Ages beyond Myst - Vault corruption

[Eric]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure (More info?)

Hi,

A friend of mine is trying to play through Ages beyond Myst, Return to
D'ni, and Path of the Shell. She has a shiny new Dell PC with plenty of
Oomf, a wizzy graphics card, and Windows XP Home (all latest drivers
and SPs).

The PC Hangs regularly, and on occassions when restarted, has lost all
player information. It seems that the vault file is corrupt in some way
- it is still there, as is all the rest of the save data, but the only
option in the game is to create a new player.

These crashes only happen in this particular game.

As she was in the process of calibrating the Great Zero, there is an
awful lot to redo to get back there, and she is too dispirited to try.
(this would not be the first restart)

So, 1) Am I correct in assuming that this is vault corruption, or is it
possible that the vault is OK, and that a registry setting has been
lost or something of that ilk?

2) If it is a case of vault corruption, would anyone know how the vault
is structured, and what I would need to do to fix it?

Thanks in advance,

Eric

P.S. Does anyone know if The Path of the Shell is dependant on
completion of the previous games?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure (More info?)

If you mean Complete Chronicles, The Path of the Shell is independent of
the other adventures. It probably is for earlier versions of Uru.

Regardless of "oomf and wizzy" which is meaningless if you want help,
there probably is some incompatibility in the Dell PC regards DirectX
(D3D specifically) and the game or possibly audio. This won't be the
first time I've seen complaints about new Dell units and graphics. We
need to know exactly what the audio/video cards and drivers are.

There are several files in the game that might help trace the problem if
it is Complete Chronicles. Look in Log for debug_info.dat (a text file
but you will need to change the extension to read it) and stackDump.log.

You won't get anywhere trying to change the .sav files but you may be
able to prevent further problems by checking the entries shown by
UruSetup.exe. This program (in Complete) attempts to determine optimal
video and audio settings by reading card and registry info. The program
is not infallible by far. Reduce the settings experimentally until you
have a responsive and stable game. Regardless of what you expect "wizzy"
cards to achieve, this game will strain them.

eric wrote:
> Hi,
>
> A friend of mine is trying to play through Ages beyond Myst, Return to
> D'ni, and Path of the Shell. She has a shiny new Dell PC with plenty of
> Oomf, a wizzy graphics card, and Windows XP Home (all latest drivers
> and SPs).
>
> The PC Hangs regularly, and on occassions when restarted, has lost all
> player information. It seems that the vault file is corrupt in some way
> - it is still there, as is all the rest of the save data, but the only
> option in the game is to create a new player.
>
> These crashes only happen in this particular game.
>
> As she was in the process of calibrating the Great Zero, there is an
> awful lot to redo to get back there, and she is too dispirited to try.
> (this would not be the first restart)
>
> So, 1) Am I correct in assuming that this is vault corruption, or is it
> possible that the vault is OK, and that a registry setting has been
> lost or something of that ilk?
>
> 2) If it is a case of vault corruption, would anyone know how the vault
> is structured, and what I would need to do to fix it?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Eric
>
> P.S. Does anyone know if The Path of the Shell is dependant on
> completion of the previous games?
>