I want your mods!

[Kristoffer O]

Or at least I like to try them out from time to time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Unfortunately I can't use them if you use capitals in the dm file and not in the tga's and vice versa. My linux is case sensitive and the game crashes when I try to use some mods.

I was about to try the Avernum mod, but ran into problems.

Edit: Seems it was only the Avernum Guard and the Avernum Archer that had the problem.

Others might have the same problem.

[Kristoffer O]

Tharoon Servant spear is not capitalized in the tga.

[lch]

Hah, I have told Sombre about the case thing some days ago, too, and he said that he'll now pay greater attention to it.

You'll be able to download 8 of the mod nation in one big package in a couple of days, when I have prepared them for that mod nation game that I plan to host.

[Gandalf Parker]

I should be able to come up with a quicky line that you can do to fix that. Some SED or TR command to convert them all to lower case.

[Kristoffer O]

Just tried Insectiods. It worked fine. Quite interesting mod with the one way shapeshifting breeding machines. It took me a while to realize that I had a mictlanish sacrifice dependent dominion.

I imagine the swarm queens are rather powerful. 3 monthly flying freespawns with fear and 19 def seems quite a bargain.

[Shovah32]

Choke-points are definitely that mods friends. Dominion 10 at a chokepoint with a few spawners and you have an army per turn. To fight against you the enemy HAS to fight your dominion or its all over.

[llamabeast]

The capital letter issue is quite a recurring issue. I just always make sure to run dominions via a terminal window the first time I use a new mod. Then when it crashes it tells you which file caused the problem. So I rename that file and try again, till it works. It generally takes two or three attempts with each new mod.

Gandalf's idea is a good one, it should be possible to fix automatically.

[DrPraetorious]

ls */*.tga */*.rgb | awk '{print "mv " $1 " " tolower($1);}' | csh
# If you get a bunch of "file does not exist" messages, make the directories.

awk '{fout = ARGV[ARGIND] "_fixed";} {pmode = 1;} /\.rgb/ || /\.tga/{print tolower($0) > fout; pmode = 0;} (pmode == 1){print $0 > fout;}' *.dm

ls *_fixed | awk '{print "mv " $1 " " substr($1,1,length($1)-6);}' | csh

# Try that.

# Er.... back up your mods directory first.

[Sombre]

I'm currently in the process of making sure my mods are linux friendly. All releases from this point onwards will have no case issues.

In fact this week/end I will hopefully rerelease all of them fixed for linux.

Ulm Reborn will also get a couple more pretender choices and I'll do some CBM version work. Sylvania and Avernum maybe.

[Leif_-]

Kristoffer O said:
Or at least I like to try them out from time to time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Unfortunately I can't use them if you use capitals in the dm file and not in the tga's and vice versa.



So don't allow capitals in file-names in a dm. You have the power! The power of Greyskull.

[Sombre]

But that wouldn't stop people randomly putting capitals in the tga filenames. The reason people do that is because windows doesn't care about case.

It's not too hard for linux users to fix, anyway.

[Ballbarian]

It's not too hard for linux users to fix, anyway.




Now that is blatant case insensitivity.
I personally am a very case sensitive windows user.
I think that it is a coder thang. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Amos]

I imagine the swarm queens are rather powerful. 3 monthly flying freespawns with fear and 19 def seems quite a bargain.



I arrived at 3 after alot of testing. They are so easy to rout that less than 3 wouldnt be worth it.

[Kristoffer O]

> I arrived at 3 after alot of testing. They are so easy to rout that less than 3 wouldnt be worth it.

True, they routed a lot, but fear can be devastating. I don't think they are that powerful initially, but when armies grow they might be.

An army of 1000 is as vulnerable to fear as an army of 100. One fear unit can cause the whole squad to be forced to make a fear check, even if it has not lost 25% of its initial members.

[DrPraetorious]

This script should fix the case issues.

Run it in your mods directory. For the love of God do not run it anywhere else or you'll be very very sorry.

Let me know if it doesn't work.

[Leif_-]

Sombre said:
But that wouldn't stop people randomly putting capitals in the tga filenames.



No, but Dominions could insist that all files it read must be in miniscules only. It's the only way to make sure all the mods and such are platform independent.

[Sombre]

In the long term, maybe, but realistically all that would do is make it so the mods don't work for anyone instead of just not working for linux users. Until they were all fixed that is. It would take less effort for linux users to simply fix the mods they want to play, or explain things to the mod makers, like me, who had no idea that some OSs actually cared about case.

[Gandalf Parker]

Well it was pretty likely to enforce case since the game is created on linux. Its hard for the devs to consider all the possible cross-compatible features. Ive asked for the text files, such as .map files, to be dos version instead of unix. Personally I wish all the file formats were more cross-platform friendly.

[DrPraetorious]

AFAICT it supports either DOS or Unix format text files on either platform. I have to switch all the text files into unix format to manipulate them with awk etc., though, so I usually prefer to keep them in Unix format even on my win machine.

Anyway, I just posted another mod, and everything in it is lower case http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

I find artwork is much less of a problem now that I can just do pixel carpentry on KO's stuff.

[Gandalf Parker]

Yes it works for both. And I work most of mine on linux also. But my thinking is that its usually true that linux people can handle the difference better than windows people.

[Xietor]

Hi all,

I am in some desperate need of advice. To test the Epic Heroes Mod for mp, we are running a 12 race game on a 250 province map. We are on turn 8 and one of the players(Ctis) posted this:

Small problem... When I opened my army set up an error message popped up saying that it could not open the Flytrap1.tga file. Help? I really don't want to stale again.


The flytrap1.tga file is the domsummon20 monster that the Ctis Epic Hero can summon in a strong dominion. SO I am guessing Ctis had no problem doing his 1st 7 turns because this offending creature was not part of his armies.

The real curve ball is he says he uses windows, not linux. While flytrap is capitalized in the mod, I use windows and have no issue whatsoever summoning the creature.

My second question is this: to make Epic Heroes Mod user friendly to Linux users, are there any files other than the tga files that have to be lower case? Do the names of the monsters, weapons, and everything else have to be lower case as well? Before I release the next version, I want all issues with Linux users resolved.

The link to the mod being used in the game is here: http://www.mediafire.com/?e99ud3xxhng

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[Sombre]

It isn't that everything needs to be lower case, just that the case in the .dm and the case of the files referred to must be the same.

So if you set #spr1 as something like "/Vaettihiem/Big Scary Worm.tga" in the .dm and the sprite is really /Vaettihiem/big scary worm.tga if you look at it outside of the game/dm, the game will crash when it comes up, if it's on linux.

[Gandalf Parker]

You should be able to make the change on the fly even though the game has already started. Hopefully. I know that some changes can be made to mods with the game started.

[Dedas]

Just make sure that the filenames and their references match each other EXACTLY and there won't be any problems. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

But remember that you can't have a "Flytrap.tga" with reference "Flytrap.tg" AND a "flytrap.tga" with reference "flytrap.tga". As Windows can't handle that even though Linux can.

[Xietor]

Well that sounds easy enough!

That makes it fairly easy for me to make EH 1.5 user friendly for Linux users. Thanks for the help.

But any ideas why a windows user would get that message when he summoned the "Croaker"(the carnivorous plant that the flytrap.tga references)?

[Gandalf Parker]

The quirk with windows is that it might have problems with paths that have spaces in it or are longer than 8 characters. In older windows what WinXP handles as "C:\program files\" the olders ones want "C:\progra~1" (6 chracters and a ~x for the numbered occurance of those 6 characters).
Just a guess

[Xietor]

Thanks gandalf, but i am not quite sure I understand how to fix the issue.

Are you saying i need to limit descriptions of the tga files to 6 letters or less? So instead of "flytrap1a, i could use "croak1" and "croak2"

[Gandalf Parker]

Im only mentioning it because it might come up with a user who is still using Win95. You could tilde (~) each path and file name which breaks the 8 character limit. But that would break it in linux, and quite possibly MAC also.

Even though its been a close race over the last 2 years or so, I would now say that the people using Windows 95 number fewer than the people who are using Linux. So I would just ask if the people bringing it up are using Win95, and if they are then I guess I would shrug my shoulders and say "sorry". Or tell them that if they are determined to use Win95, and understand what I just explained, then they could fix their version just for their own use. Altho Im not sure if that would work.

Maybe someone else has a fix for this but I havent come up with one.

[Dedas]

No, the only way is to respect the 8 character limit. But I believe that 99% of the Dominions players have moved on to at least Win98 anyway. And if they haven't they could always download a small Linux distro like Damn Small Linux (DSL).

I remember Windows 95, and the memories ain't pretty! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif