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lionsilverwolf
04-26-2017, 01:50 PM
I was working today and my mouse is breaking so while I was resizing a stencil it did a weird multiple-left-click thing and like tried to change what monitor the program was on, and the program won't respond anymore. The window isn't stuck on the screen and Windows (8.1) isn't saying it's not responding, but it's not doing anything and hasn't for over an hour. No response from keyboard shortcuts or anything. I'd rather not lose what I was working on (I got into the groove and painted for five hours without saving...) and so I guess: Any solutions? Or a way to recover what I was working on if I restart the program? Current plan is to let it do whatever it's doing while I sleep and if it's not working tomorrow I'll just suck it up and deal.

HannahRage
04-26-2017, 02:29 PM
Ouch, sounds like something's stuck! Try restarting your computer or open a second ArtRage 4 window and see if that wakes it up, but otherwise I'm afraid you may be out of luck.

If you have to kill it: Take a screenshot so that you have something, and maaaaybe ArtRage will save some of it as an ARRestart file when you shut the program down.

lionsilverwolf
04-26-2017, 02:40 PM
Ouch, sounds like something's stuck! Try restarting your computer or open a second ArtRage 4 window and see if that wakes it up, but otherwise I'm afraid you may be out of luck.

Definitely will try opening another instance!


If you have to kill it: Take a screenshot so that you have something, and maaaaybe ArtRage will save some of it as an ARRestart file when you shut the program down.

Unfortunately it froze with a stencil completely obscuring the entire painting :X

HannahRage
04-26-2017, 04:14 PM
Ouch. If you knew what process you kickstarted, you might be able to go directly to that and kill it (e.g. you can stop or restart your Wacom driver from run > Services.msc) , but if it's a Windows system thing, you probably can't do anything. And there's a chance that it would outright crash ArtRage if you could.

nekomata
04-26-2017, 07:30 PM
I'd rather not lose what I was working on (I got into the groove and painted for five hours without saving...) and so I guess: Any solutions?

I prescribe downloading and installing a trial version of the latest corel painter and using it on the reg for at least fourteen consecutive days.

once you get used to software that won't last five hours straight without crashing (that won't often realistically last a full hour tbh), you'll develop a reflex to hit ctrl/cmd+S and save your files manually
you'll also be relieved at how comparatively stable artrage is upon returning, but that won't ditch the muscle memory you'd have developed by then.

hope this helps!!

lionsilverwolf
04-28-2017, 08:29 AM
Alright so for future reference for anyone else who has this happen, don't close it with task manager. I did and very briefly saw the 'do you want to save this painting' window pop up. And then it closed ayyyyyy.

Does AR5 have auto saving? XD

HannahRage
04-28-2017, 11:13 AM
If it makes you feel better, the task manager may have been your only option at that point.

ArtRage 5 doesn't have autosaving as you go, but - theoretically (as I have no idea what you actually DID) - is much less likely to implode on you.

ArtRage has various saving/backup options - none of which help in your case, but here's a rundown anyway ;)

- actually saving. Obviously :P But AR4 crashing might damage an existing save, AR5 will not do that, so I'm mentioning it.

- extra backup files (turn this on in Edit > ArtRage Preferences > Advanced Preferences), which keeps your previous save(s) around as a spare file(s). Handy if you change your mind a lot, or something happens to the current file.

- scripts. You have to actually save/export the script, but you can turn the script recording on at the start (File > Record Script) and then play back the painting later from it.

- Crash recovery. If ArtRage gets the chance (i.e. the operating system doesn't kill it suddenly, or the computer is shut down), it will save everything it can on the canvas when it's crashing as an 'ARRestart' file. It will usually suggest this when you reopen ArtRage, but you can also go to File > Recent Files > ARRestart.ptg.

To maximise your chances of this, it's better to shut ArtRage down directly instead of killing it in Task Manager, but *shrugs* sometimes that's not possible. Basically, this works great if it's an ArtRage bug, but doesn't help with external software/hardware/memory problems, and these days, we rarely see a crash that's actually ArtRage' fault, so the recovery option never really shows its face.


(Autosaving is problematic for ArtRage as the way our program works behind the scenes is a bit different from most other programs, so we need to invent a good way to save changes as you work without freezing up the whole program whenever you're working on a really large painting - which is exactly the kind you need autosaving for).