Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 12:12 am

Just spent the 2 minutes converting maps after the upgrade, then, when my session loaded, i got "Invalid character near '.'" (or similar, sorry, closed the window before i thought to note the error message) and no map data was loaded. I went file->open in mapper, selected my old map, and it all works now i think, but didn't automatically.

Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 2:13 am

Yikes, it isn't supposed to convert your maps yet. Looks like some of the new mapper code didn't get disabled in the release version. As you mentioned, it doesn't harm your old map files, but it's annoying to have to reload your session.

I have re-uploaded a new build of v2.34 that properly removes the new map conversion stuff. So just download CMUD again.

Btw, if you think the error message came from your map conversion, I'd be really interested in getting a copy of your *.MDB map file so that I can try the conversion here. Email it as an attachment to sales@zuggsoft.com if you are willing. Thanks, and sorry for the trouble.

Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 3:37 am

Aah, so here it finally is, Zugg using "bugs" to muscle top-secret information from the muds he plays! Can't be bothered mapping them all? Add a bug and hope for the best! ;)

Sent.

Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 6:11 am

Heh, I actually forgot that was the MUD you play Smile

And yes, I promise to only use my powers for good Cool

Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 6:16 am

On a related note, just opening the map didnt work, path-finding etc didn't work, i had to re-open cmud and open the map (if that matters at all) before it was good again.
I could manually set my position on the map by right-clicking and going set current position, but functions like %mapquery, %walk, #move weren't working, and the find functionality on the mapper itself failed to return rooms i knew existed too.

Haven't grabbed the latest download, cos everything seems to be working now, so I'm assuming that is just a 1-off conversion attempt, if anything goes wrong with it, i'll know where to look. :)

Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 11:59 pm

Btw, I found the problem with converting your map file. It appears that you have several other tables that you have added to the map database yourself. Maybe in MS Access or something?

Anyway, I am trying to handle this and properly convert any additional tables into SQLite 3 format. But one of your tables (StubExits) had some field names with period characters in them. This is a bad idea since I don't think it's allowed in the SQL standard. I was able to get around the problem by putting [] brackets around the field names in my SQL INSERT statements. But it's something you might want to change in your database in the future.

Anyway, I have it working now in the new CMUD mapper. Your old file was 25.5 MB and the new SQLite file is 44.5 MB. I think this might be because I was able to use a "compress" option with ADO for memo/text fields that isn't available in SQLite. The map takes about 2 minutes to convert as you mentioned. The load time to open the map was 8 seconds in the old CMUD and is about 9 seconds in the new CMUD. So that's pretty comparable. For my own smaller maps, the new mapper loads the new files faster than before, but for large maps it looks like it's about the same.

So, this is good news so far. Your map file is certainly a good example of a very large map so I feel good that the new mapper code is going to work and be fast enough. And this is before any sort of optimizations (and after removing all of the ADO-specific optimizations).

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 12:00 am

Oh, btw, when the new mapper is released, be sure and delete the existing *.DBM file that the 2.34 version created by mistake. There were many problems in the conversion process that I have fixed in the past few days and if you use the DMB file created by 2.34 instead of letting 3.0 make a new one, then you will have all sorts of problems.

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 4:10 am

For the record, not sure that those tables were manually created, more likely left-overs from conversion processes etc from really old map formats perhaps? I could be wrong, as these maps have been floating around for quite a while (you'll see references to some ANCIENT areas that don't exists any more in there)

Personally I don't care if any extra tables are dropped, as long as those tables aren't actually tied into the mapper somehow. You should know though, seems you wrote it, but it may have been a while since you got to play in that code, and if you're anything like me, you'll get half way through something before going "oh, i remember doing that now so i didn't HAVE to do all this" ...

Otherwise, may just want to convert . to _ or similar and convert.

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 4:40 pm

Nope, there are lots of tables that I never created in either zMUD or CMUD, so I'm not sure where they came from. For example, there were tables named "AardPortals" and "AardZoneList" which are obviously names specific to Aardwolf that zMUD/CMUD would have never created.

But it's fine...there might be some other people that have added tables to their map, and this allowed me to make the conversion code a bit more robust to handle other user-added tables.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Yeah, I added tables to my map database - probably just backup tables that aren't needed anymore, but you're right: it does make it more robust.