Gazz_

Join Date 03/2004

+33

[1.08b.094] Gamestopper: Elemental not starting - being blocked by DataZip.exe

Situation:

1.08b.094
The Mods folder exists but is empty.
I deleted Data.Zip as well as Data/English/*.* because I had messed around with some files
I used the Impulse Verify/Update to recreate all of those.
All files, including Data.Zip, have been restored.
Impulse Verify now reports: all systems go.

When I click the desktop link for Elemental.exe or try to start it via Impulse or the launcher ELLaunch.exe, this happens:

I see the loading screen with the bronze dragon but no interface items on it. Only the text / logo that is part of the graphics.
The computer does not freeze and I can freely alt-tab out and back but I cannot actually start / load games since the menu buttons do not appear.
The game does not advance to the main menu with animated background and menu buttons.

In the task manager I see a process for Elemental.exe and one for DataZip.exe.

The DataZip.exe process is claiming memory at a rate of 1MB / 10 sec.
After about 2 minutes I would abort since it doesn't appear to be doing anything.
It definitely doesn't give me any popup window, telling me that it is doing something and how long this is going to take.

If I terminate the DataZip.exe process, Elemental.exe apparently finishes loading (claims more memory as per the task manager).
The screen changes to the animated background and the menu buttons appear.
I can play the game normally at that point.

Somehow I don't think it's intended to work that way. =P

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

While it's odd that the game is trying to rebuild the data.zip when it already exists and matches the data folder's contents, it is completely normal for it to take several minutes to build the new zip file.

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Now that I let it run "for several minutes" it works normally.

Still - it's very annoying that the program doesn't give any hint about what's happening.

If it's happening in fullscreen mode you can not alt-tab out of the loading screen and you can't bring up the task manager to even get a hint as to what's going on.
Effectively, the computer is locked up as far as the user can see.

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ScottTykoski

Join Date 03/2001

+132

Yeah, if anything ever changes (data-wise) in the core Elemental directory, it'll trigger the rebuilding of Data.zip.

What were you trying to mod in where you had to throw it into the Data/English folder? We've made some significant Mod-Loading progress for v1.09, but i want to make sure we've covered our bases.

Thanks Robert!

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Oh, I didn't have to work sloppily and directly hack into the Data/English folder.
I did that because I didn't plan on "creating" a proper mod at all.

I just didn't know about DataZip.exe and the fact that there would not be any feedback about it happening.
So things just... stopped working. For no apparent reason.

Until I can get my hands on the scripting language I just don't really care for what "modding" is now. A couple numbers changed. Yay.
I'm no graphics artist so I'm useless with tiles/models, too.
I just can't mod anything at this time because what I do is... scripts. My biggest X3 script is over 6 MB and that just the XML code files without any language localisation and data files.

So for now I'm just plotting and planning. I actually don't expect much of that to make it into the official version. The WOM magic system is too bland to not be intended that way so only a few details are likely to change.
I'm kinda waiting for the candy store to open...

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