[eluser]sophistry[/eluser]
no, it doesn't help. please strip out extraneous details and post to the forum. or if you need to, make multiple posts.
just thinking out loud here, but, i'm wondering if you could do some changes on your own and report what happens when you change stuff around. you know, debugging, and stuff?
for instance, before going and zipping that set of files, did you try dumping any variables in the controller?
you have the running code and the motivation, use it.