StarLogo Maze: Troubleshooting

StarLogo is itself a program, and virtually every program has bugs, because they're just too complex to build perfectly bug-free. This page tells you how to deal with or get around the more common bugs we've found so far.

Q: When I run one of my procedures, a little box appears right after the procedure name in the Turtle Command Center, and everything seems to stop working (after a while).

A: While this could be caused by a mistake in your program, it's also possible that a bug in StarLogo is the reason. Call over a TA or your instructor right away to determine which is the case. If it's a StarLogo bug, rather than yours, then the staff will do their best to help you get past the problem. The StarLogo bug can sometimes be caused by use of case and the say command in your procedures, so you might want to try rewriting your code to use these less. For example, you can often rewrite code that uses case to use a series of if statements instead.

Q: The reset button doesn't clear marks left by the turtle using mark-here. Any way to update my project to fix this?

A: Yes. There are two ways you can update your project. You can either download the latest version of the starter project file or do the following: Switch the Control Center to the Observer page (by clicking its tab near the top of the window) first. In the Observer Procedures section of this window, add the following procedure, exactly as written below:

to clear-marks
  ask-patches [
    if patchcolor = mark-color [
      setpatchcolor nothing-color
    ]
  ]
end

Update the reset Observer procedure by adding the line clear-marks to the beginning of the procedure definition. (Clicking the reset button runs the reset procedure.)

Return to the Control Center's Turtle page and test your updated reset button by marking a patch and clicking reset.

Q: How can I get my Control Center window's Turtle Procedures section to come back? A: Drag the horizontal gray bar dividing the Turtle Command Center and Turtle Procedures section up or down a little bit and the lower part of the Control Center window should be restored. A: If that fails, save your project, close it, and reopen it.