the one running which was at fault (which isn't impossible, but we did a lot of testing to try and make sure that wasn't going to be the case!).

I also have a theory about the lost data too, and I believe it might be an unfortunate combination of the crash corrupting data, and a mechanism designed to prevent crashes caused by corrupted data kicking in together - if the save information becomes corrupted in any way, the game wll normally have to delete the corrupted data (as it can't always correct the problem), and I suspect that the crash may have either occured while saving the game, or the affected memory contained the save data - either way, the save game data likely become corrupted sufficiently that this protection system kicked in :(

I can try to spot possible culprits among the applications you have installed on your device, and we can try experimenting around that to see what we can find, so could I possibly ask if you could email me (kieren@astraware.com (mailto:kieren@astraware.com)) a list of all the software you have installed on your Palm?

Warmest regards,
Kieren

[marketacumen]

It first happened after I got to the beach. I was wiped, but figured it was a rare occurance.

Then I played for awhile, I was at Casino in NOVEMBER and next time I played IT WAS WIPED. Next day I started over and got through Kitchen for a year and it was wiped again? What gives? I love the game but can not stand to start again and again!

This is OOOOOOH SO frustrating. I'm running a Palm OS 5 on a Treo 650.

I can make this happen repeatedly. It's not just a crash, I believe it happens when the app is switched out by, say, the phone call. unfortunately, I can't control the phone calls coming in.

I am pretty frustrated!

Grrrrr.

But I love Astraware, despite this bug.

[istara]

Hi Kieren!

Thanks so much for your detailed response, it's interesting to get an idea of what is going on inside my Palm.

I will email you the things I have installed - in the mean time - is it possible to know what the save game or saved data file is called? That way I can try to save it after a back-up, and perhaps restore it manually if the crash happens again?

[marketacumen]

Yes, what's the save file called? Slim chance I got it in a HotSync!

[istara]

OK - I have just managed to restore my saved game, after another hideous crunching crash.

Fortunately, I had HotSynced just previously, so what I did was look for files that had been modified today in my Palm Backup. I found these files:

Queries.pdb
NetworkDB.pdb
Graffiti ShortCuts.prc
psysLaunchDB.pdb
Saved Preferences.prc

I dragged them over to install them manually, did a HotSync, after which the Tungsten T5 asked me to reset it. I did so, it started again fine, then when I went to Cake Mania - hooray! my save game was there, and working.

[istara]

Sadly, this method didn't work with my last crunch-crash. I tried several times, but it did not restore it.

EDIT: OK I've found a possible other way to get round this. You need the freeware Palm file browser Filez. In the Internal folder will be a file called CakeManiaDB. Copy that somewhere (eg to an SD card, to or the flash partition (mine is called TUNGSTEN by default I think).

If you get a crunch crash, and your data has disappeared when you restart Cake Mania, copy that file back to the Internal drive. You may get a prompt to "overwrite?" in which case type Yes.

So far I have only tested this by manually deleted CakeManiaDB from Internal, restarting the game (which gives you the initial Create User start up screen) then quitting again, copying the saved CakeManiaDB back from TUNGSTEN, and then restarting Cake Mania again. My data was there.

[mbaker5408]

What I find really strange is that there doesn't seem to be any file related to the Cake Mania application that could be holding data.

Actually there is data stored in SavedPreffrences and UnsavedPreffrences. that is very important to several applications....

[istara]

Sorry I edited my post at the same time you quoted it!

Will post back again after the next crunch crash to see if my new back-up method works... (it will require frequently quitting and manually backing up that file, but c'est la vie).

[mbaker5408]

As a FYI My copy of cakemania stores everything but 1 thing in the cakemania database and the other Item thats stored elsewhere is the registration code....so what I am assuming is happening is when you get to some point your memory is getting corrupted as kerien stated eralier, and since CakeManaiaDB is open during this curuption time frame when the system crashes it's being closed and erased by the os to protect it's self from further coruption. My suggestion is to try and note exacly what is going on with the game IE is it just after doing one thing or a cirtain chain of events each time.....I'm sorry your experiancing this issue....also just incase you don't have anything I use RBACKUP and Explorer from Resco these can back your system up and let you copy databases (I recomened RBACKUP so you can backup and restore your device incase of any issues) let me know if this helps....A couple of other things to look at is, do you have any scheduled tasks that might be kicking in IE: Email Checking programs, Alarms, Anything else that might be running in the background. these all can play a factor in memory usage, espscially with a program that wants lots of memory like CakeMania.

[istara]

The only thing running in the background is MessageEase (an alternative text input system). Other than that I don't have any alarms on.

The longer I play it for, the more likely it seems to crash.

[mbaker5408]

The only thing running in the background is MessageEase (an alternative text input system). Other than that I don't have any alarms on.

The longer I play it for, the more likely it seems to crash.

Try turn off the MessageEase while you play and see if that helps...

[mbaker5408]

Just to ask the question, If you disabled the Other program how did things work????

[Kieren]

Hi Istara (and anyone else having problems like this),

The Cake Mania savegame information should all be found in "CakemaniaDB.pdb" (which I see you've already found actually), if you back that file up then that should protect you from losing too much. This file *should* be backed up during a HotSync too, although each time you perform a HotSync it's updated (so you might have to manually copy it somewhere safe from there).


The only thing running in the background is MessageEase (an alternative text input system). Other than that I don't have any alarms on.


As Mike Baker suggested, it may be worth temporarily disabling that and seeing if you have fewer/no problems, but in my experience there's usually more working beneath the surface of the Palm than you'd expect. If doing this doesn't help, if you can email me with a list of what you have installed I'll see if I can spot anything else which we could try disabling


Then I played for awhile, I was at Casino in NOVEMBER and next time I played IT WAS WIPED. Next day I started over and got through Kitchen for a year and it was wiped again? What gives? I love the game but can not stand to start again and again!


Hi Marketacumen, could I just check that from your description you haven't encountered any crashes, just that the save information "disappears" when you next load the game? This sounds like the cause might be a bit different to the one istara has had, but the symptoms are similar enough that they look the same. Could I possibly ask if you are running the game from card, and whether you use a third party launcher, like LauncherX, ZLauncher, anything like that?

Warmest regards,
Kieren

[marketacumen]

Hi Marketacumen, could I just check that from your description you haven't encountered any crashes, just that the save information "disappears" when you next load the game? This sounds like the cause might be a bit different to the one istara has had, but the symptoms are similar enough that they look the same. Could I possibly ask if you are running the game from card, and whether you use a third party launcher, like LauncherX, ZLauncher, anything like that?


I have had crashes some times, some times not. At times I exit the app and the phone resets itself (which is typically rare). But I have lost data without having a crash at all. I exit the app fine, go about my business, then next time I go into the program, all of the saved data is GONE. (Shock and dismay!) Noteable that my initials are still saved (KMD) and the licence code is still in place...

I am not running anything "funny" like LauncherX, ZLauncher, or anything. Pretty generic setup.

The app was on the main phone memory originally.

I will note that I moved the app to a 1GB card and it hasn't had any problems... yet.

If it's helpful, here's all of my applications (Note the plethora of Astraware!):

1,366 AddressCitiesDB.PDB
3,741 AddressCompaniesDB.PDB
790 AddressCountriesDB.PDB
868 AddressStatesDB.PDB
1,570 AddressTitlesDB.PDB
158,386 Alchemy!.PRC
137,346 Atomica.PRC
9,058 AuthenticationMgr.PRC
57,200 AwSU-PuzzleData.PRC
28,892 AwSU-ScratchpadData.PRC
62,720 AwSU-UserData.PRC
132,053 Bejeweled!.PRC
54,553 Bkgammon.PRC
3,821 Blazer_Bookmarks.PDB
21,839 Blazer_Cookies.PDB
1,794 Blazer_Field_Autofill.PDB
80 Blazer_Find_Autofill.PDB
1,427 Blazer_URL_Autofill.PDB
239 BtExgLibDB.PDB
2,561,883 CakeMania.PRC
1,520 CalculusDB.PDB
214 CalendarLocationsDB-PDat.PDB
244 CalypsoBest.PDB
37,391 CarrierProfiles2.PDB
6,196 Children's_Pack.PDB
9,648 Classic_II_Levels.PDB
7,176 Classic_Levels.PDB
8,924 Confusion_Pack.PDB
396 ConnectionMgr50DB.PDB
426 ConnectionMgrDB.PDB
592 DocCategories.PDB
26,716 DopeWars.PRC
1,044 EAContentDB.PDB
977 EISBookmark.PDB
1,050 EISDNS.PDB
457 EISHistory.PDB
15,264 EncryptionMgr.PRC
526 English.PDB
497 FrameworkDB.PDB
2,548 GalaxDB.PRC
452 Graffiti_ShortCuts_____.PRC
7,374 HSTraceDatabase.PDB
3,085 HtmlPlugin.PRC
90 iFDConfig.PDB
80 ImageLib_imageDB.PDB
388 ImageLib_mainDB.PDB
12,166 Impossible_Pack.PDB
356 LauncherDB.PDB
1,368 locLCusLocationDB.PDB
6,317 locLDefLocationDB.PDB
80,478 LodeRunner.PRC
369 MailDB.PDB
51,676 MemoProDB.PDB
26,390 MIDI_Ring_Tones.PDB
26,978 MMPluginMGR.PRC
9,853 MMPROIII_Attachments.PDB
358 MMPROIII_Disconnected.PDB
90,015 MMPROIII_Messages.PDB
6,113 MMSmartAdd.PRC
8,889 MMWizard.PRC
287,345 Monopoly.PRC
3,297 MSWPlugin.PRC
201,131 MultiMailPROIII.PRC
236,456 MummyMaze.PRC
1,155 NetworkDB.PDB
66,205 NetworkProfiles2.PDB
125,915 Nisqually.PRC
789,809 P4Messages.PDB
102,029 Package_Installer.PRC
10,238 Panic_Pack.PDB
15,874 ParkingLot.PDB
10,204 Parking_Lot.PRC
225,524 PassPlusDB.PDB
353,345 PasswordsPlus.PRC
69,817 PdaNet.PRC
59,807 PdaReach.PRC
145,018 PhoneCallDB.PDB
1,840 PhoneFavorites2DB.PDB
587 PixerRecentRecipientListDB.PDB
116,738 PM_Calc.PRC
303,805 pssh.PRC
245 pssh_Connection_List.PDB
1,175 pssh_Known_Host_Keys.PDB
228 pssh_Preferences.PRC
80 pssh_Public_Keys.PDB
152,670 psysLaunchDB.PDB
504 pXlr_k.PDB
16,433 qsimport.PRC
1,070 Queries.PDB
76,975 Saved_Preferences.PRC
324 SMS_6106394630BFB38813.PDB
485 SMS_6108644747BFB4763A.PDB
915 SMS_6108644747C1545B5C.PDB
152 SMS_Addresses.PDB
141 SMS_Domains.PDB
2,446 SMS_Msg_Database.PDB
1,120 SMS_Quicklist.PDB
328 SMS_QuickText.PDB
308 SMS_Special_Addresses.PDB
293,146 SpellData.PDB
109,859 sslplus.PRC
978 System_MIDI_Sounds.PDB
640,059 TCPMP.PRC
1,426 Tetris_Prefs.PDB
9,732 ThumbnailCache.PDB
9,709 Ton-SylvanKai.PDB
3,134 Ton-YoKentpickupthethephone.PDB
9,731 Traffic.PRC
296,770 TuSSH.PRC
8,192 Twister_Levels.PDB
3,574 TxtPlugin.PRC
7,702 Variety_10_Pack.PDB
7,654 Variety_11_Pack.PDB
7,854 Variety_3_Pack.PDB
7,506 Variety_5_Pack.PDB
7,724 Variety_6_Pack.PDB
7,780 Variety_7_Pack.PDB
8,076 Variety_8_Pack.PDB
8,046 Variety_9_Pack.PDB
7,884 Variety_II_Pack.PDB
7,894 Variety_Pack.PDB
14,909 VCardPlugin.PRC
63,651 Vexed.PRC
4,564 VillageSavegame.PDB
154,292 WallpaperCache.PDB
80 WebLib_Autofill.PDB

Hope this is helpful. I'll let you know if I lose data again on the card.

The only good news is that in playing the game again and again, my purchases are much better timed!

Best,

-Kent.

[Kieren]

Hi Kent,

I couldn't see anything in that list which stood out to my mind as likely to be a problem at all, and certainly nothing likely to cause data loss like that, so I have to admit to being puzzled as to what could have caused the issue you've been seeing. The symptoms are consistent with a third party launcher inconsistently copying and updating the savegame file as you run the game (sometimes copying it across and sometimes not), but that's not the case here. Also, that would have resulted in losing the profile names as well, whereas keeping the profile names but losing the saves is most odd - both sets of data are stored in the same file!

Do let me know if you see any more unusual behaviour now it's stored on the card, and I'll see if I can think of anything else which might be causing it. If you can try and remember whether anything unusual happened on startup or exit, that could be handy too!

Warmest regards,
Kieren

[istara]

I don't know if this helps, but the nightmare crash is nearly always just as I complete a level, then comes applause/death rattle whatever.

Also: the re-copying of that file works perfectly. I don't even need to resync, I just copy CakeManiaDB back across from the flash partition with Filez.

EDIT: Just to clarify, here's what happens at the end of a level:

1. The lights dim and Save/Save Continue comes up
2. There is "applause noise"
3. There is a rattling noise, then it goes to the Save screen (all fine)

Except sometimes it crashes at point 3.


EDIT 2:

OK - I cannot complete the game, because sadly it crashes every time after I finish the last level. As soon as the screen starts to dim with the CLOSED sign showing, the death rattle starts and the whole thing freezes.

I've tried four times now :(

Also - one more thing I've noticed - later levels take much longer to "start" - as in when you've finished in the upgrades shop, and press Finish, there is a pause of several seconds before the game begins. Not too long, but definitely longer than earlier levels.