ToEE Front-End X Official Discussion Thread

#5: Well, whether you had to highlight the Co8 module every time or whether it was automatically preselected for you on startup was dependent on whether you saved your front-end options or not. But anyway, it doesn't really matter because the default module is always the standard Temple of Elemental Evil module that shipped with the game. Everything else is considered custom modules, or third-party modules. And in case you chose the Co8 line in the modules list and ran the custom Circle of Eight module, it was activated for you by the front-end every time you started it and highlighted the appropriate option. So it's necessary to launch the old front-end, ensure that "Temple of Elemental Evil" is selected, then close it before installing TFE-X (well, in case you forget about it, TFE-X will remind you that it needs to be done, so you won't ruin your installation or anything anyway ).

#6: Do I understand correctly that you're referring to the module conversion paragraph? Well, you really only need to worry about it in case you already converted your installation to TFE-X (by installing the new front-end), then understood you have some module around that you'd like to play and that's still in the old (unconverted) Toffee format. All you need to do is unpack your old module into your ToEE folder, then start TFE-X and request conversion (File->Convert ToEEFE Modules). For certain safety reasons it won't be done right off the bat - you'll need to restart TFE-X. But the next time you start TFE-X all your old format FE modules will be automatically converted into the new TFE-X format. Hope it makes more sense now. I don't think you really need to worry about it though, it's made to extend compatibility with older modules (which won't be an issue soon when 5.5 is released, and later when KotB is also released in native TFE-X format).

Glad you got it working btw.

LOL it's funny to see people *still* not believe the "no more 0002/0004 madness" after it's mentioned in the download thread, in the first post here, and in the official readme. Sorry, I just can't help myself.

But yeah - sure, you can go ahead and try. What I can promise is that you definitely WON'T be getting any dreaded 0002/0004 messages anymore - and there's more than one reason for that, the simplest one being that such messages are no longer even present in the new front-end code. The more complicated, yet more significant reason is that the new module switching model is both thread-safe and secure for most other running processes, such as antiviruses and firewalls. Personally I'm running a TFE-X installation on a system that has Avira Antivir Guard enabled, and I never had a problem during the whole testing cycle. So yeah, it's definitely more secure and less problematic. And no more 0002/0004. Honest.

- Agetian

 

Then we're not hacking it hard enough :evil_laug

Dont wait for this - use ToEEFE-X for your KotB Demos now! NOW NOW NOW!

 

UPDATE (15 OCT 2008): Version 1.1 is released that fixes a minor issue with the use of 'tab' button sometimes leading to the 'activate' and 'play' buttons ending up in reversed state when an active module was already selected.

- Agetian

 

@ nyarlathotep: This is not a problem with the front-end. This is an issue with SecuROM conflicting with some of the emulator software you might be running on your PC. However, the problem is actually somewhat deeper and it seems like the older SecuROM used in Temple of Elemental Evil also conflicts with some of the newer CD/DVD hardware or something like that, and mistakenly detects it as an emulated virtual drive. Some people can't solve this problem without resorting to using a no-cd (which is something we don't and can't support, so you're on your own here), sometimes the problem can be solved by turning off all virtual drive emulators and other similar software, such as Daemon Tools, CloneCd, Alcohol 120%, etc., and trying again.

@ Thalmor: Sorry, but I can't help you until you submit the bug report properly. Your bug report is rejected for now.

IMPORTANT: Both bug reports above are not submitted properly. Please follow the official bug reporting guidelines located in the TFE-X-README.TXT file if you would like to report a problem. Any future reports that do not conform to the bug reporting guidelines will be automatically rejected and not even considered! Keep in mind that I didn't make the bug reporting guidelines just for the fun of it. They are there because they contain a list of things that are absolutely necessary for me to reproduce your problem, understand its essence, and fix a bug if there is one. Without the mentioned details I can't work on fixing your problem effectively.

- Agetian

 

I'll just point out I am getting that SecuROM nonsense on my new laptop, using the old FrontEnd. Its nothing to do with ToEEFE-X.

 

@ sps49: (registered issue #004) Please check to see if the file ToEE.EXE is in your game folder. It might be the case that the mentioned file was deleted or quarantined by your anti-virus package (again?), and that's what causing TFE-X to report that it doesn't look like the game root folder (it does look for TOEE.EXE upon startup). Please let me know what your investigation showed. If ToEE.EXE is not in your root folder, try restoring it so it's there, then run ToEE Front-End X. If it's in your root folder, please ensure that both TEMPLE.DLL (size = 3,440,640 bytes) and TIO.DLL (size = 102,400 bytes) are present in the game folder upon startup. Thanks in advance for extra information. Hope it helps solve your problem - if not, I'll look into it further (depending on what you report).

- Agetian

 

@ sps49: OK, in that case, in point 5 you mentioned you experienced a crash at shutdown - does that mean a crash at shutdown of the game or a crash at shutdown of the front-end? If it's ToEE Front-End X that crashed, it'd be very interesting to look at the log file that was generated during the session when it crashed. Unfortunately, that's not possible of course, so we'll have to try and solve this without that log file. Anyway, it looks like some other process (likely to be NOD32, but can't be totally sure) might have interfered with ToEE Front-End X when it tried to activate the module (namely, place the custom temple.dll into the game folder)

For now, try putting *any* temple.dll you have into the game's root folder, then launch Front-End X (which should launch normally), then try activating the default (Temple of Elemental Evil) module, then activate Circle of Eight 5.0.5 again. If it works normally, then great. If it crashes on you again, please zip up and attach the log file of the session where ToEE Front-End X crashed. As an extra piece of advice try to keep NOD32 off when you run the game - we'll do it just in order to exclude potential interference from the active scanner of the antivirus.

Also, please check the following (these are interesting to know for bug hunting):

1. Is there a file named TFE-X.TFD in your root ToEE folder?

2. Try to open every .TFM file in the root ToEE folder with WinZip, WinRar, or other archiver you may have that supports zip format, and check if there's TEMPLE.DLL inside each of them. Please report which of the .TFM archives contain TEMPLE.DLL inside of them and which of them don't.

Thanks in advance for extra info. I'll do my best to get to the bottom of this and if there's some bug in the TFE-X code, I'll fix it in v2.0.

- Agetian

 

UPDATE: Added a simple and small utility called TFE-X Repair Kit to the download thread. It may help you diagnose and repair potential start-up problems, such as the one sps49 mentioned. EDIT: This tool is no longer a separate download, it's an essential part of ToEE Front-End X v2.0 package (and any newer versions that may be released in the future).

@ sps49: Please try using the mentioned utility and tell me what it told you. Also please tell me if it was able to repair your TFE-X or whether it just gave you some advice.

- Agetian