chisquare05
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I'm not sure whether this is a DROD bug or a machine problem, but my son plays on his (now relatively old) Mac ibook running Mac OS X 10.3.9. Whenever one tries to save a player (either full save or "saves" only), DROD shows the progress bar until the end and then crashes (fading to blue, then gone). This happens for every player, even new players, and at whatever point I try to save. I'm moving him to a new computer, but he really wants to recover his player. (He made it to JtRH L18 on his own after a good bit of work.)

What are my options? Are there some files that I can copy into
the new directory (on a Mac OS X 10.4 machine) that will give
carry the player data over? If so, which?

Thanks.

mrimer
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What DROD game and version are you playing?

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

Elfstone
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I have great sympathy for your son's situation. A year or so ago I lost all my progress to that point (some 20-odd holds, including all of KDD) and I would not wish that on anyone. People here will confirm to you that I know nothing much about computers, but I am playing on a mac (Tiger) and although I have had difficulties now and then, I have never come across the problem you are describing. I wonder if it could be a memory problem - how much does the iBook have? Have you tried saving directly onto a flash drive rather than the hard drive?
(Apologies if I'm suggesting things you've already thought of and tried.)

____________________________
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Briareos
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Elfstone wrote:
I wonder if it could be a memory problem - how much does the iBook have? Have you tried saving directly onto a flash drive rather than the hard drive?

If it really is a memory problem also try increasing the size of the page file/swap file/virtual memory (dunno how it's called under Mac OS) because that will allow DROD to use more memory than is physically available...

____________________________
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009)

Elfstone
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Briareos wrote:
If it really is a memory problem also try increasing the size of the page file/swap file/virtual memory (dunno how it's called under Mac OS) because that will allow DROD to use more memory than is physically available...

In OS 10, virtual memory is effectively always on and RAM is dynamic. I know I'm out of my depth here, but I would be curious about the amount of hard drive he has available as well as what RAM is installed.

____________________________
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FAPCA - Technical Design Excellence in Layout and Aesthetics

chisquare05
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Thanks guys for the good advice. I'll try the memory configuration and flash drive ideas and will post back.

The hard drive has 11 GB available. There are 640 MB of RAM. Does that seem insufficient? It shows no problems with any other operation. Mike, it's version JtRH 2.0.15.1. (Sorry, I meant to include that info originally.)

If all else fails, are there selected files that I can move over to another JtRH installation to clone the installation?

chisquare05
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P.S. Virtual memory is on in OS X by default. I'm not sure how much flexibility I have for configuring it, but I'll look into it.

mrimer
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chisquare05 wrote:
What are my options? Are there some files that I can copy into
the new directory (on a Mac OS X 10.4 machine) that will give
carry the player data over? If so, which?

Currently, all the user data files are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/Caravel/drod-jtrh-2.0 (or named depending on which game you're playing). However, for 2.0.15.1, data might still be stored in an older hidden ~/.caravel* path. You may find it by opening a terminal window and copying all the files out of there to a new folder, which may then be copied to another computer. Just place the files in a folder with the same name as the first after installing DROD:JtRH on that computer. That should be all you need to effectively transfer your player progress, and all imported holds, to another Mac.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 05-31-2008 03:22 PM]

chisquare05
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Thanks, Mike. It looks like that's the best option as the other approaches didn't work. I had hoped that the player/hold information might be stored in one or a few files that could be transferred, but if not, I can move them all.

Briareos
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chisquare05 wrote:
Thanks, Mike. It looks like that's the best option as the other approaches didn't work. I had hoped that the player/hold information might be stored in one or a few files that could be transferred, but if not, I can move them all.

Well, on Windows the interesting information for JtRH is spread over 3 files - "data.dat" which stores the holds, "player.dat" which stores your demos and saves and "text.dat" which stores the speech text et al used in the holds.

I don't think it should be that different on the Mac... or should it?

np: Señor Coconut - Sweet Dreams (Around The World)

____________________________
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009)

Elfstone
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hmmm, I think it is different Briareos.
Chiaquare05 you might want to have a look at the Data folder : control click TCB/show contents/resources/Data. There is a file called drod3_0.dat which might be for us what Braireos is referring to.

____________________________
Winner of: Novice Architect Excellence 2006.
FAPCA - Technical Design Excellence in Layout and Aesthetics

Briareos
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No, that's exactly what I was not referring to - drod2_0.dat is the datafile holding the JtRH hold, room styles etc. that are installed with the game, while drod3_0.dat is the same thing for TCB.

The files I'm referring to should either be in a hidden folder (one that has a name starting with a ".") by unix convention or, like Mike wrote, somewhere else in your home directory/user profile folder/whatever where the per-user settings of all your other applications go (i.e. Library/Application Support/Caravel/drod-jtrh-2.0 under your home directory).

(Disclaimer: I've never used Mac OS X since it's so snobby in it's choice of supported hardware (read: Apple hardware only), so I can only speak for Windows and Linux...)

np: Señor Coconut - Sweet Dreams (Around The World)

____________________________
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009)

---

[Last edited by Briareos at 06-01-2008 11:00 PM]

mrimer
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Briareos is right -- the *.dat files should be all you need to transfer from the location I specified. Everything else (besides files you have possibly placed in the Homemade dir) gets installed with the game.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 06-02-2008 05:33 AM]

chisquare05
Level: Goblin
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Perfect, thanks so much for all your help. I'll try it tonight.