ForumsHQ

For anyone that remembers, I tried starting, on multiple occassions, a blank world. First I did it many, many months ago, and then again around when LJN came out, and now, again, a few days ago. I've spent the last few days coming to really like Redux and have added my races, classes, and some rooms, including the required rooms (BTW, 376 is the jail room, not 540-543). I've removed everything that refers to "normal" mmud stuff (i.e. no monsters, items, etc being referenced that I haven't created). I have something in every main dat file (meaning, I have items, monsters, spells, rooms, everything, except for users and bank accounts, since I can't get it to work. Read on.).



So, I originally started with Redux by deleting everything, and I've built my way up with my races, classes, dozen and a half items, few spells, dozen monsters, shop, messages, text, blah blah etc, and figured I'd give it a shot to make sure everything works. Well, it doesn't.



In my previous attempts months ago, I always ran into this error:

C:\wgserv\wgserver.exe - Access Violation. Attempt to read from: 4

Well, now I'm running into this error:

C:\wgserv\wgserver.exe - Access Violation. Attempt to read from: 36



Notice a pattern? Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong or what I'm missing? I've checked and double-checked that everything is there that needs to be, in terms of what is being referenced by rooms, monsters, et al, and I have all of the required rooms (it quit bitching about invalid rooms), but I can't get it to work.



MrBlack mentioned some time ago it could be some other process running btrieve, but I doubt that's the problem I'm getting. I've fished through all of the running processes, looking at each one, and I know none of them are using it, as I know which processes I usually have running (Win2k, before anyone asks). However, I can swap out my modified dats with the normal (read: original) dats and it'll work fine, but that does me no good when I want to start completely from scratch.



I've recompiled the update dat, run recoveries, deleted any items that could have magically been placed in rooms, still broken.



So, anyone started from scratch and had similar problems and can tell me what stupid thing I'm doing that's causing this? Sorry to be a pain and coming back to this problem repeatedly, but I'm a glutton for punishment, and I'm determined to make this work.



Or, if you're feeling adventurous, feel free to write down everything step by step that you did to get a blank world to work. I have time, for now at least, to work on this.

I'm surprised no one has responded to you on this yet. Well, I know MrBlack has used redux to create a fresh realm, maybe he can help you out a little. As far as your access violations, we need some specifics.



-When do you get the error (during bbs load, when a user first enters, when you get to a specific room, etc)?

-What exactly have you added to the realm so far?



From what I've been seeing, access violations are usually an invalid value or invalid use of a variable. Like using %s instead of %d in a message for example was causing an 'Access violation attempt to read from 17' on dxpac's dats. And I've seen Access violations if people had some values set too high (or low).



-syntax

Well, glad someone replied. :)



The quick numbers are:

18 classes

17 items

36 messages

11 monsters

13 races

~60 rooms, including those required ones

1 shop (just to have something in it)

4 spells

8 text blocks

bank accounts and users are empty (can't run the mud, can't make a char...) and actions are at default (never deleted them)



I suppose I can go through my messages and see if there's an incorrect %s or %d, but I'm fairly positive I followed what the help file said, as well as what I've seen by looking at other "default" messages. I know everything is cross referenced properly (I've looked many times) within rooms/monsters/items.



Now, to answer your original question, that error pops up right after it does the "MajorMUD buffers and CNF options verified" (or whatever the exact wording is) and it crashes WG immediately, meaning WG won't even run, so there's no way to get into the game.



Now, as far as I know, none of my values are set improperly as I was pretty anal about double-checking everything. I think what I'll do, since I have an idea of what to look for now, is go check what some of the default values are for different abilities, and see if things match.



Otherwise, I'm really quite stumped. If you know of any problematic areas to look (things you commonly see wrong), I'd certainly appreciate a friendly shove in the right direction.



Thanks for the reply though. I'm hoping to get this thing working one of these days.

Quick update: I fixed a few problems in the messages, mainly missing a %s here or there for the goofy dodge statements, and a %d that should have been a %s in two spells, but I'm still getting the same thing.



I'll keep on digging, but I feel like I made a tiny bit of progress at least.

Don't worry about double checkinig your values on your abilities if you have tons of them. It seems that when mud sees an ability that shouldn't be where it is or shouldn't have a value that it does, it just ignores it or removes the ability. What I would try doing is deleting everything and just creating the required rooms. See if it loads up and you can enter. Then make a few monsters and conjure them up or stick them in those rooms to see if they work. Go little by little becuase the slightest little thing will make everything go wrong.



-syntax

I'm gonna take a guess and say your prolly getting that error reading from ffffff when the bbs starts up, arent ya?



To fix t his, put at least 100 entries into the monster file, and at least 150 into the item file. Both files have some end of file thing, and this is the only way I could fix thatt...you can just leave those entries blank, and it will work fine for that.



As for the jail room you mentioned, I find that alot of ppl get differing numbers, I think its just whatever room is set as jail..but not sure, cuz I just used the jail rooms already set in mud before I gutted the map dat.

syntax: perhaps I'll give that a whirl later tonight. I really dislike the idea of deleting things again, but it's not like I'm so far along it'd be a catastrophy. And for now, I'll ignore the messages, although I think they are correct now....



MrBlack: nope, no FFFFFF thingy. Just that Can't Read From: 36 deal. I've never seen the FFFFFF thing actually (but I know what you're referring to as I've seen it in other threads). Although, just to see, I'll also try what you're suggesting, since, hey, I'm willing to try damn near anything! :) Actually, come to think of it, back in the days when I was editing the existing dats, it worked fine, but it was when I deleted everything I started having problems...



Well, we'll see what happens.



Thanks guys. I'm hoping the next thing I post is "It works!" but I won't hold my breath. ;)

Ok, so I tried removing any non-essential rooms. Still can't read from 36. So I tried adding items (160 total) and monsters (199 total, I just held down Enter) and now, same error message, except that it "Can't read from: ad" now. WTF? I also tried adding lots of text blocks, messages, and spells, but it still returned a "Can't read from: ad" thing.



I feel like a total retard, like I'm doing something wrong, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is.