[Major BUG][Editor] Editor resets pick-up skill type and count

IchoTolot · August 08, 2020, 11:03:49 AM

Open a level with pick-up skills for example "Laughs of Insanity" of United's Genocide rank (newest version).

There should be a 6 builder pick-up skill in the bottom right corner. You should see that the pick up skill is empty and the count is set to 1. As long as you don't save this the level is fine though.

You can set it to the intended type and amount and save after that though if you need to change the level as a temporal workaround. It only resets on opening the level.

IchoTolot · October 05, 2020, 07:04:46 AM

This may not be completely fixed, as we had another case with mantha's contest entry again. I attach the 2 versions of the level here.

So it may be worth checking this out again.

Strato Incendus · October 05, 2020, 10:57:36 AM

I can confirm that this error also occurred on some Lemmings-Open-Air levels for me - however, so far it only seems to happen with levels that were initially created with an older version of the New-Formats editor. In my case, the pickup skill retains its type, it's just reset to a count of 1.

On levels of a similar age, it also sometimes happened on opening a level in the editor that every one-way-arrow area was shrunk by 1 pixel - either in height or in width. This might be a separate bug, but since both occurred on levels of similar age, and both on level opening, I'm more inclined to believe they are related. This is why I didn't open a separate thread for the one-way-arrow issue.

Once I had fixed the skill count and re-saved the level, the skill count was maintained when opening it again. Same for the one-way arrows.

namida · October 05, 2020, 06:11:22 PM

Quote from: IchoTolot on October 05, 2020, 07:04:46 AM
This may not be completely fixed, as we had another case with mantha's contest entry again. I attach the 2 versions of the level here.

So it may be worth checking this out again.

V1 of this level does not contain, in the NXLV file, skill counts. V1 was also created with editor V1.26 (as noted in the comments at the top of the file) - doesn't say exactly which version, but most V1.26 builds (all of which were experimental) had issues with this. My guess is that the level was worked on with V1.26, and at some point before submission, was opened and re-saved, which is when the skill count data was actually lost.

Regarding the loss of skill counts on very old levels, if these levels pre-date NL V12.7.0, please confirm if the issue persists after cleansing the level (in a version between V12.7.X and V12.9.X inclusive - this range includes the current stable version). If this resolves the issue, it is not an editor bug, it's an issue of the level having not been updated for the format tweaks in V12.7. While NL itself can still understand the deprecated keywords / etc, the editor cannot, and the solution is to cleanse them.

The off-by-one-pixel for one way walls was to do with a bug with resizable objects in older editor versions. The wrong size indeed gets written into the file so there's no way to automatically correct this, but it shouldn't be happening any more on up-to-date versions.

Strato Incendus · October 05, 2020, 06:16:33 PM

As I said, I fixed the issue in the current version of the editor and saved the levels, so that the issue didn't re-occur on opening the level in the editor. Thus, I currently have no further affected level files, but if any further ones come up, I'll make sure to store one of those "broken" versions elsewhere!

In the meantime, IchoTolot's and mantha's examples might suffice?

namida · October 05, 2020, 07:04:22 PM

Quote from: Strato Incendus on October 05, 2020, 06:16:33 PM
As I said, I fixed the issue in the current version of the editor and saved the levels, so that the issue didn't re-occur on opening the level in the editor. Thus, I currently have no further affected level files, but if any further ones come up, I'll make sure to store one of those "broken" versions elsewhere!

In the meantime, IchoTolot's and mantha's examples might suffice?

Already explained what appears to be the issue re: mantha's example, but I do still need to look at IchoTolot's.

mantha16 · October 05, 2020, 08:56:14 PM

i using 1.27 now but it prob was 1.26 cos i made the level quite a while ago now prob within a week of the competition being launches so that explains it

namida · October 06, 2020, 11:01:55 PM

The level in question from Lemmings United also shows as being last edited with V1.25, which I believe also had bugs around this (in that it incorrectly used a deprecated keyword instead of the current one). Running the level through Cleanse, or open -> manual correct -> save, will fix it.

As all examples have related to either a known-and-fixed bug in experimental builds, or to outdated-format levels that had not been cleansed, it looks like there's no actual issue with the current stable editor here.

If anyone encounters this issue again, please:
1. Check the level in-game. If the skill count is missing there too, it's lost from the level data altogether, and will need to be fixed manually.
2. If it's fine in-game, run the level through Cleanse Levels (on the title screen of a pack containing it, press F8).
3. Open the level in the stable version of the editor, V1.27 or higher (Help -> About to check which version you have). Only if the skill count is still wrong in the editor (or when saving again from the editor now), report it.

Please also make sure - in general - that your copy (or copies, if you have more than one) of the editor are up-to-date, unless it's an old version you're intentionally keeping and clearly know that it's an old one. At the time of this post, the latest stable version is V1.27.