Can't Find File Graphics/Character/Party/Actor4

[QuickQuestionThrowaway]

Hey,

I've got this old project that I haven't touched in a while. I launched it again and it fails after opening a scene that contains one of the missing sprites. Either Actor4 or !Door1 or Vehicle, etc. Basically a bunch of default files that it should have found immediately. After investigating I realised that all these missing sprites were in Characters/ and the /Party/ folder didn't exist. I duplicated all the images in the application directory into the party folder and lo and behold it worked again.

My question is, what did I change that had the game looking for default files in the wrong folder? And how do I change it back.

It might be relevant: I added some custom characters and they were put in the Characters/Party folder in my games directory but I'm not sure why (I can't remember if I did it myself or the character generator created this folder). Preferably I'd like to delete the duplicated assets and have the game just get the objects from the standard folder. Other projects work fine, there's nothing wrong with the .ini and all the assets were visible in the resources manager prior to me duplicating them.

 

[Kes]

My immediate question is - what 'Party' folder? My Graphics folder has never had a sub folder of that name.

 

[Andar]

these are RTP files, and for Ace that means that they don't need to be in the project folder, but the RTP has to be installed correctly.
re-download the RTP from the links top right and install it.

 

[QuickQuestionThrowaway]

My immediate question is - what 'Party' folder? My Graphics folder has never had a sub folder of that name.

That's why I think that I must have created this subfolder. There's a joke: debugging is like being the victim, the detective and the culprit all at once. I don't know how I altered the file path but I'd like to change it back.

these are RTP files, and for Ace that means that they don't need to be in the project folder, but the RTP has to be installed correctly.
re-download the RTP from the links top right and install it.

The RTP is installed correctly. Other projects work fine. This project in particular is looking for the RTP in the wrong place though.

 

[Andar]

is it your own project or from someone else?
because what you describe is technically impossible unless someone messed up the project base code.
Ace always had the same override functionality for the RTP, for the project to look for them elsewhere it needs to be an intentional change in the code (that code can't be randomly changed without the rest of the engine failing as well, so it has to be an intentional change somewhere.
either done by the developer or by a script that the developer didn't understand correctly.

 

[QuickQuestionThrowaway]

is it your own project or from someone else?
because what you describe is technically impossible unless someone messed up the project base code.
Ace always had the same override functionality for the RTP, for the project to look for them elsewhere it needs to be an intentional change in the code (that code can't be randomly changed without the rest of the engine failing as well, so it has to be an intentional change somewhere.
either done by the developer or by a script that the developer didn't understand correctly.

It's my own project but I haven't touched it in 3 years. Messing with the scripts definitely seems like something I'd do.
I still would like to figure out how to fix it.

 

[Andar]

In that case, it might have been a try to reduce space by removing the RTP.
Make a copy of your project, then make a new project.
Copy the ini file of the new project into the copy of the old project.
Open that modified copy and check if it now recognizes the RTP.

 

[QuickQuestionThrowaway]

In that case, it might have been a try to reduce space by removing the RTP.
Make a copy of your project, then make a new project.
Copy the ini file of the new project into the copy of the old project.
Open that modified copy and check if it now recognizes the RTP.

Thanks for the help but this wasn't the problem.

I managed to find the problem for anyone with something similar in the future. File paths are defined in Scripts>Modules>Cache. In an attempt to define two folders for characters I had :

def self.character(filename)
  load_bitmap("Graphics/Characters/", filename)
  load_bitmap("Graphics/Characters/Party/",filename)
end

The second line seems to override the first unfortunately. I'll still probably try to create more folder locations (and problems) by defining them in the cache separately but the original problem this thread was created for is resolved.

 

[Andar]

these are script commands, not path definitions. and commands are always executed one after another.
So you first load the bitmap from the first path, then discard that bitmap to load it from the second path again.