Script Gone...

[Phemar]

Please...help me. This be my last desperate plea for help...

Today...I opened up my game. I wanted to edit the GUI. So I pressed [ctrl]+[G] to open the Global Script. I looked.

I looked again.

I looked again.

I looked yet again.

My script was not there. Gone. Wiped off the face of the Earth.

Be there not a way to revive the Script?

Anyone? You must understand how desperate I am...That is alot of work to rewrite...

PLEASE! I AM FLIPPIN TELLIN YOU THERE BETTER BE A WAY OR ELSE!

I am using AGS Beta...So maybe?

[Hollister Man]

You mentioned you were using a beta version?  Well, then restore from your backup.   If you didn't back it up, then you'll have to wait for another bright idea from someone else.  (sorry for the sarcasm, it does really suck, but everyone's been warned)

[Pumaman]

When you say "gone", do you mean the script window was totally empty, or had it been replaced by the default global script?

Does your editor.dat file look intact and ok?
How much free disk space do you have?
Is your script header still working?

[Phemar]

When you say "gone", do you mean the script window was totally empty, or had it been replaced by the default global script?

Does your editor.dat file look intact and ok?
How much free disk space do you have?
Is your script header still working?

Totally wiped. Gone. Not a // left. The monster.

225 MB free...

I don't what the editor.dat file is supposed to look like, but it's still there, standing at a mere 5.80 KBs...

I don't know what you mean by script header...I can still type in more stuff, if that's what you mean...

You mentioned you were using a beta version?  Well, then restore from your backup.   If you didn't back it up, then you'll have to wait for another bright idea from someone else.  (sorry for the sarcasm, it does really suck, but everyone's been warned)

Call me what you may, but I am still deeply traumatised and upset by this incident. At night I fall alseep to the sound of my own screams, do you think I'm unhappy? Hm?

I did make a backup...but last week...so much has happened since then...Oh the pain. Don't make me think about it any more...please...

[Pumaman]

Did you get any errors or problems the last time you saved your game?

The global script shouldn't just suddenly disappear like that - are all your sprite folders intact? (they are also stored in the editor.dat)

[Phemar]

Did you get any errors or problems the last time you saved your game?

The global script shouldn't just suddenly disappear like that - are all your sprite folders intact? (they are also stored in the editor.dat)

All my sprites and folders and basically everything else is still intact...

[Pumaman]

I take it there's no possibility you accidentally did a Select All -> Delete in the script editor?

I've never had a report of this before, has anyone else ever had this happen?

[fred]

I've experienced loss of data from the global script (AGS version 2.62 final) too on several occasions, but never the whole thing. The script is about 6500 lines, and when this has happened, the script seems to have been simply cut at a random position (say, line 4912) - everything after that is gone, and sometimes there have been some strange characters instead. This has only happened when I used the Ctrl+T (Test game) option after exiting and saving the global script where I had just added new content. The game would try to compile, and I would get an error (do you want to fix this..?) and when the script re-opened for me to fix it, a huge chunk would be gone - always at the end of the script.
I haven't reported this earlier as I didn't see any pattern in the data-losses and I figured it had someting to do with me adding so much custom content to the global script (more than 200 custom functions and 720 arrayed custom ints so far). Its probably my own fault - but strange that part of the script is suddenly replaced by nonsense characters. I'll give a more thorough bug report if something similar happens again. But I'm sure limited disk space can be ruled out as a factor.

[Pumaman]

That's very odd. It shouldn't be anything to do with the size of the script -- AGS games like KQ2VGA have been produced with global scripts over 30000 lines and I haven't had any reports of this corruption happening.

Does it seem to be if you add a large chunk of code in one go? Does it only happen if a compile error occurs?

[fred]

I'm glad to hear long scripts aren't the problem, I was starting to think there may be some limit to script-sizes.
Btw, is there a limit to how many custom global variables you can use in a script? Or to the length of arrays?
I currently have:Ã, 
1 array of 80 ints
1 of 360 ints
3 of 100 ints
2 of 40 ints
They're all made globals with the header-/global script import-export statements.

Does it seem to be if you add a large chunk of code in one go?

I do believe that the script-corruption happened after I had addedÃ,  at least some code (don't remember how much), and possibly also after I had added new custom arrays of ints to be imported and exported.

Does it only happen if a compile error occurs?

Yes. Or maybe the compile error occured because a big chunk of the script was missing.

[Pumaman]

I'm rather concerned by this corruption... but it's very strange that nobody else has seen it. Do you remember if you switched away from the script editor and did some work in the main AGS Editor while the script editor was still open? If so, any ideas what you might have been doing?

Btw, is there a limit to how many custom global variables you can use in a script? Or to the length of arrays?

In 2.62, a single array cannot be bigger than 32 KB (that would be an int array of 8000). This limit will be removed in the next version.

Other than that, no, there's no limit on the amount of global data in the script.

Yes. Or maybe the compile error occured because a big chunk of the script was missing.

Do you remember whether the compile error was on the line where the script was corrupt, or was it something earlier on in the script and unrelated?

[fred]

I'm rather concerned by this corruption... but it's very strange that nobody else has seen it.

You shouldn't be too worried - the reason I haven't posted these corruptions is that I haven't been able to make sure they weren't just my own stupid mistakes - so don't be too concerned. If anything like it happens again I'll be sure to take note of everything I was doing and report it.

Do you remember if you switched away from the script editor and did some work in the main AGS Editor while the script editor was still open? If so, any ideas what you might have been doing?

I don't remember if I switched away from the script while it was open, but it is likely. My game doesn't use Inventory Items, Global Messages, Dialogs, Text Parser or Lip sync - but I could've been working in any of the remaining branches of the Editor.

Do you remember whether the compile error was on the line where the script was corrupt, or was it something earlier on in the script and unrelated?

I remember one occasion where the error pointed to the line where the corruption started, but I'm not sure where it pointed the other times.

[Pumaman]

Thanks for the info. Do let me know if it happens again.

[fred]

It happened again - I had been working on my script, closed and saved it, and when I triedÃ,  to "Test game", I got an error pointing to a certain line, where, as I discovered upon opening the script to edit it,Ã,  the script had been cut off, the last 3000 lines or so having been replaced by a few characters.

I had been going through the whole script, providing new ints for 104 calls to the DisplayAt()-function, using the Ctrl+F (subsequently F3) to find the cases: DisplayAt(135,75,118,"different messages"); and replacing them with DisplayAt(82,55,300,"same different messages"); The changes spanned app. 5000 script lines, and took place in maybe 30 different functions.
Note: I used Ctrl+v to paste the new integers (82,55,300) into the function after having deleted the old ones with <backspace>.

I found that if I closed down ags without saving changes, the script could be restored - so luckily there was no actual loss of code - only the changes weren't made. Still kinda scary to see my script gone like that. Do you think it's because of the "amount" of code changed, or could it be due to using Ctrl+v or Ctrl+f?

[Pumaman]

I'm stumped by this, I have to say. It's obvious that there's some memory corruption going on, but I've never experienced it and neither has anyone else reported it here before.

The Find and Paste features are both standard features of the Scintilla control that AGS uses, so I doubt there's a problem with them or it'd have been picked up very quickly.

I'm wondering if it's somehow linked to your game -- or have you seen the problem while editing different games? I don't really know what to suggest.

Slightly off topic, you could use a #define for those numbers so you don't have to repeat them hundreds of times around your script; but that doesn't change the fact that something strange is going on here.

Out of interest, did you use the Save And Exit command in the script editor, or did you close the window and select "Yes" from the "Do you want to save" dialog?

[fred]

Out of interest, did you use the Save And Exit command in the script editor, or did you close the window and select "Yes" from the "Do you want to save" dialog?

I used the Save And Exit command.

...have you seen the problem while editing different games?

I've only seen theÃ,  problem while editing the current game.

you could use a #define for those numbers so you don't have to repeat them hundreds of times

I'll try that now, although they only need to be changed once :-)

Guess we'll just have to wait and see if anyone else reports something like it. Also, it's not so important, because the script isn't really deleted if you don't save the corrupted script or game. (Of course I didn't know the first couple of times it happened).

Additional info: I'm running Windows XP (Professional Edition) with a Kerio Personal Firewall installed.

[Pumaman]

Are you writing your game in English, or might there be extended characters in the script? I'm clutching at straws now, but it's possible that attempting to use unicode characters of some sort could cause a problem.

[Radiant]

Actually the symptoms of files being cut off half-way through may be caused by a faulty hard drive, or simple logical errors in your file system. Have you run scandisk lately?

[Gilbert]

Also, faulty RAM can affect this, too. Try to config your BIOS so it doesn't do a "quick" test on the startup RAM test (if not already).

[fred]

Are you writing your game in English, or might there be extended characters in the script? I'm clutching at straws now, but it's possible that attempting to use unicode characters of some sort could cause a problem.

The only characters I'm using that aren't listed in the ASCII-table in the Help-file , are the '+' and '-' characters (keycodes 43 and 45). They work just like they were intended to (catching keypresses from different GUIs).

Btw. I redid the replacement of the 104 DisplayAt()-function calls already mentioned, doing only 5-10 at a time between saving and testing the script, and now the game works fine - only doing them all in one go seemed to cause the corruption.

Actually the symptoms of files being cut off half-way through may be caused by a faulty hard drive, or simple logical errors in your file system. Have you run scandisk lately?

I think you might be right about this - I'll try running scandisk as soon as I'm done working.

Also, faulty RAM can affect this, too. Try to config your BIOS so it doesn't do a "quick" test on the startup RAM test (if not already).

I'm not sure how it's done, but I'll try it also.