| Compability Notice | |
| Posted by: pd - Wed, 2008 Apr 23 - Comments: 6 | Views: 127 | |
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Before I release a first usable DLL some time and I get flamed about it, I should give you this note in advance: The DLL system is compatible only to Windows 2000 Professional or higher. I didn't give this too much importance since my Windows 98 time is long over, which is why I didn't tell you earlier. However, it is my honest opinion that by now, Windows 98 is truly outdated. If you decide to complain about this, I'm fine with it, but there is absolutely no way I can "fix" this issue, since I am relying on the Windows debugging features, which aren't available on any Windows version prior to Windows 2000 Professional. Furthermore, I've now successfully moved to Windows Vista and I've been using it for three days now. Unlike you may be thinking, I am very happy with it so far. I didn't try YR on it yet, but according to Droke, it runs just fine, which includes online play. If I happen to find a Vista related problem, I'll try my best to fix it, don't expect me to replace the use of the IPX protocol though, I have no idea about network programming at all... |
| Posted in: News from the Battlefield | |
| New developments | |
| Posted by: pd - Sun, 2008 Apr 20 - Comments: 6 | Views: 131 | |
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While I'm not too much closer to a final result, I have been increasing the convenience of using my DLL system a lot. First off, I started another little DLL project, the ExceptChecker. Now unlike the previous ExceptChecker, this one will give you a larger amount of detail on the errors that occur. For example, if you forget to assign a Warhead to a Weapon, it will tell you what Weapon is lacking a Warhead. The ExceptChecker is not too much work, so you can expect a first version (and therefore a first glimpse at using DLLs) of it in a while. Chances are good that I create one for TS as well. It keeps getting better though: Due to *very* recent developments (last couple of hours), my DLL system does not require any modification of the game's executable. Theoretically, this should enable support for NPatch and old RockPatch versions, however, there seem to be a few problems concerning this which I can hopefully fix. |
| Posted in: News from the Battlefield | |
| Bugtracker captcha | |
| Posted by: DCoder - Wed, 2008 Apr 09 - Comments: 3 | Views: 41 | |
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Annoying spambots apparently stumbled upon our bugtracker. So I bolted on a simple guest-only captcha. Report if it malfunctions. "My bot can't spam any more" is not a malfunction. Shoo. |
| Posted in: Propaganda Tower | |
| Status report | |
| Posted by: pd - Mon, 2008 Mar 03 - Comments: 5 | Views: 251 | |
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Possibly, some people desperately load this site and wait for some kind of a status update, to no avail. Of course, not everyone looks into the forums (although I recommend to do that!). So let me make an "official" status report for everyone. I'm still working on the base of this DLL project - replicating the original game's classes and making its functionality available for C++. That alone is a huge bunch of work. IIRC, I have about 80 C++ files now, each at about 2KB. Now imagine that amount of source code.  Bad news: it's not even close to being done.  The good news is however, that I don't need it actually done to start working on "RockPatch2", which will probably be split in two parts with different names. That's why I will begin to work on it parallely to the base, YR++. So what can you do with YR++? Well, if you know C++ (and I really mean if you do know it... hello world skills are far from enough), you can do a bunch of things already. Add superweapon types, add hotkey commands, ah, you name it. The functionality grows and grows, the result will be something similar to the DirectX SDK. So when will there be "RockPatch2"? Sorry, no ETA. At the moment, I'm having technical difficulties, the mainboard of my desktop is broken and I don't really plan on getting a new one too soon. I ordered an external HDD case though which will allow me to continue from my laptop. I've been out of work for 2 weeks now, a time in which I could have done a lot actually. The "early 2008 release" is in danger, but still a doable thing (my definition of "early" includes the whole April). About the RP2 features, all the things that have been done in assembly (see the striked-through items here will be ported to C++. After that, I'm going to continue with a huge bunch of new possibilities. |
| Posted in: News from the Battlefield | |
| Slight changes in custom MyCode | |
| Posted by: Renegade - Mon, 2008 Jan 14 - Comments: 1 | Views: 214 | |
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I saw D trying to link to a project on the bughouse, and since the way that is done is kinda counterintuitive, I created a custom mycode snippet to do it - [ project ] Syntax is [ project=ProjectNumber ]Link text[ /project ]. So [ project=6 ]RockPatch2[ /project ] would create RockPatch2, linking to RP on the bugtracker. I also changed the [ modenc ] code to work like the others ([ modenc=PageName ]Link text[ /modenc ]), instead of its previous, more limited format. An overview of all custom codes is here. |
| Posted in: Propaganda Tower | |
| MyBB updated again | |
| Posted by: DCoder - Wed, 2008 Jan 09 - Comments: 1 | Views: 228 | |
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I have just updated MyBB to the latest version, 1.2.11. It seems the upgrade was successful, but if you encounter any new errors, report them to me or Renegade, as usual. |
| Posted in: Propaganda Tower | |
| Little reminder/pointer about mail sending | |
| Posted by: Renegade - Mon, 2008 Jan 07 - Comments: 2 | Views: 256 | |
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In light of a recent support question, I'd like to remind you all that our mail server is using the DNS blacklist from SORBS, both to protect us from being abused as a spam relay as well as to keep the volume of spam coming in as low as possible. Unfortunately, sometimes you are dynamically assigned an IP-address that was previously used by a spammer, and thus blacklisted - since your IP is blacklisted, our server will refuse connections. Said recent support call reported that receiving went fine, but sending would be blocked, for example. Therefore, if you are getting mail sending errors along the lines of "mail server not available or refused connection", please check your IP at http://www.au.sorbs.net/lookup.shtml?127.0.0.1 (replacing 127.0.0.1 with your actual WAN IP) - if it is blacklisted, the problem lies with a previous user of your IP address, not with our mail server. The SORBS list is entirely independent from us and we have no influence on their blacklist - we cannot remove you from it to allow connection to the mail server. The quickest solutions there are are to either try to reconnect to obtain a different IP address, or to use webmail instead. If the problem persists, please contact us via IRC or PM, but you have to understand that, with more than 95% of all e-mails sent today being spam, we have to take defensive measures to protect the server and its users from drowning in viagra, penis enlargement and stock offers. |
| Posted in: Radio STX | |
| The Future of Modding | |
| Posted by: pd - Mon, 2007 Dec 24 - Comments: 11 | Views: 557 | |
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Go into yourselves. Think about what modding (and I am referring to TS/RA2 modding here) will look like in exactly a year from today. Some of you may think "RockPatch4" and "NPatch Santa Claus Edition" and "gufu's TS Patch", while others may not have any hope that tools like that contribute anything and that time will do its job and slowly make the community die out as people move on to work on modern titles. I can almost assure you that none of these things are going to happen. The TS engine has something with it that no other game has. The TS engine, after having been researched, was found to be a kind of RTS game maker, that allowed for simple modification of its workings. It does not use any really compiled files (MIX files have quickly been broken), it does not rely on compiled scripts that only few could decompile and even fewer could understand. The nature of being based on INI files has made the TS engine a target for many people to create their own twist in a game with ease. And although by the time Renegade, Generals and lately even C&C3 have been released, this is the one feature of the engine that kept it alive and popular even today. However, time is leaving its mark. The attitude towards modding on the developer's side has changed entirely. While they formerly encrypted and compiled files so that nobody can steal content and modify the game, it is now a standard that a map editor is included, and newer games even bring their own SDK with them. The TS engine is standing strong, which might be because of it's nature being a 2D game (and naturally, 2D games are easier to work with than 3D games). Still, you see members leave and move on. In the end, the set of possibilities is used out. If you do not come up with a total conversion, which has a huge lot of work involved, it has been done already and it is not special. The motivation starting to work on a TC is not only limited by the amount of effort involved, but also by the question "Who am I doing this for?", seeing more and more people moving on and losing interest in this old TS engine. Have executable modifications changed anything about this? For a while, certainly. When the first version of my own product, the RockPatch, was released, the attention was exploding. Suddenly, there was something new. Things that were said to be impossible became possible, modders who gave up on certain ideas suddenly felt a little bit of hope. This hope lasted for a while, but the executable modifications took something away from modders that they loved most: total control over their own project. Most people are not able to disassemble an executable, to understand what they see and to modify it to what they want, and can you blame them? They completely rely on the developers for that matter, and there are only three people that have ever worked on these patches in the TS/RA2 community. Quite frankly, three people can not live up to the expectations of a community which counts hundreds of people. Everyone wants something else, the wishlists were filled to overflowing, the bug reports arrived in masses. After all, all the exe modifications turned out useless, being heavily bugged and not giving people exactly what they want. So, can we expect that in one year, nothing has changed? Will 2008 be a boring year for the TS/RA2 community? Will we see "RockPatch4", "NPatch Holy Mary Edition Revision #1337" and another guy's TS patch? I have, while developing RockPatch2, realized that there is nobody I am devleloping it for. Maybe 20 people have a major interest in it. And, I do not know this, but maybe, these 20 people would have found RockPatch2 buggy and stopped using it as well. After reading through the thread that I posted on DeeZire almost 3 years ago, announcing my first executable modification, I got an idea, immediately stopped RockPatch2 development and worked on realizing this new idea. What if I told you that modding TS/RA2 will be changed forever some time next year? My new project gives modders back their total control. I have a working prototype of an application that allows for executing a specific procedure in an external module on demand. That means, you create a DLL with an exported function and tell the application when to execute it. The DLL name, the function name and the time to call it can be specified in what TS/RA2 modders love most: INI files. Such a DLL can be coded up in C++ with ease. Said application is not the only tool available. As soon as I finished it, I will start writing wrappers for C++, so that later, you can have something simple as "Unit->Kill( )" and it works. How do you know the time when your function must be called? To be honest, this will be the hardest part to make easily understandable, but I already have an idea concerning that. The goal is that those who know C++ and those who are willing to learn C++ can implement their very own features into the game (things like new SuperWeapons will be a piece of cake). Those who do not know C++ can opt to use other people's work, and of course there will be a RockPatch2, just in a DLL. Making advanced development publicly available is only one of the benefits of this idea. The most important thing might be the possibilities. It can take you an hour to write a long function in assembly. That function often requires hours of planning and researching. All that was then. Now you can easily add to the game. Heck, if I am able to come up with good drawing wrappers it might be an easy enough job to make a SuperWeapon that launches a game of Tic Tac Toe on the screen. If you win, the enemy receives heavy damage, if you lose, goodbye. Just one of many possible ideas. And that's still not all. This system is pretty easily portable to any executable. IE, Tiberian Sun and even Red Alert 1 will probably not be forgotten. Prepare for a huge change next year. Merry Christmas!  -pd |
| Posted in: News from the Battlefield | |
| The site is complete! | |
| Posted by: RedFox34 - Wed, 2007 Nov 21 - Comments: 0 | Views: 205 | |
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www.atw.strategy-x.com The website for the standalone tank combat game Atrigan Tank Wars is finally complete! I encourage anyone who hasn't yet to try the demo, which although from December of 2006, has 3 full difficulty settings, an unlockable secret, and an easter egg nobody has found yet Feedback on the game is encouraged on the forums; though most of the bugs from the demo have been solved it is always interesting to read new gameplay and bug feedback. Give us a look! NOVEMBER 21st: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIPSTkIJGRg = New video trailer for ATW. Check it out! |
| Posted in: Atrigan Tank News | |
| Server upgrades/hiccups/don't panic | |
| Posted by: Renegade - Thu, 2007 Nov 08 - Comments: 31 | Views: 740 | |
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Some of you may have experienced some problems connecting to the server within the past few hours - I assure you these are not "problems" per se - quite the opposite. Today I finally upgraded the server backend and PHP to the latest available versions, which made some reinstallations and reboots necessary. The reason I've not warned you about this beforehand is simple: It'd have been useless. Both shutting down Apache and removing PHP automatically and inevitably disables forum access - so how would you have read a post on the forums saying that everything is fine? The forums seem to work currently, but I'm not sure if D entirely fixed them before he went to bed. The Bugtracker is currently out of Order, but on the plus side, ModEnc finally uses a current MediaWiki installation. So if there was any post-1.6.x feature you were missing, it should be available now. It'll probably take another one or two days to sort everything out, as we literally re-installed half the services on the server, and have to go through several configurations, but I assure you nothing of this was accidental, and the server is not failing. If you experience any problems other than the Bughouse being down, please report them one way or another, so we can fix them. |
| Posted in: Propaganda Tower | |