Zugg Software :: View topic - %roomload and Reload Room Description don't work

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

OK, I've finally got my mapper working like a dream. Everything works fine, except I've got some old maps that need to have the room descriptions updated, because the descriptions have changed on the mud, and that means the mapper aborts when I move into one of these rooms.

According to the documentation %roomload should do the trick. And it seems some people have got it to work (although there were some issues (http://forums.zuggsoft.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=17107&highlight=roomload) with setting more than one thing to reload at once). If I open the map database in Access, I can see the Flags column change value when I tick or untick the varies Reload options in Room Properties from the AutoMapper. (From this I can see that Reload Room Description is equal to a flag of 8 in the database.)

Three issues:
1. %roomload() does not affect the value of "Flags" in the database or the display in Room Properties. (Yes, I am on Map Creation Mode. No, I don't have the map locked. The commands I have tried are: #noop %roomload(,2) ; #noop %roomload(,1) and using a VNUM: #noop %roomload(3847,1) , etc. What I did discover though is #echo %roomload(3847) does work if you use the Object ID (not the VNumber), but %roomload with the Object ID still doesn't work.

2. Even if I set Reload Room Description (using any of: %roomload, updating the database in Access or ticking the box in Room Properties), it doesn't reload it, even if I wipe the Room Description first. Setting Reload Room Name doesn't make it reload the Room Name either. I haven't tried Reload Room descriptions.

3. You can't set more than Reload flag at once (but I'm not too bothered about that at the moment).

Can anyone shed any light on this? Anyone who uses the mapper can do their own tests? Many thanks.

Seb

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zMUD 7.05 (with zMapper 1.22 Beta) on Windows XP Pro SP 1 with MS Office 2000 Premium (including Access).

Wanderer Joined: 17 Aug 2004 Posts: 98 Location: OK, USA

Did you try #LOOK?

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Sure, #LOOK works, but I don't want to have to do this on every single one of the 900 or so rooms affected. #LOOK works even when Reload * is set off though, so it's irrelevant to this discussion.

I'd really like to get it to automatically reload the room descriptions when I enter these rooms. Does anyone have any ideas what could be wrong?

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

By the sounds of this topic and some vague memories I have of playing with the reload flags directly it sounds like they are broken. This would be a bug. Please add it in the bug reporting system. Please provide a reference to this topic and as many details of the tests you have preformed around this as possible.

Wanderer Joined: 17 Aug 2004 Posts: 98 Location: OK, USA

Sorry #FIND is too manually intensive for you (yeah, 900 is some, but hundreds, > 500, or a similar description would have avoided the obvious #FIND question Confused

). Sorry %roomload may be buggy. One more obvious question for you, since the Help files say to use #CALL "instead of #NOOP for executing functions", did you try #CALL?

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

You mean #LOOK.

It makes no difference if you use #CALL instead of #NOOP. I double-checked.

But I've discovered two things (so far):
1. I closed the zMUD mapper, unticked the zMapper plugin, reopened the zMUD Mapper, and now #NOOP %roomload(,2) works! Well, it still doesn't work if you actually have the Room Properties open for that room, but otherwise it does mean if you do #SHOW %roomload straight after, it has the new value. I haven't yet tested whether this actually causes the room to get reloaded when you enter it though, but it does seem to suggest that zMapper was affecting this function. I have now ticker zMapper again, and it's still working. I have also opened zMapper and it still works. I guess there must have been some bad interaction, which I fixed by unticking and reticking the zMapper plugin...
2. If you have the Room Properties window open, setting %roomload on the currently open room doesn't work.

My experiments continue...

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

I learnt one more thing: if you have the Room Properties window open, and do #LOOK, the Reload Description flag doesn't go away (presumably for the same reason as %roomload() not being able to be set under these circumstances - this window must lock that row in the database, preventing other writes to it). On the other hand, if you don't have the window open, it does go away when you #LOOK.

But I was still not able to get the mapper to reload the Room Descriptions automatically. I think there must be a bug here. I'll post it to the bug reporting system tomorrow.