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Albian Command v0.1.1 for Creatures 2   
skerit

skerit
Belgium  

 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  3/12/2018  3

Albian Command v0.1.1 for Creatures 2The next version of my wolfling run monitor for C2 is available and I'm looking for people to test it.

Some features are: game speed adjustment, creature observation, auto-naming, egg overview, pregnancy actions, import/export control and also an early implementation of a peer-to-peer "warp".

You can check the release notes or report issues on the Albian Command github page

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  3/12/2018  1

Hi Skerit! If I switch my world (using the World > Open feature ) it still shows the previous world's creatures in the list, although they're not in my currently open world.

My TCR Norns
 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  3/12/2018  1

Malkin wrote:
Hi Skerit! If I switch my world (using the World > Open feature ) it still shows the previous world's creatures in the list, although they're not in my currently open world.



Ah, a Blueberry4$ user? :)

Currently it detects the open world on boot only, though it should remove creatures from the list that aren't in the world anymore after 15 seconds. I'll add some more checks for that, sounds like a good issue #1 :)

By the way: do you manually save your world every now and then? I thought about some way to detect the Blueberry4$ string and then maybe save the game every every few minutes, but I didn't know if many people used it.

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  3/12/2018

Yeah, I use Blueberry 4$ for Albian Years. I try to manually save, but I often forget - an autosave tool would be useful!

I think I may have lost my passphrase - I had to get the door and thought I'd copied it to my clipboard, but it didn't. Scratch that - it seems to have saved itself in Albian Command?

When using Nerinath and Albian Updates 1.1, I can't see the headshots of the norns, and when I was trying to export a creature who was definitely in the world, I got an error message saying she wasn't. error message


My TCR Norns
 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  3/13/2018  1

Yes, the passphrase immediately saves itself to the settings so it can auto-login next time.

I didn't see your registration in the blockchain (yes, we have a tiny little blockchain for username registrations :)) so I'll see if I can do something about that. What blockcount do you have in the "Albian-Babel Network Status"?

I'll install a Nerinath world on my computer and try it out, might be something quite simple.

The export error message isn't saying the creature is not in the world but that it didn't find the "Export Current Creature" dialog. It exports creatures by sending keystrokes directly to the application. (Namely "ALT+F" and then "E". This could cause problems when running c2 in another language than English, but that's probably not it since you're from Australia :P)


 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  3/13/2018

Albian-Babel Network Status

0 out of ? blocks

0 connections

Logged in as "02efdaabbc5acc2236e16c57a0c17a70a42b1a6ff618e3f538f92a6b15065d9841"

I don't have any special keyboard, using it in English, so I don't know what's going on there.


My TCR Norns
 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  3/13/2018

Oh ok, that's interesting. It's not able to make any connection then. Which windows version are you using? 10, 8, 7?
 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  3/13/2018

10, updated from 8.

My TCR Norns
 
Vermidia

Vermidia



  3/13/2018

I have something similar, with my login being numbers and my connection being 0 out of ? blocks. I thought it was because of my firewall though.

You know...wait...nevermind... wait...no...umm...maybe later...
 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  3/13/2018  2

Yes. The "login" is actually your public key on the network. The username you register is then a unique value attributed to that public key.

I'm just trying to hide the public key/private key stuff. If there are "0 out of ?" blocks there are indeed some issues with the network. I know that when you run it in a virtual machine with NAT you'll need to bridge the network instead.

I'm installing Windows 10 now to test it out (but it's been updating for hours now, go figure :))

 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  3/15/2018

Ok, I've released version 0.1.2

Some of the fixes:

* When opening a new world the current world name will be updated
* Creatures that are no longer in the world will now be removed from the list correctly
* If no peers are on-line you won't get an error when trying to warp a creature
* Fix not being able to register a username once connected
* Fix error where the program would block when a creature's name starts with a non alphabetical character
* Add (very basic) CAOS tool
* Add ability to toggle the powerups to the settings page
* Clicking on the same creature/egg row will hide the actions row
* Added Creature select action
* Add action to infect creature with random bacteria
* Add action to force ageing of creature

And here are some fixes that were made in the creatures library:

* If unable to get a gene file in the documents directories, get it from the main application directory
* Fix `Genome#getBodyPartImage` so that it tries all lower lifestages before giving up (especially needed for ettins)
* Get locale & language of the current windows environment
* Add English, Dutch & French menu keys mappings
* Make the Import & Export functions work in all languages (except Japanese)
* Fix the sendKeys functionality on Windows 10 (needed to send {DOWN} to actually open a menu)
* [VB] Fix identifying other windows with "Creatures 2" as their title as the C2 window (for example explorer windows in a folder named "Creatures 2";)
* Add `Creature#select(callback)` method to make it the active creature
* If the creature's name starts with a "<", or it is the moniker or hex moniker, it is deemed "unnamed"
* Callback with error if loading history files fails in `Creature#getWorldNames`

I've also added some more information about the network status, but people behind NAT (which is, like, everyone) will probably only be able to connect to 1 unnamed instance I have running on my server. (This is actually 1 part of the program I did not code myself and is awful to fix, so bear with :))

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  3/15/2018

Clicking through the tabs slowly to familiarise myself with the new version produced this error in the sprites tab, when I was using it without C2 being launched.

When I tried to launch C2 via the Albian Years/GOG.com shortcut I was given at install, it got to the world switcher, and then it said 'C2 is already running, if this is not the case please restart!'.

Weird.

The new features look great, though!


My TCR Norns
 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  3/16/2018

I've noticed similar behaviour once or twice. I think that sometimes when you close creatures2.exe, it is still kept alive because the little tool I use to connect to it is somehow keeping it alive :/

I'll look into that, but for now: you don't have to restart, you can just kill creatures2.exe in the task manager :)

About the string/undefined/pledge error: I actually look for the path to the creatures2.exe executable by asking windows what executable is running the Creatures 2 window. That way I'm quite certain where to look for images, but in this case you'll indeed get errors if it is not running :) I'll see if I can look for the executable in more default locations, or remember it in the settings

 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  3/17/2018

So here's version 0.1.3.

The only new feature is that network messages can now be relayed, so in principle you can send warps to off-line peers. But it's all still very experimental :)

There's also a log tab now, but I have yet to add all the useful information in that.

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  3/18/2018

I'm still experiencing the same error, where C2 launches and runs with Albian Command, but isn't visible to me. (only the extended version of the Task Manager).

Have you considered setting up an autokill function for Albian Command?


My TCR Norns
 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  3/19/2018

Interesting. I'm sure it's a bug somewhere in Albian Command, but could you test something for me?

Could you close Albian Command, kill all the creatures2.exe processes, and then run Albian Command again. Does creatures2.exe pop up in the task manager now?

Because I know Albian Command keeps creatures2.exe ALIVE after closing it manually, but I can't get it to start a "zombie process" on start, at least not on my Windows 10 machine.

About the autokill: you know that Albian Command does auto-close caos error messages, right? Or at least: it tries to :) Sometimes there are so many it's unable to close them all and it gets stuck.

I did think about something like autokill, but I don't know if it's possible yet.

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  3/20/2018

After opening, then closing Albian Command, killing the "SMALL FURRY CREATURES" process (creatures2.exe), then re-opening Albian Command, creatures2.exe only pops up in the extended version of the Task Manager, whereas Albian Command appears in the shortlist.

My TCR Norns
 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  3/26/2018

Get ready for version 0.1.4

What's new:

* Fix where nothing would load on new installs (I'm not sure if this fixes Malkin's issue yet, though :/)
* Autosave feature (for `blueberry4$` users only)
* Setting to automatically unpause eggs
* Fixed some powerup issues (also uses regular caos, not the cmnd)
* Add action to line up all eggs by the incubator
* Add action & setting for backing up creatures hourly (very experimental, though! Best to only turn this on during wolfling runs since it can take a while :))
* Fix `Teach Language` not working properly
* More debug logging
* Many various fixes
* Implemented pigment & pigment bleed for Creatures headshots (loading those takes a bit longer now, though.)
* Show parents of an egg

 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  3/26/2018

Uhoh, @Pilla has already discovered a bug where Albian Command would close the game window because it's called "Creatures 2" instead of "worldname.sfc - Creatures 2".

So here's another update, v0.1.5.

It's probably best to start Creatures 2 *before* you open Albian Command. Otherwise it'll try to start it on its own, but that seems to go wrong (especially on Windows 10)

 
GimmeCat

GimmeCat



  4/11/2018

Love the work so far. :)

I'd love to see fixes for the following issues (on Windows 7 x64, running The Albian Years version of C2):

* The app starts reporting endless timeouts and completely stops functioning until both C2 and Albian Command are restarted.

* Norns not being named even though the option is set-- either it just says "Naming creature <moniker>..." and then never does it, or else it comes back with e.g. "Error setting name: Jackie on 2YSD"

* Norns that it does rarely manage to name always seem to start at the beginning of the alphabet, with wolfing norns several generations in still being named e.g. "Abby".

* The auto-namer refuses to use duplicate names for norns, and once it's used each at least 1, the error comes back "Found no name!" (there are plenty of names for all the letters, I added them myself)

* This is very common in the log: "Naming creature null..."

* The log does not autoscroll with new messages.

* The population limit reads from hatl to pause eggs. It should read from eggl instead. (I manually edited creatures_application.js to work around this, because even though my poplimit was 40, AC would pause all eggs over 24 norns.)

* The game speed hack doesn't remember how to return to 1x speed with any accuracy-- sometimes exiting Command sets C2's speed to half-speed, but most of the time it doesn't reset it at all.

* The game speed hack doesn't snap to values, making it impossible to select a desired speed with any accuracy.

* Higher game speeds (3-5x) seem to cause the endless timeout problem within a few minutes.

* Another common log error: "Uncaught Error in: "chrome-extension://ddjepacnciokonhicnbbbalmnnhmlggh/index.html @ 15178" (I don't use Chrome)

---

If I were to pick a couple of issues in terms of highest priority, I would say fixing the auto-namer and having the log autoscroll would be up there. While the timeouts and speedhack are also big problems, I imagine they're a lot harder to fix.

 
GimmeCat

GimmeCat



  4/15/2018  1

Just a heads-up btw, as of today MSE is detecting vbole.exe as a trojan and auto-quarantining it.
 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  4/22/2018

Thanks for the bug hunting, GimmeCat!

Here is v0.1.6, which is primarily a bug fix release.

Some visible changes:

* The gamespeed scrollbar is now a regular number input (which can actually be scrolled with the mouse, so that's nice)
* The log textarea will autoscroll once you have scrolled to the bottom once.
* Added the `reuse_names` setting, so that names can be, well, reused once you run out of them. No number is added or so.

And bugfixes:

* Getting the parent of an egg should now work

* Many timeout issues happened because of the generation calculation. Due to several bugs, it would never really finish and just happen again and again on every update. This should now be resolved (though timeouts CAN still happen, it's not that big of an issue if they happen only from time to time)

* I now store some data in the "owner notes" of a creature, because this also survives exports & such. The only data I store right now is generation. Should you STILL get errors because of generation stuff, try manually setting the generation in the owner notes like this: "{generation 15}" (My generations are 0-index based, so Adam would be {generation 0})

* The previously set gamespeed is now recovered when starting albian-command again (previously it would always show "1" on boot, no matter what it really was set to)

* On some people's windows, albian-command was unable to find the creatures2.exe process. I believe this is because windows was reporting it using a shortname (creatu~1.exe). I added an extra check for these shortnames, too. (This wasn't a problem in v0.1.3 and earlier because I only matched against window title then, but that also caused issues when an explorer dialog was open named "Creatures 2", for example)

* Finding an import or export window should work better now. Previously it waited a fixed amount of time (500ms) for the window to appear, but that was sometimes not enough. Now it retries maximum 10 times, with shorter sleep intervals.

* The method used to read length-prefixed strings did not yet support strings that were longer than 254 chars, that is now also fixed.

* Many more dependency fixes

About the antivirus thing:

I tried multiple antivirus scans, and some do pick up vbole.exe as a danger, but each one reports something totally different. The VM on which I code is completely virus-free :) If anyone is really paranoid, the sourcecode of the exe is also included on the github page :)

 
skerit

skerit


 visit skerit's website: Skerit
  4/27/2018

Here's yet another bugfix release, v0.1.7, mostly relating to naming new creatures & getting their generation:

* Name maximum 3 creatures at once
* Naming a creature no longer stops an `update` from finishing, which caused timeouts
* Fix new eggs causing update timeouts
* Fix bug where too many eggs were being unpaused
* Fix CAOS tool normalization before sending to game
* Remove limitation count on vbole.exe reconnects
* Fix creature update overload
* Only allow 1 egg update script at a time
* Don't move a creature to invalid coordinates (after backup)
* Make sure local creature info is updated before it is exported
* Retry file reads that failed with `ENOENT` if they're export files
* Retry getting a parent for generation calculation if the reason is a timeout (!)
* Do not load creature history file if it is empty
* Getting a creature's generation should no longer cause a near infinite loop

Big thanks to Gimmecat for sending me one of her worlds that had the naming issue!

And also a "sorry" to Gimmecat, because I still haven't fixed the hatl thing :)

 


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