Recovering from Corrupted Dreams, Do This When Your Character Is Trapped Options

[Artex]

Note: There is a lot simpler way to recover from these problems now and the method below should be considered obsolete! Visit this page: Return to the Vinca

Every once in a while I get a call where people are trapped offline by a dream that makes their client crash once they enter it. Unfortunately, there are still methods there to crash a client upon entry and therefore, I'm writing this list of instructions on how to get out of it.

Problem Description
Stepping into a dream portal, you expose yourself to the changes that dream contains - some of them can even crash your client and when it happens, you might be stuck, trying to reconnect. Once you reconnect, returning to that very problematic dream, you will crash again...

This phenomena can be especially annoying if you're using the character selection window that doesn't trigger the crash recovery message - the one that would let you spawn in Vinca upon arrival.

So what do we do?..

Workaround Steps
Note: Please be careful with what you delete! If you don't think you understand the instructions or you don't think you're in the right folder, you should ask a helper to provide assistence on this to avoid data loss.

Assuming that the problematic dream was among the last 5 you've entered with any character, we are going to erase the saved information of the last 5 dreams you've visited:
# Go to your Furcadia folder by clicking: Start->Programs->Furcadia->Furcadia Tools->Furcadia Folder
# In the new window that popped up, go to folder called tmp which stores the data for the dreams you go to.
# To arrange the folders inside by modification time, right-click on an empty area, select Arrange icons by and pick Modified
# The last 5 td######### folders - delete them (if you're concerned about safety, just cut/paste them elsewhere temporarily).
# Try loading the alt you have crashing - once you're in, you should start re-downloading the dream. Simply press CTRL-B to go to Vinca or go to another main map before the download completes!
@ If the crash re-occurs of it the dream is not one of the last 5, you could delete everything from the tmp folder and try again - it's safe.

That's all to it.

This post has been edited by Artex: Jul 28 2006, 04:41 AM

[Artex]

The following instructions should help you correct the problem if the dream that crashes you belongs to yourself or to a dream owner who is interested in fixing it.

Dream crashes are normally caused in three ways:

1. Overloaded FSH files (patches)
2. Bad settings in skin.ini (if used)
3. Corrupted files in the dream folder or system bugs.

Each case has their own way to solve the problem (or at least get rid of it) and I will list most of them here.

Overloaded FSH Files
The problem here is that a particular FSH file contains more graphics than it is supposed to. FSH files themselves are capable of containing up to ~65535 images, but the system has its own limitations. For instance, the file iteme.fsh may not contain over 200 1000 images or the patch would crash either the Dream Editor or Furcadia itself when somebody enters the dream! While overloading some files may seem harmless and cause no negative side effects, it is generally discouraged, for there is no way to know for sure what would happen if you do.

To verify that your dream does not have FSH files that are overloaded, you should open each FSH file in the FSH editor and check the amount of shapes they have against the maximum allowed amount. (The maximal amount of shapes for each FSH file is listed below!) To open an FSH file in the editor simply double-click it.

NOTE: Shapes in the FSH editor begin from 0 and not 1, thus shapes 0 - 199 == 200 since we start counting from 0 and not 1 here!


Bad Settings in skin.ini
If your dream uses the skin.ini file in it, chances are that the position of one of the items in there or some other setting has a bad value! (If you have no idea what skin.ini is and you don't see it among your patch files or you don't even use patches, this is clearly not your case) This bad value, when processed by the client, would make it crash when entering the dream...

Unfortunately, the settings in skin.ini are not as easy to check and troubleshoot, so chances are that you will need to start over again if you won't be able to locate the bad setting. In order to make sure skin.ini is the culprit, try moving that file away from your patch folder and uploading your dream without it. If you no longer crash, then skin.ini is the cause. Otherwise, there might be something else and you should probably leave the file alone for the time being.

What you should do with skin.ini at this point is load it in the skinner application (Start->Programs->Furcadia->Furcadia Tools->Skin Editor) and check if the items you placed are too close to the window borders (like.. sitting on the very edge) or even go over the border into the "unknown" space. If you do have such items in the skin.ini, you should move them accordingly so they stay strictly within the bounds of the window! If you have resized an item to take up no space at all (not even one pixel), try changing it so it does, it might also be the case (though I'm not sure about it).

In the end, when you're done making changes to the skin file, save it and try uploading again, see if it makes a difference...


Corrupted Files or System Bugs
If the two previous steps didn't bring you any success or didn't describe your problem, chances are that you have a corrupted file (or more) in your patch folder that cause a client to crash when it reads them. I once had a case where someone's PCX files were 7584x7744 pixels large - the client didn't like that, obviously... ;)

In order to locate the problematic file(s), we need to do it the hard way - taking a file (or group of files) out of the patch folder and uploading the dream again without it. This way we check whether the file(s) we just took out caused the problem. If your dream consists of a few patch files, it shouldn't be too bothersome, so you can try doing it on a file-by-file basis. Otherwise, if your dream consists of many patches (i.e.: lots of music files, lots of PCX files, lots of patches), you should take groups of files to speed things up: First, take all the music files out of the patch folder and reupload, then if it didn't help, take out all the PCX files and reupload, etc.

If you took pretty much everything out and only two files remain - .map and .ds, then it could either be a corrupted .map file or some sort of system bug. If it's a system bug, then there's no way to know for sure what might be wrong with your dream and you should probably contact a Bugge Hunter to help you with this.

When approaching a hunter, it's a good thing to mention that you've already followed the instructions given in this post so they won't try and go through the same steps again.

Hope this helps...


FSH File Boundaries
The following list shows the maximal amount of shapes each FSH file can contain. Exceeding the maximum is strongly discouraged and can cause the client to crash once somebody enters your dream! The list was gathered by an automatic script from the default patch folder.
NOTE: This list may no longer be up to date since 0.24!

CODE

brth.fsh ..... 34
buttons.fsh .. 168
de.fsh ....... 20
desctags.fsh . 67
effects.fsh .. 200
effectse.fsh . 800 (NOTE CHANGE)
fe2.fsh ...... 45
flame.fsh .... 20
floore.fsh ... 500 (NOTE CHANGE)
floors.fsh ... 208
fshe.fsh ..... 144
item.fsh ..... 305
item2.fsh .... 320
item3.fsh .... 338
iteme.fsh .... 1000 (NOTE CHANGE)
junction.fsh . 31
local1.fsh ... 20
lport1.fsh ... 6
player.fsh ... 101
player10.fsh . 20
player11.fsh . 20
player12.fsh . 20
player13.fsh . 120
player14.fsh . 100
player2.fsh .. 120
player3.fsh .. 20
player4.fsh .. 20
player5.fsh .. 20
player6.fsh .. 20
player7.fsh .. 101
player8.fsh .. 20
player9.fsh .. 101
portrait.fsh . 30
portrt2.fsh .. 5
portrt3.fsh .. 3
portrt4.fsh .. 3
portrt5.fsh .. 3
portrt6.fsh .. 20
portrt7.fsh .. 3
portrt8.fsh .. 6
smileys.fsh .. 20
speci2.fsh ... 20
system.fsh ... 82
tags2.fsh .... 52
wall.fsh ..... 48
wall_3.fsh ... 18
wall_4.fsh ... 18
wall_5.fsh ... 18
wall_6.fsh ... 18
wall_7.fsh ... 18

[Kotramif Slikomif]

this is very helpful! especially the maximum FSH shapes list. thanks!

[Dreamless Dancer]

Just bear in mind that Artex is giving the Technical counts not the Digital counts, for example, on the wall_#.fsh files, you would read that 18 shapes as 0 to 17 in the file itself.

[Emerald Flame]

There is now an easy way to get out of a dream if you get stuck in it. http://www.furcadia.com/services/backtovin...11532-zuhg-kvi&

[Just a Furre]

Best thing to do is bookmark the return to the vinca page, so you can get to it quickly. OR you can place it as a desktop shortcut. A quick and snappy way of doing this is as follows:

1. Open Notepad

2. Place this in notepad:

[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.furcadia.com/services/backtovinca/backtovinca.php4

3: Save as a .URL file (example: backtovinca.url)

4: Place this file somewhere you can find it quickly (Example: Desktop). You can change the icon to anything you'd like it to be, by rightclicking and selecting Properties, then click on Web Document, then select Change Icon.

[Yamake Takahashi]

Other things trigger personal-level crashes, such as fast-executing DS that deal with the sound system being overloaded.

[The Big Blue]

Thanks a million! One of my friend's dreams had exceeded the shape limit on a few of those you listed. And when she tried to show me her dream my client crashed, as did hers. So, thank you!^^

[Damien Kane]

But what if your TMP folder is missing from the Furcadia folder?

[Gerolkae]

Acording to the Furc Protoco Documentation the Temp downloaded dreams are moved to a diferent area

Temporary Dreams
Furcadia program directory\tmp\
Documents And Settings\All Users\Application Data\Dragon’s Eye Productions\Furcadia\Temporary Dreams\ Or (Vista): ProgramData\Dragon’s Eye Productions\Furcadia\Temporary Dreams\

Feel free to Dump these Files