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Aktuellster Beitrag geschrieben von:
GreenReaper
(14.06.2005 20:58)
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Re: GEL
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geschrieben am: 11.06.2005 08:39
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Von:
GreenReaper
Beiträge: 77
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Registriert: Jan, 2005
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Good Morning, Joni!
This is a problem that other people have had too. As you can read at the Wiki, there was a version 2, but it never got completed. Unfortunately the source code for the version 1 got lost, so the problem could not be fixed.
I talked to the author, Mike Raiford, a few months ago, and got him interested in working on another version of it. I do not know if this is complete yet, or if he has stopped working on it, but I will ask.
Meanwhile I decided that I should find out what the problem is (I like a challenge), so I spent most of yesterday looking at the code. I think I know what the problem is and I am trying to solve it now.
There appears to be an error in version 1 of GEL. It tries to read the position of the Creatures 2 folder from the Registry, because it needs to know where the AllChemicals.str file is. Unfortunately it does this incorrectly. However, because of the way comptuers are, sometimes you can do something incorrectly and it still works . . . for a while. This is why it worked on Windows 98, even with the error.
Unfortunately then another OS comes along - Windows XP - and does things differently so that it no longer works. This is not the fault of Windows XP - the program was lucky to work on 98 in the first place; it should not have worked. But it does need something needs to be done to make it work properly on XP.
(for programmers: I think that GEL uses a buffer to load the registry data and copies all of it to the rather than just the amount that was in the registry. This results in paths like "C:\Games\Creatures 2\.r3. t3\lots of gunk here\t3iu89" to which it then adds "AllChemicals.str". This does not work!  I guess Windows 98 nulled out the buffer and so there was no gunk.)
Hopefully I can figure out how to make it work. If not, then we shall just have to hope Mike makes a GEL 3. 
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Re: GEL
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geschrieben am: 11.06.2005 14:43
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Von:
GreenReaper
Beiträge: 77
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Registriert: Jan, 2005
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OK . . . I think I may actually have fixed it. This is a surprise to me! 
You can get the updated file here. You must extract the contents of the zip into the Windows\System32 directory (usually C:\Windows\System32). If it is the right place (and if you have installed GEL) then it should ask if you want to overwrite the existing file - you do. If you are concerned you might want to make a copy of that file first, up to you, but considering it is broken already, I don't think there's much point. 
Be warned: I do not know exactly how GEL is supposed to work (since I've not used it before), and I did not do an extensive test. This is just a fix for the one bug that stopped it loading. If there are more crashes . . . well, tell me, and I'll have a look, but no guarantees. I probably cannot fix crashes that were always there. Anything "more" than a crash is out of the question - my skills do not yet extend to writing feature additions in x86 opcodes. 
As for Nornimator, I actually chat to him on the Sine-Waves IRC channel, so I will ask him there, although I can make no guarantees for his time . . .
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AW: Re: GEL
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geschrieben am: 12.06.2005 03:37
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Von:
vadim
Beiträge: 17
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Registriert: Jun, 2005
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Sure, tell me what exactly doesn't work, and I'll try to fix it
Currently, I don't have XP installed on any computer at home, but I have access to XP systems at work and such, so I could do some testing there.
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AW: Re: GEL
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geschrieben am: 12.06.2005 09:27
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Von:
Alien
Beiträge: 4.732
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Registriert: Okt, 2002
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Vadim! *waves frantically*  to the Forums! 
A few people reported, that the nornimator doesn't work on XP. Unfortunately (no, stop, fortunately!! ), I don't have XP, and I don't know wether there is an error message popping up or not. But maybe those people here who actually tried the nornmator on XP could report, what exactly is happening when installing and starting it.
And there's that pigment and pigment bleed feature in the nornimator that is buggy (actually never worked  ). I already told you that and you wanted to wait if it's wanted also by other members of the community. Well, I'm really sorry, I never really asked around and maybe people just got used to the fact that you only can see the nornbreeds in the original colour. Well, to be exact: as far as I can see, the pigment feature works, the sprites get tinted as in the game. But since the pigment bleed settings allow more intesting colours in game, I use them more often. And here comes the tricky thing: in the game, if a genome has four pigment bleed genes for one age stage, the colours of the sprites can change dramatically. Even more dramatically if the genome contains 11 pigment bleed genes for one age stage.
I simply don't know how this happens in game and I also don't know if it's possible to teach the nornimator to do this.
In order to compare what I just tried to write:
Find example of tinted (pigment genes altered) norns here:
http://www.creatures.de/c3gargoyle.htm
And here examples of colour changed ones (pigment bleed genes changed)
4 Pigment Bleed genes:
http://alien.creaturesforum.de/C3/gargoyle.htm
(bottom of the page)
11 Pigment Bleed genes:
http://alien.creaturesforum.de/C3/wingies.htm
(top picture, right side, a neon winged norn)
 And how's Masha? 
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AW: Re: GEL
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geschrieben am: 12.06.2005 12:10
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Von:
vadim
Beiträge: 17
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Registriert: Jun, 2005
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Hmm, definitely not very helpful.
I will to give it a try at work tomorrow if I have time.
BTW, does it get to write anything at all in the log file, or it crashes before it does anything at all?
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AW: Re: GEL
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geschrieben am: 13.06.2005 18:46
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Von:
vadim
Beiträge: 17
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Registriert: Jun, 2005
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Well, unfortunately no results today.
Did try to do a test at work, but forgot that I was missing a few necessary things on the laptop, so it couldn't be.
Darn, should have made sure it'd work first. Oh well, will try tomorrow. Should have more free time at work tomorrow too.
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AW: Re: GEL
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geschrieben am: 13.06.2005 22:51
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Von:
vadim
Beiträge: 17
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Registriert: Jun, 2005
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Ok, first contribution in ages! New installer.
I needed some way of setting it up on the work computers without much trouble, so now there's a new shiny NSIS based installer. Basically means no more "support files" crap, and the whole thing is (currently) 2.12 MB in size.
No functional changes yet, but this is absolutely latest version, so give it a try in case it happens to work.
Get it here:
http://vadim.ws/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=8
More stuff there if anybody wants it:
http://vadim.ws/tiki-list_file_gallery.php?galleryId=1
It'd be nice if you could mirror it, as currently my server is awfully unstable. I'm working on getting a replacement.
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Re: GEL
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geschrieben am: 14.06.2005 07:57
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Von:
GreenReaper
Beiträge: 77
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Registriert: Jan, 2005
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Sorry, that should be "why doesn't it copy the atts?"
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AW: Re: GEL
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geschrieben am: 14.06.2005 10:18
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Von:
vadim
Beiträge: 17
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Registriert: Jun, 2005
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Yeah, it could definitely use some debugging. And it doesn't work well with DS.
There's an unsolved problem with DS. IIRC, it goes like this: DS doesn't have the 'A' breed Norns, but uses the 'A' breed ATTs. The breed detection code looks for sprites, which means the 'A' ATTs aren't loaded unless the images exist. Very stupid limitation I should fix some day. It should be possible to use more than one game folder as well.
What do you mean by "why doesn't it copy it"? It does, the ATT cache is an exact copy of the .ATT files, except it's a dump of the array where it stores them. This is from when I had a P133, where loading all the ATTs on startup actually caused a noticeable delay.
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Re: AW: Re: GEL
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geschrieben am: 14.06.2005 10:40
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Von:
GreenReaper
Beiträge: 77
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Registriert: Jan, 2005
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I mean, if it knows where the C3 folder is and it knows where the DS folder is, why doesn't it copy the atts to the DS folder rather than telling the user to do it?
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