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What To Do When You Go To Open A Vp Table And It's Corrupt!


Rascal

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Don't you just hate when you have been working on a table for hours or days and saving frequently like you should and all of a sudden the table fails to open any more. It has become corrupt and your most resent backup is like 5 days old and missing the hardest feature that you painstakingly worked through. Well friends, don’t kick the dog, or throw your wife through a window, save that for when they really deserve it!

 

I’ve had this happen to me a few times before and scrapped the whole project because I’m so pissed. Melon’s resent corrupt table posting on that there “other site”. Sorry, Melon, I didn’t see it in time to help you, I don’t read post much anymore. You know the site, it starts with “v” and ends with “g” and has “pforums.or” in the middle. It reminded me of this little trick that seems to always work for me and it doesn’t need to have any violence involved unless you like it that way.

 

Have you ever right clicked a .vpt table and pick open archive through 7-zip? If not, then you’ve lead a sheltered life and should ask mom for more time outside the attic. Anyway, it shows a table file has a GameStg and a TableInfo folder within, and if you go to the Properties of the file under 7-zip’s File menu it shows that 7-zip has recognized this type of file as a Compound type file. Ok forget about the TableInfo folder, it’s worthless to you. But double click the GameStg folder for shits and giggles. Damn there is a lot of freaky items in there. Collection0, CustomInfoTags, GameData, GameItems, MAC, Sounds,Version, and Images. Holy crap! I think we’re getting somewhere right? Wrong! Damn dog! He’s too damn cute to kick. I just thought I would take you guys on an emotional roller coaster trip before I explain the real solution. I’m evil like that. Anyway, you see the files, but 7-zip can only look at them, it’s smart enough to recognize what kind of file it is, but doesn’t allow you to delete or really open these files. Throw something soft at the wall, I suggest a rolled up sock and swear a bit, if your dog is well trained it may even bring your sock back to you. If it’s not trained, then it may rip your sock to shreads giving you a reason to kick it.

 

So after farting around for what seems like hours, what have we learned? Rascal’s a jerk that beats on his dog and wife? Not really, I just threw that stuff in to make this post interesting. I don’t abuse nobody except maybe through text and it’s cab losers, or people like faralos… I’m kidding! I love all you guys, just not as much as my dog. Ok, back to the corrupt file, stay focused, we’re almost there. We learned that the file is recognized as a Compound file.

 

So now I do a search on Google (fuck Bing) for a Compound file editor. What is a Compound file? I have no clue, do I look like someone that is smart? But I punch “free compound file editor” in Google and poof, I don’t see much that says editor… where is that sock? But I see Explorer a lot. I think the one that I originally used was a 60 day trial of something, not important. I tried to run it again this morning and it was expired, so I removed it. But also this morning I found this open source thingy.

 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/uvfseditor/

 

Installed and opened a .vpt file as an unknown file type. Wow, I see the GameStg and TableInfo! I can open the GamesStg and double click the freaky files inside and see hex decimal info inside. Don’t get scared, people, I’m not expecting you to know hex code. I’m happy and the dog is happy. What I want is the Delete function. I remember one of the last things I did to the table before it got foobared was I added an image. So I’ll just delete all the images in this file right? NO! First I’ll make a copy of this table so that I can revert back if I totally trash the file. Then I open the copy and I delete the last Image in the list. File save and try to open with VP. Shazam!!! The table opened! No wonder the dog looks up to me! Of course the image file is missing and it needs to be imported back into the table.

 

I’ve used this trick on a few occasions already and it always seems to be a corrupt image, maybe the last thing VP saves is the images, I don’t know. I hope you liked my little story and enjoyed how I forced you all to read. Reading is FUNdamental unless your lexdysic like me. I don’t post big long posts like this at give me a “v”, give me a “g” and stuff “pforums.or” in the middle, anymore. Why? Ain’t nun ya bizness! So if you know Melon please pm him with this solution. I don’t guarantee this will fix any corrupt table file, but the alternative is the recycle bin with the file anyway, so what the heck.

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Ok, I guess no authors here, or at least no authors who have every had a corrupted table. Shazam! More power to ya!

 

I tried to be helpful but you guys just blow chunks. Maybe some day you will be looking for this post and I hope you can't find it.

 

I'm taking leasons from Bob on how to be a misunderstood member of the community. The student is surpassing the teacher. :)

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"Corrupt" usually means wrong checksum when loading. Remember that VP basically hashes every object into a MD2 that is stored in the compound doc and that is verified when loading the VPT. I've recently implemented checksum generation for VPTs in Node so I can update stuff in the table script automatically without having to open up every table in VP. Been busy with other projects meanwhile but if you have corrupted files that you want to load, let me know and I can regenerate the hash so you can at least open it again.

 

Source code of hash generation for those who are interested is here, needs a few tweaks to make it write the hash back but nothing major.

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  • 8 months later...
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I have exact the same problem. I worked days on my LOTR File. I never did an backup (my fault). Now I wanted to open the vpt...and VP crashes..the file is corrupt! I tried rascals solution but no luck, the files keeps corupted! All my work is gone :(

maybe if someone haves an solution I would be happy.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Groni

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  • 2 weeks later...
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Yeah, I saw this thread to late in the past as well.  I had this happen as well.  Ever since that happened I now save frequently under different names.  For instance, when I start to build I will name the table Batman REDO 1.  After I do a couple of things I will save the file as Batman REDO 1.1.  Another couple of things and it becomes Batman REDO 1.2.  This is why some of you that beta test for me will see a 3.6 or 4.1, etc in the name ;-)  I end up with a lot of version but now when I get this problem I have to go back to my last one and just redo those few things I just did.  Still frustrating but now I only lose a couple hours work vs weeks work.

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