Cannot Load \"Obsidian\"-savegames in D2X-XL

hori · Post by **hori** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 12:23 pm

Help (yet again)!

After having finished playing TEW (with great enthusiasm!) and after some quite stressful weeks I just wanted to start playing Ellusion Design´s \"Obsidian\".

Seems quite interesting so far...
only I can´t load any savegames

I *can* save but whenever I try to load I get the message \"Error! Unable to Load Mission 'Descent 1'\".

Does anybody know how to fix that?

I am running D2X-XL v1.14.34.
(Updating to current v1.14.65 is not an option because that only makes things worse: it quits any game immediately after starting the renderer with a \"Out of Memory Error\" - equally in D1, D2, TEW or Obsidian!)

Thanks in advance!
Hori

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 10:14 pm

This \"out of memory error\" sounds like it has been fixed in 1.14.66 (source: http://www.descent2.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1302). Try that and see if the savegame problem is gone yet.

hori · Post by **hori** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 2:47 am

Yes, v1.14.66 fixed the \"OoM\"-error.
But no, it still can´t load any Obsidian-savegame.

Yet, in the meantime i found a not-even-remotely-nice-but-working solution:
- obviously the name of the matching mission has to be stored within the savegame
- so I searched and found the string \"Descent I\" in midst of all the ASCII in the savegame-file
- \"What if I change that mission-name in the savegame?\"
- I replaced it with \"Obsidian\" (note that \"Obsidian\" is one character shorter than \"Descent I\")
- now Descent cancelled loading not with a \"unable to load mission 'Descent '\" error but with a \"unable to load mission 'Obsidianorporation'\"-error
- ok, that didn´t work (seems like the 1-character-shorter string made delimiting the mission-name break)
-> but: this *is* in fact the exact spot where the *expected* mission-name is stored
-> for a test I renamed \"Obsidian.hog\" and \"Obsidian.mn2\" to \"Descent I.hog\" and \"Descent I.mn2\"

And behold!
No I can save *and* load!

Please note that the error isn´t fixed - it even got weirder in v1.14.66:
- v1.14.34 couldn´t restore a savegame of any custom mission (TEW, Vertigo, Obsidian) - but at least always for the same reason (\"unable to load mission 'Descent I'\")
- v1.14.66 can´t restore Obsidian (\"unable to load mission\"), TEW (\"Save game data corrupted or the level has been changed\") and Vertigo (complete crash with an \"unhandled win32 exception (...) (3760)\")
-> will post on D2X-XLs bugtracker...

Best regards!
Hori

P.S.:
after following Sirius´ link and reading what´s there:
Didn´t know Diedel was banned here...
Bad blood?
Would be a terrible shame since you *all* do such great work keeping Descent alive.
I (as an outsider) even was under the impression that \"it´s all the same\".
Little did I know...

hori · Post by **hori** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 5:14 am

Seems to be related to filenames / filename-lengths!

I always used renamed mission-files like \"Descent II - Obsidian.mn2 / hog\" instead of \"Obsidian.mn2 / hog\".

Now it seems like mission-names need to be <= 9 characters long:
- Vertigo.mn2 / Vertigo.hog -> works!
- VertigoXY.mn2 / VertigoXY.hog -> works!
- VertigoXYZ.mn2 / VertigoXYZ.hog -> fails with message \"unable to load mission 'VertigoXY'\"
- Obsidian.mn2 / Obsidian.hog -> works!
- ObsidianX.mn2 / ObsidianX.hog -> works!
- ObsidianXY.mn2 / ObsidianXY.hog -> fails with message \"unable to load mission 'ObsidianX'\"
(note that the error-messages state the names incorrectly - one char too
short!)

Of course now that I know this I can rename my mission-files to their
original names - problem solved.

Yet I *know for sure* that it *did* work with funky mission-file-names
like \"Descent II - The Enemy Within.mn2\" - I played that through using that
filename...

Greetings!
Hori

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:28 pm

Back in the days of DOS and 8.3, and the original Descent 1/2 games, you couldn't do that either, hence why all the mission names are mangled to fit in that format. Although 9 characters isn't quite what I'd expect.

Nonetheless it would probably be possible for D2X-XL to handle long file names these days. I think.

The bug tracker would really help with dealing with this though, I agree.

Bad blood is pretty much right... it's a long story, and not one that is much fun to go into. There are still quite a few people who use D2X-XL around here though and we can at least point people to appropriate resources.