Maelstrom issues with 2019 Remaster

[triabolical]

Maelstrom seems to always crash when trying to randomize the 2019 Steam Remastered release with any of the options to randomize bosses, music, or the cards selected. This works fine with 2013 release.

Only selecting the options for enemy draws, GF abilities, and shop lists will the program not crash and successfully randomize the game as expected.

Due to the lack of error messages when the program crashes, I’m wondering what could cause only half of the randomizer to work on the remaster and work completely fine on the 2013 Release.

I’m using the program straight as is from the most recent release, not from the source. The previous version of Maelstrom did not crash but was stuck and appears not to modify or created anything when trying those unusable settings.

Could there be some mismatch in some of the binaries/dependencies or something? Why would only half of it work?

[jamuspsi]

I am not the developer. I am rewriting this project in electron currently. Take this with a grain of salt because the actual author will understand this better than me!

For the remastered version, all the things you mentioned, I think, require unpacking certain archives at the beginning of the patching process, altering them, then repacking them. (These are ZZZ files.) I personally have used the tool on the 2019 remastered release with boss shuffle enabled, and it worked. So I'm betting its something to do with permissions on your filesystem. Maelstrom creates new folders as part of this unpack- perhaps this is where the issue is?

It's also maybe possible that maelstrom has misidentified your version and thinks that it doesn't need to do this step, which will cause it to fail later. Do you have any other mods installed, especially the remaster-unpack one floating around?

[triabolical]

In an attempt to build the tool and debug, as I'm unfamiliar how things work on Windows, I got it to work by installing Visual Studio. I guess that I was missing some dynamic libraries (or whatever the window's equivalent is) that the process that modifies the packages/files probably depended on. Everything now works: Bosses, music, GF abilities, menu items, enemy drops, and enemy draws. The only thing that is not working is the random draw points, which is expected in the remastered version.

Not sure what solved the issue but I will try to figure that out in case if the are others have this same issue. If I had to guess maybe something in the NET Framework runtime package probably was missing from the developer version.

It's not a filesystem issue as before it was able to access and modify the packages/file(s) that I assume contains the boss data (../FINAL FANTASY VIII Remastered/Data/lang-en/battle.*), when the option was turn off. This was a fresh Steam install so no other mods for reference.

[Rae2Rae]

Im having the same issues as you. I tried what you mentioned worked for you @triabolical
I downloaded and installed all of the .NET framework packages from visual studio and it still crashes upon Randoming Bosses or Cards, everything else works fine and doesnt crash.

[triabolical]

@Rae2Rae, I can list out all that I did, but I'm still not sure what fixed it.
I also install the .NET Framework developer pack, not the runtime, for versions 4.8 and 4.7.2 directly from the Microsoft webpage. I don't think this would affect it but I installed the full SDK for .NET version 5.0.2.

As I was playing around with Visual Studio, I installed MSTools and some C#-related stuff, as the program is written in C#. I doubt this would resolve the issue.

If you decided to try replicate what I did, you should give the results so others who have this problem can have an easier time troubleshooting.

[triabolical]

I have uninstalled everything, all the framework and Visual Studio, and Maelstrom crashes as before.

Reinstalling the .NET framework developer pack separately does not fix the issue, Maelstrom still crashes.

Upon installing Visual Studio 2019 Community (16.9.4) and the .NET Desktop Development (with the extra option of .NET 4.8 development tools selected), Maelstrom does not crash.

This seem to suggest that the path to locate the require libraries/binaries to properly run the tool is the issue. I'm not familiar with windows so I don't know where the files should be located in.

[Rae2Rae]

I tried what you mentioned in your earlier post and it still kept crashing. Then I followed you second post and it worked, specially the part of

Upon installing Visual Studio 2019 Community (16.9.4) and the .NET Desktop Development (with the extra option of .NET 4.8 development tools selected), Maelstrom does not crash.

It did not crash and now I'm going to go play through and see if it worked! Thanks.

[sleepeybunney]

How much RAM do you have, and how much free space is there on the drive with ff8 on it (& also the Windows drive if they're not the same)?

The cards/music/bosses options all affect the "field" archive - by far the biggest archive - so I'm thinking it might be crashing for lack of resources.

[roxas1511]

I bought the Remasterd version today to do it and I can't seem to get it to work. Everytime I click go it tries to save and then closes itself out. I thought it worked at first but wehen I started playing everything was normal.