Module Database and Crash Recovery news - Epsylon

time is still scarce over here but nevertheless a couple of things could be done on the engine and the homepage side. the content side stays a bit back until all people get back the time they don't have at the time beeing ( i think roughly 2 or 3 weeks and then we can pick up work in that department ).

on the homepage the engine module section has been altered and sports now a database backend. the database consist of two entries: modules and module types. the user can then go and look for better suiting modules on this page. more informations about the individual modules will be added upon the next time. also filtering will be added later on. check out the database at Modules Listing and Module Type Listing

furthermore on the engine side work went into improving the Crash Recovery System. in most games if an error occures it results usually in a crash to desktop and in some cases with crash-dump files which is cubersome to find a solution for what went wrong neither can the user continue playing loosing progress. the Drag[en]gine provides a safety net in the form of Crash Recovery Modules. as with all modules in the engine you can choose the one pleasing you. some screenshot of the default crash recovery module is provided below. it's still work in progress though.

as a user your first bet in such a situation is to restart the module causing the error. if this does not help you can try to mess around with the module parameters. if nothing else works you can switch to another module which works and continue playing.

for developers there is the error-trace which is shown on the screenshot provided. this trace can be used by module developers to add detail informations about the time of the error allowing for better detecting the problem. furthermore if required you have a direct console interface into the engine or each individual module. you can send each of them formatted commands and checking out the feedback they give you. this is possible because in contrast to other game engines everything is up and running during the crash recovery ( simply put to sleep ) hence you can inspect the running engine trying to find out why your module doesn't do it's job correctly.

have a nice day

( EDIT: linked image updated )
( EDIT: EDIT: moved the linked image to the proper location and added the second one missing. )