[WIP] ToEE Front-End X 5.0 Progress Report

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

0 - 5 is correct for Delayed Blast Fireball (the default should be 0 so you get an instant highest damage fireball), and 3 - 8 NPCs is correct, as Gehennis said. I believe the lower bound 3 figure is because problems arise with more than 5 NPCs, not that there are issues with fewer than 3 PCs.

Understood on the portrait packs. They will all have to be re-packaged as .zips with the .tpp extension, but that's no big deal. We will probably even give them their own installers so they get put in the right directory.

All looks great, Ag. :thumbsup:

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

Thanks a lot for the input, Gaear!

P.S. Working on add-on support now, will finish it up tomorrow.

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

Ok, the add-on support is now in, seems to work fine but I'm still testing. An important change in the infrastructure (let me know if it's fine): since portrait packs appear to be cross-module (as in, as far as I understand, you can use them with any module, including all versions of the Co8 mod and the vanilla game). As such, instead of storing portrait packs with module-specific add-ons in the "addons" folder, I have moved them for now into their own folder "portraitpacks". Let me know if it's OK to do it this way or not. If I'm mistaken and the portrait packs have to be module-dependent, I can revert to the original behavior (as described yesterday).

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

Well they are actually module dependent in that portraits.mes is always updated to be consistent with the latest modpack. So really the only modules they are compatible with are the latest. That said, they could be installed over any module without game-crashing errors or anyting ... you would just see a few blue Boba Fett T-men.

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

Yep, I tried them on Vanilla and they worked but with some portraits missing in the character creation (not sure if any would also be missing in the game) - so, what functionality would be preferable? (module-dependent or module-independent but with potential blank portraits?)

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

Module-dependent I think.

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

Ok, will make it module-dependent then, I guess it'll allow us to avoid unwanted questions and bug reports in the long run :thumbsup:

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

Alrighty, guys, here goes nothing - I put the beta version of TFE-X 4.0 with all the necessary functionality implemented in the first post of this thread. Remember, it's designed to be a drop-in replacement for the old Front-End (as long as Java 7 is installed, of course).

The following files from the old TFE-X are no longer necessary when using the new front-end:

ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib.dll
Interop.IWshRuntimeLibrary.dll
TFE-X-linux
TFE-X-repair.exe
TFE-X-repair.txt
TFE-X.jpg

The only files necessary to run TFE-X are:

TFE-X.exe (for Windows)
TFE-X.jar (universal cross-platform)
TFE-X.sh (for *nix systems such as Linux or FreeBSD)

You need to install Java 7 (v1.7.0) before running TFE-X or it will not start. It should give an indication if the supported version of Java is not installed.

Please remember this is a BETA for the brave - get ready to have your ToEE fubar'ed if anything goes wrong. Seriously though, I tested it on three systems and it seemed quite stable as is, didn't crash on me and seemed to work alright on both Windows and Linux. Still, something may still be wrong - majorly wrong, that is. So, testing is welcome, guys! Please read the updated documentation in "doc/TFE-X-readme.txt" before using!

P.S. The basic safety recommendations for this incarnation of TFE-X stay the same as for the previous one: 1) avoid game installations in system folders such as Program Files; 2) run TFE-X as administrator if any issues arise (personally I didn't have to run as admin as long as the game was installed in a custom folder, D:\Games\ToEE in my case on my Windows box).

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

UPDATE: Uploaded beta 2 with some minor text additions and corrections in the UI (no functional changes).

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

@ sirchet: Beta 3 will work on JRE v1.6.0 It will be posted soon.

By the way - that's a different matter but I'm pretty sure it's possible to run JRE 6 and JRE 7 side by side with Java 6 set to be the primary VM, I used to do that for a while in the past and it seemed to cause me no trouble. That way, your programs which do not play well with Java 7 will still run on JRE 6 while the applications that demand JRE 7 will locate and execute on your JRE 7 installation.

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

UPDATE: Posted Beta 3 in the first post of this thread. Changes:
- Back-ported the source code to JDK 1.6.0. Now TFE-X no longer requires Java 7 and requires at least Java 6 instead.
- Some source code simplification leading to minor speed improvements.

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

What's the module activation speed going to look like overall compared to the previous version, Ag? Any noticeable difference?

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

@ Gaear: The new front-end is likely to be somewhat slower in activation. Here are side-by-side test results:

WINDOWS:
The old front-end took 33 seconds to deploy and 9 minutes 42 seconds to install Co8 7.8.0 on my PC.
The new front-end took 14 seconds to deploy and 11 minutes 53 seconds to install Co8 7.8.0 on my PC.

LINUX:
The old front-end refused to work on my updated Linux box (Mono issue, so I didn't bother).
The new front-end took 11 seconds to deploy and 33 seconds (!) to install Co8 7.8.0 on my PC.

As you can see, on Windows 7 it's a tad bit slower than the old front-end (took 2+ extra minutes to activate the module). However, the fact that it's responsive and shows progress, as well as the fact that it's more careful in its file operations and should have better compatibility with various anti-virus scanners, makes it quite alright for it to be a couple minutes slower than the old TFE-X. Also, the initial deployment is more than twice as fast as the old front-end on my machine. As for Linux systems, the new TFE-X is blazing fast on them (I don't even know why, but it only took 33 sec to fully activate Co8 7.8.0) - potentially it's because ext4 is faster when working with a myriad of small files than ntfs (that'd be my guess anyway).

UPDATE: Beta 4 uploaded - added the standard ToEE icon to the main window. This version is compatible with both Java 6 and Java 7.

- Agetian

 

Re: [WIP] ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Progress Report

UPDATE: Beta 5 uploaded - I fixed a bug which caused TFE-X to crash on Windows in the final phase of delpoyment (the JRE 6 backport bug). Also, updated the documentation a little bit.

- Agetian