New map viewer and quest lister available

[atcen]

See https://wendigo.online-siesta.com/darklands/dlhelper/
Allows you to browse the map and search for cities. Displays waterways.
Lists saves sorted from the newest one and displays quests in them. Loads a new save automatically.
It can rename savegame files to be listed from the newest one in the game and enabling you to save more than 10100 saves. See readme.txt.

[MasterBismuth]

Ran the Windows version and got an error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "dl_helper.py", line 520, in <module>
  File "dl_helper.py", line 516, in load_saves
  File "format_sav.py", line 152, in read_file
  File "format_sav.py", line 137, in from_data
  File "format_sav.py", line 31, in from_data
ValueError: month must be in 1..12

Peeked in on dl_helper.py on Github but I'm not entirely sure what's going on with the rename_saves function. In one part it seems to be expecting the saved games to be named like so:

"DKSV\d+"

which is definitely NOT the naming prefix given to my own Darklands save files.

Then in a different loop below in the same function it starts looking for file names formatted with the prefix

"DKSAVE\d+

Further in the function is seems to be asserting "DKSV" again over "DKSAVE"

Perhaps this is some side effect from using the old Windows 95-era Quest Lister(?). It's not clear what the semantic purpose some of the if statements in the rename_saves function are meant to fulfill. Only thing I know for sure is that it doesn't seem to work on my machine.

I tried making a new save file just to double check against possible side-effects from the old dlqs.exe quest lister but the file it generated was also of the format DKSAVE\n+ so I'm at a loss as to what is really happening when the dl_helper.exe program runs. Can't really hook a debugger in either since it's running from a binary packaged Python VM.

Anyone else have a keener insight into the nature of this code?

Edit: I filed an issue on the Github for the program, so with any luck it will get fixed.

[atcen]

Thank you! Reordering of saves is enabled only by -r parameter. And published binaries have not this feature yet. There is no way (I hope) it would infer with savegame decoding.

I think it is some kind of DL bug/feature producing mallformed date of event in SAV file. I've encountered it once (game state was in a mess - I was unable to get bounties for raubritter quests). After starting from scratch it is OK (more than 150 savegames now)
Add the last savegame to issue please. I can handle it, but I'm not sure if it is for good.

[MasterBismuth]

I think it extremely likely that I have encountered such a bug with my own game. The old Windows 95 quest lister didn't acknowledge certain quests I had received. They never came up in the listing at all. Could be something went awry and I just kept playing.

I also had the character colors bug hit me a few times, though I'm not sure whether or not that's indicative of anything related to this data format issue.

[atcen]

Thanks for your save. Yes, neon bug seems not related to this.

[atcen]

Current status: there is event for witch sabbat, but sadly there is no indication you know about it. Maybe I can add some "cheat key" to display them.

[MasterBismuth]

I feel as though that's not the only quest I've been given that wasn't listed by the Windows 95-era dlqs.exe quest lister, but I do believe that I extracted information about a sabbath from a countryside witch some time back. However, I thought that the date of that sabbath had already come and gone by the time I made the save file that I extended to you.

Either way, my thanks for taking a look at this. Hopefully the knowledge gained from the save will be able to improve your quest lister for the benefit of one and all!

[atcen]

It's fixed I hope: https://wendigo.online-siesta.com/darklands/dlhelper/ (see readme.txt)

[MasterBismuth]

Wanted to confirm here that the fix works, and the quest lister is quite good.

There's still an open question of how save files in the game get corrupted, but that's a separate issue.