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ErikH2000
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icon Build 46 Release Candidate (0)  
There is a really practical incentive for you'all to download the latest build: it has automatic backup and restore to protect you from losing your data. So I can't promise that the text/player-loss bugs are fixed, (we tried a few things--maybe...) but you should now always be able to restore back to your previous DROD session when data gets trashed. Thanks to Stuart for the idea.

Download from here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=10939&release_id=189134

New fixes:
85600 BUG: Playtest starts on invalid objects on no-save
85718 Bug: Bad number of moves in demo
86003 BUG: Obstacle paste errors
85995 BUG: Clicking on demo screen registers second click
85842 BUG: Beethro laughs at mimic death
86748 More useful error-reporting.
86344 Write backup and recover routines.
85717 BUG: Door tootip doesn't display in Row 1
85591 Fix memory leaks

-Erik

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10-06-2003 at 04:20 AM
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ErikH2000
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File: wesley_player_BAD.dat (46.1 KB)
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icon Re: Build 46 Release Candidate (0)  
Could somebody run this smoke test on XP? If I can get a confirmation on XP, we will proceed to the next level of testing--code-named "halfway house".

1. Run DROD build 46.
2. Go to the second room on level 1.
3. Exit DROD.
4. Run DROD.
5. Go to the third room on level 1.
6. Exit DROD.
7. Overwrite your player.dat with the attached file.
8. Run DROD.

You should see a message about a restore being performed.

9. Choose continue.

You should be on the second room that you saw on step 2.

That's it.

-Erik

[Edited by ErikH2000 on 10-06-2003 at 04:57 PM]

[Edited by ErikH2000 on 10-06-2003 at 10:18 PM GMT: Cleared up the instructions.]

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10-06-2003 at 04:54 PM
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eytanz
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Done - it works fine.

I assume you are backuping whenever the game starts with a non-corrupt set of data files?

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10-06-2003 at 05:31 PM
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Oneiromancer
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icon Re: Build 46 Release Candidate (0)  
It worked for me too. When you say, "You should be on the second room", did you mean the second room of level 1, or the second room that we went to, which was on level 2? I started on the second room of level 1, which does make sense in terms of starting from the uncorrupted save before the corrupted one, but I just want to make sure.

Game on,


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10-06-2003 at 06:46 PM
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eytanz
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icon Re: Build 46 Release Candidate (0)  
Actually (after going through the whole thing), it occured to me that the "level 2" part must be a typo - otherwise why specify the third room? I'm guessing we were supposed to go one room deeper. And level 2 doesn't have an unambiguous third room, anyway.

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10-06-2003 at 07:09 PM
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bradwall
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Worked for me!
10-06-2003 at 07:45 PM
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Oneiromancer
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icon Re: Re: Build 46 Release Candidate (0)  
eytanz wrote:
Actually (after going through the whole thing), it occured to me that the "level 2" part must be a typo - otherwise why specify the third room? I'm guessing we were supposed to go one room deeper. And level 2 doesn't have an unambiguous third room, anyway.

No, I don't think it's a typo...I think Erik wanted us to go to a room on a different level from the first room (I agree about the ambiguity though). Because the backup program has to keep the .dat files from the game before the most recent one. If it saved the most recent one, which was corrupted, then you have two copies of the same corrupted game. So probably what happens when you start DROD, if it loads up without any corruption, then it saves the then-current .dat files with changed names, not when you close DROD. At least, that makes sense to me with my limited knowledge of programming. But I'm not quite sure, hence my previous question.

Edit: and it appears that's what you assume too, after re-reading your first comment.

Game on,

[Edited by Oneiromancer on 10-06-2003 at 08:24 PM]

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10-06-2003 at 08:23 PM
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eytanz
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icon Re: Build 46 Release Candidate (0)  
I just don't see why the level matters - as long as you are somewhere in the first save, and somewhere clearly different in the second save, the experiment should work. The level change makes no sense to me given that DROD saves whenever you enter a new room, not every time you descend a level.

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10-06-2003 at 09:11 PM
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Oneiromancer
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icon Re: Build 46 Release Candidate (0)  
True, okay, you're right.

Game on,

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10-06-2003 at 09:20 PM
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ErikH2000
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icon Re: Re: Build 46 Release Candidate (0)  
eytanz wrote:
Done - it works fine.

I assume you are backuping whenever the game starts with a non-corrupt set of data files?
Yep, everytime DROD starts it does this:

If files are corrupted
Overwrite current data from backup files.
Else
Overwrite backup files from current data.

Pretty simple.

-Erik


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10-06-2003 at 10:21 PM
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ErikH2000
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icon Re: Re: Build 46 Release Candidate (0)  
Oneiromancer wrote:
It worked for me too. When you say, "You should be on the second room", did you mean the second room of level 1, or the second room that we went to, which was on level 2? I started on the second room of level 1, which does make sense in terms of starting from the uncorrupted save before the corrupted one, but I just want to make sure.

Game on,
Sorry, I mean the 2nd room of level 1.

-Erik

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10-06-2003 at 10:22 PM
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Mattcrampy
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icon Re: Build 46 Release Candidate (0)  
Erik, you might want to check the distribution of the RC8 zip file. I had to try four different servers to find one that had it.

Or just make sure it's on flow.sourceforge, and it'll all be good.

Matt

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10-07-2003 at 09:34 AM
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ErikH2000
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Erik, you might want to check the distribution of the RC8 zip file. I had to try four different servers to find one that had it.
I'm not sure what I can do about it. There is only a single way I know about to release files on SourceForge. It sounds either like a bug with SF, or possibly the files just take some time to propagate to other mirrors.

Thanks for the info, Matt. If people continue to have problems, I will look into it further.

-Erik

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10-07-2003 at 07:58 PM
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StuartK
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icon Re: Re: Re: Build 46 Release Candidate (0)  
ErikH2000 wrote:
Yep, everytime DROD starts it does this:

If files are corrupted
Overwrite current data from backup files.
Else
Overwrite backup files from current data.

Pretty simple.

-Erik

Is it confirmed that the corruption is definitely not a gradual process, which might happen over multiple DROD sessions? It might be useful to have more than one level of backup...

Also (since I've not tried B46 yet) is there any kind of 'please send your corrupted .dats <here>' prompt in DROD b46? If it's a single button click to compress and upload, you might get more (perhaps) useful data. Optionally harvest stuff like hardware configuration, OS, dll versions, free memory, tasks running etc?

Autobackup while a DROD session is running? I've had sessions last hours (though I haven't encountered corruption having made any significant progress)

In the meantime, now we've got a backup option and while the bug hasn't been identified/fixed, I guess it makes sense to quit and restart DROD every so often when building, or completing difficult rooms.
10-07-2003 at 10:48 PM
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ErikH2000
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StuartK wrote:
Is it confirmed that the corruption is definitely not a gradual process, which might happen over multiple DROD sessions? It might be useful to have more than one level of backup...
I'm pretty sure it's all or nothing. I considered having something like your backup batch file, but decided that without evidence to show a gradual corruption, it wasn't worth taking up the extra disk space.
Also (since I've not tried B46 yet) is there any kind of 'please send your corrupted .dats <here>' prompt in DROD b46?
Well, the .dats by themselves aren't that useful to determine the cause. I've got a good selection of corrupted .dats that I used to write the backup/restore code, but I probably won't need more.

I also beefed up the error logging so that drod.err contains a really detailed log of what the user did. I think at this point, for technical simplicity, I would rather just receive bug reports by e-mail, and we've got instructions for that on DROD.net and in the help pages.
If it's a single button click to compress and upload, you might get more (perhaps) useful data. Optionally harvest stuff like hardware configuration, OS, dll versions, free memory, tasks running etc?
Yeah, I'm basically with you here, but I'm playing down the importance of system configuration factors from what I know about the bug and discussions I've had with the author of the database library.
Autobackup while a DROD session is running? I've had sessions last hours (though I haven't encountered corruption having made any significant progress)
That makes sense, with a tradeoff that I have to close and reopen the database to do it, which is slow. I'm hedging my bets here with the backup/restore--it isn't intended to be the ultimate solution. Let me explain the DROD:AE release strategy:

This weekend, I'm planning on making AE release announcements to SDL's page, SourceForge, DROD.net, of course, and maybe a few other places. The idea is that we will release to a larger group of players who are likely to be developers and technical types--more forgiving of bugs and having skills to describe them. We will explain about the remaining data-loss bug in release notes. I think DROD:AE is reasonably stable so that someone can enjoy it without a beta-tester level of commitment. More eyeballs and good error logs may give us enough information to find the bug and release a patched version.

-Erik

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10-07-2003 at 11:17 PM
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bradwall
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ErikH2000 wrote:

This weekend, I'm planning on making AE release announcements to SDL's page, SourceForge, DROD.net, of course, and maybe a few other places. The idea is that we will release to a larger group of players who are likely to be developers and technical types--more forgiving of bugs and having skills to describe them. We will explain about the remaining data-loss bug in release notes. I think DROD:AE is reasonably stable so that someone can enjoy it without a beta-tester level of commitment. More eyeballs and good error logs may give us enough information to find the bug and release a patched version.

-Erik

I think that this is a good idea. I feel bad that I haven't been able to test as much as I would have liked to... I only seemed to have a couple of ideas for it and most of my testing was at the very beginning and the very end of the testing process, but I am still glad to be a part of my favorite game. I hope that I can do more in future builds. I hope that I can still be considered a tester for this release, even though I have not done as much as I planned. I hope to be able to play with code next time.

-Brad
10-07-2003 at 11:31 PM
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ErikH2000
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bradwall wrote:
I feel bad that I haven't been able to test as much as I would have liked to... I only seemed to have a couple of ideas for it and most of my testing was at the very beginning and the very end of the testing process, but I am still glad to be a part of my favorite game. I hope that I can do more in future builds. I hope that I can still be considered a tester for this release, even though I have not done as much as I planned. I hope to be able to play with code next time.
Aw, don't feel bad! I am grateful for the excellent help you put in for the first Caravel release. You did a little time on AE, so you're in the credits for both releases. I look forward to doing more together, Brad.

-Erik

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10-07-2003 at 11:58 PM
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trick
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ErikH2000 wrote:
Could somebody run this smoke test on XP? If I can get a confirmation on XP, we will proceed to the next level of testing--code-named "halfway house".
FYI, i ran this smoke test in Linux, and it works great. With some small patches to preserve original file permissions (Mike's got them), it also works great for multiple users.

- Gerry

10-08-2003 at 11:40 PM
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ErikH2000
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trick wrote:
FYI, i ran this smoke test in Linux, and it works great. With some small patches to preserve original file permissions (Mike's got them), it also works great for multiple users.
That's great!

-Erik

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10-08-2003 at 11:55 PM
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Atch
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I’ve been playing Build 46 on Windows 98 for a few days now and it seems fine except that mimics can now pass over other mimic potions, at least in Level 3 Once North Once East and Level 11 Twice East. Could they always do that? I can’t remember noticing it before.

I had to go to a second mirror to download successfully (Brussels then Dublin) but all my 1.5 data was transferred seemingly intact except for the demos that now only run until if and when I died. Still it gives me an excuse to play those rooms again and I can now view the replays speeded up – wonderful!

10-09-2003 at 12:13 PM
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