SCI Studio & 'Phantom' ScriptXXXXX resources

[gumby]

I ran into a problem where a 'phantom' script was showing up in my game, in the form of ScriptXXXXX, where the X's were numbers.  In my instance, Studio was convinced that this resource lived in the RESOURCE.045 file (which didn't exist).

I couldn't open it the script because it really wasn't there.  I tried rebuilding resources, and sometimes the phantom would change script numbers, but would never be removed.  If I opened the game in Companion, it does not report the phantom (go figure).  Closing & reopening Studio didn't help.  I even considered that my resources were truely corrupt, so I rebuilt it & the map using external utilities. 

Having this phantom script resulted in a failure to compile - it would attempt to find the script at compile time & it couldn't.  I'm running Studio on my 64 bit Win 7 laptop, in XP compatibility mode.  Here is the workaround that I came up with:

1) Open Studio
2) Turn off the script preview window (if you don't do this, a right-click in the next step would generate an error)
3) Right click the 'phantom' resource (Game Explorer->Scripts) & choose 'Delete' - Studio will complain that it can't delete the file
4) Rebuild resources

Yeah.  Seriously.

[Collector]

Really shows just how much the source needs to be gone through by someone capable enough. I really think that if Brian had finished SCI Studio VGA that there would have been a lot more interest in SCI by would be fan game makers. That may have lead to more development of the tools. I seem to remember Brian saying on the old MT forum that he was disappointed that SCI Studio had not attracted more interest from the fan developers, implying that he lost interest in Studio because of it.

[MusicallyInspired]

Yeah, when really everyone was just waiting for VGA SCI Studio. When he didn't deliver, everyone gave up on it and turned to AGS. It ended up being the other way around. At least he finally released the source. It's just too bad nobody knowledgeable has picked it up and done something with it (since Troflip, of course).

Never ever had this problem. But I never use Studio. Ever.

[Collector]

That was what I was waiting for, before I started any serious attempt at an SCI game. At the time I don't think that AGS was much more capable than SCI1 and quite probably not even as good.

[gumby]

Never ever had this problem. But I never use Studio. Ever.

I would prefer to use Companion - it was really hard to turn away from it, but Companion has some limitations when it comes to syntax.  Some complex statements just won't compile (inline if's, for example).

Of course, this is just for compilation.  I can still use Companion for all my graphical needs.

[Cloudee1]

Is the phantom script listed as part of the .ini file... I don't think companion sees anything that isn't listed.

[Collector]

Can you see any trace of it in the Sierra Resource Viewer? Can you create an empty script to replace the phantom one with and then delete it?

[gumby]

Now I can't reproduce the problem.  I'm pretty sure I searched the game.ini file and it wasn't there.  Next time it happens I'll recheck & use the Sierra Resource Viewer to see if it's visible in there.  Thanks for the troubleshooting ideas.

[gumby]

Correction.  I can reproduce the problem (I was looking at the wrong game).  In fact, I can reproduce this apparently every time I re-create the game from my code gen tool.  I've attached a screenshot for reference.  It's sure there is a Script48020 in resource package 45.

I can't create another script with the same number (to replace/overwrite the phantom), as the number reported by Studio for this script is 48020, and Studio won't let me create a script with a number higher than 999.

I cannot find a reference to this resource in the game.ini.  SCI Resource viewer doesn't see the resource either.  I also tried grepping the entire game folder & subfolders for 48020, but the string wasn't found in any file.

Good news is that my documented 'fix' in this thread worked again.

[Collector]

Sounds like it is more of a bug with your tool than Studio. Just something about the way Studio reads the resources triggers it. Perhaps if you rebuilt the map file outside of either Studio or Companion.

[gumby]

I thought it was my tool as well, but I cannot see how or where.  When looking at the individual files that it creates, they all seem fine.  My gut hunch is that I'm doing something wrong when I'm appending the resources to the resource.001 file, or making an error when rebuilding the map.

I've tried to rebuild both the map & resource.001 files without Studio or Companion (admittedly using other tools that I've created which probably isn't a good test) and it's still an issue.

This time when I 'fixed' it and rebuilt the resources within Studio, a new phantom showed up with a different script number.  I fixed it in the same way & I was able to continue.

[gumby]

Well, I think I've determined that it's Studio.  I've found a newer version of Studio here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/scistudio/?source=directory

Looks like it was built in September 2010.  Viewing the Help->About indicates that it's version 3.0.+.36 DEVELOPMENT.  Seems that the project admin is mageofmarr (Tony Hall), no other developers listed.

The phantoms don't show up in this version.  But my games don't compile either because it appears that the 'Random' function wasn't implemented (or temporarily removed) & for all I know other things are missing/broken.  I don't really want to use this version anyway as the project seems abandoned & it's unclear what state the build is in.

I've attached a screenshot for reference:

[Collector]

Wouldn't Tony Hall be the real name of "Omni"? I think that Omni was the one that put it up on Source Forge. He may have done what a lot of people do when compiling others' source. Comment out the part where the build fails instead of fixing it.

[gumby]

I don't know.  I thought Omni was working on VGA SCI Studio, but maybe I misunderstood.  The timing of his initial appearance here does coincide.

EDIT:  I guess it must be him.  I don't see any other SCI Studio project hosted on SourceForge.

[Collector]

Here is his post on it.
http://sciprogramming.com/community/index.php/topic,297.msg1439.html#msg1439