Small crash issue with MZ

[RHachicho]

Okay so I haven't posted much in a few years. But I think i see a problem that needs fixing that probably doesn't affect that many people. I used to get crashes all the time in MV and it still happens every now and again with MZ however at the start of my project it never happened .. for almost a week. So I decided to start keeping track of things. Thankfully MZ no longer crashes while saving. Which MV does on the same system with the same software with the same everything.

However these crashes that I do have come from one .. very .. specific .. problem.

Large amounts of files in any directory in which rpgmaker has to populate lists.

The Maker is totally fine with the files being there .. It doesn't bother it one jot .. But the moment you hit that picture drop down box to select from a list of pictures that is too long .. you risk a crash.

I think that the problem also might affect audio. But for me it's MUCH more prevalent with pictures. Because I use so many.I think probably because it has to generate a preview on the fly. If rpgmaker does manage to populate the list. Then your gold. The crash happens as soon as you try to open up the image browser from the show picture command.

I am making a game with lots of characters and visual novel elements I can't help but have a lot of images in my game. And I don't think this should really be a problem. I have had zero crashes when doing anything else in my new project.

 

[Andar]

where do you store your projects?
can you give the full folderpath from the drive letter to the index.html?

there are a few known problems with file handling that depends on where you save the files, and that folderpath will tell us if one of those is interfering here.

additionally, can you put some numbers to the claim of too many picture files?
and give a screenshot of that specific folder?
the numbers will tell us if you really have too many or if other people have a similar number without problems.
and the screenshot will give us examples of your picture filenames, because it is more likely that you got problems when too many of your filenames break the networking rules.

also, please tell us which editor-versions of MV and MZ you use.
both editors did have some problems in early versions, but those should be solved with versions beyond 1.4.x in both cases.

 

[RHachicho]

Okay! Let me answer your questions one at a time.

The pictures folder contains 572 Files. I don't use any spaces or weird characters in the file names All it is is Letters, Capitalization and the _ character. Though I did find and change some few files that broke those rules. We will see if it makes a difference. It was only about 10-12 files But if it's a big deal we will see.

My project directory is D:\CoD\Currency_of_Damnation It is stored on a standard non SSD local drive.

My editor version is 1.4.4

I'm pretty sure space in file names breaks the rules. But does -? If it does then a lot of the rpgmaker dlc audio files do which seems like a nasty surprise lol. And a tedious renaming job

 

[FrigidGaze]

Heya!

Does sorting the pictures into separate folders help alleviate the issues, or does it still hang and try to load everything?

Because the pictures folder does support additional folders when navigating files, and splitting them all up into separate ones might help both with the loading, and organisation!

 

[RHachicho]

Hmm I didn't know that was a thing and would have done that but .. Well it's going to be a pain to retarget every show picture command in the game .. there are hundreds .. I'd really rather get this working .. then again .. quite a few pictures are not called yet. Because their characters haven't yet appeared. It will make it really weird but i could shuffle those off into subfolders. And leave the images already called where they are. Does rugmaker still not have a way to batch replace all references to one file with another? Cos I can think of a million tonnes of frustration such a feature would save.

Oh who am I kidding they haven't really improved the editor in like 4 iterations XD

 

[FrigidGaze]

Ahh, I feared that then if all the commands are already in place for a lot of it. ;~; I suppose at the very least it's worth testing, for future cases, just to see if it solved the root of the issue or not. And hopefully in the meantime people can provide additional solutions to things that might help.

 

[RHachicho]

I was just about to say it seemed fixed but it happened again .. This time when loading a subfolder. However that subfolder did not have very many images in it and all were named appropriately. I'm going to remove the stuff from the subfolders .. Just because it's easier for me and the crash still seems to happen.

In fact it might even make the problem worse because having to populate the list when u click the plus icon seems to roll the crash dice again.

 

[Andar]

Honestly we really need that batch function in the editor. We've needed it for a decade now ..

there is an alternative, but it is not neat and can be risky, so it should only be tested with backups.

you can use a multifile-text editor like textpad or similar to open all json files of your project at the same time, then run a replace over all files to replace filepaths.
it will require some identifier to know which picture ended in which subfolder, but then you can autoreplace the changed folderpath for them.

the problem is that such an autoreplace tends to have a lot of false positives if you select the wrong filter - like trying to replace all text "one" with "1" and ending up with "st1" for "stone".
But if you can find the correct filters you can batch-change that way.

 

[FrigidGaze]

Ah. ;~; It's unfortunate to hear the subfolders didn't end up resolving things and I suppose ends up being a potentially larger issue of RPG Maker as a whole then?

 

[RHachicho]

Yeah I tried that with my last project back when i was really really bad at file naming. But regardless moving most of the project into subfolders did not appear to fix the issue it seems the total amount of pictures that the editor has to parse when opening the picture folder is what matters regardless of whatever folder they are in. And in fact opening the subfolders seems to cause more crashes because at least if they are only in one folder you only have to roll the dice once. This isn't nearly as bad as when I was working with MV (was an old version.) As long as I am paranoid about saving I rarely lose more than 15 minites .. half hour max and it doesn't happen that often .. When trying to make it crash again I actually opened and closed the list fast about a hundred times without a crash but then I was like .. time to get to work open up a subfolder and bam! It's very very frustrating.

 

[RHachicho]

Any news on this one? Just because this isn't a total disaster doesn't mean I don't want it solved XD

 

[rayminator]

I have the same problem and as well as another member
when the crash right click on start menu if you are on windows and select event viewer and then select custom views < to drop down and select Administrative Events and look for error make sure you keep a eye out on the time of the crash

I don't know if you getting the same error it crashed on me when i was adding images

Spoiler: error messege

Faulting application name: RPGMZ.exe, version: 1.4.4.0, time stamp: 0x620db8c8
Faulting module name: Qt5Qml.dll, version: 5.12.10.0, time stamp: 0x5fa15be0
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000ea44a
Faulting process ID: 0x888
Faulting application start time: 0x01d852aff2378f67
Faulting application path: R:\RPGMZ\RPGMZ.exe
Faulting module path: R:\RPGMZ\Qt5Qml.dll
Report ID: c1fa282d-3caf-44bd-aa48-7ab0aa529578
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

 

[RHachicho]

Yep I get that same exact error message! Word for word! I looked into the apps that use that DLL. And well the only one that I have running is Origin. I'm going to shut that down and see if that stops the crash. If I go for a whole day without another crash well .. It's probably that ..

Damn no dice there .. uninstalled Origin and it still happens.

 

[rayminator]

it has something to do with QtWebEngineProcess
the Qt5Qml.dll is run/owned by Qt Group
rpg mz is using a older version it might be causing the error/crash
if you look at KADOKAWA\RPGMZ folder the file is there
so it has nothing to do with Origin

 

[RHachicho]

Ah then it's on them to fix it? I hope they do it quickly then .. Interestingly this never happens when selecting graphics for enemies.

 

[RHachicho]

So is there any news at all? I just lost another hours work to this nonsense? If this is a known issue then why is this taking so long to solve? There surely has to be a way around this!! This is literally killing my motivation all over again. It's like I spend a whole ass hour trying to make something and I just forget about this bug by accident and then bam i click an image and woah looks like u got comfortable .. I guess you don't mind that we just dumped a whole hour of your creative life into the ether.

And don't tell me I'm the only one please .. I am looking through the forum and I see topics circling around this particular DLL file for MONTHS. How the hell is this NOT fixed? People have cooperated people have tried everything but no one seems to care. Everyone's too busy promoting paid plugins and substandard dlc.

Honestly their employees should just feel terrible that you work for these people. For that matter I've never seen anyone in any of my topics that's not just a veteran.

If this isn't something my end then tech support can fix then it needed to be patched yesterday. This isn't acceptable behaviour from a company that charges as much as it does. If it is something that support can fix then how the hell has no one told me the solution in all this time.

I'm just so frustrated .. It's like I was lulled into a false sense of security when the project was new and not bloated but then when I'd invested so much I could no longer really change my choice of engine I'm being put into this meatgrinder of inadequate support and an uncaring predatory company that feeds of peoples desires to express themselves.

 

[rayminator]

we don't when there going to be a update just have wait and be patience

 

[RHachicho]

No to hell with patience. This is a known issue that is causing crashes for many people. On many systems. If there are this many topics there's probably a lot more people having the crash that are just giving up on the software they paid good money for.

God when did we all become so accepting of these companies BS.

 

[Ingwer]

Just wanted to add my two cents here as well.
I am using MZ for about half a year now, constantly checking these forums. While I'm pretty sure that one could say the thread author got a bit 'angry', I can totally see why that is.

I am using this line of software for over 10 years now and I am actually astonished how the polishing has decreased with the last iteration (although I would bet this 'change' came already along with the remade build for MV). It is also a bit perplexing to me that, as @RHachicho mentioned, nobody really seems to notice these kind of things.

There are actually a lot of minor nuisances I'd noticed early when using the program and I'm wondering how nobody else seems to care - or if for some reason my system is the only one causing them. I did intend to make a own thread about them and can still do if desired, but after seeing a lot of these threads popping up this month, I think that it does fit in here to as a short summary to justify my point.

- Dark Mode starting to flicker randomly when using the interface or stopping to move the mouse
- Scroll bars in every window getting a bugged starting point, not selecting the right item and jumping when refreshing itself after moving
- Above problem causing entire parts of contents to be visually missing before the refresh
- Some interfaces not remembering the selected category or item after closing (Ressource Manager)
- Software always launching in windowed full screen and jittering when trying to maximize
- Textboxes (for example in plugin parameters) not refreshing their text marker location, so every second text box the letters will not be auto-marked etc.
- No multiple selection of items with mouse, had to guess that you need to hold shift for that
- Ressource Manager not having confirmation prompts (Combine that with the scroll bar issue)
- MV Animation page still having one or two optical bugs like the maximum frames (also, why is there no selectable background for the MV mode, I am pretty sure the old iterations had that)

These are just the things I still had fresh in mind, I'm certain there are a few more. Now again, should have their own topic, but what I'm referring here to is that I do not remember Ace having such lack of polishing. Say about this software and the probably smaller development team what you will, but for what it was, I could always proudly say that the software was stable and polished in what it tried to accomplish.
For some reason, this just isn't the case anymore and it perplexes me that apparently either no one else is having these issues or just doesn't care.

I see how these things could be nit-picking if one simply uses the software more casually. And that's totally fine. But the software promises a working environment for more dedicated projects, as well. And the above mentioned problems make it really, really tiring to work with the program over a long period of time - not even on a single day, but over weeks and months.

All of this brings us back to the most problematic issue - the crashes.
I am aware that one needs very detailed information to deal with something like this. But I get the impression that, again, up until this month, apparently nobody noticed. Is it really that rare of a problem, or something that these users are doing wrong? Every thread basically comes to another conclusion, leaving this error in the program - which again is... really not a good working environment.

So, instead of just ranting, here is my information about this issue:

This bug occurs when trying to load up lists of files that have been imported. This is the general gist, anyway, as more and more iterations of this seem to come up.
At first it happened with the picture event command when selecting a file, now someone reported it also happens with the opening of tileset files. That I can indeed confirm, as it happened to me as soon as I finally came around to adding these files to my database. Probably took about 5 database entries (so about 20 times opening the file list) to get the software crashing.
I would bet some money that one could reproduce this even with opening the files for characters and so on, but this is not yet confirmed.

Now, about these files. The common answer is: Your files have been named wrong.
This is the file system I use for every single file in my project: XX_XX_00_(XX_XX).file
Please explain to me what could be wrong with that. After reading into these forums I even got back to my files and removed every space before brackets as this is apparently a no-go.
So what's left are the brackets - are they the problem? If so, gotcha, I'll remove them and try again.
The thing is though, my picture and tileset folders do not use them. And it still crashes.
The only thing I can assume here is, if anything particular is responsible, it is the amount of files. I indeed have over 100 tileset and 400 picture files. However, if you are telling me this software can't handle this, we are back to the 'more dedicated projects' issue.

The other thing mentioned were file paths. I did not change the file path for creating projects. It's still inside my documents/rmmz folder. I also changed the project to not have spaces in the name, either.

If you still have any solutions left for it being a user generated problem, I am honestly all ears. I actually do not care if I or someone else needs to fix the problem, as long as there is a solution.
Because the problem is that it also does not happen after a long amount of time, necessarily. Saving the project, as some mention from time to time, also does not fix this entirely. It sometimes seems like prolonging the issue, but it also tends to crash directly afterwards, as well. Sometimes after 30 minutes, sometimes after 10. Sometimes after 30 hours, but only if I'd only work on things not related to file-list opening. Yes, I left the program open for days or a whole week and it never crashed one single time as long as I did not open these lists. If I do, though, for adding maybe 20 picture commands to an event, I need to save between at least every 5-8, as it will very probably crash in between.
This is what makes this so annoying - it doesn't happen after hours, where one could accept it, save his work and refresh the program by restarting it. It happens within half an hour and always either removes your progress or forces you to restart the program every 5 list entries or 10 work minutes. Which I am pretty sure is not that healthy for your project either, constantly relaunching the software like that.

If desired, I can also add some details about my computer if it helps any - just ask. In general, it is however a freshly bought pc with enough hardware to run the games, and especially the software. I even re-installed windows two weeks ago, but the problem existed back then as it does now. There is also not much installed besides the software and some minor other ones. Basically, this PC should not have any issues running the program from a software (except the OS may being an issue), nor from a hardware capability standpoint. So the only thing could be the very specific setup in its entirety, like the CPU or GPU...or the SSD. Again, I can share my specs, but I am pretty sure this problem shouldn't exactly stem from that.

So in the end, if it's not an user issue, it has to be related to something the software itself can't handle in this exact moment, for whatever reason. Seeing as it can handle it a couple times before crashing, I would assume it is either memory related or something in the routine to call these lists is causing a problem the software, maybe under certain situations (like what you opened before or what it had to process beforehand) cannot handle.

Sorry for the long post, I am also not sure how much it helps. I just wanted to make clear that this is indeed an issue - and I would actually be interested in why it is that either no one notices it or just doesn't have it. Or them, if you add the stuff mentioned at the beginning.
I do indeed love this line of software - otherwise I wouldn't use it. But as mentioned, the lack of polish certainly has increased. There is a fine line between what is acceptable, especially if you know 'the whole package' of the RPG Maker world, and what is just having a decline in quality. At the very least, it would be great if one would be able to trust the software he is working with, as it is quite a long relationship you're going to have with it.

[Edit]: Seems the new update 1.5 indeed addressed the crash issue, at least in theory. Hopefully it also prevents the cause mentioned in here and it doesn't have multiple ones. Would be great to see it gone completely.

 

[RHachicho]

Yeah I could also write an essay entitled 'Why isn't this part of rpgmaker yet?' XD That being said the I haven't had a crash since the latest update dropped so hopefully that's me done pulling my hair out for now.

I'll just say I'm grateful for that if it holds I'm still being super paranoid about saving it but that's a good general policy anyway.