1.3b87 -- Player VBL map black, nothing else seen

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Darcphaze
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1.3b87 -- Player VBL map black, nothing else seen

Post by Darcphaze »

I managed to see and fix this myself. I gave the players a dungeon map which had VBL and FOW. They got into a combat which stretched late and we decided to stop. Now I didn't open the campaign file again until the next time we played. When I did open it at our next play, my version of the map was fine. However, all the players got was a black screen. If I took the FOW off, the background of the map was there, but nothing else, no tokens, no Hidden items, the entire combat layout was gone and I almost had a stroke. We put the issues aside and played with the GM map and had a fine time. I worked with it after the game.

Nothing I did made any difference. I went through all the other maps in this campaign file, and they worked for both GM and player. I felt I had somehow fubared this particular map. I went into the Maptool folders, checked the mt.cfg (which had managed to lose the 1.6 java I was using) but even when I changed it to where the files were located, it made no difference, players version still black. Then as I flipped through folders, I saw layout.dat. The layout.dat file in RP Maptools had become associated with the .dat files of another program. The moment I associated it with notepad, the problem vanished, the player version with all tokens on all layers was back.

I don't know why or how the .dat file was changed (no doubt something I did without realizing it) but I had enough heart wrenching moments with it to at least mention what happened in hopes of sparing someone else thinking they fubared a map.
No matter what a GM plans for, the players are certain to find another way to do it

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Full Bleed
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Re: 1.3b87 -- Player VBL map black, nothing else seen

Post by Full Bleed »

Darcphaze wrote:Then as I flipped through folders, I saw layout.dat. The layout.dat file in RP Maptools had become associated with the .dat files of another program. The moment I associated it with notepad, the problem vanished, the player version with all tokens on all layers was back.
Interesting... What program was it associated with? It sounds like the other program somehow "protected" the dat file and made it unreadable by other programs (i.e. MT in particular) and changing the association to notepad "unprotected" it? Strange. But if this is truly the case, making note of what program can do this to a MT dat file might be useful information for a faq.
Maptool is the Millennium Falcon of VTT's -- "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

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Darcphaze
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Re: 1.3b87 -- Player VBL map black, nothing else seen

Post by Darcphaze »

I also use DM Genii (with distinctive logo), and there it was, the DM Genii logo all over the layout.dat file, which is why I saw it so quickly. I even doubleclicked layout.dat and sure enough DM Genii opened it. It only goes to follow that RP Maptools, cannot open a DM Genii file, see what I mean? DM Genii is full of .dat files. I have been using both programs for years and never had this problem before. That's why I heads up'd it.

Actually my first thought is that neither program 'did it' but that Windows 7 Professional (which I use) lumped all the .dat files into one file type and associated them all to DM Genii, as I'm finding the logo all over the place. After doing some reading, .dat files are suppose to be unassociated. Naturally Windows has nothing there to unassociate files except to play with the registry, which folks such as myself will NOT being doing. As long as Map Tool works, that's all I care about.
No matter what a GM plans for, the players are certain to find another way to do it

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