Error in Game 4 'B4 The Lost City'

[Sailent]

I found an error in Ray Dyer's Game 4 'The Lost City'

Saving the game when inside a Training Hall in the City itself, as well as inside the Pyramid, corrupts the save game.

The last character loses all ability scores, HP and items. My human cleric lvl. 7 got a new alignment, various levels in different classes, several thousand gems and GP, etc. It is not possible to remove such a character from the game.

[ProphetSword]

Any chance you could post a screenshot of what the characters look like after corruption?

[Sailent]

Sorry, I'm not able to reproduce the error anymore. I have already deleted/overwritten all corrupted savegames and started anew. This is my third attempt on my quest for killing the big Z. But now, I went back for training in between and didn't try to do all the lower levels in one go.

I encountered that error on two occasions.
Perhaps it had to with my cleric having had enough XP to gain 2 Levels. She lost some 8000 XP in the process. Then I quit UAShell as usual. Next time I launched UAShell, the save game was corrupted.

As I mentioned earlier, I couldn't even remove the corrupted character from my party. The game produced some 'save disk error'. Some effects were: strange XP values, character levels, ability scores reduced to 0, AC 0 became 60 (it seemed as if the game switched the values of AC and HP), alignment change, new race, female char became male, negative encumbrance, etc.

[Milos Gulan]

Hm far as I know You shouldn't be starting UAShell. You need to do it once only to apply hack then later you just play without starting UAShell. You only do it if You want to change hack for other design.

Ok now here is my FRUA updated to the latest and with The Lost City applied hack << Link Removed by Admin >>
What You need to do is just extract and copy it to c: You will have c:/frua04

Then go to folder !DOSBox-0.74 and start DOSBox.exe

Then in command promt type:
Mount c c:/frua04
then:
c:
then (only once it will be active every other time you play, it reveals area map so you don't need to map by hand):
area-on
then:
start

After this you should be able to play game without any troubles. I am hoping it will work this is my version of FRUA I am playing with. If You wan't to change design (for example any other) just add design folder and then start uashell and hack it. Then play. It is not a problem but I will explain if it is needed.

[ProphetSword]

Due to FRUA being available for sale again on GOG, posting of links to full versions of FRUA aren't allowed due to piracy and copyright infringement issues.   I have removed your link.  Don't do this again.

[Milos Gulan]

Ok, sorry abut that. I was wondering if it is ok to post it. Well, now it might be a bit harder to explain things I guess.

Anyway I think You shouldn't start UAshell more then once for a design. It just loads hack and then You play it without starting it unless if You want to add new design and apply hacks to it.

[steve_mcdee]

For hacked designs, I always run them through UA Shell (even if it is not the first time I have applied the design). As far as I am aware, there should be no harm in UA Shell applying the same design that is already active.

[ProphetSword]

For hacked designs, I always run them through UA Shell (even if it is not the first time I have applied the design). As far as I am aware, there should be no harm in UA Shell applying the same design that is already active.

Same here.  I usually do this because, as a designer of modules, I always like to make sure that FRUA has any changes I have made.  While this isn't as important when it comes to playing the design, it shouldn't hurt it.

I use UAShell via DOSBox and don't run it through Windows.  I have no issues with it.

[ProphetSword]

Ok, sorry abut that. I was wondering if it is ok to post it.

If you want to send a private link to the OP, that's okay.  Just don't post it in the public forum.

If it had been a couple of weeks ago, it wouldn't have been a problem.  But since the game is officially available for sale, the community will likely not support piracy.

[Milos Gulan]

Ok, I understand. Thanks for info.

[Ray]

Bugs like these are usually not related to training.

I'm not very technical, but I've read a lot of bug reports over the years.  This sounds more along the lines of someone scribing a spell from a Ring of Spell Storing, or some other spell scribing error.  There are definitely some bugs in FRUA that will cause what you're describing, and the hacks that have been created over the years have created a few new ones, too.

I wish I could provide more insight, since it's one of my designs you're running through, but it's usually something along those lines when the character gets corrupted that way...Of course, I bow to the wiser, more tech-oriented folks when it comes to in-depth troubleshooting.