Outpost Universe Forums
Projects & Development => Inactive Projects => GORF => Outpost Universe Tool => Topic started by: leeor_net on April 23, 2005, 12:48:36 AM
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Is OPUTool lacking something you would like to see? Is there something about the program that you think could be done differently or improved?
Great! I'd like to hear about it! Post your thoughts here as I will be keeping a close eye on it. It's the users of a program that suggest improvements that make it a great program, not the designers, programmers or publishers. So you, the user, get to make decisions about what comes next.
Thanks for your time and enjoy OPUTool!
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Also the fact that it dosent copy cell type could be a good thing, as in leave it as a option, copy cell type on/off :)
Like on firefox, in top right hand corner should have a little icon apear when update is aviable. Click it and it takes you to the tool website in the built in browser.
Also i hope your using the desktop style view i had :)
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Likeing the current look :)
As you mentoned the WON type thing, you should use API calls to navigate the OP2 menus, so a join button takes you to the join menu where you can enter the game ip, and host buton on the tool takes you to the host meu where you can chose game type and player number.
WD should be one of the buttons.
IRC window needs to be sizeable.
Like mIRC should be able to show all current windows in a tabs list on the side or on top.
Server selection should be removed, just have it connect to quakenet, but you should have be able to select the differnet quakenet servers. So people can chose one closest to there location.
Email entry should be removed.. just set it to oputool@outpostuniverse.net or somthing.
Should have check boxes to join the 4 channels, have the box to #outpost2 disabled as people should allways be there. The other 3 channels, have check boxes.# to auto join them.
Option for on/off window flash when message recived, for channel(s) and pm's.
Have arrow button next to private message text box which shows on/off that box.
Remove change channel box on irc view.
Set own nick to be in user set color.
Set irc font selectable.
If IRC is allready open you shouldnt be able to 'start a new chat' and connect again to quakenet, disable that.
Add code for auto rejoin channel on kick, and auto reconect to server on d/c..
Could you possible have a seprate window for quakenets MOTD ? this aint that importiant but its nice. Also then you could have a option for 'hide qnet motd' in settings.
Maybe we could have a Tool MOTD, reads a text file from server and shows it in program.
Also does anyone have the skills to make some nice custom images for the buttons?
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Wow... that's a very serious list. hehe... Welp. I'll get to work on it!
BTW, thanks for the Avatar change! I needed it!
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Add status bar on browser window, show link in it when hovering on link.
Rename user list to forum user list.
Add link/button to gamers list.
Add desktop style view, like i originaly had, where you can turn on and off shotcuts to the suff. hacker has code for this.
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Add shotcut to load exe files, Outpost 2 and mIRC, save paths in settings like my Tool.
Some people might want to use the Tool but not use the IRC client it has, because mIRC is better or whatevea, so allow for easy load of mIRC from the Tool.
Also add shortcut to Outpost 2. So when game is hosted they can quicky load OP2 and join game.
On first start, have please setup settings, like OP2 exe path.
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Even better would be on start up auto detect the paths of mirc and op2. then display the result so u can change it (e.g. multiple installs of op2.exe) or return a program not found dialog and have to do it manually then.
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I was thinking of that myself. However, I'm not 100% sure quite how to that... yet... so it'll be a manual install for the time being. Later on, I'll change that.
I may actually have the installer do that and then create the settings so that the program can then read them.
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I was thinking a buddy list would be a cool thing to have.
You can add users to the list and it saves them with there current nick, there host and a screen view nick, which default is nick. You can change this. Have online buddys and offline. Click there name if there online and brings up the PM window for them.
Also option to hide/show windows, and have settings for each window, pm and channels, so u could set a channel to flash when new message. default pm window flash when new msg maybe.
Also maybe in the future have ballon alerts like NNS has when your nick is said, or your get a PM.
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rly i like the current look MUCH better than the desktop-like look of the old one. the old one was rather ugly w/ that desktop imo.
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ummm kinda lost you now.... can you dowload the tool... if yes where???? :D
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The Tool has been available for download for awhile. The link can be found on the OPUTool website (link in sig).
However, to make it a little easier, here's a direct link! :-)
http://tool.outpostuniverse.net/dl.htm
Please note that I found a very serious bug in the installer. Upon uninstall of the program, the uninstaller removes several system files that are more than important for Windows/IE to work properly. To delete it, simply delete the shortcuts/files where you set the installer to install.
This bug has already be fixed in the new installer.
Also, you may want to wait for v0.6.7 as that's about to be released and is a hell of a lot better (MUCH improvements over the old!)
EDIT (leeor_net): edited download link to make it clear it's no longer active
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Please note that I found a very serious bug in the installer. Upon uninstall of the program, the uninstaller removes several system files that are more than important for Windows/IE to work properly. To delete it, simply delete the shortcuts/files where you set the installer to install.
Thats exactly the reason why I hate installers so much. They can easily mess up your whole system. If there has to be an installer make one that tells you what it does (ie. where it puts files etc) and make it ask whether system files may be replaced.
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Yeah, I fixed that part. Now the only thing it does is add new files if they don't exist on the system. They are left on the system and are not removed.
:op2: Leeor Dicker
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Should have shortcuts to natfix and Hamachi, like the ones for the games.
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IMHO, Nullsoft's installer is really crappy. I wouldn't use it. (The only good thing they've made is Winamp and Shoutcast)
Also, some comments on the package:
-- It stopped about 1/3 way thru the install. The program ran however.
-- NEVER, NEVER use BMPs like that. Save them as JPEG or PNG (or better yet) stick them inside the EXE (compressed still, of course) so people can't get to them.
-- Some of the toolbar buttons are useless (like the forum calendar, no one really uses that)
-- Use the winsock, common dialog, etc APIs directly and create toolbars directly instead of using the bloat provided by the standard VB ocx controls.
Then a thought...
why do you have the GNU GPL license, but yet I can't find any evidence of being able to get source code? Unless you plan on releasing source.
It has the potential to be good. Just a lot of pointless tools need to be taken out, some of the bugs worked out, and in my opinion, the most important thing is to reduce the bloat (and dependencies). We want to distribute OPU Tool with the game package, but that wouldn't be possible at it's current size.
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Hacker, ALL great points! These are all things that I will work on.
I did notice the few little bugs here and there. I overlooked a few things when I stuck it alltogether into a package.
I think the Hamachi idea is great. I didn't think of that, actually! :)
Now, what exactly is natfix? How would I implement that into the program?
I think you're right about the forum calendar. That doesn't need to be there. I know that I look at "View New Posts" all the time so I can probably change the buttons functionality to that instead. What do you think?
The bloated size of the program is another thing I will work on as I revise the program.
I tend to use OPUTool to do all of my OPU web browsing! :-) I hope that it will become useful in this way to others.
Lastly, the toolbar button graphics could use some work. They're great for now but I want to have a cleaner more modern look. I was going for a litho feel when I started and they just kind of stuck.
Also, the BMP's are there right now as the standard stuff for the WorldMap right now. Eventually, I want to allow for people to completely customize the way WorldMap looks (with a different map, different pin icons, etc.)
So this is definatly a good start, if you ask me! But however you look at it, there's still work to be done.
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The Hamachi and natfix would be the same as the games, you just set and save the location of the exe files. natfix is located in the op2 folder. they would have icons on the right hand side like the others.
the irc ico on the right should be the mIRC icon or the NNS icon (maybe have it so you can pick which one to use).
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I'm still not exactly sure what NatFix is.
As far as the IRC Icon is concerned, I know that I personally use mIRC whenever QuakeNet let's me log on but this may not be true for everybody. Some people may prefer another IRC Client and so I left the Icon as a generic one.
Is there anything else I should be aware of?
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NatFix is really just a cheap hack. :lol:
The problem being, OP2 doesn't use the return address on network packets. Instead, it getrs the addresses from inside the packets from the computer who sent it. The problem is though, that behind NAT, those computers won't know their external addresses, so they package and send their internal LAN ip. Which is why you can't connect from behind a router since the other person never gets a valid IP to return data to you.
What NatFix does, is hooks into the code that packages your internal IP, and overwrites that value with a hardcoded constant that was setup ahead of time.(That value being your external IP.) The original NatFix exe determined what your external IP was by contacting a website, and getting it to reply with the address it was contacting from. It would then save this value for use in patching that code.
If the game was designed with NAT in mind, this should be completely unnecessary. It'd be nice to fix the underlying network code, but that's kinda complicated to do, and would take a long time. So, the simple fast hack was developed for the meantime.
Does that answer your question? Or is this too out of context with this thread?
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Yeah.. the IP is stored in the ExternalIP key in the [Network] section of Outpost2.ini. If you're interested, the natfix.exe, all it does is encode an entered IP into big endian format in that field.
It handles none of the actual patching -- that is done at game startup.
If you want to know how to do it, so you could do it from the program, just tell me and I'll send the source code of the natfix app.
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Actually, I wasn't thinking to actually implement the NatFix code into OPUTool but now that the thought is out there, I like it a lot. It helps to reduce the number of 'downloads' and 'hacks' that one has to find and install. Also, OPUTool is meant to be a group of tools all packaged into one lump of a thing... :) Of course, sometimes programs can get too big and too complicated and thus will need to be broken into several smaller programs. But I think OPUTool is going pretty good right now and could use a really neat new feature.
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BTW, Hooman, how goes the SIGS/WON Hacking?
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Nowhere! :P
I took a vacation this summer. From everything. (Mostly)
And before you ask, I'm not too eager to get back to work on it quite yet. It took many months of reading assembly to get to where I did, and then it got really hard to get anywhere. Kinda discouraging actually. But I was still slowly making progress before I put it aside for a summer of stress free fun.
Of course, competition with my brother to beat him at every possible stat in Rune Scape was also responsible for my lack of time to put towards other things. But my membership is almost up, and once it is, I'll have nothing better to do but code this type of thing. But until then, I kinda want to make the last few days count.
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Believe me, I understand. I've had a really hard time picking up OP:MIA recently... I still am. I'll eventually get back to it full-swing
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A BUNCH of suggestions:
Another icon that takes you to your Media player.
Also, leeor_net, I told you about that Time change thing, Where it takes your system time and using info given when a pin is made, it calculates the time where that pin is. (using GMT or something). You should also be able to switch between 12 hour and 24 hour time.
Quoting from the other thread :P
In my folowing ideas, the MOTD would pop up when you start OPUTool up. It is a seperate window or something, maybe even give the option of making it transparent and have it go ON TOP of your current window!
This MOTD idea is awesome, I hope it gets added to some future release
People can choose to recieve updates on various projects. (this needs to be able to update the list of projects whenever OPU tool is run) Then, for that MOTD, we can have a file that is on the site and is downloaded when people check (the checkbox) that they want to recieve updates on that project. It would be similar to a newsletter. These files for the MOTD could also be an image with text on it (would be very sweet, very similar to Hacker's signature). There would be a file on each project subdomain that can be updated whenever needed, and the MOTD would use that image or file on the MOTD.
The MOTD wiki idea would also be cool, have it be able to be turned on and off and have it show the last changes that were made to the Wiki. (you'd have to edit the wiki PHP to output a list of the people and things that were changed each time an OPUtool user "visits" but doesn't display a certain link. OR you could make a custom wiki page that does this all by itself.... It would have the latest changes and maybe Wiki news and whatnot. You would be able to "merge" repetitive updates, like: "23 updates on OPUTool wiki page: Stormy: I'm testing this system"
When you click on that, it goes to the page with the changes.
A way to put the current webpage URL on the clipboard would be nice.
BTW: Are there any releases of OPUTool for Linux? I might switch over to Linux soon (blender runs better under Linux)
I can't wait to begin talking about this and to maybe see it implemented :D
stormy :op2:
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You and your blender stormy... :wacko:
You'd better not forget to use my name for the user map. Or something like it, I can't remember what it was...
(has nothing else worth saying)
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Like windows has a sound played when it loads, and some other apps do...
the tool should have 'savent series computer activated' sound when it loads :)
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I'm very glad that I asked for feature ideas/requests because there are a LOT that have been posed here!
OPUTool will not be supported under Linux... at all. It is coded entirely in VB (I hate GUI programming with C++) and thus not suitable for a Linux distribution.
If there is someone that knows how to port VB code and forms to Linux then great. Contact me and we'll get that part of it rolling as well.
If not than OPUTool will be completely Win32 based (useable on Win98+ machines) and that's not likely to change.
I absolutely love the MOTD ideas and Project Updates. That will DEFINATLY be added after 1.3.2 (I'm now polishing off a few more things and it will then be released).
As far as the address bar is concerned, I'm not sure how I'm going to handle that. I will likely have a field rather than a drop-down combo that's just updated with the URL. Typing in a URL will yield nothing. OPUTool isn't supposed to be a full-featured browser as it is and I would like to add this without violating that principle. Any ideas?
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The firefox support rocks :) It should be default imo.
U should add File > New Browser.
In quick links add Todays Active Topics to forum links.
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The new browser idea as well as a tabbed view for the browsers was suggested by Stormy and is definatly a good one. It shouldn't be too difficult to add support for that.