Currency bug game CRASH

[Eric]

After years of cold storage I decided to revisit Ultima 7 (though I cringed at running it in DOS with MOSLO), so I searched for support under Win2k and found EXult. I'm running the latest version, and for the most part I'm quite impressed, however...

Upon noticing that for some reason all items (bolts, money, etc...) do not automatically group together I tried resorting back to the manual method of left-click dragging the item and right-click releasing to specify an amount to divide the currency in (ie... 97gold and 43 gold, spilt 43 into 40 & 3, add 3 to 97 to get 100). The second you release the right mouse button the game crashes.

I hardly ever use this method, I prefer to use the automatic item grouping, when will this be implemented?

[drcode]

Not sure when we'll do the grouping (maybe soon), but I'd definitely like to fix the crash. I'll try to duplicate it tonight.

[MV]

Mmmmm, I tried that myself. Left drag, then right click, the money ended up on the ground or in the character's hand.

I found though, if I moved money, or any stackable thing to the ground and choose to only leave say, half of it, and then I picked it up from the ground, (have 100 gold, drop 50, pick up 50 from ground), the npc's would act as though I'm stealing and call the guards.

I'm running the 5-4-02 snap. That's the 5th of april for you crazy backwards americans.

[MV]

Ok, just got the 8-4-02 snap and the same thing happened. I even turned off right click closes gumps and tried it.

[Eric]

So are you saying that it did or didn't crash for you on the 8-4-02 snap?

I tested this out on another computer and it still caused the game to crash. There's no spaces in the directory path. 320x240 res, x1 scaling. This happened in Ultima VII part 1, I'm between early/mid game. I'm by no means computer illiterate so I'm doubtful that it's because of a hardware configuration.

[Dominus]

How do you make it crash exactly? I don't get you right click description.

[drcode]

MV: I'll check your 'stealing' bug tonight. We're possibly not setting the 'okay_to_take' flag when splitting up a quantity of things you already own.

Eric: If we can't duplicate the crash on our own, could you submit a bug report with a savegame and instructions for duplicating the crash? Thanks.

I did try moving things last night, though, and couldn't get the game to crash.

[MV]

I'm saying it didn't crash, that it ended up on the ground or in the character's hand. I'd also like a better description of the rightclick thing. I tried my best to understand and duplicate it.

[Dominus]

From an email by Eric:
> Attempting to split/divide money into smaller portions
> causes game to crash.
> 1: Open inventory where money is
> 2: Left-click drag money, Right-click hold, release
> left button, release right button.
> 3: Select amount to divide/portion money into and
> click the checkmark.

> Boom!! Crash, no error warnings.

I don't get this crash. I would also like to know WHY you are pressing the right button. Makes no sense at all. You don't need the right button unless you are moving (or if it is enabled in the Gameplay Options to close Gumps).
I tried this now a couple of times and no crash at all.

[drcode]

Same here, using the savegame and following your directions. No problems.

There was a previous bug, fixed since the RC1 release, where the game would crash if you hit the ESC key while dragging an item from the inventory. Could this be what you're seeing?

[Eric]

Alright, through testing U7 in DOS I've concluded that I was mistaken about the left-click drag right-click release method of portioning items (note though that this can alternatively be done by dropping the item on the ground and returning only a portion of it back into your inventory).

However... I am still right in the fact that following my exact steps causes the game to crash. I have tested this out on two separate machines with the same results. I submitted proof documenting the bug. And here's an onlink link for you readers (http://members.shaw.ca/eric-albrecht/u7).

Take careful note of the screen shots. Notice how in the first screen shot I'm dragging the money. Then in the second I'm releasing with the right mouse button. Now by original design this should result in simply dropping the money, no portion window called. But note how the portion window is called anyway. This would lead one to believe that perhaps this unexpected firing of this function may be the cause of the game crashing.

The errors in the stderr.txt file aren't that relevant as they appear "before" I attempt the steps to crash the game.

Again, for viewing of these files goto
http://members.shaw.ca/eric-albrecht/u7

[Dominus]

Ah, i actually got it to crash, when I looked more closely at your picture.
Jeff, you have to have "right click closes gump" enabled.
Then drag some money but while you are still "above" the backpack rightclick once (the backpack closes but leaves a nasty screen where the cursor is). drag further, right click again and then release left-click. One out of ten times I got it to crash. No hint of it in stdout/stderr.
But it has something to do with the "right click closes Gump" function I guess

[wjp]

ok, it's fairly easy to reproduce. Just drag something (anything) from a gump (paperdoll, container, whatever), and then right-click-close the gump while dragging.

Instant crash when you drop the item.

[drcode]

Okay. This is the same bug as the 'ESC while dragging'. The 'fix' for that was to ignore keystrokes while dragging. I'd do the same thing for right-click-close.

[MV]

Ah I got it.

I got it to crash too. Still on the 8-4-02 snap.

[MV]

Cool, just tried the 11-4-02 snap and it didn't crash.

I tried it about 15 times. All good.

Also the steal bug seems to be fixed that I mentioned earlier. The npc's didn't scream out "don't do that"! I did it about 4 times and didn't get attacked by guards.

[drcode]

Er, maybe I shouldn't admit this, but it doesn't look like any of us tried to fix this in the last 24 hours...

[drcode]

It's now 'fixed' by disabling the gump-closing when you're dragging. In the future, we may re-enable it, but it will mean rewriting a fair bit of the 'dragging' code.

[MV]

Pretty strange though. On the earlier snap it would crash 2 out of 3 times, but on that updated one it didn't crash at all. Maybe something else you did inadvertantly fixed it?

Same as the steal thing. I didn't get yelled at for stealing my own stuff.

[drcode]

To get it to crash, you'd need to drag something out of your inventory, but close the inventory while you were still dragging, and then just drop part of the object. Unfortunately, the 'drag' code keeps track of the 'gump' that the object was dragged from, so we can't allow you to close it until we rewrite that code.