Open Saved Item Rectangles

[Ishad Nha]

I have played Shadow of the Stranger using the open version of BoE and the saved item rectangle in town 27 did not actually work. There were no items to be found when I eventually was able to return to the town.

 

Then I reverted to an earlier save file and played the regular version of BoE, the items were all there as they should be.

 

It is known that there is a problem with the Open game ending as soon as the party is killed, this can be bad news because killing the entire party and then raising them is the only way to remove all their items. (Remove all their items in a way that will permit them to regain said items later on.)

 

[Prince of Kitties]

I can confirm this - in Redemption, items lying on the floor in rooms that should preserve them are gone on my second visit.

[Ishad Nha]

What to do? Either don't use the Open version for games that need saved item rectangles or switch versions. Switch from Open to official version when your items are about to be removed. Then you can switch back after you retrieve all your items.

 

A third approach uses hex editing to alter your save file, it is known exactly where the items are listed in the file. See my post on Save Game File Decrypting. Now the decryption of the item entries is not written up, but you only need to copy and paste from one save file to another.

[Celtic Minstrel]

That's very nice, except some of us cannot use the "official" version. It doesn't run on Intel Macs.

[Ishad Nha]

I know the problem is on Windows XP, I don't know if the problem actually affects Macs or not. What does Miramor use? If it does affect Macs you will need to look at hex-editing, which is not so hard.

 

As for adding the items to the town manually via the Scenario Editor, there are not that many slots in any town: 64 in total. In my experience of Windows BoA, items added this way are never available to parties that started the scenario before the items were added.

(Edit: I don't know about Windows BoE let alone anything Mac.)

 

You can always customize a PC Editor, and then add the items manually, one at a time. Imported items will be a problem here.

 

 

[Prince of Kitties]

Hmm, there's a new version of OBoE out since I observed this. I'll see if the bug is fixed in it.

[Ormus]

I've uploaded new executable file and source code of BoE today. Could anybody check if bug with saved items still exists? Your savegames may be corrupted, so please either start playing new scenario or restart scenario you're in.

[Ishad Nha]

I have a save file from Shadow of the Stranger, just before town 27, this should test it.

 

Fastest way to test it is to create a saved item rectangle in the starter town of a scenario and then play the game with both the official version and the previous open version. This will show how the error works, then play it on the latest open version and see if the error is still there.

 

Edit: a whole lot of items have been reduced to only five, the moment that I leave a city and return. My trusty spreadsheet shows that 45 out of 64 preset item slots are full, but that leaves 19 free. So it is not the preset items that are at fault, well what is going on?

 

Edit 2: Then I dumped some armor and shields: all still there when the party returned.

 

(Yes you can dump the data from a town record into a prepared spreadsheet, it will all show up.)

 

Edit 3: I suspect that it might be a case of items being placed upon impassable terrain but that seems not to be the problem in Redemption.

[Ormus]

Ishad Nha, but I've written just before that YOUR savegames may be CORRUPTED, so do NOT use your existing savegames to test if bug still exists (except that party is not in scenario). :-)

 

Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha

Fastest way to test it is to create a saved item rectangle in the starter town of a scenario and then play the game with both the official version and the previous open version. This will show how the error works, then play it on the latest open version and see if the error is still there.

That's good idea. I'll do that.

[Drayk Armitage]

Presumably you can just test on a copy of an existing savegame?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Slarty

Presumably you can just test on a copy of an existing savegame?

Not if they're already corrupted before testing begins.

[Ormus]

Could anybody explain me how to make saved item rectangles in scenario editor? I need to make simple scenario with them to test my code.

[Balladeer]

It's in the Scenario drop down menu. 'Edit Saved Item Rectangles'

You mark what town you want the rectangle in and the coordinates of the top left and bottom right corners.

[Ormus]

Thanks, Jewelz! I've made simple scenario with one saved item rectangle and tested it with various versions of BoE executable. Old versions corrupted savegames. Current version does not, so saved item rectangle bug is probably fixed.

 

Please download current version of executable file from my webpage and test it yourself. Remember to either make new party or restart scenario you're in.

[Ishad Nha]

Ormus was saying in one of his posts that there were an incredible number of global variables, around 500. In Irony Central I read the reason for this: if you have a huge number of such variables you don't need to hunt through every source file every time you change the value of a variable. Thus there is no chance that you will alter the value of a variable in some source files but not others. I read this here:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-clear-code/?ca=dgr-FClnxw01linuxcodetips.

[Niemand]

This is not a reason to use global variables, it's a reason to define constants, which is what Jeff wrote about in his article. Global variables actually tend to have exactly the opposite effect; they allow/are bad data encapsulation, meaning that a global variable may be modified anywhere, anytime making it very easy to mess up the data it contains when you forget the impacts of all the other parts of the program that modify it. Vast numbers of global variables is the major cause in old Spiderweb code for having to search through all source files to make sure that a change permeates the entire program.