Advanced Updating

[aleatherglove]

I wanted to try out a snapshot build for the first time. Before doing so I wanted to set up my copy-over data and point to them in the config files as described in the readme under "Advanced Updating". I have a couple questions/observations about it.

1a) The readme says to copy over /quest/questdata.dat to preserve quests in a new version. No such file exists. I have /quest/data/quest.dat and in the same folder there's a .dat and a .xml with the name I used for my quest.

1b) I don't see where to enter the path to these files in main.properties. I also don't see how I can preserve quest.preferences without manually copying that every time too.

2) When I launch Forge with edited main.properties it fails to launch (default main.properties works fine). This happens with Forge Beta ver 1.2.6 rev 14987 and forge-1.2.7-20120410.110614-11.tar.bz2. The log reads:
java.io.IOException: The following exceptions occurred:
File 'res\main.properties', Property 'quest--properties':
res\C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\Magic Forge\My Data\quest\quest.properties (The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect)
That line in my edited main.properties reads:
quest--properties=C:/Documents and Settings/User/Desktop/Magic Forge/My Data/quest/quest.properties
It seems to be erroneously inserting the res\ before the path. To test it, I put the quest.properties files into res/test/quest/ and pointed to test/quest/ in main.properties, then renamed the quest.properties file in res/quest. Forge loaded without errors. I don't see anything in this file that looks important for me to save across versions, but it was recommended in the readme and this means I cannot have this file set aside and must be copied to each install of Forge.

Full Error Log | Open

java.io.IOException: The following exceptions occurred:
File 'res\main.properties', Property 'quest--properties':
res\C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\Magic Forge\My Data\quest\quest.properties (The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect)
at tree.properties.TreeProperties.rethrow(TreeProperties.java:277)
at forge.properties.ForgeProps.<clinit>(ForgeProps.java:48)
at forge.quest.data.QuestPreferences.<init>(QuestPreferences.java:230)
at forge.model.FModel.<init>(FModel.java:133)
at forge.model.FModel.<clinit>(FModel.java:71)
at forge.view.Main.main(Main.java:58)
java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
at forge.quest.data.QuestPreferences.<init>(QuestPreferences.java:230)
at forge.model.FModel.<init>(FModel.java:133)
at forge.model.FModel.<clinit>(FModel.java:71)
at forge.view.Main.main(Main.java:58)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at forge.error.ErrorViewer.printError(ErrorViewer.java:212)
at forge.error.ErrorViewer.showError(ErrorViewer.java:115)
at forge.error.ErrorViewer.showError(ErrorViewer.java:79)
at forge.properties.ForgeProps.<clinit>(ForgeProps.java:50)
... 4 more
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class forge.properties.ForgeProps
at forge.properties.ForgeProps.getProperties(ForgeProps.java:62)
at forge.properties.ForgeProps.getProperty(ForgeProps.java:88)
at forge.properties.ForgeProps.getProperty(ForgeProps.java:73)
at forge.properties.ForgeProps.getLocalized(ForgeProps.java:164)
at forge.properties.ForgeProps.getLocalized(ForgeProps.java:143)
at forge.error.ErrorViewer.printError(ErrorViewer.java:212)
at forge.error.ErrorViewer.showError(ErrorViewer.java:115)
at forge.error.ErrorViewer.showError(ErrorViewer.java:79)
at forge.view.Main.main(Main.java:69)
java.lang.NullPointerException
at forge.view.Main$1.run(Main.java:53)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

3) I think there was another file I was wanting to set in main.properties, but I can't remember now. I'll just say that without being able to point to all files I want to keep when updating Forge, and keeping them separate from the /res folder, it kind of defeats the purpose of this nice feature. If I'm doing it wrong, please instruct me. Or I can just keep overwriting when extracting and keep them in /res - it's not a huge deal, just a nice idea to keep user data separate and common for both beta and snapshot versions.

[friarsol]

I can check my main.properties when I get home, as I use it to load images from a different (shared) directory between multiple instances, but it looks like you are using the wrong slashes.

See how the error message uses backslashes (for Windows) but your quest properties is using forward Slashes? This is why res is being prepended with it, because Forge can't determine that it's an absolute path.

[aleatherglove]

The Forge readme specifically says to use forward slashes. And using the same slashes for the draft files works - just not for the quest file.

I think the error message uses backslashes because it's generated by java and the Forge script is set to use forward slashes for file paths. I'm not familiar at all with java and only an amateur coder, but I seem to recall there being a command for path format in some language I've used.