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Nyerguds

1.06c development topic

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what is the newest version and when was it released? I've been out of the loop for a bit.

 

"Welcome aboard",

the COVER (the first post) has everything, including LINKS.

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Sorry. From WINEHQ:

Window managers often have the alt key bound to certain features, especially the alt-click. THIS IS NOT A WINE BUG. If you have problems with the alt key in any way DO NOT REPORT IT. Fix your window manager. I'm not going to list steps for every one because there are too many possibilites. Figure out yourself or ask in a help forum (here is okay... but be warned all I use is TWM). If you are desperate, turn off window manager managed windows in winecfg.

 

KDE

 

Go into KDE Control Center, expand Desktop, click window behavior, then click window actions tab. You can turn off the alt-combos. If you want to make window specific settings, click on window specific settings under window behavior on the side.

 

GNOME

 

The option to change the key binding is in System Menu -> Preferences Menu -> Windows.

 

SUPER+ALT "fixes" the problem. but i'm sure i gonna press SUPER even if i'm running Windows, causing the game to minimize :P

 

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for those ones that don't know what SUPER KEY is, is the same one that opens the Start Menu.

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Well, I know where the key listening is handled, but I seriously don't have a clue how the modifier keys work. Especially if you're talking about mouse command modifiers.

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Meh... I should just go ahead and release it... it's just, I got this annoying problem.

 

I'm really close to fixing the radar crash problem, the last true hindrance that exists when it comes to using high resolutions (besides the bottom cell build bug). The problem is, the Windows 7 laptop which I usually use to work on the patch (on the train, travelling from & to my job) simply doesn't crash on it, while my (WinXP) home PC does, making it really hard to get the fix done, since I do most of the patching on these 'lost hours' on the train.

 

Another thing that's kinda holding me back is the fact I integrated CnCNet into the config tool, and that just switched to an entirely new (and, tbh, much better) system. So I need to fix the config tool to support the new CnCNet 3 system. Problem is, it's technically still in alpha/beta (not sure which) phase, and since my support consists of actually storing the cncnet dll file (replacing the normal network dll, 'thipx32.dll') inside the config tool (with the option to write it to the game folder) I'm unsure what to do. After all, the dll could still be updated, especially since cncnet 3 is still in development. I'm also not sure whether the internal storing is still needed, since the new cncnet dll is perfectly capable of handling both normal LAN and CnCNet. On the other hand, it's kinda dangerous to just assume the thipx32.dll is the cncnet one, when some silly users say "Hey! An official XP patch! Let's add that to the game!" -_-

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Nyerguds,

Don't release it.

People can wait.

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Meh... I should just go ahead and release it... it's just, I got this annoying problem.

 

I'm really close to fixing the radar crash problem, the last true hindrance that exists when it comes to using high resolutions (besides the bottom cell build bug).

Speaking of which, did you make any progress on the bottom cell build bug ?

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SUPER+ALT "fixes" the problem. but i'm sure i gonna press SUPER even if i'm running Windows, causing the game to minimize :P

 

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for those ones that don't know what SUPER KEY is, is the same one that opens the Start Menu.

I assume wine is referring to the linux/native window manager, in which case you could probably just change it's settings to avoid the alt key problem.

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Speaking of which, did you make any progress on the bottom cell build bug ?

No... I have some leads that I could follow to find it (I know where the building foundation shapes are stored), but that's about it. A lot of solutions are just found by stumbling on them by accident... and I don't really stumble around as much as Hyper. He prefers researching the exe to actually editing it :P

 

Also, crashes are sometimes easy to fix because I get an instruction address in the crash message; in the case of the radar crash it pointed me exactly at the place where it went wrong. But the bottom of the map build bug is 'just' abnormal game behaviour, so, no message telling me where it goes wrong.

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whoa, didn't see this news.

 

Yeah, I'd use what time CNCNet is giving you to try to finish that radar bug. Get a VM or something to make your life easier. hell you could even clone your XP comp to make sure the bug is still there. if the DRM cause trouble, just restore to the image every time the "trial" runs out.

 

If you finish the radar bug before CNCNet, you could try making some sort of auto updator.

Edited by Sonarpulse

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Psh. If I tell my work place I need to run an XP in VM on my work laptop, they'll get me a perfectly legal XP in VM.

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Radar crash bug... we didn't already fixed it?

 

Yes SonarPulse, That issue is because of the Window Manager... But LXDE don't seems to be a settings to edit that...

 

Yes Nyerguds, we can wait... Just look behind and see what happens with the "Quick'n'Dirty" patches... It will be more work and issue 2 you :P

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No... I have some leads that I could follow to find it (I know where the building foundation shapes are stored), but that's about it. A lot of solutions are just found by stumbling on them by accident... and I don't really stumble around as much as Hyper. He prefers researching the exe to actually editing it :P

I understand the bug occurs only in high resolution. Did you try higher resolution than 1024 ? Like the map resolution. Maybe a crash could occur...

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The bug just happens at any resolution higher than 400. That's all. It never crashes, it just doesn't allow you to place down a structure on the lowest row.

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The bug just happens at any resolution higher than 400. That's all. It never crashes, it just doesn't allow you to place down a structure on the lowest row.

 

So... Why did you call that "Radar Crash" ? :P

 

anyway, I use 800x500, and this bug do not annoy me... I only use C&C to play online... i've already finished it sooooo many times :D

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Pichorra, please read everything before responding. Kamikave was asking about a completely different bug.

 

The bottom cell row bug Kamikave asked about, which prevents placing down buildings on the lowest row of cells of the map, ALWAYS happens in resolutions higher than 400, but it only happens with buildings that are 1 cell high, since the top left cell is the one on which you really place down a building. So it only prevents the pacement of fences, guard towers, turrets and SAM sites. The main problem is that if you're in the south of the map, this prevents completely closing off a base with fences, unless you use an AGT or Obelisk on the lowest cell.

 

 

 

As for the radar crash, it happens when you have a radar minimap on a map that's smaller than the screen size.

 

The crash happens because the game tries to write outside the memory reserved for the radar image when drawing the green corners that indicate which area of the radar is currently being viewed. So yeah, that small green indicator is what crashes the game.

 

And so far I haven't been able to find out where the size of that radar image memory buffer is defined, so I can't do boundary checks on it. I'm trying to get around it by checking the input X and Y, since they seem to be in map cells, and comparing that to the map size restriction.

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Sorry about that. But it isn't because the "white viewing form" is bigger than what Minimap are trying to display? Or maybe becase the radar always use for reference the "Nort-West" border of the map? EVERYTHING in C&C95 seems to use Nort-West for primary things.

 

It is just a sugestion based with my experiences in the C&C95 crap engine :P

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The radar minimap itself looks the same no matter what resolution you're using, since it just shows the entire map, without any influence from the currently viewed terrain. The only things that change are the green corners indicating the currently viewed area. Those are the problem. I did say it didn't crash on my Win7... well, the minimap showed perfectly on it too, just showing the actual map area, even though the actual game screen showed black area outside the map.

 

Besides, it literally crashed in the function that draws those lines. I even managed to modify the function to change the length of the lines it draws, so it's definitely the correct function.

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Hmm, so the green cornered box is bigger than the radar image, and thus the bitmap of the radar is bigger than it should be (more pixels) and thus takes up more memory? And the solution is to prevent the green corners from being drawn if the map is too small for the resolution?

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No. Memory doesn't work like that. Just because some system forgets to check how big the image is before trying to paint on it, and tries to paint on a spot that's actually beyond the image, doesn't mean some magical system will automatically MAKE the image bigger so it's all fine and dandy again.

 

It simply crashes the game, because it tries to write beyond the memory of the actual image, into memory that's outside the range reserved for C&C95 as a whole. It tries to write in memory that may be used for other programs, and Windows obviously blocks access to that, so it won't mess up other running processes. The result is that the game doesn't know how to continue because the operation it tried was denied, which is what we generally call 'crashing' :P

 

The solution is simply to prevent the game from trying to write the pixels that are outside the actual map image. What's slightly less simple is figuring out how to DO that.

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Sorry phrased it wrong. I meant the green corner "expands the canvas" so the function TRIES to rewrite a bigger bitmap than it can with the memory allotted to it. tries and fails, of course, hence the crash.

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Nothing ever tries to expand the canvas. In memory, an image is just a long row of bytes, and the drawing system just knows that after every Y pixels, the width is reached, and the next pixels should be drawn on the next line. But internally, it's all one-dimensional.

 

The green stuff just falls out altogether. In fact, it surprised me that the upper left green corner didn't end up somewhere in the middle of the image because of this.

 

It's comparable to how placing a comm center (or unloading a commando from a helicopter) on the right-side edge of a very large map sometimes reveals a bit of the left edge too. It just wraps around, because cells are also simply one long row.

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OK. well this doesn't effect the solution, but If the engine successfully wrote/drew the bitmap, would the game write a bunch of transparent/pink/black/whatever pixels/bytes until it before the green corner / after the corner and before the map? (thus placing the green corner in the right spot with wrapping)

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