Ahh the inevitable...

[glockenspeel]

Hi all, 

So I might have gone a bit overboard with the downloads. Been checking regularly in-game to ensure there are no conflicts and everything shows up, but I just installed a few of the scenery packs and the game crashed on the loading screen. This raised a couple of questions for me. 

1. Does the game crash at the same part of the loading screen regardless, or does it depend on where the conflict is? (For me it crashes just over half-way through the loading bar)

2. Is there a conflict detecting tool somewhere on the forum?

3. Is there a limit to the amount of .ztd files you can add to the dlupdates folder.

If not, that's obviously fine and I should've read the instructions better. It shouldn't take me too long to sort it out as I've narrowed it down to the scenery packs I added recently. Just wondering if there's a way to stream-line it.

Thanks for any info!

[(Admin)Cricket]

There is indeed a limit to the number of .ztd files you can have in-game :D  You may want to check out some of the tutorials on creating combined .ztd files here.  This will definitely help. 

 

I also have a tutorial on combining .ztd files using WinRar.  I'll have to locate it for you.

[glockenspeel]

Cricket, you're amazing. Thanks a bunch for the links! It's getting late but will read through thoroughly tomorrow :) 

[(Admin)Cricket]

glockenspeel, I sure hope you can find one of those tutorials helpful :D 

 

I just added the one I put together to combine .ztd files using WinRar.  You can find it here. 

 

The other tutorials are good too.  It just depends on which method you prefer to use.  When I first wanted to learn how to combine .ztd files, I tried the WinZip method.  Much to my dismay, it didn't work well for me lol.  So I tried applying the same concepts using WinRar and it worked so much better! :D

[(Admin)Savannahjan]

Glad Cricket came to the rescue!   The limit of individual files seems to be around 350, which includes the files in the updates folder, so maybe you can about 280, 290?  It seems like just yesterday there were not enough items created all over the community to max out on downloads.  Now it is easy to get an overload in no time.

 

[Fern]

5 hours ago, glockenspeel said:

Hi all, 

So I might have gone a bit overboard with the downloads. Been checking regularly in-game to ensure there are no conflicts and everything shows up, but I just installed a few of the scenery packs and the game crashed on the loading screen. This raised a couple of questions for me. 

1. Does the game crash at the same part of the loading screen regardless, or does it depend on where the conflict is? (For me it crashes just over half-way through the loading bar)

3. Is there a limit to the amount if .ztd files you can add to the dlupdates folder.

1. Knowing exacting when/where a game crashes can tell me where to look for the problem. Cricket is right in this case. It is most likely too many files. If it crashes when you click on a specific scenery or whatever in the menus and it crashes, then the problem is with that specific file. There are other things as well.

This info will help: Causes of ZT crashes and how to avoid them by Jay and
Zoo Tycoon 1 Limits And Suggested Solutions by Jay

This list is out of date and some things may have been fixed but here is a list of conflicting files I knew about.

Known Conflicting Files

The website these are on also contains downloads. So does the other one in my signature.

Have fun playing.

[glockenspeel]

Thank you all so much for the answers, advice and links!

Quick update, FINALLY got it to work - although I had to use 7zip instead (after updating WinRar, which I thought might be an issue, it was extracting into subfolders even though I unchecked the box... weird and annoying).

Managed to eventually merge all the AoE Wonders into one ztd. Took me ages, must've checked in game about 25 times. At first nothing, then the slot in the menu showed up but with no textures, then I switched to 7zip this morning (I thought I could try other programs) and edited the file to SAVE as ztd, rather than changing the name afterwards from zip to ztd, and that seemed to work! Am going to test later on with multiple scenery packs etc. Couldn't have done anything without that WinRar guide however, so a 1000 thanks Cricket!

 

Been thinking about making a little tutorial for it on 7zip too for anyone having issues. Need to do more testing, but I'd like to return the favour if it doesn't exist already :)

 

Btw is it the same process with animals? I read online (after a desperate google search) that it might be different merging animal files.

[Fern]

There is a post on using 7zip over at Zookeeper's Lounge done by Jay as that is what he has been using for years. That is another site that has downloads as well.

http://www.lunamanar.com/zklounge/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=1983

 

[glockenspeel]

O.o wow there are quite a few sites for this game... definitely found 7zip to be working the most consistently with no issues. Have compiled most of my files into merged categories. Gone from a few hundred to about 20. Thanks so much for the guides everyone! Soon I'll actually get round to playing the game...