Special Characters need to be removed

[chrisdarkdixon2]

Hi, there are some people, however not many, that create characters with Special Character in their names. (Copy and paste of off site characters) which my laptop is unable to support. So when they are being loaded, it forces my shockwave to crash, rendering me unable to play the game. I would like to suggest a ban in all special characters of this type.

For instance, there is someone in S639, who has special characters and I am unable to see his name. Someone identified him as "mkg7 with funny characters around his name".

I have submitted a ticket, and they said "It does not crash us" and my answer to why, is simply, your computer can support these characters in flash.

However, for those of us with computers that do not support these, I would like to impose on a "ban" upon using characters like these.

Thank you

[Meikura001]

Sorry, but no. I am one that use special characters (such as a space and a unique identifier). To impose a ban on such will force me to use generic naming conventions that will take an ugly turn and I don't like naming with numbers or it being bunched up.

But enough of that. This game has been done for a very long time, so those problems you might have might be of something else that is already in game and not of these special characters you have mentioned.

[-M-]

You might just need to install a language pack to see the characters, which would stop your crash issue if the characters is what's causing it. You can find more information about the language packs for your operating system through google, or clicking on the help links in the Region and Language section of the Control Panel.

[chrisdarkdixon2]

Sorry, but no. I am one that use special characters (such as a space and a unique identifier). To impose a ban on such will force me to use generic naming conventions that will take an ugly turn and I don't like naming with numbers or it being bunched up.

But enough of that. This game has been done for a very long time, so those problems you might have might be of something else that is already in game and not of these special characters you have mentioned.

I am quite sure that it is the special characters. This has also happened on another server (Gamefuse S5) when Mo15oN changed his name to include a special character, which was a yellow upside M I believe. This also froze my shockwave. Which was even before the latest wartune update.

[chrisdarkdixon2]

You might just need to install a language pack to see the characters, which would stop your crash issue if the characters is what's causing it. You can find more information about the language packs for your operating system through google, or clicking on the help links in the Region and Language section of the Control Panel.

I have tried several as you have suggest, but none of which has helped.

[Alsatia01]

I am quite sure that it is the special characters. This has also happened on another server (Gamefuse S5) when Mo15oN changed his name to include a special character, which was a yellow upside M I believe. This also froze my shockwave. Which was even before the latest wartune update.

I'm almost positive you aren't crashing because of fonts.

R2/Adobe don't even handle much of the character encoding, most of it will be handled by your operating system, and just manipulated by the systems in place to make it aesthetically pleasing.

It is for this reason, why you can even change your font in game if you were so inclined. In your case, missing fonts should just appear as little 'squares'. Is that the same for you?

As -M- recommended, downloading some language packs could clear up the issue. It would be weird to see that you don't have at least the basic unicode language sets installed, and even if you didn't they shouldn't really be causing crashing. What browser/operating system do you use?

[Meikura001]

Some people either have boxes or a box with a ? in it when it comes to decoding names used in special font case. I see these some of the time, but my flash never crash as a result of that. It crashes when so much data exchange happens that flash cannot handle, but that's for another debate much down the road.

My big question would be, how long have you played before you realized this was an issue?

[Alsatia01]

Some people either have boxes or a box with a ? in it when it comes to decoding names used in special font case. I see these some of the time, but my flash never crash as a result of that. It crashes when so much data exchange happens that flash cannot handle, but that's for another debate much down the road.

Well I would say, flash can handle the data transfers just fine. Peoples computers on the other hand....

[chrisdarkdixon2]

I'm almost positive you aren't crashing because of fonts.

R2/Adobe don't even handle much of the character encoding, most of it will be handled by your operating system, and just manipulated by the systems in place to make it aesthetically pleasing.

It is for this reason, why you can even change your font in game if you were so inclined. In your case, missing fonts should just appear as little 'squares'. Is that the same for you?

As -M- recommended, downloading some language packs could clear up the issue. It would be weird to see that you don't have at least the basic unicode language sets installed, and even if you didn't they shouldn't really be causing crashing. What browser/operating system do you use?

It is the Characters Im sure. I was able to find out by doing multiple tests with the name. Some characters do come as boxes, yes, but the ones that dont, crash shockwave.

[-M-]

If it was the characters themselves, then everyone would be crashing, but that isn't happening. So, we need to see if we can help figure out why it's happening to you.

Best place to start is for you to tell us what operating system you are using and on which browser(s) you are having this issue.

[Alsatia01]

It is the Characters Im sure. I was able to find out by doing multiple tests with the name. Some characters do come as boxes, yes, but the ones that dont, crash shockwave.

What methodology did you use to confirm that exactly?

And as -M- said, knowing which browser/operating system you're on could help immensely.

[Arlad]

What methodology did you use to confirm that exactly?

the infamous PIOOTA* method, presumably.

*pulling-it-out-of-the-***

[Meikura001]

Well I would say, flash can handle the data transfers just fine. Peoples computers on the other hand....

Yep, I am still guilty in that department as not only I run the 5 module system but do tend to run the media player (music), chrome for forum/Youtube music sampling/Facebooking, Google Earth when I want to get the address in or to take a look, among other programs at will. A simple memory upgrade will probably fix all that for me so I won't have to shake a stick.

And chris, you didn't answer my question when it is regarding the longevity of your game play. If you had played the game for a very long time then it's not the letters. If you are just starting out, then it can be debated. I run 5 accts into the wringer and had known people with entire names full of special characters that never crashed my game.

[R245474509]

I will weigh in and agree with the OP - I have the same issue. Causes the issue for me only on my Chromebook (chromeOS) using Chrome browser (no choice to use any other browser).
No issues on windows 7 based machines that also use Chrome browser.
It's not all the special characters that cause the issue, the 'love heart' one seems to be one that does though.
It is kinda difficult to prove - took a long time to narrow it down. There were 2 people on kabam-67 with the love heart character in their sylph names - grouping with either would cause flash to crash.
Would happen if they had that sylph on in the mpd waiting room, or following a kid when starting a fight. Issue would not occur if the sylph was following a kid and I had 'hide objects' already switched on.
Only way to continue playing would be to swap over to desktop PC, instead of chromebook, as flash would immediately crash again after a refresh.
One renamed her sylph and I now don't have an issue playing with her, the other still causes crashes, but I usually only meet her in bonfires these days.

Have an alt on R2- S1 and get constant crashes there as there's a high level and active player there with love heart symbol in her character name. Difficult to tell there, but I think I crash whenever she speaks in world - I last alot longer bewteen crashes if I only filter for guild chat (she's not in my guild there).
I can't do sylph expedition there as her name's always displayed and have to find a different machine to use if I want to do expedition.

HP Chromebook (chromeOS):

Google Chrome 49.0.2623.112 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Revision 0
Platform 7834.70.0 (Official Build) stable-channel falco
Blink 537.36 (@0)
JavaScript V8 4.9.385.35
Flash 21.0.0.216-r1
User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 7834.70.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.112 Safari/537.36

[BigRedTed]

fonts cause window 10 problems