Bug Report - One book in Relto causes a crash

[dave735]

I was clicking through my Relto bookcase trying to acquaint myself with the available links, and when I clicked on the last book on the top shelf, the book slid out, but then the game froze.
As background, I have recently ported over the files for the Myst V ages and more recently the MagicQuest play areas. I know some pages got added in the bookshelf due to the Myst V addition, but do not know if any would occur due to the MagicQuest addition (did not think so). But in any case, I haven't added or moved any books, so they are in their default positions. The last four books in the upper shelf (left to right) are - Minkata, then Jalak, then the book with all five pod age pages, then a blue book on the far right end of the shelf (the one that causes the freeze).
When the freeze happens, I can still move my cursor, and I see a text block prompt when I move across the upper left part of the screen (like there is an invisible writing area there), but the game does not respond to any keyboard commands or mouse clicks. At first, after the book slides out, my hard drive thrashes for a time (some sort of I/O operation is occurring), then settles down. If I wait for that, then Ctl-Alt-Del and open the Task manager, I get the following error message (also provided as an attachment to this note) --
Exception type: Access violation
Call stack (14 levels):
0x764633AA
0x00869D54
0x00475CF0
0x00476029
0x00641570
0x00640F3C
0x0064112F
0x00845139
0x008486F4
0x0084D88A
0x0084E5B6
0x0062730F
0x0050688F
0x004BBB8F
I do not know if this problem is confined to my configuration. I cannot remember ever clicking on that book in the past, or even if that book was there previously. It does not appear to be necessary for me to reach anywhere else in the game (unless it contains the link to the Great Zero room, which I do not know how to reach currently). But in any case, I hope from this description that you can resolve the issue causing the game to freeze.

[Sirius]

This is a Windows 7 crash... Here is one of the related threads

In short: it is caused by an animated Linking Panel Win7 doesn't like. You can remove the animation file (<your path to your Uru folder>/avi/mystWithAlpha.bik and direboWithAlpha.bik). You won't have the animated linking panel, but the game will default it to a static image if it can't find the file.

Otherwise you can try to switch off compatibility mod for Uru, but it might cause other errors.

[dave735]

Thanks for the quick response. Killing the animations does work like a charm, and yes I've already found out the hard way that Win 7 compatibility mode is necessary to get URU to run online.

I guess if I 'd known the book was for Direbo I might have been able to find the earlier posting and solved the problem from that. Sorry for the duplicate posting. Looking at the other posting did put me onto Diafero's alternative approach for running URU in Linux, however. So thanks for that too.

[diafero]

Cool, support is working

My recommendation is to set up compatibility mode for Windows 7. It sounds a bit weird to tell Windows 7 to be compatible with Windows 7, but as far as I remember that did the trick for me... but then, it's been a while since I started Uru on Windows

[Ehren]

I would recommend to avoid using any book that appears in the last four spaces of the top shelf, those are the killers...

[Sirius]

I think Windows 7 compatibility mode disables the Virtual Store. I'm not sure it is causing the issue though.

For offline Uru I prefer to keep compatibility off since Virtual Store allows me to put any modified file (or test files) in the Virtual Store while being able to keep the original version of files. Also very useful when you want to quickly revert EVERY changes you made to your Uru...

Fun fact, Win7 compatibility also works to fix realMYST's linking panels (Plasma 1, non-steam version).

[diafero]

I would recommend to avoid using any book that appears in the last four spaces of the top shelf, those are the killers...

Actually also those books work great here, both on Linux and Windows. You just have to set up Uru properly.
For example, I always recommend people to put Uru into their home folder, which means that virtual store is not an issue. If Uru is in a folder where virtual store is in effect, that's almost guaranteed to end bad as both the Uru launcher and the proper engine want to access the same files, but as far as I know they get their individual virtual stores. Adding Drizzle to the mix, and it blows all up

[Annabelle]

What is the "virtual store"?

[Ehren]

What is the "virtual store"?

C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore

(AppData folder is a hidden folder)

Windows 7 by default seems to not want programs to edit or add things to the Program Files folders, so it wants to use the "VirtualStore" instead. This can really confuse Uru and cause it to crash rather quickly...

I always set Uru to compatibility mode, but I also make sure to set folder permissions for Uru directories so that any user or program can edit them. I also make sure no files are set to Read Only.

[Sirius]

Windows 7 is a real pain when it comes to permissions...

The virtual store is cool if you want to keep an unmodified version of a program (when like me you're applying all kind of stuff to Uru which usually cause it not to work), but otherwise it's not really convenient. Especially since not all programs access the files the same way.
For instance, setups can access the root folder directly, the game itself won't be able to.