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View Full Version : Realm Works Version 218 Please Read Before Updating!


BJ
December 8th, 2016, 03:04 PM
The following items are of special note to users updating to the most recent version of Realm Works:
• WARNING! We uncovered an error where certain snippets were not being manipulated correctly. These snippets may appear to be corrupted and/or contain incorrect links when viewed – or they may look fine, with the problem lurking beneath. This release includes corrections to the problem, but all necessary fixups must be applied before each realm can be accessed. Therefore, do not install this new version if you are in a hurry, such as shortly before a game session. The fixup process can take many minutes to complete. More details are provided below.
• NOTE! This new version requires a login to the server before you can access any of your realms. You can continue using older builds by choosing to operate offline and not logging in to the server.
The following is a summary of the significant enhancements and new behaviors introduced in this release:
• As indicated above, some realms will have snippets that were incorrectly handled in previous versions. Each realm must be analyzed and corrected prior to being loaded. When you load a realm for the first time, you will be given the option to perform the fixup or cancel the load. If you proceed with the load, any existing issues will be identified and corrected, which may take anywhere from a second to many minutes, depending on how many snippets with the problem are found.

The following minor enhancements and changes were introduced in this release:
• The workflow for adding content to Player View has been streamlined. Whenever you are viewing a smart image or external object (e.g. picture) in its own tab and attempt to show it in Player View, you will now be given the option to immediately reveal the governing topic and snippet (assuming one or both is not already revealed).
• The “Show in Player View” option is always enabled for smart image and external object (e.g. picture) snippets, even if the snippet or topic is not revealed. If selected, the user is prompted to reveal the snippet and/or topic, as necessary to show to the contents to the players.
• If you don’t want to be prompted to confirm revealing topics and snippets to show something in Player View, there is a new preference to disable this behavior.
• When you add something to Player View, it will now be immediately made visible to players. The extra step of showing the window to the players has been eliminated.
• If you don’t want content to be immediately shown t players within Player View, there is a new preference to disable this behavior.
• A visual separator line has been added beneath the header region within the content pane, providing a clear demarcation between the header and the scrollable content region below.

The following issues and problems were addressed in this release:
• When the user navigated to an external object like a picture for the first time, the Quick Help was not being automatically shown properly.
• When there were two snippets, with each snippet having exactly one potential link each and where the links' ranges within their snippets' text are the same or overlapping, only one of them was being ignored if both were specified as ignored. A second save operation was needed to re-prompt to ignore the other name before both were correctly ignored.
• Saving changes to an explicitly ordered tag domain would often leave the domain still behaving as it is was unsaved, requiring a second save to actually apply it.
• When configured to not auto-create text snippets within sections of topics, there were situations where they would still be errantly created.
• Game-specific categories, snippet types, and tag domains that were modified by the user after removing protection were no longer reporting as game-specific, which caused the icon shown next to them to be wrong.
• Under certain conditions, ignoring a link within a text snippet that also had GM directions could trigger a crash.
• On a computer where the low-memory warning is shown when loading a realm, returning to the Launch Dialog, viewing Quick Help on the Create Realm panel, and then closing Quick Help would trigger a crash.
• Revealed aliases are now shown within the appropriate topics within Player View.
• Double-clicking within a topic while the topic was being loaded could trigger a crash.

The following are known issues:
• None

daplunk
December 8th, 2016, 03:16 PM
I should have timed it. But this easily took enough time for me to eat tea with the family. Realm is 3.42 GB though so most people should be quicker than that.

BJ
December 8th, 2016, 03:31 PM
That is a very large realm!

daplunk
December 8th, 2016, 03:35 PM
Hopefully not for much longer. The first thing I'm going to do with Import/Export is break it into about 8 realms. Will be MUCH easier to manage!

BJ
December 8th, 2016, 07:02 PM
I could see that being useful! I Can't wait for Import/Export!

MNBlockHead
December 8th, 2016, 09:01 PM
FWIW, the entire upgrade process from download and installation to the fixing the database scan, resyncing the database to the cloud, and opening the realm, took 29 minutes for 0.57 GB realm.

BJ
December 8th, 2016, 10:22 PM
Good to know! Thank you for timing it. :)

rob
December 8th, 2016, 11:04 PM
FWIW, the entire upgrade process from download and installation to the fixing the database scan, resyncing the database to the cloud, and opening the realm, took 29 minutes for 0.57 GB realm.

It took only a couple minutes for a comparably sized realm. And there are many realms for which it takes only a second or two to determine there's nothing to fixup for that realm. It all depends on exactly what's in your particular realm. We warn users that it COULD take quite a while, since that's definitely possible. But the time it takes for any one realm is not going to be a good gauge for any other realm. In fact, a single user could have multiple realms, where one smaller realm takes a while to fixup and re-sync, but another larger realm has nothing to fixup and is done in a couple seconds. :)

Exmortis
December 9th, 2016, 03:51 AM
Took me about 30minutes to download, install, and update every realm in my list.

More than acceptable, So far not a single crash yet!

AEIOU
December 9th, 2016, 08:31 AM
My experience matched @Exmortis. About 30 minutes start to finish. I have a fairly large realm file and the two that were oldest were the ones that RW took time to fix -- as anticipated. No issues encountered.

Bloodwolf
December 9th, 2016, 09:36 AM
I just had the new 218 version crash twice one me. I traced the crash to custom links. The first time it crashed without warning when I want to save a topic. The second time I saved the same topic several times without a crash but when I tried to save it with two new custom links in the topic to save it crashed again. After that crash I saved after creating each custom link and it did not crash. So it looks like for some reason when it has to do multiple custom links it crashed.

Just to be clear my realm is rather large because I am bringing 1e Temple of Elemental Evil up to 3.5. Current topic number is 1254.

Grey Mage
December 9th, 2016, 11:52 AM
I haven't had it crash yet, but found a bug (already reported) within 5 minutes of using it.

If you have a link that also contains bold text, upon saving, the bold goes away.

Anyone else having this issue?

Little Paris
December 9th, 2016, 01:46 PM
I tried to update all of my realms. All worked but one: I tried to update one specific realm several times, but it always crashed....:(

I still have to check, if the allready updated realms will be really working. Thankfully the one not working at all is not in use at the moment at the game table....

rob
December 9th, 2016, 02:17 PM
We're putting out a new version with a couple bug fixes shortly. I believe we'll have fixes in place for the above-mentioned issues.

rob
December 9th, 2016, 04:15 PM
New build 219 is out. This fixes a few bugs in build 218. I believe it fixes the ones identified above.

Little Paris
December 10th, 2016, 08:11 AM
I was very hopeful when Rob announced the new fixes. Unfortunately, it did not solve my problem, but I hope you will figure out an solution. As I said it is not very urgent, but it would be a shame to lose the data. Thankfully it is one of my smaller realms...

wurzel
December 10th, 2016, 04:18 PM
Update today took 1 Minute for a 1.2 GB Database. Obviously I didn't have any strange topics.
RW crashed once again during play today. Somehow it could not send the error report due to some problems. That has never happened before. http://forums.wolflair.com/images/smilies/confused.gif
Was too busy keeping my players in line so I could not record the error messages. If it occurs again I'll try to put together a summary.

rob
December 11th, 2016, 04:20 PM
I was very hopeful when Rob announced the new fixes. Unfortunately, it did not solve my problem, but I hope you will figure out an solution. As I said it is not very urgent, but it would be a shame to lose the data. Thankfully it is one of my smaller realms...

Make sure to provide us with your database. Send us a link to it. Something very special is going on with your realm, so we'll need to see exactly what it is.

kate
December 31st, 2016, 12:14 PM
I never updated to build 218, but tried to update to 219 today.

When I try to do the database fixup on my realm, I get "Error deserializing span list" and Realm Works crashes.

I've sent an error report but I'm curious if anyone else is getting this error - and considering revering to an earlier Realm Works version since this is my main realm and I'll want to use it again shortly after the holidays.

EDIT: Husband has the player version and is getting "C++ Exception: Failed to locate lookup entry at line 1215 in file utility.cpp." I'm pretty sure the cloud version he's trying to access isn't fully updated if that would make a difference.

EightBitz
January 5th, 2017, 07:43 PM
Is it possible to implement a "Fix-All" button, or something equivalent, so when database fix-ups are needed for a new release, we don't have to go through one realm at a time?

AEIOU
January 5th, 2017, 08:48 PM
We've never had to fix databases until last patch. So I reckon it's a one time gig. If it becomes an ongoing thing then it may be a valid request but I don't think it's really necessary, is it?

EightBitz
January 5th, 2017, 08:57 PM
We've never had to fix databases until last patch. So I reckon it's a one time gig. If it becomes an ongoing thing then it may be a valid request but I don't think it's really necessary, is it?

I kinda feel like I had to do it for the last two patches? But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm confused. It's been known to happen.

Either way, if it's not going to be an ongoing thing, then no. It's not necessary.

rob
January 5th, 2017, 09:30 PM
Database fixups are actually performed about every other release. They are usually done quietly and automatically so nobody knows. There were special circumstances with build 218 that required us to do things the way we did, and it was a one-time thing. We don't envision this becoming a recurring situation.

There will be more fixups with the next release, and they will again be done quietly and automatically when you first launch with the new version.

EightBitz
January 5th, 2017, 10:09 PM
Database fixups are actually performed about every other release. They are usually done quietly and automatically so nobody knows. There were special circumstances with build 218 that required us to do things the way we did, and it was a one-time thing. We don't envision this becoming a recurring situation.

There will be more fixups with the next release, and they will again be done quietly and automatically when you first launch with the new version.

Thanks, Rob.

Indus101
April 20th, 2020, 12:07 PM
I never updated to build 218, but tried to update to 219 today.

When I try to do the database fixup on my realm, I get "Error deserializing span list" and Realm Works crashes.

I've sent an error report but I'm curious if anyone else is getting this error - and considering revering to an earlier Realm Works version since this is my main realm and I'll want to use it again shortly after the holidays.

EDIT: Husband has the player version and is getting "C++ Exception: Failed to locate lookup entry at line 1215 in file utility.cpp." I'm pretty sure the cloud version he's trying to access isn't fully updated if that would make a difference.

Interesting. I believe I was last on build 218 and am now trying to open up my realm with 254 (and tried 253 too) and getting this same error as Kate. I know this thread is 4+ years old, but this is the only other person I could find who's mentioned the

"Error deserializing span list"

Kate - don't suppose you are still around? And if so, did you figure out a fix?

Thanks

Acenoid
April 25th, 2020, 03:11 PM
Worst case try sending a bug report to LWD and hope they will fix it. RW is still being sold, so hopefully they are supporting such issues. But... why didn't you update earlier?