I want your mods!

[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.

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!