Friday Facts #231 - Belt compression & Crash log uploading

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-231

[DanGio]

Great !

[Gergely]

Thank you for finally addressing privacy. I have been dealing with log files myself and I can't help but wonder why people still feel unsafe about it. OR/AND worry about those who do not even care.

I still recommend not even making this an option though.

[ske]

Do you have an affected Ryzen processor yourself for running tests on?

[Twinsen]

Do you have an affected Ryzen processor yourself for running tests on?

Nope, we were thinking of possibly getting one. But the issue is still very rare and we will most probably not be able to trigger the crash on our computer.
Last time we got and AMD computer with weird hardware we did a few tests and now it's mostly collecting dust.

[Lorash]

-

[Jap2.0]

I never had many problems when you added this and this reassured me a bit, however I'm still going to leave it disabled, for the following reasons:

• 1. I'm going to upload it here anyway
  2. I can provide much more information on the forum than a single log
  3. There are many bugs that don't involve crashes, and in those cases a log won't get sent
  4. In the hypothetical case I try to reproduce a crash and in the process the game crashes 10 times, you have no way of knowing that 10 different people didn't suddenly have the same crash

Again, nothing against them doing this, those are just my reasons for opting out.

[Omarflyjoemacky]

As always, awesome FFF. Awfully grateful for the belt compression.

I'm surprised in this day and age, people would still be upset about you devs knowing how much RAM they have. I have no problem with the crash log reporting - it makes for a better game in the long run. Keep up the great work.

[<NO_NAME>]

If you can't find the bug, it is 90% chance that this is thread synchronization.

[dasiro]

4. In the hypothetical case I try to reproduce a crash and in the process the game crashes 10 times, you have no way of knowing that 10 different people didn't suddenly have the same crash

chances are high there's a lot of info in the log or dump that is so unique it must be either the same savegame or the same mod being used so they'll pretty fast figure out it's the same system/person even without having any other traceable information that leads back to you

[steinio]

Why not connect the uploaded crash log with the logged in user credentials and in the user area there is a overview of my own crash logs with a case number which i can quote in the forum?

[ske]

Do you have an affected Ryzen processor yourself for running tests on?

Nope, we were thinking of possibly getting one. But the issue is still very rare and we will most probably not be able to trigger the crash on our computer.
Last time we got and AMD computer with weird hardware we did a few tests and now it's mostly collecting dust.

There was talk about compiler crashes on earlier versions of the processors. AMD offers replacement for those earlier processors that are affected by the compiler crashes. Threadripper/EPYCs were already fixed for that particular crash type at release. It might be some weird caching problem that occurs in conjunction with tight loops. Do you check and include the CPU stepping in the crash logs?

[QGamer]

I must confess

I was contemplating if I should or should not check the option to automatically send crash logs to you guys. After reading your FFF, you've convinced me. Next time I start up Factorio, I will double-check to ensure that crash log uploading is enabled.

Congratulations on the bugs you've already fixed, and best of luck to you as you try to find the mysterious bug!
As always, it was a great FFF!

[Jap2.0]

4. In the hypothetical case I try to reproduce a crash and in the process the game crashes 10 times, you have no way of knowing that 10 different people didn't suddenly have the same crash

chances are high there's a lot of info in the log or dump that is so unique it must be either the same savegame or the same mod being used so they'll pretty fast figure out it's the same system/person even without having any other traceable information that leads back to you

True. They might think it's very common for me, though, even if it was actually rare. Good point nonetheless.

[ixnorp]

You've made the right choices regarding crash logs. You'll never make everyone 100% happy no matter what you do, but this will make the largest number of people happy in the long run.

[torham]

Its so true that people would never send crash dumps to you. I click "don't send" automatically out of habit. I have been doing it ever since internet became a thing( 17+ years). I do not know of an instance where anyone would send a crash log to microsoft, and it would actually solve something. I think that message is there just to troll.

[Engimage]

While it has potential I am not happy with compression just yet
viewtopic.php?f=182&t=57998
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=58046
And some splitter compression bugs related to its small internal buffer

Waiting patiently for those to be fixed!

[bobingabout]

Woo, lines 13, 26 and 27. Bobingabout contributions~

[Ringkeeper]

can you tell us which Ryzen CPU is affected or when it is happening (what are players doing)? So it might be tested by players?
Have Ryzen 7 1700X myself on 2 PC ^^

[Wubinator]

Why not ask for the opt-in / opt-out once in the main menu for the people who haven't made a choice yet.

Show it in a popup over the main menu, that way it isn't much different than the release notes popup. Because people aren't in a active game they have the time to read the information in the popup. And you can tell more details if you want to because the size wouldn't matter anymore.
Useful information I can think of: tell what it's for and where in the options people can disable it.
And I don't know if this still an issue in certain area's but maybe tell about the average file size for people with bandwidth caps

Highlight the opt-in button as the default for the people that just hit enter to hide the box?

You can show the same information again with a tool tip on the option in the menu



Maybe it's also an option (for those that opted out) to see some kind of alert icon in the main menu when there are crash logs so people could still cherry-pick crash logs to commit.