How to use Talcum?

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How to use Talcum?

Postby Christian Walther » Thu Oct 21, 2010 12:22 pm

I am trying once again to get Talcum to work, without success. I usually work on Mac OS with Drizzle compiled from SVN, but this time I tried on Windows with the released Drizzle28.jar, with the same result:

Half of the time (randomly), just before the client starts the secure download (dots-around-book animation already displayed), it tries to send a stack dump to the server (message 44). Talcum doesn't know what to do with that, so things stop at that point. I don't get a stack dump dialog on the client, it just keeps spinning the dots. (I can get the stack dump out of a Wireshark trace if it's interesting.) The other half of the time, the secure download proceeds, but at the end of it the client stops with the following stack dump dialog:
Code: Select all
UruLive.Live.1.893 - External.Release
Exception type: Access violation
Call stack (14 levels):
 0x008BF988
  0x0045723C
   0x004571E3
    0x0045633D
     0x007F77A1
      0x00506E5F
       0x00553CE4
        0x005533A6
         0x004568D1
          0x007F6F74
           0x007F6B43
            0x007F65D0
             0x7C350609
              0x7C343305


First of all, can anyone confirm if the file system layout I determined by trial and error is correct? I basically did the following to set it up:
Code: Select all
drizzle -downloadsecuremoulagainfiles username password securemoulagainfiles
drizzle -downloadmoulagainfiles moulagainfiles
drizzle -patachmoulbinary moulagainfiles\UruLauncher.exe 192.168.1.42
drizzle -patachmoulbinary moulagainfiles\UruExplorer.exe 192.168.1.42
del moulagainfiles\UruLauncher.exe.orig moulagainfiles\UruExplorer.exe.orig
mkdir moulserver-data
drizzle -generatedataserver moulagainfiles moulserver-data\fileserver
xcopy /E /I securemoulagainfiles moulserver-data\fileserver\SecureDownload
move moulagainfiles moulserver-data\files
move securemoulagainfiles\Python moulserver-data\files
move securemoulagainfiles\SDL moulserver-data\files
rmdir securemoulagainfiles


So, I have a folder moulserver-data containing three folders database, files, and fileserver, where the second is a full MOULa installation (with patched executables) plus the plaintext Python and SDL folders, and the third is the output of drizzle -generatedataserver with an additional folder SecureDownload containing again the plaintext Python and SDL folders. I then start Talcum with
Code: Select all
drizzle -startmoulserver thepassword 192.168.1.42 moulserver-data


What's puzzling me is that when I watched the network traffic using Wireshark, I found no obvious difference between such a failed Talcum session and a working MOULa session - the ordering of PingRequests/PingReplies with respect to other messages varied a bit, but I assume that shouldn't matter. I did fix one bug (the AuthServer FileDownloadReply was specifying the plaintext rather than encrypted file length) but that had no effect.

One difference to MOULa is that at this point, the client doesn't have a full installation - UruLauncher.exe only downloaded the top files and empty dat and sfx folders, but no contents for the latter two and no avi folder at all. Could this be the problem? Is it even intended?
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Re: How to use Talcum?

Postby ddb174 » Fri Oct 22, 2010 9:42 am

I'll fix that up for Drizzle29 and make a little tutorial on how to get started and where to put files!
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Re: How to use Talcum?

Postby Christian Walther » Fri Oct 22, 2010 10:56 am

OK, thanks – that sounds like you know what the problem is?
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Re: How to use Talcum?

Postby ddb174 » Sat Oct 23, 2010 1:00 am

Yeah, I've found and fixed the problem (the problem was that the manifests had too many slashes after some improvements I made to the DataserverGenerator), as well as making a number of other improvements. I've created the tutorial, but it's specific to Drizzle29, so I guess I'll wait until that's released to post the tutorial. And it now supports the LogStackTrace message, so that's handy. Amazingly, during all my testing, I never had a stackdump before! (The way this works is: when Uru stackdumps, it saves a log of it. Then the next time Uru starts, it submits that stackdump with a LogStackTrace message.)

I also found yet another bug with Moulagain Plasma: if avi files are downloaded in-game and the avi folder doesn't exist yet, it crashes. So I'm including a simple workaround for that in the tutorial too^^
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Re: How to use Talcum?

Postby Christian Walther » Sat Oct 23, 2010 1:26 am

I don’t see any of this in https://alcugs.almlys.org/svn/drizzle, am I looking in the wrong place?

ddb174 wrote:The way this works is: when Uru stackdumps, it saves a log of it. Then the next time Uru starts, it submits that stackdump with a LogStackTrace message.

Ah, that’s why it happened every second time. It did seem more regular than random! I was assuming that the LogStackTrace message was generated in the instant of the crash, but when I think about it, that probably wouldn’t work too well.
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Re: How to use Talcum?

Postby ddb174 » Sat Oct 23, 2010 10:57 am

Yes, that's the right spot, but Drizzle is in the part of its release cycle where there aren't usually commits to svn, but there will be a big commit soon with the Drizzle29 stuff. (This is because of a few reasons, not least of which is because of untested prp changes.)

As for the stackdump thing, I must say that I think it was a good idea of Cyan's!

Drizzle29 will be released in a few days, or you could email me at ddbernardAtSasktelDotNet and I could send you the current .jar and walkthrough if you would rather not wait!
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Re: How to use Talcum?

Postby J'Kla » Sat Oct 23, 2010 12:53 pm

I usualy use it shaken from the tin applied directly to the skin. :D
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Re: How to use Talcum?

Postby ddb174 » Sat Oct 23, 2010 8:01 pm

Okay, Drizzle29 is out, and the walkthrough is at http://dusty.homeunix.net/wiki/Talcum.
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Re: How to use Talcum?

Postby Christian Walther » Sat Oct 30, 2010 3:50 am

Some rambling about my progress, in case anyone wants to replicate it:

In the Great News for Fan Age Players and Authors Alike! thread,
Christian Walther wrote:Now I only need to figure out a way of getting myself a KI…


Getting a KI was easy enough (UPDATE VAULT SET TEXT_1 = '2' WHERE TYPE = 29 AND STR_1 = 'PlayerKILevel'), but getting it to work is harder…

First, to avoid a freeze when opening the KI, the auth server needs to handle ScoreGetScores requests – sending back a canned dummy PelletDrop score recorded from MOULa works for now. (If anyone wants to implement it for real: the Uru Wireshark plugin knows more about ScoreGetScoresReplies than Talcum currently does.)
patch Show Spoiler


Now the KI opens, but kills the game server with “Moul isn't listed as having type: 0x370”. According to libHSPlasma (PyHSPlasma.plFactory.ClassName(0x370, PyHSPlasma.pvMoul)), this type is plAvTaskBrain, which is not implemented in Drizzle. I guess that means that the problem happens when the client tries to tell other players “this avatar is doing the KI opening animation”. libHSPlasma suggests that a plAvTaskBrain is simply a container for a plArmatureBrain, which is not implemented in Drizzle either, but some of its subclasses (plAvBrainHuman, plAvBrainPirahna, plAvBrainQuab) are. Hopefully that means that implementing it will not be very hard. Whether that will get me much further is a different question – my lack of Plasma knowledge is showing here…
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Re: How to use Talcum?

Postby ddb174 » Sat Oct 30, 2010 11:22 am

Yeah, those things are all easy to implement, but I never tried using the KI yet, so didn't encounter them. Perhaps I can take a look at it before Drizzle30. Thanks for all the info!
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