How to troubleshoot zone.exe crashes

[govtcheeze]

Just an FYI for people who might not know:

If zone crashes and closes the window, you can open your own instance of zone using DOS to see what error is returned and the window will not close. Do this by opening a command window, browsing to your eqemu folder where zone.exe resides, and copy/paste in one line from your boot5zones.bat file. For instance:

zone . xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 7995 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

This will boot up one zone instance. If it is crashing while you run the zone batch file, the error will pop up right away and take you back to the dos prompt. If it happens during login, after you log in and it crashes, the error will be displayed and take you back to DOS prompt. Here is a full example, in case this isn't clear:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\>d:

D:\>cd eqemu

D:\eqemu>zone . xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 7995 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
[Status] CURRENT_ZONE_VERSION: EQEMu 0.5.9-DR2
[Status] Loading Variables
[Status] Loading zone names
[Status] Loading items
[Status] EMuShareMem loaded
[Status] Loading npcs
[Status] Loading npc faction lists
[Status] Loading NPC Faction Lists from database...
[Status] Loading loot tables
[Status] Loading Loot tables from database...
[Status] Loading doors
[Status] Loading Doors from database...
[Status] FileLoadSPDat() Loading spells from ./spells_us.txt
[Status] FileLoadSPDat() spells loaded: 5426
[Status] Loading guilds
[Status] Loading factions
[Status] Loading corpse timers
[Status] Loading what ever is left
[Status] Loading commands
[Status] command_init(): Warning: Command 'help' defaulting to access level 0!
[Status] command_init(): Warning: Command 'flag' defaulting to access level 0!
[Status] 166 commands loaded
[Status] Entering sleep mode
Connected to worldserver: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9000
Map header: 36395 faces, 60 nodes, 41346 facelists
Loaded map: 109185 vertices, 36395 faces, 0 branch nodes, 0 final nodes
Map BB: (-1273.50 -> 14.00, -321.88 -> 239.91, -88.97 -> 41.97)
Map ./Maps/neriakb.map loaded.
[Status] Weather should change in 7374 seconds
Init: Loading zone listsError in SpawngroupID: 41056
, zone state or spawn list, player corpses
Zonepoints loaded into memory
, timezone data - Done. ZoneID = 41; Time Offset = 0
Successfully loaded Zone Config.
[Status] Loading Objects from DB...
[Status] Loading Ground Spawns from DB...
[Status] Loading doors for neriakb ...
[Status] Done loading doors for neriakb ...
Error in GetAASkillVars 'SELECT cost, max_level, hotkey_sid, hotkey_sid2, title_
sid, desc_sid, type, prereq_skill, prereq_minpoints, spell_type, spell_refresh,
classes, berserker,spellid FROM altadv_vars WHERE skill_id=0' #1054: Unknown col
umn 'hotkey_sid' in 'field list'

D:\eqemu>