This thread is meant to document and give solutions to many bugs plagued throughout our old chat program. If you find an issue and/or a solution, post it here and mention me so I can update this OP.
- 1890-1904 refuse to launch on certain system configurationsWorlds will refuse to launch. Not entirely sure on what is the cause. The only clue known is that Worlds uses DirectDraw to get the screen resolution, which might not return properly on different modern graphics devices.
- Avatars turn invisible or non-existent after some time.Users who have just loaded the drone (user object) of the effected user will be unable to see their avatar, while users who have already had the drone loaded will see an avatar. This is caused by the server not sending a packet with avatar information, presumably because the server may have forgotten it.
Spoiler: SOLUTIONS
Re-wear your avatar by changing your avatar code someway. This can be accomplished by selecting another avatar and then turning back, or by modifying the code in Console.
Graphics will appear like clown barf; a mix of changing colors and strands of a surface. This is very likely just a math limitation of the rendering engine.
Spoiler: SOLUTIONS
Lower the resolution of your screen.
The Delete button on properties will not be re-enabled when selecting the ToolTip property, and it is not possible to set an empty string.
Spoiler: SOLUTIONS
Remake the object.
Change the tool tip to something unique and save the world. Find and make a backup of your world. Use a hex editor to locate the UTF-8/Character string you made the tool tip as. Delete the characters and two bytes before it, and change the third byte before it to a 0x01. The string and three bytes before it should now be replaced by only one byte of 0x01. Save that and open it up. If Worlds crashes or says the world can't be loaded, you've done something wrong.
Using an action that takes control of the mouse cursor on Worlds will break if the position of the cursor reaches outside the application window, causing the application to disagree on the position of the cursor.
- [SHAPER] Right-clicking and selecting "Edit Properties" on an object after teleporting to a world with Multi-user off causes random glitches.When teleporting to a world that semi-boots you off the server, the Edit Properties context menu will do unexplainable things. Some examples are: Setting you to a random avatar, teleporting you around the world, adding random actions to objects. It is unknown why this happens.
Spoiler: SOLUTIONS
This is often only experienced when users attempt to start out with a new world. The default NewWorld.world file that Worlds uses as it's placeholder has multi-user set to false. Setting it to true and saving it over the existing NewWorld.world will workaround this bug. Worlds with multi-user set to false will still cause this issue.
Teleporting or navigating to worlds or rooms occasionally de-syncs with the server. In this state, users will not appear and chats will not be sent.
Spoiler: SOLUTIONS
Teleporting to a few worlds and back will usually clear it up.
Global shortcuts defined by external programs or by Windows do not function properly when the client is active. This mostly occurs when the chat text field is active.
- 1920+ will type three (3) characters at once instead of only one.Attempting to type in chat or any other input field will sometimes insert three (3) of one character instead of one, making your messages look like spam.
- Worlds saved with 1920+ Shaper will be broken and inaccessible if a Shape or PosableShape is used.A bug in the way Worlds 1920+ saves a world causes invalid data to be processed and written in the world file, preventing it from being loaded again. 1920a02 is unaffected.
Spoiler: SOLUTIONS
Just don't use 1920+. It's more trouble than what it is worth.
It's possible to hex-edit the world file and modify it to the correct values. This however, is a very long and tedious process and requires extensive knowledge of the format.
An issue in the way AdBanner is implemented gives access controls to the WorldsPlayer window. Occasionally, the AdBanner will attempt to take window focus and succeed, preventing any keyboard actions to be used in the 3D view. It is still possible to use chats.
- Launching the client will leave the player on a black 3D screen for quite some time.This is usually caused by a request to the server that isn't responding, and will wait out the entire timeout limit or until the server responds.
Recently in 2022, this is often caused by the servers not responding to the TIME protocol on port 37, and the player will wait until it's timeout or response.
Spoiler: SOLUTIONS
If in the past several months you have experienced the issue of having to wait on a black screen on launch to log in or even see anything on the client, you aren't alone.
When the servers went funky last year, one of the things that didn't come back was the open and running time server on worlds.net. Worlds uses the time server to sync up it's time to the client, and it waits on the main thread until a response is obtained to move on. You heard that right, your black screen troubles have been caused by a loss of time. How long can you keep patient if time doesn't exist?
Luckily, it's a simple fix: just swap out the time server for a new one. This will require editing a file in your Worlds installation, so make sure you have the permissions set and follow these steps:
1. Make sure any instance of Worlds is not running.
2. Locate your Worlds installation folder. You can get to it by opening the file location of a shortcut.
3. Edit
override.ini.
4. Locate the section
[Runtime].
5. Create a new value under it with the name 'timeServer' and the value 'time.nist.gov' (or any other public
timeserver domain/IP). Your configuration should look something like this:
Code
[Runtime]
timeServer=time.nist.gov
6. Save and launch Worlds and experience no more long black abyss of timelessness.
This should fix your wait as long as the US governments time servers (or whatever server you used) continue working. Enjoy!
Occasionally, connecting through the built-in proxy handler (regardless of if your proxy supports it or not) will fail and be refused. Worlds sometimes does not even attempt to start a socket on the server ports.
Spoiler: SOLUTIONS
It's unclear why, but clearing your cache should work if restarting the client doesn't.