Client Side Data - Preference Folders : Post Server Migration

[Liwa]

In light of the comments that part of the server migration process is to un-pack Blob files such that toon inventories and banks will not be in Blobs going forward ...

Does this change what is stored in preference files on the client side?

Will we be able to copy our old preference folder contents into the new character-ID folders post migration? Successfully? In order to maintain our bk-pack labels ...

Or, will copying the contents of old preference folders into new folders mess things up?

Will there be new files in the new preference folders that we should not copy over, while other files are OK to copy over?

Kinnik

[Rurounin]

I would think that writing down all your current character ID's and then rename the folders into your new character ID's would do the trick, that's what I'm doing at least ^^

[Liwa]

Granted ... that is what I asked ... will that work with the new un-Blob'd inventory files?

Kinnik

[Utopian]

Would like to have an "official" answer from FC on this - been asked several times already.

[Macrosun]

Some things will work, some things will not work.

You can get partial prefs back by copying the folder, but not all. Things like bag names, sorting and so on will be lost (because all bags will get new IDs). Settings (F10 and such) you would be able to keep by coping the folder. I wouldn't really recommend it though as you'll end up with a lot of junk in your prefs.

[MachSchau]

What about GUI?

[Liwa]

Some things will work, some things will not work.

You can get partial prefs back by copying the folder, but not all. Things like bag names, sorting and so on will be lost (because all bags will get new IDs). Settings (F10 and such) you would be able to keep by coping the folder. I wouldn't really recommend it though as you'll end up with a lot of junk in your prefs.

Thank you for your answer ...

However, It would have been better to have this information 2 or 3 weeks ago when we all first started asking this question, so we all could have saved the time of making a list of all our character ID's since it apparently won't do us any good with identifying all our "stuff's".

Kinnik

[nanoforcer]

Damnit, i'm not looking forward to this, considering i've got waaay too many toons with full banks of bags

[Deemure]

With this news, sounds like we desperately will need items assistance updated. No offense to the development team here, but with 5 paid accounts and 6 free accounts serving as banks, the thought of losing preferences is scary. Especially, as almost all are full to the extend of starting yet another free account to store stuff. I honestly just can't even adequately convey the horror at the thought of redoing all this without IA. It will be bad enough if it is working.

[MachSchau]

You have too much stuff. You should really sell some of it, or just stop picking up crap.

[nanoforcer]

Now to another also very interesting question is, do we need to do anything to the stuff & cash we have on the GMI? i'm pretty sure i have some toons on an account i don't really want to HAVE to reactivate just to move it out manualy.
Macro? Any word on this?

[Tiralee]

Some things will work, some things will not work.

You can get partial prefs back by copying the folder, but not all. Things like bag names, sorting and so on will be lost (because all bags will get new IDs). Settings (F10 and such) you would be able to keep by coping the folder. I wouldn't really recommend it though as you'll end up with a lot of junk in your prefs.

If some things will work and some won't, and copying the folder isn't recommended, is there any chance of getting a list of what won't be carried over?

For example, writing down everything that I have on my shortcut bars would be a big job that I'd rather avoid -- but it would be easier than going through every line of nanos, perks, and so on to figure out which is the best/most recent because they are no longer on my shortcut bar.

[Graftmage]

I honestly just can't even adequately convey the horror at the thought of redoing all this without IA. It will be bad enough if it is working.

All IA data will be lost as items (and not just characters) get new IDs.

[Liwa]

With this news, sounds like we desperately will need items assistance updated. No offense to the development team here, but with 5 paid accounts and 6 free accounts serving as banks, the thought of losing preferences is scary. Especially, as almost all are full to the extend of starting yet another free account to store stuff. I honestly just can't even adequately convey the horror at the thought of redoing all this without IA. It will be bad enough if it is working.

All IA data will be lost as items (and not just characters) get new IDs.

So I think what you are saying is our old AOIA database will not work with the new character ID's ... so we need to "re-open" all our backpacks, etc. to re-establish a new IA database with the new character ID's ... correct?

I hope you are not saying AOIA won't work at all ...

Kinnik

[cybertron]

Not the most fantastic news I've heard from FC lately....

While I'm still very much a big fan of the game and will go through the painful process of sorting out banks, shortcut bars, nanos, etc on all of my 50ish toons..URGH!! But i can't imagine people who are thinking of coming back will love having to have to go through that process before they can play their characters properly again

[Leetlover]

Some things will work, some things will not work.

You can get partial prefs back by copying the folder, but not all. Things like bag names, sorting and so on will be lost (because all bags will get new IDs). Settings (F10 and such) you would be able to keep by coping the folder. I wouldn't really recommend it though as you'll end up with a lot of junk in your prefs.

Hi, does this apply to nanos too? I got a thousand nanos on my agent.

*nervous* Anyone can cast relieve stress on me?

[Unkfix]

Some things will work, some things will not work.

You can get partial prefs back by copying the folder, but not all. Things like bag names, sorting and so on will be lost (because all bags will get new IDs). Settings (F10 and such) you would be able to keep by coping the folder. I wouldn't really recommend it though as you'll end up with a lot of junk in your prefs.

/quit
try renaming bags on 76 alts sometime.

[Tiralee]

Some things will work, some things will not work.

You can get partial prefs back by copying the folder, but not all. Things like bag names, sorting and so on will be lost (because all bags will get new IDs). Settings (F10 and such) you would be able to keep by coping the folder. I wouldn't really recommend it though as you'll end up with a lot of junk in your prefs.

I know the Character IDs for my characters. If copying the old Character ID folder contents to the new Character ID folder isn't recommended, then what about just some folders/files from the old Character ID folder?

One of my characters has, in her Char ID folder, a folder for chat, containers, and dock areas, as well as files for char.cfg, iconpositions.bin, prefs.xml, references.bin, and textmacro.bin. Would one of those hold the information for my shortcut bars, for example? Or for my F10 selections? And if so, could I just copy those specific ones to my new Char ID folder?

I'm not as concerned about having to rename backpacks as I am concerned about losing my shortcut bar settings, my customized key settings, where I've put nanos in my Programs windows, and so on. If copying some of those folders/files to the new Char ID folder would help with that -- without causing problems, of course -- it would be valuable to know which ones.

[Liwa]

I know the Character IDs for my characters. If copying the old Character ID folder contents to the new Character ID folder isn't recommended, then what about just some folders/files from the old Character ID folder?

One of my characters has, in her Char ID folder, a folder for chat, containers, and dock areas, as well as files for char.cfg, iconpositions.bin, prefs.xml, references.bin, and textmacro.bin. Would one of those hold the information for my shortcut bars, for example? Or for my F10 selections? And if so, could I just copy those specific ones to my new Char ID folder?

I'm not as concerned about having to rename backpacks as I am concerned about losing my shortcut bar settings, my customized key settings, where I've put nanos in my Programs windows, and so on. If copying some of those folders/files to the new Char ID folder would help with that -- without causing problems, of course -- it would be valuable to know which ones.

I don't know if it is correct or if it would work on the new Character ID, so Macrosun should probably confirm ...

In my toon's Container sub-folder there are files named ShortcutBar_0, _1, _2, etc. These may be the contents of the shortcut bars as their name implies ...

The Chat sub-folder seems to have all the custom chat windows settings ...

My personal guess about the F10 settings is that it is one of the 4 to 6 files in each toon's main folder that are not in a sub-folder ... but that is just a guess.

I am curious if the sub-folder called Browser is our GMI account ... or if that is only the Item Store.

I would be interested in knowing how much we can safely copy over to the new Character ID's also ...

Kinnik

[Honorbound]

While I'm not Macrosun, based on what I've learned over the years about how the prefs work, this is what should still work even in light of what has been officially posted about it:

- - -

tl;dr; version

You can:

• Copy over all files in the "<accountname>\<CharID>" folder except "IgnoreList.bin" to keep most of your GUI layout and other char related settings (most window positions and settings will still get reset to default, but at least some will be preserved).
• Copy over the entire "<accountname>\<CharID>\Chat" folder to keep your chat windows and (most of) the channel associations.
• Copy over the following files from "<accountname>\<CharID>\Containers" folder to partially keep some of your non-backpack window settings (except their position): "Bank.xml", "Inventory.xml", "ShortcutBar_x.xml" and "SpecialActions.xml". Do not copy any other files. You'll lose custom names, display and sorting settings on all backpacks.
• There is no point in copying the "<accountname>\<CharID>\DockAreas" folders since 99% of the files in it will become ineffective and there's no easy way to separate the few that won't. You'll lose the position of all regular windows, including backpacks.
• The "<accountname>\<CharID>\Browser" folder is not needed/irrelevant in this regard.

If you do the above:

• You will not lose your nanoprogram window settings (and the "internal" settings, such as sorting and display mode of a select few other windows).
• Most of your shortuctbar settings/content will remain intact except for any backpack link you've put on them.
• You will keep your keybindings.

You will not lose anything GMI related since nothing of that is stored on client side.

(There is a way to keep 99% of your non-backpack window positions, but it requires the use of a 3rd party tool and some rummaging about in the "DockAreas" fileset. If anyone's interested, I can detail how.)

- - -

Copying over everything under the CharID folder is not "unsafe", only a lot of the files there will get "orphaned" since the server side objects they are associated with will have different IDs after the migration.

Most files in the "<accountname>\<CharID>" folder should still remain effective on the new character, except "IgnoreList.bin" since this stores the CharID of the ignored chars which will have been changed. The "Prefs.xml" here will remain partially effective; most of your Control Center layout (except for windows which are managed through the "dockarea" system, such as inventory, map, vendor/trade window, ncu, etc.), key assignment and a number of other things will remain intact, and thus can be transferred.

"<accountname>\<CharID>\Browser" is just a cache for the ingame browser, it usually contains nothing at all except an empty file, it makes no difference if you try to transfer it or not.

"<accountname>\<CharID>\Chat" contains all your chat window settings and channel assignments to all of those windows. Assuming the internal channel IDs won't change as part of the migration (but I'm guessing at least the org channel IDs will), by transferring this folder you can get back all chat related settings. If some (or all) IDs do change, all that will cause is red, unselectable channel names in the channel selection list, but whatever still matches will get transferred.

In "<accountname>\<CharID>\Containers", all "Container_XXXxYYY.xml" files will become orphaned since the containers they refer to will get new IDs; this means all backpacks stored anywhere will lose all their position and sorting settings and names, they will get reverted to default state. "Bank.xml", "Inventory.xml", "ShortcutBar_x.xml" and "SpecialActions.xml" will partially be still effective; they will retain the sorting and display settings, but will lose their positions.

"<accountname>\<CharID>\DockAreas" is where the biggest problem is. The files here are associated with a lot of various elements of the GUI and also with all the backpacks you own. The files related to backpacks will become invalid (along with the packpack files in the "Containers" folder itself), but there are about two dozen files here which would still remain effective... The problem is that they are mixed with the ineffective backpack files and unless you crossreference each file here with other files found elsewhere to figure out which is which, there's no way to find the ones you'd still want to keep. These files affect everything (except the chat windows) which has a regular window frame with the "i" button on the left and the "pin" and "close" buttons on the right side of the window header. If you do transfer this folder, the non-backpack windows will keep their position settings, but you'll also transfer hundreds of useless files too. If you do not transfer this folder, you won't be creating hundreds of orphaned files but you'll lose the position setting of every window.