Failure to start Keyring (or the other included mods) with crash to desktop.

[Fretka]

Have a little problem here that is beyond my ability to troubleshoot. Any help and advice would
be very greatly appreciated!!

Three or four years ago I played Keyring a lot, messed around with Studio, and had a lot of
fun on my older rig. Upgraded my rig, wanted to get back into U7, and installed fresh on it.

The system I'm playing on now:
Hardware is relatively new, functioning flawlessly, and vastly OP.
OS: W 10 Home 64, v.21H1, build 19043.1826 (ie. up-to-date).
U7: GOG download/auto-installed about a week ago.
Exult 27 July '22 snapshot, v. 1.9.0 with All-In-One sound pack.
Marzo's Avatar Pack.
Latest Exult Studio is also fully installed and working flawlessly, although I haven't done any
work with it and so haven't had a chance to mess things up (that'll happen later, for sure..).
I am playing Exult in Windowed form only (fullscreen disabled).

I can start and play games with basic BG-FoV and SI, and in the Exult menu all the mods show up,
are selectable, and allow input of name, gender, and portrate.
But...when I hit "continue on" (for "start a new game") I get a crash to desktop.

# stdout.txt had the following for Keyring. The other mods all gave the same last line:

Starting a BLACK GATE game with the 'Keyring' modification.
Game path settings:
Static : C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Ultima 7\static
Gamedat : C:\Users\Fayfi\AppData\Local\Exult\blackgate\mods\Keyring\gamedat
Savegame: C:\Users\Fayfi\AppData\Local\Exult\blackgate\mods\Keyring\saves
Patch : C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Ultima 7\mods\Keyring\data

Opening digital SFX's file: "<DATA>/sqsfxbg.flx"
Resetting AudioMixer...
Creating 'gamedat' files.

# And stderr had this when attempting to start Keyring, Sourceforge Island, and SI Fixes
# (exact same message for all three):

Could not open file '.\forgeofvirtue\static\mainshp.flx
Could not open file '.\silverseed\static\mainshp.flx
Could not open file '.\serpentbeta\static\mainshp.flx
Warning, trailing slash in path: "<BLACKGATE_STATIC>\"
Warning, trailing slash in path: "<SERPENTISLE_STATIC>\"
SDL Reports 640x400 windowed surfaces are not OK. Windowed scalers may not work properly.
Exult (fatal): Error reading current from zip '<PATCH>/initgame.dat'.

# No files have been written by Exult to any of the Exult\Mod folders in either the Program Files (x86)\
# or the AppData\Local locations (they are currently empty).

Playing in Exult default resolution does not solve this.
I can provide my exult.cfg and whatever else if it would be helpful.

Fretka (a few years ago I went by 'Fretka Furlet' on these forums)

[Fretka]

With further research in our forum I discovered that initgame.dat is not required to start a game and can be deleted. So I trashed the one in the Keyring Mod folder.
Keyring started up just fine after that and seems to play without errors (so far).

So..... Why did I have to do that? Why was there a disfunctional file installed with my Exult installation?

[Dominus]

Initgame.dat is required if you delete that a lot will not work.
Have you updated the keyring mod as well?

[Fretka]

What I actually did was rename the initgame.dat in the Keyring folder to initgame.datOLD. All the files in the Keyring Data folder were the ones installed when I installed the latest snapshot of Exult.
So far, the game has being playing fine with no crashes for hours, and with no functional initgame in that folder. Of course what I'm playing is basicly the unmodded game, which is not what I want.
I can try naming the file back to a functional form and see if the game dies or not.
Also I can download another copy of just Keyring (from Marzo's website maybe?) and installing it in place of the current files if that version of Keyring would be any different from the one that comes bundled with Exult snapshots. [Did this, no change as would be expected, since they are probably the exact same version and files]

For now I'll do the re-enable of the old initgame file and get right back with the results.

Ok, started a saved game with the file restored and it works fine, but is still just basic BG without Keyring. Must be relying on the savegame data with no call to reread the initgame.dat.

Now to see if it will allow a new game to be started....
And the answer is a resounding NO. Exact same error as before.

When I then tried to open a saved game I was told I had to start a new game (couldn't find the saves I guess...?). So I did, and then could access the saves. Only to find they would open fine, then crash on various actions of mine or an NPC. (This is with the functioning initgame.dat.)
It also started showing fewer saves with another attempt or three to open a save and play.
More experimenting: the same crashes and savegame weardness occur with both a functioning and disabled initgame.dat. I assume either the saves have been corrupted or there is some other frackup that has happened.
Either I figure this out or I'll have to completely restart from bareass Trinsic >8-|

So...when and how often does the game read the initgame.dat file? Obviously once at the start of a new game, but after then if and when?
If I knew that, I could arrange for it to happen during a game and see if the crash happens or not.
Since it contains the instructions for everything that makes Keyring not regular BG, I can't actually live without it forever, so I'm in this for the long haul on figuring out how to fix the problem.

Fretka

[Fretka]

Ok, after some sleep it occured to me that the common factor is that Exult is unable to read the initgame.dat files for any of the mods, even tho it apparently did just fine reading the 'same' files for the two base games. ( or does it even have to read those?)
I did notice that for the base games there is a Gamedat folder right in the main game install with all the appropriate files in it. Either the GOG install has it pre-generated or has no problem reading the initgame.dat in the STATIC folder, and cranking out the gamedat files.

Oh, and Dominus, the mod files are the ones that came bundled with the latest snapshot of Exult and *should* be right up-to-date. When the Keyring one didn't work, I also downloaded the very latest version directly from Marzo's website and tried it with exactly the same result.

In the course of this, I have completely uninstalled both the GOG games *and* Exult (plus cleaned out every folder and file the uninstalls missed) and did a fresh install of both the base game and the latest snapshot of Exult.

The GOG dosbox version works fine (well, works like it's supposed to....), and Exult will play unmodded BG and SI just fine too. It's just the mods (ALL the mods for both BG and SI) that consistantly give the: Exult (fatal): Error reading current from zip '<PATCH>/initgame.dat'.

Hopefully that narrows down where the problem might lie. To my non-coder eye some suspicion seems to fall on whatever subprogram Exult is using to read the initgame.dat files, since it's unlikely that Keyring, Sourceforge Island, and SIfixes all have corrupted initgame.dat files.

I have tried to search this forum for anything similar that's happened to others, with no results so far, and I'm sorta lost over at Github.

Anyway, thanks in advance to anyone who can give me any help at all,
Fretka

[Dominus]

Hmm, it might be problem caused by us lately. Can you try the last release of Exult (1.8)?

[Fretka]

Yes, I can and will. Might take me a day or two to do and test, but I can always use the practice.

Do have one question about that, tho: If I wanted to have more than one install of Exult on my rig, wouldn't they both be forming and writing to the same folders and files in appdata\local? Is there a way to have them set up and use separate ones? Or does it matter?
At the very least, I name all my saves so I only use the appropriate one for each install.

All right, installed 1.8.0 and fired it up: Keyring starts a new game just fine. I'll check the other mods too, but expect success.
And success was had.

Amusing discovery: the savegame from the one I started in 1.8.0 Keyring functions fine with my 1.9.0 install. Guess that indicates that at least some parts of 1.9.0 are working fine (which is to be expected since you all do awesome work).

If I play it that way would I be getting the upgrades of the 1.9.0 snapshot or does the 1.8.0 save somehow override them? And again: does it matter?
Oh, wait...the data files were generated by 1.8.0, not 1.9.0 so I'd be playing a 1.8.0 game, even tho I was using 1.9.0...hrmpf.
The reason I ask is that I do have the latest snapshot of Studio installed with the 1.9.0 Exult and would like to dabble with some patch/mod work for my own amusement. Would having 1.8.0 generated data files bork that up? Guess it would depend on what changes were made between the two versions of Exult (and Keyring).

[Dominus]

No that should work fine. I'll see if I can reproduce your problems and file a bug. Thanks for testing and reporting back. This really helps! We changed some stuff because of the Android port since 1.8 and it seems to cause problems for Windows versions of the snapshots.

[Fretka]

Cool!! I'm delighted I could be of some help.
I tried to do all the research and experimenting I know how to accomplish on my own to take some of the load off you all.
Didn't try to file a bug since there was an excellent chance it was all my fault .