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View Full Version : Multiple problems on FGII start-up



derbubba
June 5th, 2007, 16:04
My friends and I are having a number of problems, and I am seeing only related, but different stroies on the boards so far. These are my trouble spots;
1) After FG and the website went down for a few days, I started my FG to find that all my story lines were gone. I still had everything that was stored on my own computer, ie. tokens and maps, but anything I had input through the FG interface was gone.
2) We installed FGII, with all the interesting errors and warnings that other have gotten. Mine loaded up fine, but my players cannot find their old characters to load. Pictures and character sheets are gone.

We spent quite a long time looking for backup files, of which there was a warning and instructions about on install, but the only file I could find was the db file, with nothing under a "backup" name. I also couldnt simply reload character portraits. I tried putting files and jpegs in all sorts of places, on ym computer and the players' computers, but they still were unable to make new character sheets with those portraits.

Oh, and I'm using Vista :(

Much thanks for any help given.

Griogre
June 5th, 2007, 20:37
1) After FG and the website went down for a few days, I started my FG to find that all my story lines were gone. I still had everything that was stored on my own computer, ie. tokens and maps, but anything I had input through the FG interface was gone.
Not sure whether you are talking about FG1 or FG2 here. Make sure you had the right campaign selected when you started.


2) We installed FGII, with all the interesting errors and warnings that other have gotten. Mine loaded up fine, but my players cannot find their old characters to load. Pictures and character sheets are gone.
Oh, and I'm using Vista :(

a) Almost certainly, no characters were lost unless the FG1 server campaign was deleted. Your player can not find their characters because they are FG1 characters. FG1 local characters (ie on the player's computer) are still there if they need to look at them have them start FG1 and look at local characters. Local characters were not converted because it was assumed that FG1 characters should stay FG1 because not everyone would convert to FG2. Server characters (those stored on the game master's computer) should have been converted when the game master updated. All your campaigns should have been converted to FG2 and the server characters also.

b) FG2 and FG1 are installed side by side unless you uninstalled FG1. When FG2 was installed it should have tried to convert you FG1 campaign into FG2. It may have failed but it is easy to do manually. First make *sure* you make a back up copy of your FG1 campaign and module files so you can recover from any problems. After that all you need to do is copy all your campaigns in the Campaign Folder in FG1 to the Campaign Folder in FG2. You will need to remake FG1 modules as they will not run in FG2. If you do not have a copy of the FG1 campaign that made the module you will need to unzip the module into a FG1 campaign folder to recreate the campaign the module was made from. Then copy the campaign folder over with the others. You will need to remake the module in FG2 by re-exporting it.

c) With Vista, which I also have, program data is not allowed to stored under program files. FG1 was not Vista compliant. FG2 is Vista compliant. Did you run FG1 with vista in XP mode? Also in Vista you do not want to run as an Admin as this fouls up backwards compatiblity and scatters your data files unless you always run the same way.

First, you need to find your FG1 data. Where this is depends on whether you ran FG1 in Vista or not and how you ran it. First look and see if you have anything in C:\Program Files\FantasyGrounds\Campaigns the folder is probably empty but you should check. If you do find something in there don't do anything with it yet just note what campaigns are in there and the dates on the db.xml files.

I suggest you use Windows Explorer to do you looking - Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Windows Explorer. Once you have this started we need to show hidden files. So press the Alt key to bring up the Menus and Pull down Tools and Select Folder Options. Click the View tab at the top and look at the Advanced settings in the middle of the page. Under the Hidden files and folders select "Show Hidden files and folders". Next uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types". Finally uncheck "Hide protected operating system files (Recommend)" - Vista will whine at you for this but do it anyway.

Once you have done this click OK at the bottom to apply the changes, the close and re-open Windows Explorer to be sure the changes have taken place. On the left side of Windows Explorer there is a Folders line. If you can't see the list of folders on the left, click Folders it so you can see them.

You should see Desktop then your login name. Indented under the login name should be a folder called AppData. This is a hidden system folder and if you don’t see double check you have show hidden files and folders checked. To find your FG1 data open AppData -> Local -> Virtual Store (another hidden folder) - > Program Files. Anything you find in this program file folder is a non Vista compliant app. Vista uses some virtual slight of hand to fool old programs not being run in admin mode into thinking the data in this folder is still in your C:\Program Files\ one when it really isn’t. You should see a folder. Open the FantasyGrounds folder and you will see the campaigns folder and inside that is the FG1 data you want to copy over into FG2 campaigns data folder.

Finding the FG2 campaigns folder is easy. Just press Start -> All Application -> Fantasy Grounds II -> Application Data Folder. This will open up a window with a campaigns folder in it. Copy the contents of the FG1 campaigns folder over the contents of the FG2 folder. Be careful and make back ups before you do this in case you make a mistake. When you start FG2 you should see a list of FG1 campaigns, select the one you want to start and go. If you have any questions ask.

derbubba
June 10th, 2007, 09:10
Thank you much for such a detailed walk through! That was very very kind.

I followed your instructions to the letter, and am finding the correct folders, but not my game information. To expand on the first part of the question; before FGII released, the FGI server and the website seemed to be down for a day or two. When I attempted to log on, I (and my players) were given a message about not being able to access the server.
The next day the server was back up, but when I logged onto my campaign (still talking about FGI) all my storylines and NPC info was gone. That is to say, everything that I had written using the FG system was missing. All that remained were my maps and tokens that I had stored in folders on my own computer. All this happened before I ever downloaded FGII, but I believe it coincided with the FGII release.

In addition, at the same time, my players tried to log on, but found that their character sheets were gone. After some failed searching, they tried simply to create new sheets using their old portraits, which should have been stored (and which I attempted to re-restore in the appropriate "portraits" folder) but never could find them.

I was running FG in Vista mode, so I am assuming this is where the foul-up may have been. Certainly not the first program to explode in my face.

I guess my question at this point is whether my campaign information was saved anywhere? I thought those things must be saved on a FG server, since I never saw a likely folder or file that might contain them. I did find a db.xml file in my capaign folder, but am unsure where to put it. I tried cut and pasting it into a FGII folder, but that didnt seem to work, so I uninstalled FGII.

Any more light to shed on this subject would be great, and thanks again for the great support.

joshuha
June 10th, 2007, 14:16
The only thing the Fantasy Grounds server does for FG1 is store your IP to match the alias you give your players. This isn't even required if you just hand out your IP before each game.

While it may seem like they are related the alias server being down would not have affected anything in FG 1.

So in your regular Fantasy Grounds folder your entire campaigns folder was totally gone or where individual files gone? I am guessing since you "logged into your campaign" the folder was still there but maybe the db.xml was missing or corrupt. If you are lucky there should be a backup in the same location as the db.xml called db.backup.xml. This would be at "c:\program files\fantasy grounds\campaigns\[campaign name]\" in FG1. Although in Vista the OS may have automatically remapped it to "C:\Users\[profile name]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\FantasyGrounds\campaigns" so I would check there.

A far as the potrait thing, players should have been able to pick them again if they still had them locally in their portrait folder.

Griogre
June 10th, 2007, 17:23
Ah, I was not clear on Vista being used to run FG1. If so your campaign will be were Joshuha said in the virtual store. Vista would place the campaign db there only if you ran the campaign in Vista in non admin mode. You may find it helpful to open windows explorer and clip on AppData and then type db.xml in the search box in the top right. That should find all your db files in both FG1 and FG2 for anything you have run.

One other potential problem is that if you have the same file (ie the db.xml file) in virtual store and under "program files" the virual store one shows up. Thus it is possible that your db.xml file for FG1 is correct in Program Files but is being overwritten by a blank one in the virtual store.

derbubba
June 24th, 2007, 16:09
Thank you both for the information. I found several of the db files, but they all seemed incomplete. Finally, I think I have discovevred the correct db file in the virtual store (it is much larger than the others and I can recognize some of my storylines when I open it up). So, hopefully the last question is; what do I do with it? Replace the db.xml in FGII folder with the virtual store file? I'm going to hold off on that until I get a response, because I am afraid I will seriously mess something up.

So, just to make it clear, this is what I am seeing in my FGII/campaigns folder; campaign.xml (1kb, doesnt look like anything when opened), db.backup.xml (69 kb, has some info inside, but I think it is from me and my friends trying to reinstall characters), and db.xml (58kb, looks the same as the backup).
And then there is the other db.xml file from virtual storage (214kb and I see the "lost" information when opened)

Again, thanks a million guys. Your help is very very much appretiated.

Griogre
June 25th, 2007, 01:36
It appears to me that the 214 kb db.xml file in the virtual store is the original campaign data file from FG1. I would go to your FG2 campaign folder by using the start menu to go to FG2 and then clicking on Application Data.

If it were me I would just drag out the whole FG2 *campaign* folder on the desktop as a backup in case there is actually something in there you want. I would then just copy the *whole* campaign folder in the virtual store over into the campaigns folder in FG2. Then start FG2 and take a look at the campaign.

Some comments: The downside of this approach is that any changes to the characters you made in FG2 will be lost and you will need to re-convert them. However if you dragged your FG2 campaign to the desktop you can open the db.xml and cut and paste any changes into the db.xml now in your FG2 campaigns folder.

Jammeez
July 6th, 2007, 18:27
I've got a (maybe) related problem. Last week, I went through the steps outlined above to get my FGI rulesets and portraits transfered to FGII. It worked fine.

For this week's game, I need to get FGII set up properly on another computer and another login. (My husband and I trade off using the newer computer, and both puters have a separate login for each of us. So, a total of four logins. This way we can play at the same time.)

I'm using WinXP on both puters, and they are networked on the same DSL connection.

At first I tried simply copying FGII over to the other logins, including the AppData info. But once I did that, I can no longer get FGII to open any rulesets except d20. I get a message "cannot load data/bmpfonts.xml"

I have tried uninstalling FGII and doing the setup over. I have tried getting just one login to work, as it did last week. I have three additional rulesets, none of which work under any login.

BTW, when it was working, I was online with the host GM. But now, when it is not working, I'm trying to view and edit locally.

joshuha
July 6th, 2007, 18:47
Custom rulesets probably aren't going to work as they are missing some FG 2 required information. The only ones that might work are the ones that are small tweaks to the d20 set but even then they aren't going to work out of the box.

What should have translated fine are portraits and campaigns. So campaigns using the default d20 ruleset (or even the ones with small tweaks) should still load but I don't of any rulesets that can make the transition from 1.05 to 2.0 without extensive modification.

Jammeez
July 7th, 2007, 00:19
Well, the program worked fine with a gm hosting. Just for some reason, I can't get in and edit my CS outside of game.

We are using a generic d6 ruleset for Star Wars and a custom tweak for HackMaster.

joshuha
July 7th, 2007, 00:42
Oh, most likely then you are using a newer ruleset but one that isn't configured for local mode. Editing a ruleset to work in local mode is not an easy task and uses different parts of the XML/code so would make sense that the ruleset maker didn't work on that for FG 2.

Jammeez
July 7th, 2007, 15:18
I'm certain you're right. That sure makes my job easier. Wish I'd known this before all the trial and error. ;p

Thanks! :D