Trouble interacting with objects in Myst V in Uru:CC

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Trouble interacting with objects in Myst V in Uru:CC

Postby Hazeldust » Mon Nov 08, 2021 10:46 pm

Hope this is the right forum for these kind of questions? I've been having a lot of fun exploring the MOULA ages in Uru:CC via Drizzle (I even figured out a way to get the widescreen fix working on the Steam version!) but I seem to have hit a bug with Myst V content. My understanding is that Myst V ages should be mostly playable, but I've got to the beginning of the Descent age and I can't interact with the objects. Can't click the journals, can't click the Direbo book. My mouse cursor indicates something interactable is there, but nothing happens when I click. I am able to move the wooden lever thingies and the elevator lever, but nothing happens when I do that.

I should note I'm playing on Linux using Proton/Steam, and the Myst V files come from the Steam version of Myst V. The first time I ran Drizzle I ran it natively on Linux, then when I encountered the bug I ran the conversion again using a Windows virtual machine, but it still didn't work. I had already installed a copy of the CD version of Uru:CC on the virtual machine (which I was using to figure out how the widescreen fix works) so I tried to convert it using *that* as the base instead of the Steam version, then play that version instead using the Steam save file, but it still has the exact same problem. It could very well be a result of me using Proton rather than running it natively but everything else in the game has worked fine so far, barring a couple of very minor graphical glitches in the pod ages.
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Re: Trouble interacting with objects in Myst V in Uru:CC

Postby Sirius » Tue Nov 09, 2021 1:35 am

Are you using Drizzle32 for conversion ? Also, make sure the files included with Drizzle32 are put in your Uru folder AFTER installing the Offline-KI.
If that doesn't fix it, start the game once and Link to one of the bogus Ages, try interacting with a few objects, then quit. Then find the file log/Python.0.elf in your Uru folder, and upload it as attachment here (you may have to zip it first in order to attach it to a post).
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Re: Trouble interacting with objects in Myst V in Uru:CC

Postby Hazeldust » Tue Nov 09, 2021 8:35 am

Sirius wrote:Are you using Drizzle32 for conversion ? Also, make sure the files included with Drizzle32 are put in your Uru folder AFTER installing the Offline-KI.
If that doesn't fix it, start the game once and Link to one of the bogus Ages, try interacting with a few objects, then quit. Then find the file log/Python.0.elf in your Uru folder, and upload it as attachment here (you may have to zip it first in order to attach it to a post).


I restarted everything from scratch and it worked! My avatar is now chilling in Direbo. I think I had originally put the files in *before* installing the Offline-KI, and then when I was frantically troubleshooting with other installations I forgot to put them in at all :oops: ! Thanks for your help.

re: the widescreen thing, would it be worth submitting a pull request with my fix for the Steam version if/when I get enough time to test it properly?
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Re: Trouble interacting with objects in Myst V in Uru:CC

Postby Sirius » Tue Nov 09, 2021 10:26 am

Glad to hear it worked ! Yeah, it can be a bit confusing, eventually those files should be included in the Offline-KI to avoid such issues.

Hazeldust wrote:re: the widescreen thing, would it be worth submitting a pull request with my fix for the Steam version if/when I get enough time to test it properly?

May I ask how you did it ? You downloaded the No-CD patch and applied Drizzle's widescreen fix to it ?

The truth is, we have several versions of the engine (UruExplorer.exe) available for CC/PotS, and all are quite imperfect (there is the original that's 4:3rd only but can be patched by Drizzle, the "beta" that has official but buggy widescreen and no EAX, a patched one that fixes bugs online on Deep Island...).
This is immensely annoying because I'd rather have everyone use a single version of the engine with as many features and no bugs as possible, but so far we don't have one that satisfies all those criteria. Really unfortunate :x
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Re: Trouble interacting with objects in Myst V in Uru:CC

Postby Hazeldust » Tue Nov 09, 2021 2:30 pm

Sirius wrote:Glad to hear it worked ! Yeah, it can be a bit confusing, eventually those files should be included in the Offline-KI to avoid such issues.

Hazeldust wrote:re: the widescreen thing, would it be worth submitting a pull request with my fix for the Steam version if/when I get enough time to test it properly?

May I ask how you did it ? You downloaded the No-CD patch and applied Drizzle's widescreen fix to it ?


I manually hex edited the Steam .exe myself. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I noticed Drizzle was only overwriting a few specific bytes in the .exe for the No-CD patch version, so I used a hex editor to find the position of the same bytes in the Steam .exe in what looked to be the right neighbourhood (comparing them to the No-CD .exe) and just overwrite them manually. I didn't expect it to be that easy, but it worked!

I'm assuming this could be done automatically the same way the current code does it, it would just have to have some way of knowing which version of the .exe it was working with (Steam vs. No-CD vs...?) so it knows the specific locations to overwrite. The Steam DRM stuff might make that more complicated though, I'd have to test with a .exe from another Steam account to see if the hex values still end up in the same places.


Sirius wrote:The truth is, we have several versions of the engine (UruExplorer.exe) available for CC/PotS, and all are quite imperfect (there is the original that's 4:3rd only but can be patched by Drizzle, the "beta" that has official but buggy widescreen and no EAX, a patched one that fixes bugs online on Deep Island...).
This is immensely annoying because I'd rather have everyone use a single version of the engine with as many features and no bugs as possible, but so far we don't have one that satisfies all those criteria. Really unfortunate :x


Yeah, that does sound annoying. I've been trying to get as much stuff as possible working offline/single player through Steam, as for me it's the most convenient way to play the game single player right now, and single player is my preferred way to play. However I understand trying to support a bunch of different clients probably isn't a good long term strategy. Is the idea that eventually something like the H'Uru client will work for playing single player as well as online?
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Re: Trouble interacting with objects in Myst V in Uru:CC

Postby Sirius » Fri Nov 12, 2021 2:08 am

Hazeldust wrote:I manually hex edited the Steam .exe myself. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I noticed Drizzle was only overwriting a few specific bytes in the .exe for the No-CD patch version, so I used a hex editor to find the position of the same bytes in the Steam .exe in what looked to be the right neighbourhood (comparing them to the No-CD .exe) and just overwrite them manually. I didn't expect it to be that easy, but it worked!

Good job ! Yes, the widescreen fix just requires replacing the original ratio of 1.33 in the exe with 1.78. Editing exes isn't straightforward though, so nicely done :)

Hazeldust wrote:I'm assuming this could be done automatically the same way the current code does it, it would just have to have some way of knowing which version of the .exe it was working with (Steam vs. No-CD vs...?) so it knows the specific locations to overwrite.

Yep, right now Drizzle doesn't even check which version of the engine it's dealing with, but this can easily be improved with some kind of CRC.
Would you mind uploading the original version of your Steam UruExplorer.exe as attachment here ? (you'll probably need to zip it first.) I'll update Drizzle so it knows which offsets to write to.

Hazeldust wrote:Is the idea that eventually something like the H'Uru client will work for playing single player as well as online?

No, the file format the H'Uru client expects is too far from the one in use by PotS. It wouldn't be worth it.
There isn't much that can be done right now. Only Cyan could fix and rebuild an exe without bugs, but I suspect they have better things to do. So right now, the best exe to use remains on a per-user basis. I don't like it but we don't have much choice...

But the truth is, PotS and Deep Island are becoming more and more obsolete now that we have good control over MOULa's engine and contents. Once the H'Uru client can work reliably offline, I suspect there won't be any reason to use PotS' engine and content any longer, and most of the "fun stuff" (fan Ages, Myst V/CT Ages, etc) will be on that new client. Some PotS-specific content is also slowly being ported to MOULa, so it wouldn't surprise me if eventually we'll be able to configure our offline MOUL install to mimick PotS behavior.
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Re: Trouble interacting with objects in Myst V in Uru:CC

Postby Hazeldust » Sat Nov 13, 2021 5:19 pm

Sirius wrote:Good job ! Yes, the widescreen fix just requires replacing the original ratio of 1.33 in the exe with 1.78. Editing exes isn't straightforward though, so nicely done


Thanks! I'd done a bit of hex editing for other game mods in the past, but editing executables is a new one for me :)

Sirius wrote:Would you mind uploading the original version of your Steam UruExplorer.exe as attachment here ? (you'll probably need to zip it first.) I'll update Drizzle so it knows which offsets to write to.


Sure, no problem. Looks like it's too large to upload as an attachment, even as a zip, so I've put it up here (link expires in seven days). This is the unedited version. To edit I changed the following:

at 1494e7 I wrote 0000b4
at 149739 I wrote 0000b4
at 65316c I wrote 643b5f

Again, I'm no expert on the intimate details but I do know a lot of games (not all) have Steam's DRM added, which might make it harder to hex edit reliably.

Sirius wrote:Once the H'Uru client can work reliably offline, I suspect there won't be any reason to use PotS' engine and content any longer, and most of the "fun stuff" (fan Ages, Myst V/CT Ages, etc) will be on that new client. Some PotS-specific content is also slowly being ported to MOULa, so it wouldn't surprise me if eventually we'll be able to configure our offline MOUL install to mimick PotS behavior.


This makes sense, and was kind of what I was getting at with my question. I guess for me "single player Uru" just means I can have an experience that resembles what I played back in 2003-2004 offline, with improvements like widescreen. If that's where H'Uru is headed I'm all for it 8-)
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Re: Trouble interacting with objects in Myst V in Uru:CC

Postby Sirius » Sun Nov 14, 2021 4:04 am

Hazeldust wrote:Sure, no problem. Looks like it's too large to upload as an attachment, even as a zip, so I've put it up here (link expires in seven days).

Downloaded, thanks ! :)

Hazeldust wrote:Again, I'm no expert on the intimate details but I do know a lot of games (not all) have Steam's DRM added, which might make it harder to hex edit reliably.

This one launches without Steam, so I think we're good.
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Re: Trouble interacting with objects in Myst V in Uru:CC

Postby Korovev » Sun Nov 14, 2021 5:23 am

Sirius wrote:But the truth is, PotS and Deep Island are becoming more and more obsolete now that we have good control over MOULa's engine and contents. Once the H'Uru client can work reliably offline, I suspect there won't be any reason to use PotS' engine and content any longer, and most of the "fun stuff" (fan Ages, Myst V/CT Ages, etc) will be on that new client. Some PotS-specific content is also slowly being ported to MOULa, so it wouldn't surprise me if eventually we'll be able to configure our offline MOUL install to mimick PotS behavior.

Not in the short term: there are more than a hundred fan Ages on UAM, many of the authors left long ago (so it would fall on the usual few to do all the porting), some of those still around still use the old tools, and some Ages probably use specific quirks of PotS that may be a hassle to replicate on MOUL.
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Re: Trouble interacting with objects in Myst V in Uru:CC

Postby Sirius » Sun Nov 14, 2021 6:12 am

Oh, granted, we're talking about Uru, so it's not going to happen overnight either ! And in any case, PotS/Deep Island will keep working for a long while after that.

I wouldn't worry too much about Ages on UAM. I think most of them are simple enough that they could be rammed through a clever HSPlasma-based converter. I'll probably try that at some point, since it sounds less complex than what Drizzle does. But yeah, we'll see once the H'uru client can work offline without hassle. No rush.

I'm more worried about re-integrating PotS-specific content to be honest, since many smaller details clash with their MOUL counterpart (such as the blue/green shell cloth texture).
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