Random shutdown of Garmin

[+Zorkan_Heneron]

I'm working on a project that requires 4 players to make it through the Wherigo to get to the end, each with their own cartridge. It works fine on ios products, but I'm having trouble with the Garmin Oregon's randomly shutting down. So far there has been no specific area in the cartridge or any specific action where it shuts down. It is randomly shutting down on all 4 devices. I have, however, on occasion, gone completely through the whole cartridge without a problem. After shutdown, when the GPS is rebooted and the Wherigo started from the save it says "restoring cartridge" and the regular screen comes up for about 5 seconds and then it shuts off again. The only way to get it to go is to start from the beginning.

 

I have no messages appearing during inputs (I know that's a common problem). There have been no shut downs going between zones. It seems to happen in a zone but only when the cartridge is idle, no one touching the screen. I have placed saves throughout the cartridges at "On Exit" of each zone.

 

It appears to happen more if a player has made a manual save. On our last outing, one cartridge went down. Somewhere along in the cartridge they had made a manual save. I had one of the remaining players do a manual save and with the other two we walked out of the zone and shut down without making a manual save, relying on the "on exit" save. When they all restarted the two coded "on exit" save cartridges came up and remained running, while the manually saved cartridge came up and worked for about 5 seconds and then shut down.

 

Is there a difference between a coded save and a manual save?

 

I'm wondering if the cartridges are just to big for the Garmin's to handle. The gwc file is 1400 KB. I have a maximum of 4 zones active at any one time and normally only 2 when any action is being taken. We are using 3 Oregon 450 and 1 450t. I have used different cartridges on different devices with the same result.

 

It is very frustrating trying to figure out random problems. Any help in this area would be greatly appreciated. I'm starting to wonder if I should just say these are only available for smart phones.

 

Thanks in advance,

Bob

[+jonny65]

Sometimes, but very seldom, I have had these issue (only on garmin) too. It helps either to start the cartridge again and restore or shut down the whole device, start again and restore or (this ever helps) shut down, remove the batteries put them in again, start and restore. Your cartridge is not too big, I have seen GWCs which were several times bigger than yours with 20 or more zones, 50 items, 200 pictures and more (yes garmin compiled, not ppc). I think there is no difference whether it is saved manually (on shut down and save) or do a save command (i.e action "save game" in urwigo) Which builder do you use ? As I say, problems with save or restore (on garmin) are very seldom. On 100 saves perhaps 2 or 3 times. And : You may not save a game while things are still running (move items, set variables, activate zones and so on)

[+Zorkan_Heneron]

Thanks jonny65.

 

I should have mentioned it earlier, but we have tried the battery removal and restart and even switched batteries. It seems like once it shuts down the Garmin, the restore does not work properly and you have to start from the beginning, which is frustrating when you are 25 zones or an hour or two into the cartridge.

 

Bob

[+charlenni]

I have the experience, that a Garmin normally don't crash without a bug in the cartridge (exceptions are the input problem, when an input is removed by a dialog). So I would expect a problem in your cartridge. Perhaps you don't see it at the first view, but there should be one.

 

Try to reproduce the problem with the emulator by moving your man while different screens visible. Try to restore saved cartridges and so on. Look into your OnResume event, what's happening there. Try to work with LogMessage, so that you could see, where the problem occures.