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Reply 240 of 1962, by collector

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Pan wrote:

The only problem would be machine specific information like cycles and pathnames. Relative paths could resolve the latter by having some standardization on game location. Creating a new empty directory inside the DBGL directory to allow the storage of games could help with this.

That is why I suggested a built in browse function. It could be invoked during the import process to allow for different paths than that of the original profiler's. I don't know how difficult that it would be to keep it portable, though.

Reply 241 of 1962, by Pan

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That's true. However, I think allowing online profiles to be made for a vast number of DOS games is a longer-term goal, as the complexity required to achieve it is quite significant. As a first step, allowing relative paths and the importing/exporting of profiles would be useful for home-made collections and is much easier to implement.

Reply 242 of 1962, by wd

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First thing would be getting game installation standardized, whatever that
means, that is hard disk installation along with sound/graphics/etc. configuration.
Don't know if any frontend already does that, or if this is planned.

Reply 243 of 1962, by Pan

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Yes, that's one of the big problems with shared game profiles unfortunately. Not everybody uses the same directory name/structures for their games. But it would have no impact on private collections of course.

Reply 244 of 1962, by ErikGG

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I'm planning to add the ability to make certain dirs to be presented in a shortform like <DOGHome> and <DOGDrive>, for D.O.G. that is.

They will be presented as <UserDefined>. When importing such a profile, D.O.G. will present the user with all short form dirs in the profile with the ability to add those to their own list and/or alter them for the profile.

Standardisation is always in the back of my head but I haven't done anything with it yet. XML was the main candidate as I recall. It also supports multiple profiles in one file wich is one of the main things I do want.

Erik.

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Reply 245 of 1962, by DosFreak

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I'm currently going through all 900+ DOS games and adding them into DBGL.

So far all I've been doing is duplicating an existing profile and then modifying it for the next game.

So I'm modifying:

INFO TAB

Title
Developer
Publisher
Genre
Year

MOUNTING

Mounting Overview
Just modifying the path to point to the new file.

EXECUTE
Modifying Main and setup to point to the right executable.

Would it be possible to build into DBGL the ability to scan a folder and ask for this information? For now it would work by having the user input the information but going into the future hopefully we'll have some central server with the ability to identify games by hash and input this information automagically.

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Reply 246 of 1962, by rcblanke

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DosFreak wrote:

Would it be possible to build into DBGL the ability to scan a folder and ask for this information? For now it would work by having the user input the information but going into the future hopefully we'll have some central server with the ability to identify games by hash and input this information automagically.

Well, as woody could have said: sure, go ahead. 😁

But seriously, I might give it a shot in the future. Maybe using information from Mobygames? For the moment, I try to tacle the dbgl and/or game directory relocation thingy first, since that was asked for by many many many folks.

Reply 247 of 1962, by collector

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I still think that a simple browse function invoked during the importing process would be the way to go.

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Reply 248 of 1962, by rcblanke

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collector wrote:

I still think that a simple browse function invoked during the importing process would be the way to go.

Hi collector, could you please explain that a little more?

Reply 249 of 1962, by MiniMax

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I think collector means something like this:

Assume that you know that the installer for game ABC always creates a 1 level deep directory structure on the target drive. When you then import game ABC's profile from some external repository, and you find an EXE-path that reads

C:\MyVeryOldGames\Roleplaying\ABC\ABC\ABC.BAT

then the import function needs to ask the user what the replacement for

C:\MyVeryOldGames\Roleplaying\ABC

should be, and automatically use that as the path for the mounted C drive.

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Reply 250 of 1962, by collector

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All I mean is that when importing a profile for a profile that the DBGL import dialog or wizard (or D.O.G. for that matter, if there is a standard for import) asks for the location of the game and gives the user a browse button to locate the installed folder or zip and any other discs that need to be mounted.

Not everyone wants to install their games to C:\Oldgames, etc. I don't install any games om my C: drive. Rely on the user to locate the games instead of relying on fixed standard install locations.

Reply 251 of 1962, by red_avatar

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Is there a way to disable the JRE detection thingy? I installed 1.6.0 and it complains that it can't find 1.5.

Unable to locate JRE meeting specification "1.5" […]
Show full quote

Unable to locate JRE meeting specification "1.5"

Sorry - you don't seem to have the required version of the
Java Runtime Environment [JRE] installed. DBGL requires at
least JRE 1.5 to run.

Press any key to continue . . .

The "at least" should mean it runs in 1.6 so why do I get this error? This is on a freshly installed Vista 64 (it worked fine in Vista 32).

EDIT: installing 1.5.0 fixes it but that's not really the best solution since most people will have 1.6.0 in the future.

Reply 252 of 1962, by MiniMax

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Should work with 1.6 and above. What do you get if you run

java -version:1.5+ -version

from a CMD window?

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Reply 254 of 1962, by rcblanke

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Hi everybody,

I've been working on a new DBGL build. Because a lot of code was altered in one way or another, I have a release candidate ready for your testing pleasures!

_PLEASE_ make a BACKUP of your existing DBGL directory prior to testing! Since I made so many changes, chances are high I introduced new problems.

So, what's new?
* Relative paths! The ability to freely move DBGL and/or your games directories around without the need for reconfiguration!

It works as follows: Two new entries are added to Settings.conf to specify the locations - either relative to the DBGL dir or absolute - to the 'DATA' and 'DOSBOX' directories. The DATA dir specifies the folder in which DBGL expects the 'captures', 'profiles' and 'templates' subdirectories. More importantly is a new subdir below the DATA dir called 'dosroot'. If you would decide to move your game-files into that subdirectory, DBGL will treat all mounting and game-related information relative to that special location. On the other hand, if you have a game in another location, absolute mounting will be used and DBGL will behave like before. So, in order to benefit from the relative gamelocation feature your games have to be placed inside or below the dosroot folder. Likewise for DOSBox versions; put them in a subdirectory of the DOSBOX directory setting to make them relative. Note that the DATA and DOSBOX directories are '.' by default (i.e. the DBGL directory). This will make sure that any possible existing captures, profiles, templates and DOSBox versions can be located. If possible, document links are also stored relative, but to the DATA folder. (MiniMax, Norman, Pan, and many many more)

* More relative paths! A new 'migrate profiles'-dialog is available to relocate your DBGL games to the new dosroot. That is, all stored path information in DBGL is relocated. You will have to move your games files yourself, afterwards.
* The database-connection is now configurable in Settings.conf, so it should be possible to connect to a remote profile database! (not tested as of yet)
* Thumbs are now displayed using anti-aliasing, and you can open the containing folder by right-clicking them.
* Likewise, there is an 'open folder' menu entry for dosbox versions, too.
* SWT (GUI library) was updated to 3.3

Please note that, if you're using YKHWong's and Gulikoza's special builds, you'll have to copy the 'Shaders' directory to dosroot.

Only a Windows package for the moment, Linux is coming soon. Just the jar could work, but I didn't test that yet.

Questions, suggestions, comments and remarks are welcome!

Regards,
Ronald

Edit: Removed the links

Last edited by rcblanke on 2007-08-27, 20:36. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 255 of 1962, by jolynsbass

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Is there any possiblity of launching shortcuts to "regular" games (Windows based) via the DBGL GUI? I'd absolutely love to be able to make DBGL my one stop shop for all my PC gaming...
It'd be great to be able to place screenshots in appropriate folder, have publisher info, and the like, too.
So, is it possible? Or just not? Or do you just not think it's a good idea?! 😉

Reply 256 of 1962, by rcblanke

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jolynsbass wrote:

Is there any possiblity of launching shortcuts to "regular" games (Windows based) via the DBGL GUI?...

It's definitely possible, but I'm not sure if it's really that practical or useful. DBGL was certainly not designed for this, and it might be quite some work to accomplish your wish. But anyways, who knows.. Thanks for your suggestion, jolynsbass!

On a sidenote; One bug was already found in RC1. Migrating profiles (where the .conf files are stored in the game directories) may result in a broken .conf file location (in the database). Will be fixed, obviously.

Anybody found any other problems?

Reply 257 of 1962, by Pan

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I took a look at it, but couldn't get RC1 to work under Linux unfortunately. Running the jar directly via the script from the previous version didn't seem to work, even when I copied the settings file over. I'll take a better look when the next Linux release is available 😀

The changes look useful though 😀 Thanks.

Reply 258 of 1962, by rcblanke

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Hi all,

RC2 packages are up for both Windows and Linux. Apart for the aforementioned issue, no serious changes. Pan, would you be as kind to check if this does work for you?

Regards,
Ronald

Edit: Removed the links

Last edited by rcblanke on 2007-08-27, 20:35. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 259 of 1962, by Pan

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The RC2 package seems to work almost perfectly here. The only minor issue I can find is that it throws a stack trace when you first run it without any previous configuration. It's only reporting that it can't find a file that doesn't yet exist. You could put it in a try-catch block to suppress the error before release if you wish, but it's not serious.

I have to say I really like this frontend. I personally appreciate your hard work on it Rcblanke 😀