The Dink Network

Since today, whenever I open up my D-Mod in WinDinkEdit, it gives me this message:

"Note that you have exceeded the maximum number of 'set_sprite_info' commands by 39. These will still work in WinDinkedit but will be ignored by Dinkedit and the Dink engine. Enable Optimize Dink.ini in the options menu and WDE will attempt to fix this on the next save."

What is this all about? It just suddenly started appearing. So far it doesn't seem to have any effect on my D-Mod but is it something I should be worried about? How do I fix this? Should I do what the error message tells me to do, or should I try something else?

There's a limit on how many SET_SPRITE_INFO lines you can have in dink.ini. After it exceeds, new SET_SPRITE_INFO lines won't work anymore (E.g. if you edit the hard box for a house sprite in WDE and save it, the house's hardness will still be ducked up when you play the game). I think the limit for SET_SPRITE_INFO was increased at some point, though, so I'm not sure if it would actually be a problem at the point when WDE starts complaining about it.

Whatever you do, DON'T do the optimize thing! It breaks the dink.ini by removing things that are there for a very good reason. Try downloading Paul's INIclean instead, and use that. (INIclean only removes duplicate SET_SPRITE_INFO lines, it doesn't do any scary "optimizing" )

Thanks for this information. It seems you're right when saying the limit for set_sprite_info was increased, because so far there don't seem to be any problems.

This likely happened because you edited hardness and depth dots a lot on the same sprite and never cleaned it Just the INICleaner mentioned before and your problems will disappear^^ (Disclaimer: Dink related problems... Concerning the ini )

Can you explain a little clearer what exactly does the INICleaner do? And is using it absolutely necessary?

Yes, Kyle. That's probably the reason as I did edit a lot of hardness and depth dots yesterday. Sad thing is, I had a virus on my computer, and I had to restore the system, so now I have to edit the depth dots and hardness again! Oh, life is cruel!

As far as I know, inicleaner removes any duplicate lines it finds in the dink.ini... makes it easier in case you missed some when checking it yourself.

So it shouldn't do any damage to the Dink.ini in any way? I just want to make sure, before I use it.

It shouldn't. Well, it hasn't broken any of my dmods yet. (You should still create a copy of dink.ini beforehand though, just in case)

It also doesn't seem to work in Windows 7.

Actually some of the lines that are not duplicates are actually better left out of the dink.ini as well. For example one of the set_sprite_info lines for the flowers (seq 66, frame 13) totally ruins the depth dot of that and it actually becomes much better if you remove it. However going over all those lines will require some manual labor.

It rcan really pay off if you take the time though. I made a version of the dink.ini in which all the walls are much, much better than in the original. (Won't use it for my current projects though, as it would require me to pretty much redo all of the houses so far...)

But is there really any point for me to do this though? Because it doesn't really effect the game anyhow. In fact, only thing it effects is when I open WDE, and that message pops up. And I'm done with new graphics, so I won't be changing hardness or depth dots anymore. So I don't quite see the point of doing it.

Just curious. I don't want to make any hesitated decisions.

a) It will stop the annoying message popping up!
b) There may be one or two sprites it is affecting that you haven't noticed I guess.

It won't hurt anyway, and you can make a backup of the INI first just in case as scratcher said.

A revision of the Dink.ini to fix walls, flowers, rocks, trees, ... hardness and depth dot would be a lot of work, but it would greatly increase the quality of d-mods... Would be a nice dev file to have for sure.

Ok, the INIclean fixed the problem. Thanks a lot.

As I said I made a revised dink.ini file for my own use. (Which was part of my effort to make my own skeleton, as I started to dislike skeleton B.) I didn't just clean it but also I made all the wall pieces have the same depth dot and hardness boxes so you can just place walls precisely by specifying coordinates rather than to place every piece of wall in the correct place.

Though I have pretty much cleaned up the entire .ini file I'd say that it isn't really finished yet, there are still parts that can be improved. However if people are interested I might release it as a development file...