The engine watchdog

BotDaddy is two programs: the window you see, and the engine behind it that actually drives your emulators. The window watches the engine the whole time the app is open. If the engine genuinely stops, the window restarts it — and if your bot was running, starts the bot again for you, so a 4am problem doesn't cost you the rest of the night.

This page is about what you'll see when that happens.

The messages

"Lost contact with the engine — your bot is still running" (yellow, clears on its own) — the engine is fine and your emulators are still being worked; the window just can't read its status for the moment. Nothing is being closed or restarted. If it stays lost for around ten minutes, BotDaddy gives up waiting and restarts the engine after all.

"BotDaddy engine stopped responding — restarting it and closing your emulators" (red) — the engine has stopped doing anything. Your emulators are closed first, so the restarted engine starts from a clean slate. This is BotDaddy doing it, not a second problem.

"BotDaddy stopped unexpectedly" (red) — the engine crashed outright. Same recovery.

"Engine restarted — bot resumed" (green) — the happy ending. The engine is back and your bot is running again with the same settings. Nothing to do.

"Engine restarted" (yellow) — the engine is back, but your bot wasn't running when it went down, so it's been left stopped. Press Start when you want it.

"Engine restarted, but the bot did not" (red) — the engine is back but the bot couldn't be started. The message says one of two things:

• "starting the bot was refused: …" with the reason — no valid licence, or no account has an emulator selected. Fix what it names, then press Start.
• "we never got an answer when trying to start the bot again" — BotDaddy tried three times and heard nothing. Press Start yourself.

"BotDaddy engine is down" (red) — the engine couldn't be restarted at all. Close BotDaddy, open it again, and send us supervisor.log.

Troubleshooting

The yellow "lost contact" message appeared and everything looks normal. That's exactly the case it exists for. Your emulators keep going. Ignore it unless it lingers.

My emulators all closed by themselves. The engine was restarted — you'll find one of the red messages above. Check whether the bot resumed; if the message says it did, there's nothing to do.

I pressed Start right after "the bot did not". If BotDaddy was still trying in the background, Start will simply say the bot is already running. That isn't an error.

The engine keeps restarting. BotDaddy restarts it at most three times in ten minutes, then stops and shows "BotDaddy engine is down".

Where the record is

Everything the watchdog does is written to supervisor.log in Documents\BotDaddy\logs. If you ever have to ask us about a restart, that's the file to send.

What it does not do

• It doesn't restart your emulators individually, or restart the game inside one — that's the bot's own job while it runs.
• It doesn't decide anything based on how slow the engine is. A slow engine is still a working engine; only one that has stopped is restarted.
• It doesn't watch anything while BotDaddy is closed.