Cannot update North American Track Set : Banana's Error

[NekoMaster]

So i can't update or upload any files right now as Banana's is giving me an unhandled exception error when I click to upload a new file or update an existing project like my North American track set.

Anybody know whats going on? ANd sorry if this isn't the right place to talk about this, its late and I'm a bit tired so I couldn't think of a more appropriate place to post my problem.

[andythenorth]

For the last few days, I get an exception from Bananas if I try to update FIRS.

I haven't filed a ticket yet on github, was waiting for someone else to repro the issue.

The Bananas maintainer is probably, by default, TrueBrain, but don't quote me on that, TrueBrain might disagree.

But afaik, there's no-one else left who can fix it.

[NekoMaster]

For the last few days, I get an exception from Bananas if I try to update FIRS.

I haven't filed a ticket yet on github, was waiting for someone else to repro the issue.

The Bananas maintainer is probably, by default, TrueBrain, but don't quote me on that, TrueBrain might disagree.

But afaik, there's no-one else left who can fix it.

So what does this mean? An end to BANANAS?

[SimYouLater]

For the last few days, I get an exception from Bananas if I try to update FIRS.

I haven't filed a ticket yet on github, was waiting for someone else to repro the issue.

The Bananas maintainer is probably, by default, TrueBrain, but don't quote me on that, TrueBrain might disagree.

But afaik, there's no-one else left who can fix it.

So what does this mean? An end to BANANAS?

If BaNaNaS dies, we are screwed. Who's in charge of it? How can we contact them?

[andythenorth]

If BaNaNaS dies, we are screwed. Who's in charge of it? How can we contact them?

Thanks for reminding me why I took a break from tt-forums.

There is no-one in charge of Bananas.

There is TrueBrain who acts as sysadmin and much much more for OpenTTD.

But it's not TrueBrain's job to just fix Bananas. And if he's busy, he's busy.

I already pinged him a couple of times on irc, but no response. So we wait. Patiently.

[SimYouLater]

If BaNaNaS dies, we are screwed. Who's in charge of it? How can we contact them?

Thanks for reminding me why I took a break from tt-forums.

There is no-one in charge of Bananas.

There is TrueBrain who acts as sysadmin and much much more for OpenTTD.

But it's not TrueBrain's job to just fix Bananas. And if he's busy, he's busy.

I already pinged him a couple of times on irc, but no response. So we wait. Patiently.

Did I say even once that I was demanding he fix it immediately? No.

I can understand if he's busy. All I'm asking is that if he's too busy, that we can contact him and get access to the source code or whatever and fix it. There is already a discussion on Discord about fixing the issue without requiring TrueBrain to use his own time just to fix a free game.

Sorry if this sounds aggressive, I'm annoyed at your assumjption but I don't hold anything against you.

[andythenorth]

Did I say even once that I was demanding he fix it immediately? No.I can understand if he's busy. All I'm asking is that if he's too busy, that we can contact him and get access to the source code or whatever and fix it

My problem isn't that I thought you were demanding a fix.

My problem here is that I already said above that I tried to contact TrueBrain on irc, and that I'm going to file a ticket on github. But TrueBrain is not responding to contact right now.

So whilst the offer of help is appreciated, it's totally pointless you asking to contact him again. You're basically failing to read, or to understand what you've read, and I'm trying not to be an asshole about that, but eh.

Most likely Bananas has a hosting level issue, like the server is out of memory or the DB has stopped accepting writes or something. But there is no way TrueBrain is going to give SSH for OpenTTD's infra to random people from Discord. And he's not in contact anyway, so eh, back to the start there.

It's not a great situation, but I trust that it will be ok in the end. And meanwhile no kittens die.

= off-topic =
In my eyes, these forums have reached eternal September. Pissy sniping, spreading of misinformation and simple failures to read or search. It's not specifically any one person, and none of it can be fixed with moderation. We've simply lost many good contributors and are now stuck with a p*** poor standard of community interaction.

It would be better to just abandon the forums in favour of Reddit, where we get the same crap result, but save orudge the hassle. My £0.02

[Quast65]

= off-topic =
In my eyes, these forums have reached eternal September. Pissy sniping, spreading of misinformation and simple failures to read or search. It's not specifically any one person, and none of it can be fixed with moderation. We've simply lost many good contributors and are now stuck with a p*** poor standard of community interaction.

It would be better to just abandon the forums in favour of Reddit, where we get the same crap result, but save orudge the hassle. My £0.02

I am really sorry to hear that you feel this way.
But I do hope that you realise that at least myself (and possibly also a rather large silent playerbase) really appreciate all the work that you (and also all others that have contributed to the game in any way, shape or form) have done in the past to lift this game up to another level.
And that all of this does not affect you still having fun with just playing the game (and that maybe in future you still keep making improvements/additions that you want to share with us).

[acs121]

Sure off-topic, and sorry to say this, Quast65, but after what happened with a NewGRF creator blocking the NewGRFs of another NewGRF creator, Andrew has totally right to feel like this. I honestly think going the way the community is going right now means doom. While i could agree there will always be people creating content on the forums, I don't think there will be more.

Now to Andrew - think about it : we've lost some good contributors, but we gained some too. And my two pence, it's the other way round : Reddit should rather move to the forums.

[kamnet]

Every year there's usually one or two users who are generally unlikable, but they either disappear or they shape up and become better.

I do agree a bit with Andrew though. I think what we're seeing is more good, decent regular users disappearing (mostly likely due to life), and a slowdown of new users registering and becoming regularly active on the forums.

I'm not sure what to do about this myself. A bit of advertising and maybe some stepped up interaction from our regulars could help, but that takes time and effort that we may not have at this time. :/

[andythenorth]

TrueBrain responded. TL;DR use musa for Bananas uploads from now on.

https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/issu ... 1912959799

Musa here viewtopic.php?t=63119

[acs121]

Every year there's usually one or two users who are generally unlikable, but they either disappear or they shape up and become better.

I do agree a bit with Andrew though. I think what we're seeing is more good, decent regular users disappearing (mostly likely due to life), and a slowdown of new users registering and becoming regularly active on the forums.

I'm not sure what to do about this myself. A bit of advertising and maybe some stepped up interaction from our regulars could help, but that takes time and effort that we may not have at this time. :/

The best advertising way would be providing links to the forums straight from the game. I mean, i guess...

[NekoMaster]

TrueBrain responded. TL;DR use musa for Bananas uploads from now on.

https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/issu ... 1912959799

Musa here viewtopic.php?t=63119

While I was able to update my North American Track set I'm still unable to get my 4K USA scenario uploaded as MUSA keeps thinking that the file contains no section headers.

[andythenorth]

Bananas should now be working again (thanks Truebrain!)

See https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/issu ... -438000963

Similar issue has happened a couple of times. It's caused by incomplete handling of unicode in current Bananas. Unicode is used for characters with special marks, umlauts etc.

A completely new version of Bananas is being worked on, and will solve these issues, but as always, there's no way to give a date when it will be done

Meanwhile it's unlikely current Bananas code will fixed to prevent these issues recurring. Authors can help avoid it by not using unicode in names, descriptions etc, Stick to plain latin / ascii characters. Sorry to put the work back on users, but it's the nature of a volunteer project

[PNDA_]

Similar issue has happened a couple of times. It's caused by incomplete handling of unicode in current Bananas. Unicode is used for characters with special marks, umlauts etc.

I'm sorry that this error occured, I uploaded a GRF with an Umlaut (here it was a Ö) onto BaNaNaS just one or two days before the error occured and I was still able to update it.
I will try to prevent this happening again, until it is officialy a thing to use.
I would also ask to maybe change the current name of the GRF (ÖBB Set) to "Austrian Trains", to a) fix the issue b) because I want to change the actual Name of the Set due to changes of the Content.

Thanks

[PNDA_]

Hey.
I know this is already a while back, but it seems the error has returned. If the problem originates from the same issue this is the cause and it would be fixed by a rename of the GRF.

A GRF with the name "U&ReRMM™" was uploaded by "ufiby89" today. Since then me and others get the same error "Unhandled Exception" which was caused by a UTF-8 Error back in November and most likely is the same problem now.

Thanks

[agentw4b]

The best is simple FTP ...