The Dink Network

Hi,

I'm working on a new release of DFArc3, which now can run Dink or Dinkedit in the background (asynchronously), so e.g. you don't have to quit Dink to run the editor

I also updated DFArc to wxWidgets 3 (that's the graphics toolkit).

I made some successful tests myself, but scratcher reported the new DFArc gets stuck for him when extracting or packaging D-Mods.
I can't reproduce the problem thus it's very difficult for me to find a fix.

So, could you all test this version:
http://www.beuc.net/tmp/dfarc-3.11-bin.zip
(extract in your Dink directory)
and let me know if it works for you (with your windows version)?

Hm, overall it works, packaging worked fine but when I tried extracting a DMOD...

The "Preparing" window lingered with an estimate timer re-estimating the estimated time over and over until about one and a half minute has passed. It should not take that long.

Thanks Quiztis, can you tell me with what windows version and D-Mod you had the "Preparing" phase taking too much time?

The inability to run Dink and Dinkedit at the same time has actually been an important feature for me, since it prevents me from doing so by accident. Any time I run the game and Windinkedit 2+ at the same time, it wipes out all the tile-based hardness in the DMOD I'm editing.

Aye, it be Win8.1 pro x64, tried installing Alliance Command demo. Note that it takes a long time for any DMOD I try to install.

Quiztis, scratcher: I uploaded a new version at the same place:
http://www.beuc.net/tmp/dfarc-3.11-bin.zip
For the record, I fixed an historical performance issue (extracting files byte-per-byte) and enlarged <s>peni</s> I/O buffers.

I'm basically poking in the dark :/ since everything works perfectly from the start on the Win8.1 entreprise trial I installed, but hopefully this will improve/fix the situation

If not, any information you have on helping me reproduce the issue (disk sync settings maybe? hard disk mechanical or SSD?) would definitely help.

CocoMonkey: do you mean the running game loses its hardness info (during one play), or that the hardness gets corrupted on disk?
I had initially disabled the DFArc interface when running Dink/Dinkedit because it was way easier to code, i.e. not for a good reason, hence why I'm more inclined to leave the new system, but it that proves to be a problem we can reconsider

Just tested it quickly with The Woods. Both extracting and packaging works perfectly, and MUCH faster than it ever did on older versions of DFArc. Pretty awesome!

enlarged <s>peni</s> I/O buffers.

Hmmm.......

YAAAAAAYYY!!

I was starting to get depressed over that one.
Let's wait for Quiztis to confirm and prepare the release

What I mean is that the hardness gets corrupted on disk. When I was working on "Malachi the Jerk," I had no choice but to go back to a backup once because of this.

Hmmm:

  /* If running the game, fallback to the default hard.dat, but if
     running the editor, recreate it in all cases. */
  if (f == NULL && !dinkedit)
    f = paths_fallbackfile_fopen("hard.dat", "rb");

  if (f == NULL)
    {
      //make new data file
      memset(&hmap, 0, sizeof(struct hardness));
      save_hard();
      return;
    }

(that comes back from 1.07, let's have a nostalgia moment reading the old code

    if (!dinkedit)
    {
        if (!exist(crap)) sprintf(crap, "..\\dink\\hard.dat");
    }

    fp = fopen(crap, "rb");
    if (!fp)
    {
        //fclose(fp);
        fp = fopen(crap, "wb");
        //make new data file
        ZeroMemory(&hmap, sizeof(struct hardness));     
        fwrite(&hmap,sizeof(struct hardness),1,fp);
        fclose(fp);
    }

)

I suppose your problem happened when WDE2 read/wrote hard.dat just when the Dink was trying to read it -- under windows, where exclusive file opening doesn't seem to be so great at avoiding file corruption.

How about we ditch this "recreate a completely empty hard.dat on error" from the engine?
That doesn't seem to bring any value in the game, it only needs to be done in the editor.

Hey Beuc, tried the updated beta. As scratcher mentioned, it goes way faster than usual with this version! I also messed around and couldn't find any bugs or the like.

I had the same problem as cocomonkey with TDA recently.... lost all hard tile info, but instead of rolling back to older version I just did it all again, because the older version I had was too old lol.

Thanks for all the testing!
[DFArc 3.12 uploaded]

About the hard.dat thing, I'll make sure FreeDink doesn't write to it during play, so that should fix any issue when running the game and the editor at the same time

I've never experienced the hardness issue others have. Sometimes I'll get a message "Cannot open hard.dat" but not once has that actually affected anything. Just for clarification sake this has nothing to do with DFArc3.

So, could you all test this version:

No