### Common Issue 0004

Author:    Artex (aka: IceDragon)
Timestamp: 03.Oct.2005 @ 1250

Relation:  Bugge Hunters
Section:   Dreams
Title:     Corrupted dream crashes a client, trapping the user inside

Description:
    The user would normally spawn an alternative character or ask a friend to help them with
    this call, for the one they use can no longer connect properly. What happens here is
    rather simple to describe - a user wanders into a dream and once it has finished being
    downloaded, the client tries to load it and crashes. Trying to restart the client, the
    user connects back to the server and ends up being sent to the same dream - their client
    crashes again. After trying again a couple of times, the user realizes that they are stuck
    and loads an alt till the dream is no longer there or in order to call for help.

Problem:
    In this particular case, our problem is one of the target dream's components - there is
    something in there that causes a client to crash. What happens during the client's entry
    is the following: The dream package download finishes and the client attempts to load what
    it got and display it. Now due to some certain setting (most likely in the skin.ini file)
    being improperly set, the client can't handle the problem and crashes. The problem appears
    when the user tries to reconnect - if the character selection window is used the crash
    recovery dialog doesn't pop up and therefore, there's nothing to prevent you from spawning
    back at the same problematic dream - you end up stuck...

Solution:
    Normally if the user tells you their other character is "stuck in a dream", there's 95%
    chance that they've encountered this very problem and what we're going to do in order to
    recover is rather simple as well.

    There are two primary ways to handle this. The first one (and the fast one) would be to
    suggest the user to purge their dream cache folder (tmp), telling them how to do this if
    necessary (open the Furcadia folder by clicking START->Programs->Furcadia->Furcadia Tools->
    Furcadia Folder, find the folder called "tmp", enter it and delete everything inside). The
    only negative thing in this way is that the records of every private dream the user went to
    will no longer exist, so he'll need to redownload dreams he already was in. Due to the fact
    that private dreams tend to be updated quite a lot, this is an insignifficant issue.

    On the other hand, if you want to show the person that you can recover them with "minimal
    damage" to their cache, you can take the more lengthy way. Do note that if they entered
    more than 5 - 10 dreams after the incident, with ANY character they have, this way may be
    inefficient and you should rather go with the first way to save you both the trouble. If
    the problematic dream is within the last 5 - 10 ones he entered, however, you can do the
    following: Go to the dream cache folder (our beloved `tmp` folder) and sort the files in
    there by modification date. This can be done by right-clicking an empty spot, picking the
    "Sort files by" option and selecting "Modified". This will make the folders and files show
    in the order they were created - most recent folder being the last. Now you simply erase
    5 - 10 last folders and if the problematic dream was in one of those, the problem will be
    nearly solved.
    
    Once we're done purging the cache you are to instruct the user to connect with the trapped
    character and once the dream starts to re-download, they are to leave it as fast as they
    can - no matter where. Pressing CTRL-B is probably the fastest way out and will land them
    in Vinca. From this point their character will be recovered and operational again.