Fred2.jar crashing / Java VM problems 

Hello, I have been unable to use Fred because it always crashes upon running. Double-clicking or executing via command line both end the same way. Any thoughts?

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Maciej Komosinski's picture

Thought 1: When you execute via command line, you should see some diagnostic message (like a call stack or an exception thrown) from Java?

Thought 2: Use Online Framsticks Creature Editor, it does not support editing neural networks but maybe still helpful? http://www.framsticks.com/files/apps/js/creature-editor/index.html

When run from the command line via: java -jar Fred2.jar , the prompt disappears and after 3 seconds or so the crash dialog box pops up and the prompt returns. No diagnostic or error info is printed, just a crash dialog box.

And yeah I love the online editor but I would love to edit the neural network right alongside the body.

Perhaps there's some documentation I could read over? I've tried some Google-fu but didn't turn up anything.

Maciej Komosinski's picture

So what does the "crash dialog box" say?

Regarding NNs, it may be better to use the online javascript editor and learn a bit of the f0 encoding to add/edit the neural network on the genetic level. It is not that hard, n: lines create neurons and c: lines create connections.

http://www.framsticks.com/a/al_geno_f0.html

Crash screencap: https://imgur.com/a/TxYoZ

And yeah, f0 encoding has made life so much easier (I vastly prefer it over f1 in body and NN creation) while working on NNs, and I have no issue using it (it reminds me of using Assembly language), but me being the curious bugger I am, wanted to give Fred a go. I don't have my hopes hinged upon Fred working, I just read around that it's nice. Perhaps I'll try it in an XP virtual machine or Linux.

And thanks for the replies; I see this forum isn't the most active. When I first posted my problem I was certain it would go unnoticed lol.

Maciej Komosinski's picture

Your screenshots shows "View problem details" button, and this is where more useful information is... but indeed it looks more like a problem with Java VM than with Fred. I have hardly ever seen Java VM crash, it is not supposed to! Maybe you have some dll's mixed in your installation (32-bit and 64-bit)...

Yep, people apparently prefer to ask questions by email than post here :-)

Fred (java) is quite old and a bit outdated now (in terms of compatibility with the f0 encoding). The javascript online creature editor is not perfect either, so probably the best way is to learn f0 and then in the javascript online editor, use interchangeably the GUI to edit Parts and Joints, and the text editor to edit/tune the raw f0 genotype.

By the way, use the most recent developmental version, it is much better than the last "stable" version now.

For now and just keep working on making an 8 bit full adder in a cube's brain. And thanks for the recommendation for the updated version, by the way. Up until this recent Framsticks engagement I had a fairly old version from a few years ago.

After some uninstalling of a few unneeded/unused programs and cleaning of temp files and the like, Fred now starts up perfectly fine! Thanks for your patience and help =).