Solved Improved Build 14 Beta 3 Installation Process

[Pieter Boelen]

It's just a lot of different files, so that means writing a lot of additional delete lines for it.
I wonder if I can export folder contents to a text file somehow. That'd speed things up.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It's just a lot of different files, so that means writing a lot of additional delete lines for it.
I wonder if I can export folder contents to a text file somehow. That'd speed things up.

HA! Got it! Just generate an installation script with all those COL files and search-and-replace to change it into a Delete script instead.
That'll save some disc space on the users' hard drives.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Bugger.

Most likely it is because I'm jumping back and forth between two different games, but I just got around to trying your newest installer on the working beta 3 game and it is now completely gone. Poof!

So...what is the correct order to install this thing?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

What game version did you install on top of? It should work if you have the installer EXE + update archive on top of Beta 3 WIP 18 or the prior complete archive.
If you put all THREE files in the same folder, it should work on top of literally any modpack version combination.

"Gone" in what way? Anything in the log messages? Or do you mean the entire game folder was deleted?
The only reason the installer should do that is if there was no ENGINE.exe in that folder.
But the game will give you an error message when that happens first.

Could you tell me exactly what you did? If the installer DOES do weird things, I'd like to know how so I can prevent it.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

What I did: Installed stock POTC, then installed your Beta 3 installer onto it and played for a bit. Then today I got the 2 new installers, put them in the same folder, and clicked on the exe and pointed it at the Beta 3 install. It complained about no engine.exe and then quit. I went looking for the install to find the engine.exe that was there yesterday but the whole folder was gone. You DID say to break it. Is that broke enough?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So you're saying there WAS an ENGINE.exe in the folder that you pointed it to, but the installer claimed there wasn't?
Uh? I tested that. The check works.

Did you say you put the installer files IN the main game folder? I didn't try that; perhaps that could have done weird things?
Perhaps I shouldn't make the installer delete the entire installation folder if ENGINE.exe is not present?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

No. I put the installers in a folder on a different hard drive than the POTC folder, and yes there was an engine.exe in it because I played the game.

Ohhh. I renamed the engine.exe to beta3.exe. I always do that to keep from confusing shortcuts. Every install has an exe with a different name, then I make the desktop shortcut from that.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Ohhh. I renamed the engine.exe to beta3.exe. I always do that to keep from confusing shortcuts. Every install has an exe with a different name, then I make the desktop shortcut from that.

AH! THAT won't be helping. You could just rename the shortcut to the version name instead of the actual EXE.
But I could also put the "stock game installed" check on the presence of another file. Maybe it'd be better to use engine.ini?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I keep forgetting which shortcut goes to what install. That's why I name them both the same.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Anyway, I have replaced the installer file so that it checks engine.ini instead of engine.exe and also doesn't remove the installation directory anymore.
So that should put a permanent end to that particular weirdness.

Anyone got any other comments on the new process? Any weirdness with it? Anything unclear?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Methinks I'll delete all current Beta 3 stuff and start over. The first try did not end well.

So I deleted all the Beta 3 stuff and got ready for a clean start. Went to the top of the 1st post and clicked on the link for a new download and got "error".
I'm dead in the water.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Ok, found the BETA3 installers and downloaded them. Tried it first in an old install. All went well until I got into the game. Bad graphics.

Deleted that install and started over clean.

New stock POTC install and then the BETA3 installer on top of that. All went well until I finally got into the game and............bad graphics.

I will only be playing WIP 18 until the graphics glitch is fixed.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

What if you take the engine.ini of your working install and put it in the Beta 3 one?

Have you tried installing the http://piratesahoy.net/build/wip/b14_beta3_update.7z file on top of WIP 18 yet?
That should give you pretty much the same game installation as Beta 3 Full + Update.
I strongly suspect that will work fine for you, because no code was changed that could possibly have caused this.

 

[ANSEL]

Is ENB included in the new installer. If included,is it enabled or not? Gunsmoke turns green.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

ENB is included, but only if you select it during the installation process.
Was the green gun smoke not related to the screen_bpp ? Check that line in engine.ini .

 

[ANSEL]

Thank you.This is the line=
screen_bpp = D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8 : D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8 = 32-bit, D3DFMT_R5G6B5 = 16-bit
Can i remove ENB,I think i install it by mistake.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

There should be a .bat file in your main game folder that will get rid of it.

screen_bpp = D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8 : D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8 = 32-bit, D3DFMT_R5G6B5 = 16-bit

And I just noticed that line is DEAD-WRONG! Should be:

screen_bpp = D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8   ; D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8 = 32-bit, D3DFMT_R5G6B5 = 16-bit

Looks almost the same, but has a ; instead of a : which might make some difference here or there.
Actually, I'm surprised the game works like that at all. But it might be the reason for Hylie's graphical problems.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Ok I changed the : to ; and it made no difference, so I copied another engine.ini from a WIP 17 install into the BETA3 install and the graphics are back to normal. Here are copies of the 2 ini's.

I also ran them through Winmerge and changed tips from 77 to 0 and that made no difference. This is baffling.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So you're saying that "engine.ini" in that archive DOES work properly, but "engine beta3.ini" does not?
I'll change a few more things for the next update that might "confuse" the game code. We'll see what happens.

Could you possibly move the Beta 3 lines into your working install line-by-line?
I'd quite want to know where this comes from. But since I don't have the problem, I can't do this myself.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

That shouldn't take too long.