Fantasy Grounds Ultimate- update 2E.pak problem

[markem]

One other problem: Running a test fails. But as you can see - I can get to the Fantasy Grounds website. Ideas?

[markem]

Nevermind. Had to restart and then it loaded the rulesets in. Now it works. :-)

[Moon Wizard]

@markem,

You have something really odd going on with your machine then. The updater is using default OS-level APIs to write .pak files. Something on your machine appears to be intercepting the files either as they're being written or as they're being read to convert them to folders.

Have you checked to see if you have any compressed/zip file "helper" applications running? Try checking your Startup tab of the Windows Task Manager to see what might be running.

After figuring out what is causing the strangeness on your machine, you'll probably have to run a new Update.

Regards,
JPG

P.S. Started reply before markem's most recent answers.

[markem]

@Moon Wizard : It is a long, sad, drawn out story. So I'll try to keep it simple. :-)

I lived in Houston, Texas. Married. 4 bedroom house. Ford Truck. Worked at NASA, M.D. Anderson, and other great places. Made lots of friends. Then 2016 came along. Lost job, started feeling really bad, wife lost job, she visited her parents in Arizona, got job out there, I couldn't move out there (house et al), she left, divorced, got sick, lost right foot and part of leg, got out of hospital, Harvey hit Houston, 3ft of water in house, got saved, went to convention center, 3 weeks later came home, church across street had people tear out inside of my house, sold house, apartment, moved to Wichita Falls, in 3 bedroom apartment. Whew.

Bought new computer, super computer, 64GB of memory. Backed up system into ZIP files. System crashed. Got it back, backed it up to ZIP files again. Crash. Again. Crashed. Got new disc drives. Installed Win 7 because win 10 kept crashing. So I wound up with files names .ZIP, .ZIP.ZIP, and .ZIP.ZIP.ZIP. Being a programmer I wrote an unarchive program to go through and change all zipped files back into what they contained. Unfortunately - it also did so for PAK files. Even though I had not asked it to do so. Such is life. :-/

Working on MoveUp.PHP program to go through and move all A.zip.zip.zip->A.zip.zip, etc.... files so they become just <Folder>A with everything in them. I'll have to look for more PAK files (which PAK files are an archaic archive format from DOS days (PAK.EXE)).

And thus, my sad tale of lost love, lost leg, lost computers comes to an end.

My big question is - why does my Windows XP laptop just keep on running without any of these problems? I guess it is just more stable. :-/

[Mortar]

@Moon Wizard : It is a long, sad, drawn out story. So I'll try to keep it simple. :-)

I lived in Houston, Texas. Married. 4 bedroom house. Ford Truck. Worked at NASA, M.D. Anderson, and other great places. Made lots of friends. Then 2016 came along. Lost job, started feeling really bad, wife lost job, she visited her parents in Arizona, got job out there, I couldn't move out there (house et al), she left, divorced, got sick, lost right foot and part of leg, got out of hospital, Harvey hit Houston, 3ft of water in house, got saved, went to convention center, 3 weeks later came home, church across street had people tear out inside of my house, sold house, apartment, moved to Wichita Falls, in 3 bedroom apartment. Whew.

Bought new computer, super computer, 64GB of memory. Backed up system into ZIP files. System crashed. Got it back, backed it up to ZIP files again. Crash. Again. Crashed. Got new disc drives. Installed Win 7 because win 10 kept crashing. So I wound up with files names .ZIP, .ZIP.ZIP, and .ZIP.ZIP.ZIP. Being a programmer I wrote an unarchive program to go through and change all zipped files back into what they contained. Unfortunately - it also did so for PAK files. Even though I had not asked it to do so. Such is life. :-/

Working on MoveUp.PHP program to go through and move all A.zip.zip.zip->A.zip.zip, etc.... files so they become just <Folder>A with everything in them. I'll have to look for more PAK files (which PAK files are an archaic archive format from DOS days (PAK.EXE)).

And thus, my sad tale of lost love, lost leg, lost computers comes to an end.

My big question is - why does my Windows XP laptop just keep on running without any of these problems? I guess it is just more stable. :-/

First off...Fantasy Grounds uses .pak files for ruleset, ext files for extensions, .mod files for modules, and .ppk files for portrait packs. Those are not going to change in the near future, so get used to those formats. You may also look at ways for your system to keep them in the same format as downloaded by Fantasy Grounds. You are going to have nothing but trouble every time you start up or run an update. The updater system updates the paks, exts, mods, ppks as required. An unpacked product does not get updated. Check how your file associations are set up.

Second off - You might, just might want to think before you start calling people who are trying to help you out "dumb". Celestian is the creator of the 2E ruleset - so yeah I bet he has the 2E.pak. Moon Wizard is one of the two lead developers (and part owner). Neither fall in to the category of "dumb". Any advice they have to give on the subject is likely to be helpful.

Just my two cents

[markem]

First off...Fantasy Grounds uses .pak files for ruleset, ext files for extensions, .mod files for modules, and .ppk files for portrait packs. Those are not going to change in the near future, so get used to those formats. You may also look at ways for your system to keep them in the same format as downloaded by Fantasy Grounds. You are going to have nothing but trouble every time you start up or run an update. The updater system updates the paks, exts, mods, ppks as required. An unpacked product does not get updated. Check how your file associations are set up.

Second off - You might, just might want to think before you start calling people who are trying to help you out "dumb". Celestian is the creator of the 2E ruleset - so yeah I bet he has the 2E.pak. Moon Wizard is one of the two lead developers (and part owner). Neither fall in to the category of "dumb". Any advice they have to give on the subject is likely to be helpful.

Just my two cents

Uh - yeah.

First - Let's establish that I like Fantasy Grounds.
Second - I greatly appreciate any and all help that is given to me.
Third - Celestian may be the creator of the 2E ruleset - but he did say "To the best of my knowledge there is no "2E.pak" folder created by FG. That has to be done by a local user." which, in my limited knowledge, did exist on my system. Thus my reply.
Fourth - You are talking in absolutes when you say stuff like "Those are not going to change..." future or otherwise. They may or may not change but not realizing that I had something going on - on my system and I was trying to find out what and why does not mean I can not question why something was happening.

Fifth and last - "dumb" is just dumb. I can be dumb, you can be dumb, anyone - can be dumb. Especially when they try to talk in the absolute. Because thede are always exceptions.

By the way - I am stupid and trying to get smarter. I say this because I have been in the field since 1972 and I have always found that no matter how smart you think you are - there is always something new you have to learn. I think this is becuse unlike an Electrical Engineer who - if they wired something incorrectly could be fried to a cinder - programming and how people program is constantly changing. So you are always learning how they do something so you can correct what you do and how you do it.

Later! :-)

[Moon Wizard]

I think everything has been covered here. Closing thread.

JPG