Lost the September sparkly after a crash

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Lost the September sparkly after a crash

Postby RubyQ » Sun Sep 12, 2021 3:53 pm

A couple of days ago I picked up the September sparkly for my off-line DI game.

Then in a subsequent session the game crashed with an access violation. On restart would crash again as it tried to launch to relto. I restored an earlier copy of the vault.dat file into my avatar's \sav\xxxxxxxxx\current\ folder. After the restore, the avatar & relto are otherwise OK, but I no longer have the September sparkly on the tusk-bridge island on my relto.

So I went back to the Age with the September sparkly to pick it up again. But I can't get it! I can walk through the floating sparkly all day long, and it will not trigger the relto book's reaction. I tried deactivating/reactivating the sparkly relto page, and still the sparkly does not appear on the island. (Other sparklies that I already had from before are all there.)

I suppose there must be some file where the sparkly has been logged as "already picked up", so it won't allow itself to be harvested again. And now that setting is out of sync with my relto sparkly island. I hunted through the .sav files looking for something obvious to try to tweak, but I don't see "relto" or "sparkly" in any of the filenames in the sav folder. Is the pertinent .sav file the one for the Age itself? Or maybe Personal_xxxxx.sav?

Please, can anybody tell me the name and location of that file, so I can go take an older version off a backup? Or tell me whether the file can be edited to reset the status or flag or whatever it is that tells the game that I haven't collected that sparkly yet?

It won't kill me not to have that sparkly, but the not knowing what the obstacle is WILL gnaw away at my psyche.

Thanks for any light you can shed!

PS:
Earlier this summer, my offline DI crashed with an access violation and I lost my avatar. I didn't want to have to add a new avatar and replay everything, so searched for a solution on GOW. I found a thread about a similar issue,
viewtopic.php?f=111&t=6616&hilit=+access+start, where dendwater said to restore the sav files. So I did, and DI worked fine.

Then the same crash happened again, more than once, and somehow I decided that I only needed to restore the vault.dat file, not all the rest of the Age files. Which is why I only restored the vault.dat file today. But I'm clearly missing something else essential!
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Re: Lost the September sparkly after a crash

Postby Aloys » Wed Sep 15, 2021 3:56 pm

I wish I had some sort of answer for you, but I'm afraid I don't know a thing on this matter. :(
Anyone else?
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Re: Lost the September sparkly after a crash

Postby RubyQ » Thu Sep 16, 2021 5:33 pm

Sure is a stumper, isn't it!

Anyway, I couldn't leave it alone. I tried restoring (1) the Age.sav file from a July backup; (2) the Personalxxxxx.sav file; and (3) the Personal02xxxx.sav. First one at a time, then all three together. Nothing changed for the sparkly situation.

But I DID notice subtle changes in my Relto when I brought back an older Personalxxxx.sav file, such as things that I had kicked out of the way were once again in my path. Always interesting to learn something, even if it's not related to the problem at hand!

I am resigned to be missing a sparkly, but at least I do have it in my online DI Relto.
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Re: Lost the September sparkly after a crash

Postby Théodore » Fri Sep 17, 2021 12:52 pm

I never up to now realized you were talking about your offline install of URU... I think this topic should be moved out of the Deep Island section of the forum if a moderator or admin pass along and see this thread.

Ok, anyway, on your offline URU install you are the admin by default. If you are at ease with fiddling with things in the back end you can install PlasmaShop which should still be available through the GoW wiki. You will have access to VaultShop which is a built inside the PlasmaShop software if and only if you are the admin of said server which I may repeat myself here, you are! You can modify your vault at your convenience. Now... Do I use that myself? No not really. I do use PlasmaShop but never played in my personal vault.

It all depends on how at ease you are with playing in the back end of your game. If you are ok, keep a backup copy in case you screw something up. If you need help after installing PlasmaShop, how to navigate, how to set it properly, just let me know in this thread.

Thanks!
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Re: Lost the September sparkly after a crash

Postby RubyQ » Fri Sep 17, 2021 5:36 pm

Thanks so much, Theo! This is just the sort of pointer that I was hoping for!

I will look into downloading PlasmaShop over the weekend when I have a little more time. And just so you can relax... "fiddle" is my middle name.

Sorry, admin folks, if I posted in the wrong place. I see lots of posts that mix information re online & offline URU, so I wasn't paying attention. Next time I'll know better.

Thanks again, Theo!
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Re: Lost the September sparkly after a crash

Postby diafero » Thu Oct 07, 2021 7:15 pm

If you type '/help', it will tell you all the magic commands that the Offline KI adds. One of those will also just directly enable all Sparklies for you. But of course, that is the boring way. ;)
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Re: Lost the September sparkly after a crash

Postby RubyQ » Fri Oct 08, 2021 5:45 pm

diafero wrote:But of course, that is the boring way. ;)


Thanks for the tip, Diafero! And I appreciate all your work on the KI.

Not for me, though, the boring way! Somewhere in the forum (probably in a tip from Annabelle) I stumbled across the trick about changing the date on the computer so it thinks you're in the month for the sparkly you want to collect. Not so boring, while still being a shortcut, but so far I have resisted that approach, too.

In other news: after installing Plasma/Vault Shop, getting ready to dive into it, I did a backup of my DI offline game into a drive I hardly ever use... and surprised myself by finding a fairly recent backup that I had completely forgotten, where I was able to get the files from before I lost the sparkly. So I restored the sparkly "the old-fashioned way". And never got into Plasma Shop that day. Still looking forward to doing that back-room exploring.
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Re: Lost the September sparkly after a crash

Postby Chameleon13 » Mon Oct 11, 2021 12:24 am

Hi RubyQ, in the same vein, if you are overwhelmed by the number of uploaded fan ages, you can remove them from the (dat) section being careful not to remove an essential component from another age.
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Re: Lost the September sparkly after a crash

Postby Théodore » Mon Oct 11, 2021 7:26 am

Bonjour Chameleon13,

I wouldn't advise you to do it that way. There is a button in Drizzle to remove any age. By doing so, you don't only remove the files in the folder /dat but you also remove all the python, SDL, and other related files. Other than doing a proper removal of such age, it also prevents from removing the wrong files breaking other ages if you are not careful. The button "Delete" is right under the one we use to download an age. Also all the versions of an age whether or not you remove it or is currently installed on your game are stored in a folder named /agearchives in zip format, granted you have downloaded it in the past.

Another tip that can be said is, if for one reason or the other one has to set back a new Offline URU game, it is good to keep a backup copy of said /agearchives folder. The rest is not important, the game itself will reinstall the rest. Unless you have exported marker quests, then you also have to have a backup copy of /export folder.

Final remark, the /agearchives folder can be of a hefty size too. Mine stands at 9.44 Gb right now.
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Re: Lost the September sparkly after a crash

Postby RubyQ » Mon Oct 11, 2021 10:00 pm

Chameleon13 wrote: if you are overwhelmed by the number of uploaded fan ages, you can remove them from the (dat) section


Salut, Chameleon! Thanks, but I don't actually have any reason to delete any fan ages. (The more, the merrier!) This whole sparkly issue was due to a corrupted "vault.dat" file, not a problem with the age file(s). I do admit that some months ago I used Drizzle to clean out a few ages that I knew I would not revisit... Right now it's all shipshape and under control. Merci bien!
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