Crashes at least once per use

[bazutti]

Sorry but this is mainly a venting thread.

Saved a link? It might crash. Tried looking at a smart image (below the image restriction size)? It might crash. Save a topic? It might crash.

The annoyance of this software, including the time to get back to where you were after a crash, is beginning to outweigh the pros of using it. As I've been using it much heavier lately, I'm noticing more and more about this that makes it from how it first appeared (awesome campaign management) to how it appears now (clunky software that's buggy).

The lack of hotkeys for some functions just drags this down into a larger time sink than is necessary. The save and load times for images and stat blocks could be better as well. The lack of sorting options when viewing topics makes it difficult to always find what you want. Why can't we sort with prefixes or suffixes? Why can't I manually arrange the items?

The smart map is cool until anything else is needed for the image. Ideally, it would gain functionality if I can use some basic drawing tools to mark up the map, and the option to hide the markings.

When making links, it'd be great to see "Ignore rest of snippet" for a given link. It'd be nice to create link stubs without having to click through a bunch of things to create a shell item that's linked now and can be filled out later (think Wiki).

I still think this software has a good use, but it's becoming more difficult and annoying to work with. The bells and whistles are nice to have, but honestly I'm really considering scaling back my "wants" and just using Evernote or One Note again. /rant

[Exmortis]

Link crashes seem to be only happen when I do them manually, not when the system auto detects them. I have submitted a ton of crash reports over the past months with so many modules I have entered.

Like gaming, the trick is to save often, this means you have less lost work on a crash. I save a lot now, and a crash loses me very little. I also re-index the database every few major work times. This has reduced the crashes with links.

Trust me I do feel your pain, I am about to embark on my biggest project yet, and that is saying something after putting the finishing touches on T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil.

[MNBlockHead]

The only time RW crashes is when I have lots of tabs open, and then try to open a large image. This means that it tends to crash in game. I'm now better about resizing images and breaking up maps rather than trying to have a huge map with hundreds of pins and RW has been much more stable for me.

[Acenoid]

I agree there are some crashes. Links crash only for me nowadays ( I think) if Iam trying to do thinks fast. E.g. clicking multiple times on OK while the previous dialogue window has not completely finished processing. Maybe you can avoid some other crashes too.

Be sure to submit bug reports. If it's frustrating you, best to stop using until the next release which is scheduled soon. Hopefully it will include fixes for the bug reports that were submitted in the past weeks and months.

I think the pro's outweigh the con's even with some crashes and instability.

The suggestions belong into the feature request thread. And here I agree with you as well, there is some functionality missing, but compared to the initial smart images, there are already improvements. I made some suggestions as well regarding the available tool set and I hope that LWD will put everything in

[MaxSupernova]

>I'm really considering scaling back my "wants"

Funny, that's almost exactly what the devs just said about what they're delivering.

[wurzel]

During gaming sessions my players start betting on the number of crashes happening. To be honest so far it was never more than three times in a single session but it still prevents some of them who are DMing themselves from licensing RW.
The crashes are almost always Out Of Memory exceptions. Since after the crash the program starts with exactly the same situation and does not crash for some time this strongly hints at poor memory management. But memory leaks are almost always hard to find (I don't know C# but I don't think it is any better in this area than other languages) and therefore I fear that this is going to continue to annoy me.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by wurzel

During gaming sessions my players start betting on the number of crashes happening. To be honest so far it was never more than three times in a single session but it still prevents some of them who are DMing themselves from licensing RW.
The crashes are almost always Out Of Memory exceptions. Since after the crash the program starts with exactly the same situation and does not crash for some time this strongly hints at poor memory management. But memory leaks are almost always hard to find (I don't know C# but I don't think it is any better in this area than other languages) and therefore I fear that this is going to continue to annoy me.

Are you using massive pictures to cause this? I've not had crashes during GMing for a long time.

[daplunk]

I don't think I have ever crashed in a session. The only time it crashes is when I'm messing with massive files (images) and it's rare. Might get 1 crash a month on average.

Crashed 3 times today. But i was doing the same thing over and over again indicating there's a problem with what i'm trying to do not with the application itself so to speak.

[rob]

As was surmised above, the only reason you should be randomly crashing with any frequency is that you are using excessively large images and/or keeping lots of tabs open, usually with images in many/all of them.

The first thing to do is check the resolution of images you're using. If you have 300dpi scans from books, that's usually WAY too big for use on the screen. You should only be using as much resolution as you truly need to zoom into. Anything more is just going to chew up memory unnecessarily (and probably lots of it).

Another possibility is to assess how many different images you're keeping up at one time. Each image consumes its own chunk of RAM. Smart images are the worst, since we have to manage the image, the overlay, the reveal layer, and another layer with all the pins - plus the final composited result. So a single smart image is very expensive. If you have multiple smart images open, you're chewing up memory. If those smart images are unnecessarily large (i.e. resolution), then you're multiplying that excess by FIVE every time. So it's very important to not be wasteful with smart images.

Hopefully, this is helpful. If you investigate and address these issues, you should find yourself running pretty smoothly like others here have said. If you address these and still have problems, let us know. We can continue to brainstorm what might be going wrong for you and see if there are further things to investigate as a cause.

[Exmortis]

Originally Posted by rob

As was surmised above, the only reason you should be randomly crashing with any frequency is that you are using excessively large images and/or keeping lots of tabs open, usually with images in many/all of them.

The first thing to do is check the resolution of images you're using. If you have 300dpi scans from books, that's usually WAY too big for use on the screen. You should only be using as much resolution as you truly need to zoom into. Anything more is just going to chew up memory unnecessarily (and probably lots of it).

Another possibility is to assess how many different images you're keeping up at one time. Each image consumes its own chunk of RAM. Smart images are the worst, since we have to manage the image, the overlay, the reveal layer, and another layer with all the pins - plus the final composited result. So a single smart image is very expensive. If you have multiple smart images open, you're chewing up memory. If those smart images are unnecessarily large (i.e. resolution), then you're multiplying that excess by FIVE every time. So it's very important to not be wasteful with smart images.

Hopefully, this is helpful. If you investigate and address these issues, you should find yourself running pretty smoothly like others here have said. If you address these and still have problems, let us know. We can continue to brainstorm what might be going wrong for you and see if there are further things to investigate as a cause.

I never work with more than three tabs while entering my work. One for the topic I am entering, one for the Map (they are not Hi res by any means, I thik the largest is under a MB usually) and one for supporting topic if and when needed.

My crashes almost always come from setting links.

Example, I entered in a new adventure, T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil. Now anyone who is familiar with this, knows how large it is.

I went back, entered in a topic for every monster in the adventure. Went back to every topic, and created links to the encountered monster to the monster topic. I also went back to all the GM and Player synopsis topics and created a link to every topic mentioned in the text. Example would be in GM notes, specific talk of specific places, encounters etc.

I probably crashed a dozen times or more while doing so. I usually narrowed it down to a specific topic I was linking too. The fixes were either one of the following or both:

1- re indexing the realm.
2- going into the topic, then closing the tab. No saving, no work change, just a simple access of the topic.

The link would then not cause a crash.

This happens on my Surface Pro 4, My Gamer Lappy, and my power desktop. So it isn't install or hardware specific. All are windows 10 however.

There isn't a memory issue, unless RW has a leak like Niagara falls. It can happen within a short time of launching, and often I am going back and merely setting links within GM synopsis topics to actual adventure content entered after. Thus I only have a single tab open.

Trust me I love RW, but it does make me wonder why it wasn't a 64bit application from the get go.