[Scummvm-tracker] [ScummVM :: Bugs] #11230: QFG4 exported character unable to import to QFG5

[ScummVM :: Bugs]

#11230: QFG4 exported character unable to import to QFG5
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  Reporter:  tomasz89           |      Owner:  (none)
      Type:  defect             |     Status:  new
  Priority:  normal             |  Component:  Engine: SCI
Resolution:                     |   Keywords:
      Game:  Quest for Glory 4  |
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Comment (by sluicebox):

 Congratulations! (on completing the game, not the import trouble)

 I'm afraid that your character stats are too good for QFG's file format.
 The same thing would have happened in the original.

 You can verify this with QFGImporter:
 https://github.com/Blazingstix/QFGImporter (screenshots attached)

 It reports that the stats have overflowed the format. It attempts to
 figure them out anyway so that you can repair it, but it says that there's
 so much overflow it's still probably wrong on some of them. It's VB .NET
 source so you might have to be resourceful to get it running.

 I looked into this before and came away pessimistic we can fix it. To
 quote the notes in QFGImporter, "It's big a mess." We were able to fix
 QFG3's export by capping all values at 9999. The problem is worse in QFG4
 and that's not enough.

 The problem is that the accumulation of the stats easily overflows the
 maximum that the file format can hold. It kind of adds them together as it
 encodes them. The more stats and the higher they can go, the worse it is.
 QFG4 has more stats than QFG3 and raises on many to 400. It's not any one
 stat that breaks this, I found legal combos that still caused overflow. I
 got the impression that there isn't a big number we can cap all stats at
 without tampering with exports that would have otherwise been fine.

 I'll leave this open since we now have a legitimate export file that
 overflows. If you could upload a save game of your character near the end
 then we'll be able to reproduce how your stats get scrambled. If anyone
 wants to debug exporting, just warp to room 52 from anywhere. Hopefully
 someone can come up with something, but it's hard to work around a file
 format that can't capture the game. I would love for this to be fixed!

 https://github.com/Blazingstix/QFGImporter/blob/master/QFGImporter/FileSpecs/QFG4.txt
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Ticket URL: <https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/11230#comment:1>
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