Scroll Of The Serpent Plot Stopper?

[Jeff]

Hi Again.

I freed Fedabiblio using the Philanderer's Friend, and he gave me the Scroll of the Serpent. However, as I was "too encumbered" he left it on the ground.

I picked it up, put it in the inventory and went off to Monk Isle, where Karnax tells me I DON'T have it.

I look in my invetory, find the scroll, but it only has the first two lines of writing on it.

No matter what I do, I can't seem to get around this problem. Please find the attached file below (exult03si.sav) which shows the problem.

I'm using the very latest snapshot, my OS is Win 98SE, system is Pentium 4 1.5 with 256MB RB RAM.

I posted this in the bug tracker section also, but it would not let me attach the saved game - it said it was too big (267KB). Could this mean the game is corrupted?

[wjp]

> I posted this in the bug tracker section also, but it would not let me attach the saved game - it said it was too big (267KB). Could this mean the game is corrupted?

Nah, the maximum is just 250Kb. SI saves in the later stages of the game tend to be very big


Could you email the savegame to me?

[Jeff]

Saved game sent.

Thanks VERY much for your help here.

Best Regards,

Jeff Rollo

[wjp]

It looks like you really don't have the serpent scroll.

(That is the one which reads:
L1B60: db 'I write this in great haste, for I can already hear the forc'
db 'es of Order breaching the keep walls. I know not how this mi'
db 'ssive will survive to reach the outside lands, or for that m'
db 'atter, future generations. Mine only hope is that this speed'
db 'ily-drafted work will offer record of our hallowed philosoph'
db 'y. For our culture to have any chance of enduring the ages, '
db 'someone, somewhere must find this. Please, reader, I beseech'
db ' thee, spread the word of our peoples. Balance -- The harmon'
db 'y between the Principles of Order and Chaos -- is the one pu'
db 're axiom we hold true. All three Principles are symbolized i'
db 'n our hieroglyphs: The Great Earth Serpent, keeper of Balanc'
db 'e, lies on a vertical plane, around which the two opposing s'
db 'erpents of Chaos and Order wrap themselves.'
etc...)

Have you accidently left it behind somewhere, or did the wrong scroll get created?
If the latter, do you also have a savegame right before getting the scroll from Fedabiblio?
If so, could you send it to me? (Please attach it 'normally', not in some strange winmail.dat attachment)

[Jeff]

The scroll I got begins "From the desk of the Great Hierophant" and that's all it says. I guess then that the wrong scroll was created by the game, as it is definately not left on the ground anywhere.

Unfortunately I don't have a saved just B4 getting the scroll (only one a looooonnnnng way B4.

As for Winmail.dat, that was definately NOT my (intentional at least) doing. I have however had this problem B4 when sending attachments to other email programs such as Eudora (I use Outlook 2000). Outlook sends the message as a zip file, but the receiving email program changes it to winmail.dat. I seem to remember that all I had to do was change the .dat to .zip, and all was well. I've yet to figure out exactly why this happens. Micro$oft of course claim they can't help. Sorry about that. I also seem to recall that certain anti-virus programs can do it also. You are the second person to mention it to me. Sorry again, but thanks very much for your help.

[Dominus]

That winmail.dat thing happens when the sender (Jeff) sends a mail in RichTextFormat (RTF) and the receiver's (wjp) mail program can't interpret the used TNEF.
To circumvent this select in the Outlook settings to only send mail in text format (or in mails send to Wjp select in the properties to send in only text).
(I have a better explanation but that is in German)
Bottom line: html mails (or any other format then text) are evil...

[wjp]

It was the savegame that was wrapped in the TNEF, actually, not the text body itself:



This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

------=_NextPart_000_0000_01C1C509.72377860
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit



------=_NextPart_000_0000_01C1C509.72377860
Content-Type: application/ms-tnef; name="winmail.dat"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="winmail.dat"



------=_NextPart_000_0000_01C1C509.72377860--

[Jeff]

Quite correct, thank you Dominus. I just checked again using a technical search engine I came across recently - www.freeanswers.com it is great I recommend it to any technical type user.

Since my last post, I have turned off TNEF for wjp. If you'd like wjp, I'll resend the message using plain text.

Thanks again

[wjp]

That's ok. I managed to extract the savegame with a little linux program called 'tnef' (how original )

[wjp]

Does anyone else have a savegame in that area? The ones I have seem to be just after getting the scroll too

[Dominus]

I got one and although the game was started ages before the beta it might help. I'm attaching it now to the bug in the tracker. The Avatar is already encumbered enough (a lot of junk in the backpack) and indeed the scroll doesn't get created properly.

[Jeff]

Thanks very much for the file Dominus, I greatly appreciate all the help both your good self and wjp have given me here.

Thanks again...

[Jeff]

Hi Dominus,

Thanks for the saved game, but there appears to be at least two major plot stoppers in it -

1. The Jawbone doesn't exist - Both Batlin's and Erstram's are gone (along with the teeth) and arn't in the inventory, and

2. The keyring (from Silver Seed ) is also missing.

Any thoughts?

Again, thanks - sincerely.

[wjp]

Jeff: that savegame is meant for us to track down what causes the scroll creation to fail, not to actually play

[Dominus]

I even advice strongly against it. That savegame was from way before the beta1. Some of the bugs that required a new start are obviously not fixed. Playing with this savegame will make you as mad as Erstram is (but just for some fun, cheat your way to the dark path and you will find my inventory).

[wjp]

Ok, the scroll creation bug should be fixed now.


Jeff: I also (hopefully) fixed your savegame:
http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~wpalenst/exult27si.sav

[Jeff]

Thanks very much again wjp ( and Dominus ).

Wjp, you're fixed saved game worked like a dream - thank you - been playing again for about an hour, and "all is right with the world".

Thanks again