"ERR NCSimple_Serializer (ch=0)" & "EXC Memory stream is not expendable"

We have been using a Friends Only server since Alpha 20 was released, and have had Drones following us around since we first encountered them.

About 3 in-game days into 20.4, 3 of us got hit with this issue and it was right before a Blood Moon was about to start.  We tried server restarts and other debugging steps which ended up not working until we encountered this thread.

One of us stayed safe by putting the drone away as soon as we learned that it was a probable cause.

Another managed to avoid the issue for awhile by running away from their spawn point after recovering from this crash.  Which managed to prevent the Drone from waking up and following them around causing a crash.  After the blood moon, they walked over to the drone, which then activated.  They emptied it's inventory, put the drone into their inventory, and then got this crash.  After a logout and log in, they seemed fine, and had the drone on their belt.

Another followed Backslash2099's advise and that resulted in a .ttp that went from a bit over 2,000 KB to 30 KB after using a single player world to sanitize it.  There was some strangeness with their inventory, but it seemed to work out.

Another followed those same steps, but got error messages about downloading and modifying data, and each time they loaded that profile, they got a level 1 character at a starting point, with a 10 KB .ttp file.  We ended up using a backup of their profile from earlier in the day.  They lost 3 in-game days worth of progression, but that's better than starting over from scratch.

When the issue was hitting us, we couldn't go longer than 30 seconds logged in before the console error would show up, and then be in a private session type thing where the other players would be stationary, and we couldn't interact with world objects.

After our various recovery steps and preventions, we managed to finish the Blood Moon (After using some settime commands on the server to delay it a bit while we debugged) and stay connected after the looting and rebuilding afterwards.

The 20.3 backup files for all 4 of our player profiles have about 2,000 KB .ttp files.

After we shut down the server post blood moon, the one that had a restore, and then shoved the drone into a storage box is at 30 KB.

The one with a successful singe-player sanitize is at 62 KB.

The one who avoided it by putting a drone in a box before getting the error is at 1,777 KB.

The one who ran from the drone, then went back for it is at 2,045 KB with the drone still in their inventory.  This one knows to watch out and stash the drone somewhere safe next time we launch the server.

 
SofaKING said:
Can you PLEASE details what you exaclty copied and where, thank.
Click to expand...


On the dedicated server, with the server off, grab the 3 files for the affected player at %APPDATA%/Roaming/7DaysToDie/Saves/[Map Name]/[Game Name]/Saves

There is a .map, a .ttp, and a .bak of the .ttp file.

Give a copy of those files to the player.  Reading the server logs can give clues on which sets of files go to which player.  Also, the .ttp file has the username string in there somewhere if you open it as a text file and know what username(s) to search for.

Note:  The player profile saves use the same path on the server and client PC's.

That player creates a new single player game, preferably with the same map.  Our player that succeeded used a map they downloaded (Which was different from the server's custom map).  The one that failed was using Navezgane.

After that new game is created, quit, overwrite their %APPDATA%/Roaming/7DaysToDie/Saves/[Map Name]/[Game Name]/Saves with the files that came from the server.

Then re-launch the single player game.

While that game is running, it should be obvious that this character is not starting from scratch.  Inventory should have some stuff.

Quit that game.

They then grab those files and send them back to the server.

The server overwrites it's copy of %APPDATA%/Roaming/7DaysToDie/Saves/[Map Name]/[Game Name]/Saves from the ones the player sent.  (Hopefully the server has backups in case something goes wrong/worse)

Server launches, players connect, and should be safe from that issue, long enough at least to put their drones away.

 
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I want to add some additional info.

When i had the "ERR NCSimple_Serializer (ch=0)" & "EXC Memory stream is not expendable" error on our hosted Multiplayer server, i did shut down the server, deleted the drones.dat and drones.dat.bak files, restarted the server and the error was gone, along with all drones of course. I did not ever deploy a new drone after that.

I am currently NOT having any problems on our server, but i just noticed, checking via ftp, that my player profile (*.ttp & *.ttp.bak) files are 2093913 bytes large. So > 2 MB.

So just the fact, that my profile is larger than 2 MB, does not seem to cause an error with 100% certainity.

I looked at the last part of my profile with a text- & hex editor and will attach screenshots, in case it will be helpful for the devs (if they read in this forum anyway).

The data in the screenshots repeats until the end of file.

7_days_2MB_playerprofile.png

7_days_2MB_playerprofile-hex.png

 
Thunderbolt-GER said:
Oh, i was just writing a "real" bugreport... I guess i don't have to do it then ? :)

So is there any way i can still play?

I guess deleting "drones.dat" would fix it, but everyone on the server would lose his/her drone ?

Anything i can do?
Click to expand...
Can confirm this works if your player data isn't already too large.

On my friends server he can't connect as the files are too big for him but now he's deleted the drones.dat everyone else can connect who either hasn't used a drone or hadn't used one too long.

 
Thunderbolt-GER said:
I want to add some additional info.

When i had the "ERR NCSimple_Serializer (ch=0)" & "EXC Memory stream is not expendable" error on our hosted Multiplayer server, i did shut down the server, deleted the drones.dat and drones.dat.bak files, restarted the server and the error was gone, along with all drones of course. I did not ever deploy a new drone after that.

I am currently NOT having any problems on our server, but i just noticed, checking via ftp, that my player profile (*.ttp & *.ttp.bak) files are 2093913 bytes large. So > 2 MB.

So just the fact, that my profile is larger than 2 MB, does not seem to cause an error with 100% certainity.

I looked at the last part of my profile with a text- & hex editor and will attach screenshots, in case it will be helpful for the devs (if they read in this forum anyway).

The data in the screenshots repeats until the end of file.

View attachment 24697

View attachment 24698
Click to expand...
This got me thinking and I tried manually deleting the repeated characters (server-side), but ran into an issue where there's a coded expected bytes - so you can't just do that.

(Acceptable) If someone has an ICD of the players' .ttp file so we could figure out where the expected bytes are we could manually delete the characters, change the message (byte) size of the file and fix the profiles by hand. (Or maybe we need the devs to send this out?) 

(Better) Devs could run something on server startup and periodically to remove these entries for us.

(Best) Above + remove whatever code was added that's adding these erroneous entries.

Server log of the error:

 2022-05-02T11:09:29 281.076 ERR Loading player data failed for player 'EOS_0002dbea74864e59af3ae61262f44c5e', rolling back: Attempted to read past the end of the stream.
  at PooledBinaryReader.FillBuffer (System.Int32 _numBytes) [0x00030] in <ef95c36efe6a4645bb0ec98b58e164be>:0
  at PooledBinaryReader.ReadUInt16 () [0x00000] in <ef95c36efe6a4645bb0ec98b58e164be>:0
  at PlayerDataFile.Read (PooledBinaryReader _br, System.UInt32 _version) [0x003a4] in <ef95c36efe6a4645bb0ec98b58e164be>:0
  at PlayerDataFile.Load (System.String _dir, System.String _playerName) [0x00086] in <ef95c36efe6a4645bb0ec98b58e164be>:0 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Kuvuplan said:
On the dedicated server, with the server off, grab the 3 files for the affected player at %APPDATA%/Roaming/7DaysToDie/Saves/[Map Name]/[Game Name]/Saves

There is a .map, a .ttp, and a .bak of the .ttp file.

Give a copy of those files to the player.  Reading the server logs can give clues on which sets of files go to which player.  Also, the .ttp file has the username string in there somewhere if you open it as a text file and know what username(s) to search for.

Note:  The player profile saves use the same path on the server and client PC's.

That player creates a new single player game, preferably with the same map.  Our player that succeeded used a map they downloaded (Which was different from the server's custom map).  The one that failed was using Navezgane.

After that new game is created, quit, overwrite their %APPDATA%/Roaming/7DaysToDie/Saves/[Map Name]/[Game Name]/Saves with the files that came from the server.

Then re-launch the single player game.

While that game is running, it should be obvious that this character is not starting from scratch.  Inventory should have some stuff.

Quit that game.

They then grab those files and send them back to the server.

The server overwrites it's copy of %APPDATA%/Roaming/7DaysToDie/Saves/[Map Name]/[Game Name]/Saves from the ones the player sent.  (Hopefully the server has backups in case something goes wrong/worse)

Server launches, players connect, and should be safe from that issue, long enough at least to put their drones away.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the assist, that's exactly what I did.

For the unaware, the easiest way to get to the appdata folder is to hold the windows key, press R. In the window that pops up type %APPDATA% and click ok. It might put you in the roaming folder, but if it doesn't, just open the roaming folder and then the 7daystodie folder.

 
This seems to be the issue I’m having but when I log out and log back in it moves me back a couple levels and has been giving me the xp penalty for death even though it’s not registering that I’m dying. I’ve lost 13 levels today so far with this issue. 

 
Hello,

i had the same bug with the error ERR NCSimple_Serializer (ch=0)

Couldn't open containers etc. I stored my drone in a box dirtectly after rejoining and it somehow worked for a few days.

But since today i got the same error and got stuck at the creating player screen.

After looking at the player profiles .ttp and .ttp.bak on my server (with notepad++) in my last line there where like 2 million characters.

The last line showed:

_sheltered  €?'_craftCount_meleeToolRepairT1ClawHammer  €?°·      8B£¤   ÈA   @d     ÈA   @d

with

°·      8B£¤   ÈA   @d     ÈA   @d

on repeat. The blank spaces are filled with NUL US EXT but wont copy in here.

I deleted everything in the last line after

_sheltered  €?'_craftCount_meleeToolRepairT1ClawHammer  €?

and could join my server again. It seems to work fine, i will playtest it now for a while.

Before deleting the characters the file was about 2MB in size, now its about 18kB

 
I tried the same thing you did 7.some. At first I thought it worked but later find out that I didn't remove the unwanted text well enough that all the server did was just recover the .bak file. Is there a good way to tell the proper ending of a player profile?

 
Slyzen said:
I tried the same thing you did 7.some. At first I thought it worked but later find out that I didn't remove the unwanted text well enough that all the server did was just recover the .bak file. Is there a good way to tell the proper ending of a player profile?
Click to expand...
I just looked for a pattern and it seemed to me that in my files after €? a new value/entry was made. And i looked for the characters that where always repeating.

I deleted those strings in both the ttp and ttp.bak files.

I did also destroy my drones ingame before i got stuck at the character loading screen and deleted the drone files on the server after i was not able to join.

 
Hello, I just got the same error yesterday and after reading this topic we thought it might be my drone. Every time I re-join, after 5-10 seconds I get the error again.

So my friends helped me get rid of my drone by taking all of its inventory and then I took it in my inventory and just kept it in a storage box. After that I didn't encounter the error for a long time.

We were doing a quest somewhere in the Wasteland when I got the exact error again even though I no longer have my drone out. But when I re-joined I was still able to play, albeit without a drone.

Before all this though, I encountered a different but I think quite similar bug: ERR Task_CommWriterSteam (ch=0) & EXC Memory stream is not expandable.
My character progress was not being saved. I was stuck at lvl131 and so is my quest progress. I had a recurring completed quest, where every time I submit it back to the trader, when I re-join it's there again and it tells me to submit it to the trader...again.
I tried the same fix where you put your profile in your local world and it worked. Not so long after, I get this error in this post.
 

 
7.some said:
I just looked for a pattern and it seemed to me that in my files after €? a new value/entry was made. And i looked for the characters that where always repeating.

I deleted those strings in both the ttp and ttp.bak files.

I did also destroy my drones ingame before i got stuck at the character loading screen and deleted the drone files on the server after i was not able to join.
Click to expand...
I also tried surgery on the file, removing the repeating patterns at the end, but it still reverted to the .bak , but without the actual .tpp structure, it's just guesswork

 
Loki said:
I also tried surgery on the file, removing the repeating patterns at the end, but it still reverted to the .bak , but without the actual .tpp structure, it's just guesswork
Click to expand...
Just copy profile to single game and run it for few minutes.

On the other hand it's really sad that 2 weeks and there is 0 @%$#s given and no fix has been presented by devs.

 
selissi said:
Just copy profile to single game and run it for few minutes.

On the other hand it's really sad that 2 weeks and there is 0 @%$#s given and no fix has been presented by devs.
Click to expand...
Sadly this is the only surefire way until someone at TFP cares. You don't even really need a few minute just changing standing <-> crouch or dropping an item should be enough to sanitize the file.

 
There have been several bugs introduced in this version and I’ll bet they want to fix as many of them as they can before releasing A20.5. It can take time since fixing bugs can generate more bugs. They aren’t ignoring these bugs, it just takes time to fix without breaking other things. This was submitted via official bug report to the OA team who then has to reproduce it before sending on to the developers.

 
Star69 said:
There have been several bugs introduced in this version and I’ll bet they want to fix as many of them as they can before releasing A20.5. It can take time since fixing bugs can generate more bugs. They aren’t ignoring these bugs, it just takes time to fix without breaking other things. This was submitted via official bug report to the OA team who then has to reproduce it before sending on to the developers.
Click to expand...
This is probably < 1hr of time to fix or at least mitigate via SW. Including story boarding, source control and typical software release processes this could be hotfixed in under a day. 

 
Was having the exact same issue. My buddy and I figured out a Band-Aid fix to play. Even when the "E" key wasn't working properly I held it down to unlock my drone. My buddy took all my stuff out of it's inventory and then I picked it up. Logged off and logged back in. My drone disappeared from my inventory but we've been able to play without an issue so far. It took a couple log off/ins to have my drone show up as unlocked. During the process my buddy couldn't see me or if he could, I was walking in place on his screen.

You don't realize how useful the drone is until you don't hear "Master, we're not alone." 

Hopefully this all gets fixed for all of us! Thank you all for sharing your experience with the bug. 

- Worked for about an hour...

 
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7.some said:
Hello,

i had the same bug with the error ERR NCSimple_Serializer (ch=0)

Couldn't open containers etc. I stored my drone in a box dirtectly after rejoining and it somehow worked for a few days.

But since today i got the same error and got stuck at the creating player screen.

After looking at the player profiles .ttp and .ttp.bak on my server (with notepad++) in my last line there where like 2 million characters.

The last line showed:

_sheltered  €?'_craftCount_meleeToolRepairT1ClawHammer  €?°·      8B£¤   ÈA   @d     ÈA   @d

with

°·      8B£¤   ÈA   @d     ÈA   @d

on repeat. The blank spaces are filled with NUL US EXT but wont copy in here.

I deleted everything in the last line after

_sheltered  €?'_craftCount_meleeToolRepairT1ClawHammer  €?

and could join my server again. It seems to work fine, i will playtest it now for a while.

Before deleting the characters the file was about 2MB in size, now its about 18kB
Click to expand...
OK, so after it worked for about an hour, we then tried the post above, and it's working again. For us, the files looked almost exactly the same, but had a slightly different term after the "sheltered" part. I can't remember exactly what it was, but I deleted the files after the second ? as listed above, using notepad++, and it allowed the 2nd player to be able to join again. We'll see how long this fix works....

 
selissi said:
Just copy profile to single game and run it for few minutes.

On the other hand it's really sad that 2 weeks and there is 0 @%$#s given and no fix has been presented by devs.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately not really an option for me as a server owner. I can't login as all my players. The latest Exp patch looks like it may address the growth, but likely not fix already broken ones. Just waiting now..

 
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