Dungeon Master Forum

Hello I was running through making my dungeon when out of no where the chests started deleting items in it or replacing the items with doors, door frames, monsters, and even event triggers.

Because of this issue I was unable to place anymore chests in my dungeon ; _ ;

I not sure how to reproduce this for your testing and fixing needs, all I know is when ever I add more chests to my game they eat stuff and or delete items in them. Error city when that happens too -.-;

This happens when I use DM and DM2 chests, so it isnt just one style or the other, I have not tested this bug on bags or other containers, didnt seem to effect the quivers.

Can you clone a chest and see if that circumvents the problem?

Why the problem exists is another matter. Perhaps the RTC editor has glitched, and keeps trying to assign the same reference number to each chest.

ah ok didnt think about doing that, I try that and see if it changes things, I keep you posted

Cloned the chest and filled all 8 slots and bam slot 4 went empty without deleting the item which caused errors. Error ends up saying null cant be an item or something like that and wants it to be identified. It happened about the time I checked for errors or saved, but I had it happen right after placing the chest with items in it. It didnt try to duplicate anything this time, but sometimes it takes an item already placed and eats it into the chest itself, which I havent seen as of yet.

Edit: Chests with less then 2 items seem uneffected o.0 maybe that helps

It sounds like at some point you may have got a mixed up pointer, which has infected your file with a corruption. Normally these can only be fixed by carefully tracking the problems down using a text editor. You could also try using Levels -> Verify Layout option to help narrow down the issue. (Mixed up pointers can happen when you put a cloned item in a chest, then remove the chest from the dungeon, among other things.)

If you have a corrupt file, it's possible you won't be able to fully salvage it. Do you have backups at a point before this problem started happening?

No I dont, and my dungeon game is already in testing without chests, well except 3 chests that only have 2 items in each.

So do you mean my rtc file is corrupt or the program is? Cause I can live with 1 dungeon game lacking chests, but if I can make more dungeons and not have this problem that be great.

I think it's the dungeon file not the programme.

well at-least it didnt interfere with the game running, glad to know further games shouldnt hold this same issue.

Thank you

I mean you have a corrupt TXT file.

Try and see if you can find the problem -- have you investigated your TXT file using a text editor? Start by searching the TXT file for MISC_CHEST -- when you find each one, read all the parameters associated with that chest. I think there should be a HOLDS= or CONTAINS= parameter that gives a list of the IDs of items that are held in the chest. Once you have found these IDs, you then need to search your TXT file for those IDs to find out what items they are. If they are not things that you would normally find in a chest, then it's clear RTC got confused at some point.

There isn't a really safe way of fixing this problem without possibly causing other issues. You could try deleting the chests and contained items directly from the text file, but this doesn't always work.... and make sure you work on a backup copy in case you mess something up...

OK I will look in my txt file and see what I find

This is a bug with RTC that I ran into many times. I know just how to fix it though.

When you place items in a chest and then reopen the chest info screen after you have closed it once, the next time you close it, it will randomly make one or more items disappear giving you a NULL state instead of just an empty space. This can happen whether you replaced or added items in the chest or not.

Basically every time after the first time you fiddle with the contents of a chest, even just looking at them, you will have to make sure everything is intact by using the txt. file or else face a major bug when the module is reopened. This can sometimes delete entire levels, all items in the game, etc, and completely screw up your dungeon. So first load your backup, then use the txt. file and run a search for null items, and manually write in what you want there.

I don't know why this bug is, but it's super annoying. For this reason I try to decide exactly what I want in the chest all in one go, so I don't ever have to "reopen" it.

Ah, that's good to know it's reproducible. I've had it a few times, but didn't work out the cause.

I've had the bug a few times myself... I've even had it "duplicate" a tile's contents onto another tile (similar to how PARTYS_TILE does). IE: if an item appeared on the "duplicating" tile, then there is a 2nd visible copy of it on the "receiving" tile. The item is treated as being on BOTH tiles at the same time... if you drop a dagger on the "duplicater", you can pick it up from either tile and it disappears from the other end. This bug is very hard to recreate... that's the annoying part!

Soaponarope wrote:This is a bug with RTC that I ran into many times. I know just how to fix it though.

When you place items in a chest and then reopen the chest info screen after you have closed it once, the next time you close it, it will randomly make one or more items disappear giving you a NULL state instead of just an empty space. This can happen whether you replaced or added items in the chest or not.

Basically every time after the first time you fiddle with the contents of a chest, even just looking at them, you will have to make sure everything is intact by using the txt. file or else face a major bug when the module is reopened. This can sometimes delete entire levels, all items in the game, etc, and completely screw up your dungeon. So first load your backup, then use the txt. file and run a search for null items, and manually write in what you want there.

I don't know why this bug is, but it's super annoying. For this reason I try to decide exactly what I want in the chest all in one go, so I don't ever have to "reopen" it.

yup, if you want to change anything in a chest, even text on a scroll, it is wise to delete the entire chest, and replace it with all the right contents, or else suffer the corrupt txt file but it can be avoided, don't forget, use bones utilty to launch to safeguard your file or save the file yourself. lost a few hours of work with this problem, it sucks when you don't know about it.

I solved it by put to chest no more than 4 items, and dont change content later (better is delete whole container and make it again)

Sometime other things from map can disappear, solved it by exit from rtc editor after 1-2 hours of editing, when black icon begin to appear it soon will crasch

Probably too much items anywhere cause this problem, once i made testing level where placed every items (hundread) and black icons appear everytime am open it in editor

Already i made dungeon with 5 wide levels (open world) instead 50 small (deep dungeon) and found crashes much less often

BTW i have probably hundread Diags.txt files collected during creations

Zed5Duke wrote:I solved it by put to chest no more than 4 items, and dont change content later (better is delete whole container and make it again)

Sometime other things from map can disappear, solved it by exit from rtc editor after 1-2 hours of editing, when black icon begin to appear it soon will crasch

Probably too much items anywhere cause this problem, once i made testing level where placed every items (hundread) and black icons appear everytime am open it in editor

Already i made dungeon with 5 wide levels (open world) instead 50 small (deep dungeon) and found crashes much less often

BTW i have probably hundread Diags.txt files collected during creations

hundreds, i know it
have not experiened the black icon problem, except the ones that have transparency in .png.
found most crashes come from two things, wrong file size or timing issue loop going beyond 1/6 timing mechanics and once in a while, the file is saved damaged. size of dungeon? 50 levels hehehe, right on.

Wow today have huge bug and fatal crash, i changed "capacity" of chest and bag item (which already was placed in dungeon and contain something) then appear diag and editor closed, when open again at welcome got long list of errors, when look at dungeon there was nothing, everything erased!

Hopefully am often make safe copy so i lost only one day. This is second time when have such big crash, once am delete sound file before remove playlist which use it. So now am for sure can tell that YOU CAN LOST EVERYTHING this is no joke, so often make copy.

oh that's a bitch Zed. avoid tinkering with bags, boxes or chests once placed in the dungeon.

That's... not good.
If I remember right, the RTC editor creates a backup on save, precisely for contingencies like this.