
Help, the Program is Bombing
----------------------------

Either the program is bombing because you stumbled across a bug
(which is actually somewhat likely considering how many changes
have been made to the program recently), or you did something
wrong when you installed it (not necessarily your fault).

If installation is the problem, consider what sort of unzipping
software you're using. Did it preserve the directory structure
of the archive? Did it even preserve "empty" directories? Or,
rather, did you copy the software from one place on your harddisk
to another in such a way as to wipe out the empty directories?

If you xcopy'ed the program from one place on your harddisk to
another, make sure you used this format for the command:

   xcopy <source> <destination> /e /v

The /e is particularly important, as there may be some empty
directories, such as the maps/<world>/loc directory, which need
to exist in order for the program to run correctly. Just as
important, your unzipping software needs to preserve these
potentially empty directories. Pkunzip will do this sort of
thing correctly using the -d option, and a copy of it is in the
"sub" directory of this archive, so use that if you notice that
your usual unzipping software isn't doing the job right.

How do you find out if it is or isn't? Well, you can run some
tests. However, if you're only having trouble with a single
world, it wouldn't hurt to look at that world's data files and
directory structure to see what's going on.

The world directories reside under the "maps" directory.
Each world directory is set up as follows:

                           World Directory
                                  |
               ---------------------------------------------------
               |                  |              |               |
              GEN                LOC            MAP             OBJ
            General           Locations       Map files       Objects
            Subdirectory      Subdirectory    Subdirectory    Subdirectory

What to     (General Info)    (Location       (Maps)          (Object
put here:                     Descriptions)                   Descriptions)

Required    world.mnu                         colorkey.dat    objects.dat
files:      credits.txt                       n000e000.map

You can find out more about the required files by reading
help\qna\data\overview.txt and the rest of the files in the
help\qna\data directory, but the important thing here is to
first make sure that all four of these directories exist under
your world directory. If they don't all exist, there will be
problems, and "loc" is the most likely one to not exist
because it doesn't have any "required" files and hence could
potentially be empty... and since some unzipping and copying
programs don't copy empty directories for some reason... you
get my drift...

If you're sure these directories do exist, and the program is
still bombing, then something else is the matter. The most
likely culprit is a data format problem, particularly if you
imported the map from another version of Mapper. What I mean
by this is that every time I write a new version of the
program, I may "tweak" the data format somewhat in order to
enable to program to hold new information. Hence, if your
friend is using an older version of the program than you are
using, or vice-versa, and one of you tries to send a map to the
other one, then there could be a data-format incompatibility.
The first thing you need to do is download the latest version
of mapper. Inquire via email if you're not sure where to find
the latest version. Then read help\qna\data\changes.txt which
will tell you what changes have been made in Mapper's data
format over the past several versions of the program.

If you are familar with DOS, you may be able to figure things
out yourself locating the file where the error is most likely
occuring and fixing it manually with a text editor. You can
always compare that file with the analagous file in the sample
world (maps\sample) to see if there is an obvious difference
between the two. If you don't want to go to all this work,
however, then just archive the world using the export (x)
command from the world menu, and send me a copy, describing
the error that's occuring. Between your description and the
copy of your world, I should be able to figure out the
problem and send you back a corrected version.

If I still can't figure it out, though, then the problem may
not be in your map at all. It may be somewhere else in the program.
Time to make a bug report using the ctrl-b command from any map.
This will archive the entire program into a file called bugrpt.zip.
You will then need to send me this file along with a very
precise description of what you're doing that causes the program
to bomb. I need to be able to replicate the error over here in
order to figure out what's wrong, and having bugrpt.zip on hand
will help me do that.

If for some reason the program isn't running at all, you can
manually create bugrpt.zip by going into Mapper's main directory
in DOS and typing:   sub\pkzip -rP bugrpt.zip *.*

As a final note, if you do happen to find a bug, I'd like to
give you credit for the discovery in the program's revision
history file (help\revhist.txt). It's no biggie, but it's a
little way for me to say thanks to those users who help to
keep my on my toes. :-)

jimvassila@aol.com

