Bug? Corrupted file? Unable to start Book 5

[illarion]

Hi there. As a fan of LW back in the 80s, I was very happy to find and play through the first few books again on Project Aon a few years back.

I was even happier last week to discover Seventh Sense! All the fun and none of the drudgery!

Unfortunately though, I've come up against a bit of a problem. My PC crashed earlier today, just after starting book 5 for the first time. (On the second or third section or so).

After rebooting, I resume my campaign, and I am at the beginning of book 5 again. Fair enough, except that I can't get past the equipment selection screen. I've clicked every red icon (the map, crowns etc). I've even chucked stuff out of my backpack so I can utilise the full "up to four items from the list". But whatever I do, the red icon by equipment in the table of contents on the left stays red, and I cannot begin the book.

I'm hoping my save hasn't been corrupted in some way Any ideas?

[Dave]

I'm glad you're enjoying the program. Sorry to hear about the trouble you're encountering...

There's no need to take four items - it's not mandatory like the map (since the text says you may take "up to" 4 items, which means you can take none if you like.)

After clicking those 2 red buttons on the Equipment page, it *should* turn the TOC button green. It does sound like your save game was corrupted by the crash somehow.

Now the big question... Was is Seventh Sense that caused the crash? Or something else? Were you in the midst of playing when it crashed? And was it your whole PC that went down, or was it just Seventh Sense that crashed?

Try this trick to reset the save game for book 5 - On the main menu, click "Resume" as usual, and then when the book is all loaded up, go to the main menu, and click on "Restart Book". Choose to "restart this book using saved campaign data". This should reset any book section info without wiping any of your saved play data/equipment/skills/etc.... Let me know if this works!

[Dave]

so... did that work for you?

[illarion]

My apologies for the delay in replying - I've been away for a couple of weeks (and I didn't realise this forum wasn't set to notify on reply!).

I'm not sure what caused the crash, but I was in the middle of playing via Seventh Sense at the time. Windows locked up to the point that I was forced to power cycle.

The "trick" you mention does seem to have worked - though I would *swear* that I already tried that! Still, it's working now, so I shan't complain!

[curunauth]

This is a tad old, but I ran into the same problem - I had to restart several times to get it to work.It seems that the culprit was the coins part - or at least, I got a different message about purse fullness the time it finally worked. the first two times I got the normal "you can't pick up that many" message (don't recall exact text), and the last time I got a shorter one I'd never seen before. I think that doing the selections out of order may have been a cause of failure.

[Dave]

It's possible, though I've intentionally done things in a way that should allow the player to pick items up in any order on the equipment page, and it shouldn't impact the game at all.

curunauth, could you give me more detail - like which book you were on when this was happening? I'll see if I can reproduce it.

[curunauth]

Ah, sorry, that was an awful bug report.

I'm on the same book as the original poster (Shadow on the Sand), Windows version, 1.5.4

Just went back and did some tests; fortunately easy to reproduce
Steps to reproduce:
- Take any profile to book 5 (new or existing)
- Go to equipment page (works whether or not you have done other pages first)
- click "pick" for money before clicking Map (doesn't matter whether you've chosen equipment yet, or if you do so in between)
- now both are grayed out and the Equipment section's dot is still red; the click here to begin link (in both the table of contents and on the wisdom page) are grayed out; no action will change this.

If you click map before pick, the equipment section goes green. I suspect that somehow the page checking function isn't being called after pressing Map, OR that the Map function (if the checking is local) either fails to check correctly or fails to update the flag.

However, the problem could rest in the pick function; if your purse fills (not necessary for replication) the alert it produces is different depending on whether you did it in the wrong order (you get the usual in-game too full message) or right order (you get a different one, shorter iirc).

[curunauth]

I've dived through the source a bit, but I dunno where to look, and it seems much more likely to be something about the book file. On that note, is there a reader/unpacker for the .dat files? I was going to compare other books to it, but that isn't looking possible . . .

I've now tested a bit more and cannot replicate for any book other than 5.

[Dave]

Jan 19, 2010 5:15:54 GMT curunauth said:

Ah, sorry, that was an awful bug report.

I'm on the same book as the original poster (Shadow on the Sand), Windows version, 1.5.4

Just went back and did some tests; fortunately easy to reproduce
Steps to reproduce:
- Take any profile to book 5 (new or existing)
- Go to equipment page (works whether or not you have done other pages first)
- click "pick" for money before clicking Map (doesn't matter whether you've chosen equipment yet, or if you do so in between)
- now both are grayed out and the Equipment section's dot is still red; the click here to begin link (in both the table of contents and on the wisdom page) are grayed out; no action will change this.

If you click map before pick, the equipment section goes green. I suspect that somehow the page checking function isn't being called after pressing Map, OR that the Map function (if the checking is local) either fails to check correctly or fails to update the flag.

However, the problem could rest in the pick function; if your purse fills (not necessary for replication) the alert it produces is different depending on whether you did it in the wrong order (you get the usual in-game too full message) or right order (you get a different one, shorter iirc).

Now that's a good bug report! Should be easy enough for me to track down and fix for the next release. Thanks!

[curunauth]

Heh, I should have known better than to make a short "me too" one on an old bug -- my first was a textbook example of the kind of report I hate getting myself >.>

My lame excuse is that I was running off somewhere, and the last three reports I filed for other stuff were on ancient bugs where my procedure matched the original poster exactly >.>

It's SO NICE to be using a package that not only has active development, but also prioritizes bugfixing!

[Dave]

This bug is now fixed in the development version. It really was a simple fix... For the current released version, just make sure you click in the order that the buttons appear on the page.

For the next release, the fix will be in place, and it won't matter which order you do it in.

[curunauth]

Yay! May I enquire as to the cause of this mysterious behavior?

Is it possible to download the dev version? If so, whence?

[Dave]

The exact cause is that instead of increasing a counter by "1", the "Map" button was simply setting the counter to "1". The "pick" button correctly increases the counter, so if you started with the map button, it set the counter to 1, and then the pick button increased it to 2, so it would work. However, starting with the pick button increased the counter to 1, and then using the map button simply set it directly to 1 again. This counter is the one that tells the program you've taken care of X things on the equipment page, and you can't go on until you hit the minimum (2 in this book).

Second question - no, not yet. You'll have to wait for the Magnakai release.

[curunauth]

ooooh. I had presumed a more generic format / less specific scripting for buttons, but I guess with all the weird things in the book you need the flexibility.

Also, well darn. I look forward to it! :-)

and once again, thanks for your constant (and amazingly responsive!) work on this!