Importing maps into OLab4.5

Looking forward to playing your existing maps on OLab4? We are pleased that the OLab4 player will accept OLab3 exported maps and play them in much the same way. The same pathways, links, nodes, and general structure of the map will all be preserved and migrated without problem.  

There are certain components that have been deprecated and so should be removed or replaced. See https://openlabyrinth.ca/olab4-redesign-items-to-be-deprecated/ for notes on what is being removed in OLab4.  

There is a challenge or two that becomes evident because the rendering component of OLab4.5 that displays the HTML text is much more stringent than the old version in OLab3. It will refuse to show pages with HTML errors, bad links and missing objects.  

So, if you plan to migrate an OLab3 map to OLab4.5, here are some steps that will make the migration more successful: 

  1. Open and play the case on the OLab3 server and make sure it is playing well and generally free of issues.  
  1. Look for broken links to images. Repair or remove them.  
  1. Check out hyperlinks. You need to see if they resolve properly. If broken, repair, remove or comment them out using <!– comment –> 
  1. Update old hyperlinks that use http. If you have access to a SQL editor, you can use the following query, with nnn = map number: 
    UPDATE map_nodes SET text = REPLACE(text, ‘http:’, ‘https:’) 
    WHERE text LIKE ‘%http:%’ AND map_id = nnn; 
  1. Remove or repair hard-coded internal hyperlinks. They will not migrate as is. You can use a SQL tool to search for the following strings: 
    src=”/files/ 
    /renderLabyrinth/go/ 
  1. If you know that node text has been pasted from a MS Word DOCX, there is often a lot of style cruft embedded. This may not be apparent when you look at the Node itself. Some of these Nodes will not play in the OLab4.5 renderer. You can use the cleaner at https://html-online.com/ to remove this cruft. This can be done before or after the map is migrated.  

There are other objects that may be found in old cases that will cause problems but this is true for any web page e.g. Adobe Flash and Shockwave files,