Meta's Lost Notebook

dmb2exe Dilemma

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:43:51 GMT

As of version 5, dmb2exe has been able to create installer packages for games, apart from the usual single-file no-work-needed-to-play executable. Some users though, feel that dmb2exe should only be able to create installer packages. They have a solid reason too. Take the following scenario for example:

- Someone who doesn't know what they're doing downloads and uses dmb2exe to create a standalone exe file for their game.
- Since dmb2exe extracts all the core files into a temp directory, all files, such as savefiles which are created at run-time in the same directory will be deleted some time after the game is closed.
- This user begins to become confused as to why his savefile system isn't working, and comes to the BYOND Forums for help. He will make a thread called 'halp savefile no work', and someone will have to answer to him.

Now, over time, dmb2exe might get popular and that said scenario may repeat multiple times. The person who suggested I remove the single-file functionality said that this may become a nuisance. I, however think it a bit un-probable for such a thing to happen. What do you think?

dmb2exe v4

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 04:45:11 GMT

Just a note to anyone who is interested in dmb2exe, that as of version 4 dmb2exe has a new, slick and easy to use interface. The installation method is far easier for those who are less computer-savvy, and all shell() related bugs have been fixed.

GiaD 2009, a road-trip, dmb2exe and IM Woes

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:48:25 GMT

Well, I got back from my week long road-trip a few hours ago expecting to see GiaD 2009 results announced, but to my shock: they weren't. D:

Don't call me a fool for it, but I thought perhaps this year GiaD might be cooler than the past GiaDs and judge its entries in a much smaller amount of time. :(

All moaning and whining aside, it was a nice change to be able to program spaghetti like you've never programmed spaghetti before. It was quite fun, actually. Cleanliness and readability be damned, I needed to get that game finished in a 24 hour time-frame and I also had to sleep/eat/toilet/watchtv/etc. in the same time frame too. :O

Quite a nice experience, thank you Iain for hosting such a wonderful contest. I hope my entry gets a nice rank, although the code is more ragged and dirty than a hobo's loin-cloth on a Saturday morning and has more bugs than a hobo's hair on a Monday morning.

My entry is about a Turtle named Turtl, who is mortally wounded in battle with evil, zombie computers, then has his limbs and organs replaced with robotic ones. He then uses his newly attained robotic limbs and skills to stop the evil, zombie computers and assorted monsters from taking over the world. Reminds me of inspector gadget. :O

I would release Turtl, but first I'm going to debug it to perfection. Also, expect a sequel!

Any-who, to discuss the other subjects of this post.

dmb2exe:

A very strange shell() problem has struck dmb2exe that I'm unable to figure out the cause of. Upon running a certain shell() command( The very same shell command that actually MAKES the farking exe, just my luck ), shell() silently fails.

I am rather sure that it has something to do with this gem of a bug report, although it's not a bug. I'll have to look into changing dmb2exe to follow the instructions Tom gives in that Bug Report tomorrow, because right now I plan on depleting my energy on submitting this post, shutting down the computer, and sleeping. It's 4 AM. Every average insomniac has to try to sleep some time.

IM Woes:

If you take a look to the right you'll see that Pmitch left me a comment to IM him on MSN ASAP. I'd like to do that, because I'm a curious person, but hey! Guess what! Curiosity bites. Iran blocks MSN Messenger and sites like E-Buddy which allow you to use MSN Messenger using a web-based client. I can use AIM though! And GoogleTalk!

Perhaps I should put this bit of info in my little member info box to the right...yeah, I'll do that right after I submit this post. I'll let everyone know I can't use MSN so anyone deciding to IM me can get AIM, Google Talk, or shrivel up and cry in a corner because they can't IM me otherwise.

Good night, and Good luck to you all when you're trying to make sense of my post. :)

I Hate Mosquitos

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 03:20:42 GMT

Those annoying little monsters, they have the size of an apple seed but they make a sound as unbearable as a monster truck running over your house. And they're vampire wannabes so that's another -point for them.

All that said, I wonder what would happen if they became extinct.

dmb2exe

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:56:59 GMT

Following my previous post, I decided to make a little program to automate the whole process mentioned in said post. The result can be found here. I released it as code so that suspicious developers can check to make sure the commands I'm running using shell() aren't going to format their C Drive.

Enjoy!

A ( Truly )Standalone BYOND Project

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:32:54 GMT

Following my last post, I decided to build upon what I thought was a nice first step towards making a completely standalone BYOND Project.

I went back down memory lane to look at some methods for turning py2exe executables into completely standalone .exe files. I took a look at this page and realized that, with a bit of tweaking, I could use the NSIS script on that page to do what I want! I followed up on the thought, and put it to use and managed to make a completely standalone exe for my game!

The steps to turn your game into a standalone exe file:
1. Create a New Folder any where. ( I usually put it on my desktop for quick access )

2. Create a New Folder in the Folder we created in step 1

3. Paste all the BYOND binary files ( found in the [BYOND Installation Directory]\bin folder ) into the New Folder we created in Step 2. After that, paste your game's .dmb and .rsc files into this folder too.

4. Open notepad, and paste the following line in:

"%cd%\dreamseeker" "%cd%\[NAME OF YOUR GAME'S DMB].dmb"

Be sure to replace [NAME OF YOUR GAME'S DMB] before saving this file. After that, go to File -> Save As -> Name the file 'game.bat' ( We will need this name later on ) and save it in the folder we created in Step 1.

5. Download NSIS.

6. Open notepad, and paste in the following script:

; dataDirectory is the path of the directry where
; the BYOND Binary files and your game's resources
; and dmb file will be stored in. The folder made in Step 2.
!define dataDirectory 'tt'

; This is the name of the .bat file which runs your game.
; You will not need to change this if you followed step 2
!define exe 'game.bat'

; Comment out the "SetCompress Off" line and uncomment
; the next line to enable compression. Startup times
; will be a little slower but the executable will be
; quite a bit smaller
SetCompress Off
;SetCompressor lzma

; It doesn't matter what you name this variable.
Name 'MyGame'

; This is the name of the final exe file that 
; will execute your game.
OutFile 'TreasureTurner.exe'

; This variable will make sure that NSIS 
; will not show itself when your game's .exe is run
SilentInstall silent

; This is the icon of your game's .exe
; The icon must be in the same directory as this script.
; Uncomment in order to specify an icon for your .exe
;Icon 'icon.ico'

; You don't need to touch this part.
Section
    InitPluginsDir
    SetOutPath '$PLUGINSDIR'
    File '${dataDirectory}\*.*'
    nsexec::exec '${exe}'
SectionEnd

Read through the script, and make changes as needed.
Save this file as 'setup.nsi' in the folder we created in Step 1.

7. Right click on setup.nsi and select 'Compile NSIS script'. This should Compile the script successfully, and make a new .exe file in the same directory as your script.

And there you have it, you have your BYOND Game, packaged neat and tidy in an easy to use executable file!

There are some questions that might arise for you after reading this post. I'll answer some of the likely ones below. Post your other questions in the comments of this post.

Q: How will players log in to a game without their BYOND Key?
A: BYOND will allow them to log in using their guest key with no extra work on their end.

Q: Ok, but that still won't help when I want to update their scores/give them medals on my hub!
A: This is one of the flaws in the plan that can be easily covered up. Simply ask players to enter a 'Screen Name' at the beginning of your game and use that screen name for scores/medals.

Q: How would I go about saving/loading save files this way? Wouldn't they be deleted since they're in a temp directory?
A: This is one of the big flaws in the plan. I don't have any workarounds for this, but you could always distribute your game in a .zip file and tell the user to execute your .bat in order to run the game. This way, savefiles will stay intact.

Q: Do we have to include ALL of the BYOND bin files? Even Dream Maker?
A: Of course you don't, but I'm not eactly sure which bin files are ok to delete and which aren't so I just let them all stay there. Safe to say though that deleting dream maker won't do any harm.

A (somewhat)Standalone BYOND Example

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:32:10 GMT

A long time ago, I wanted to distribute my games freely and universally, and the only programming language I was bothered to make anything in was DM. At this time, BYOND already had a ~~crappy~~method of making standalone exes for itself:

Make an exe which:
- downloads your game for you.
-- if you don't have BYOND installed on your system:
--- download BYOND too.
- run game after all this downloading is finished or the game and BYOND have already been downloaded.

But this was not what I wanted. I wanted to distribute one file and have that file be the only thing that a user has to run to play my game, without having to download anything extra and wait a couple more minutes to play. I thought of a way of doing this, and py2exe was the first thing that came to mind. For those of you who don't know what py2exe does, it takes all the necessary dlls for a python script to run and packages them, along with a .exe which tells your PC to run said python script using the packaged python dlls.

This meant that the user didn't have to download python in order to use the program, which in turn gave the developer much more power over how he/she could distribute his/her python program/script/piecake.

So why couldn't something like this be done for DM? It seems simple enough. Why hasn't anyone tried it yet?

I suggested this method to the BYOND developers here which was met by general disagreement. So I said 'Darn them, I'll just do it myself' but I didn't have the skills necessary. So I put this idea in the back of my mind and let it rest there for many many months until tonight, when it popped up again, and I was ready for it this time.

I thought 'Well, why over-complicate things? I could just use a simple .bat file to run my dmb and have everything neat and tidy!'. The problem, again, was that this idea was very prone to problems, though it actually does work, and will need some support and tweaking from developers with more competence than I ( I lack the skills to progress this much further ). So I present to you, the brainchild of my idea, the Standalone version of Treasure Turner. After downloading the zip file, just extract and run "Treasure Turner.bat"

On a side note, if you run Treasure Turner.bat don't have BYOND installed it will ask you to "Select the BYOND Directory". I think this is for things like keeping track of the current BYOND Version installed and so on.

A very merry rioting to you too!

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:13:51 GMT

Alot's been going on. You've probably seen it on the news. And you might not have. In which case you've been living under a rock. So just to clarify: secure.byond.com WAS FILTERED! I couldn't log in. :(

It's the whole government against one man. :(
Also, I turned fifteen on the 14th. ^^

Treasure Turner goes competitive!

Wed, 27 May 2009 06:06:24 GMT

Treasure Turner 1.6 now has a score system which will allow some form of competition between players.
The formula for calculating the rankings is as follows:

((levels played/totalmoves)+(levels played/totaltime))*levels played + highest level played to

I really am not too happy with this formula and it would be great to have someone with more expertise than me to help me with making a better one. Still, it's better than nothing. But be sure that this formula will be subject to change, and changes in the scores are easy to make global thanks to a secondary database for saving everything.

On a side note, I released an Alpha version of mDraw, my icon editing program which I've managed to perfect its drawing mechanism over time. I'm working avidly on it and hope to expand it into something helpful for the BYOND community.

On another side note, the Iranian Presidential Elections are around the corner. It won't make a difference if anyone different than the current president is selected, but still. It's a chance for people to laugh a bit at the candidates and crack some top notch jokes.

Hope you all have a nice summer. ( If it's summer for you like where I am )

EDIT: Link to Treasure Turner: http://byond.com/games/Metamorphman/TreasureTurner

Treasure Turner

Tue, 12 May 2009 11:57:48 GMT

This afternoon after a long day of taking other people's crap at school, I sat down at home and decided to do some pixel art work. So I made a grass turf and some walls and some decorations for a house. It looked pretty cool to me. :P

So then, I was struck with an idea for a puzzle game that had nothing to do with I was doing. And I put the idea into effect pretty easily and made a nice little package.

Goes to show you just need some new motivation in general to get work done. :o

http://byond.com/games/hub/metamorphman.treasureturner

Have fun! It's small now but I'll be adding levels regularly.