Mid's for I19 CRITICAL UPDATE


Ael Rhiana

 

Posted

OK, here's an update to the original post, Diellan and I found a solution that should get rid of the below listing. Mid's I19 WILL support old (here after know as Legacy builds)

Quote:
Hey all, just wanted to let everyone know we are working on I19 update and should have it ready for the actual I19 hitting live!

In preperation for I19 Mid's I wanted to post a critical update. Every build you currently have on Mid's WILL cause an error in the new version. I know that sounds bad, but it's not.

In order to prevent this I am posting this in advance of I19 Mid's both Titan Network (first) and on then here. Here's what you need to do to make I19 NOT crash on your current builds.

1. REMOVE FITNESS POOL Powers from all your builds. This is the direct reason for all of the errors!
2. ADD all of the slots (minus the initial 1) to Rest, Sprint, and Brawl. This allows you to "save" slots for the Inherent Fitness powers. (If you have 3 slotted Health and Stamina now, that's 5 slots in Rest)
3. DON'T save builds using the "bootleg" patch for I19 that's floating around. I haven't tested that illegal patch and so I can't say if it will work or not with the new version.
4. MAKE all your builds I19 builds. As long as you are going to the efforts of removing the Fitness Pool, it only makes sense to go ahead and plan for it.
5. NUMBERS for the missing Health and Stamina are as follows (just a few numbers)
Health Base value + 40% Regen
Health w/ 3 level 50 IOs +79.63% Regen
Health w/ Miracle Heal, Miracle +Recovery (40s), and Numina +Regen/Recovery (50) +55.64% Regen, plus 20% regen/17.5% Recovery
Stamina Base value +25% Recovery
Stamina w/ 3 level 50 IOs +49.77% Recovery
6. LABEL your builds for I19 etc so you know which are compatable and which aren't.

Hopefully this makes your transition to the next version a bit more easy on you.

Jack Wolfe, busiest guy in I19


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Posted

Heya

Thanks for the heads up

Luckily I have been doing this since inherent Fitness was announced - with 60-70 builds to work on I thought I better get in early.

Like you suggest I have just skipped the Fitness pool and any slots I would have spent in it are sitting in Brawl (I think) ready to move over when you brilliant guys get the I19 up and running.

I have also been advising my SG friends to do the same

Thanks again for the heads up and thanks for everyone at the Titan Network for their brilliant work!!


Member of GGRRR, a SG on Defiant - check out our website - GGRRR
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Posted

thanks for the update


 

Posted

Nice heads up. i was planning to just keep 50+ old builds around for reference when making new post fitness builds, but maybe i'll just delete the directory and start over. Possibly i could find an older version of Mids' and install it elsewhere for reference access.

Of course it's my habit of generally redoing builds from scratch and just glancing at the old builds for reference that's causing the issue in the first place.


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Posted

*Hides in mids* *Wonders how long this will take with about 25 builds*


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Posted

Ick.

I have 40-50 different builds saved for various characters. I wasn't planning to respec all of them right away.



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Posted

First, let me thank you for your efforts. A lot.

Second, is there really no better way to handle this? I have tons of builds that I keep for every character for reference purposes. It doesn't make any sense to do what you're saying to those builds. This approach means that there's no way I can use the new version of Mid's to open those prior builds. I'll have to keep an old copy, and any time I happen to double click on one of those old builds, it'll load in the new Mids and fail. While I truly appreciate your efforts, that's a pretty sucky situation to face as a heavy user of the program.

It's hard to knock software that does as much as Mid's builder does when it's free, but I really wish you could do something other than offer us this work-around. I'm afraid it's not that helpful.


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Posted

I plan to keep pre-I19 Mids and its builds in a separate directory from the I19 Mids.

When I respec, I just don't move things around in a build -- that gets sloppy... I need to make sure it's built right from the start. So, when I respec, I'll be opening up Old Mids and New Mids side by side and using the old as a reference as I rebuild in the new.

There. No need to convert.


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Posted

Why not add some error handling logic that addresses this particular error?

You're probably rushed what with the new staff, but it would be worth it.


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Posted

Thank you very much for the heads up (And, once again, for working on Mid's!!)!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie Man View Post
I plan to keep pre-I19 Mids and its builds in a separate directory from the I19 Mids.

When I respec, I just don't move things around in a build -- that gets sloppy... I need to make sure it's built right from the start. So, when I respec, I'll be opening up Old Mids and New Mids side by side and using the old as a reference as I rebuild in the new.

There. No need to convert.
Yeah, this is exactly what I was thinking I'd do.
I'll probably port over a few, to get me started, but everything will be in two different folders/directories.

Not much of a problem really.
Maybe, down the road, an updated Mid's will be able to handle old/pre-I19 builds with Fitness Pool.


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Posted

why can't it just be made to be selected upon character creation? don't get me wrong, i appriciate you guys working on mids, but as another person who has over 50 builds already saved it would take a while for me to change all of them.

again, thank you for working on mids.


 

Posted

Hah! I've been doing this since the Fitness pool becoming an inherant was announced!


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight View Post
Thank you very much for the heads up (And, once again, for working on Mid's!!)!



Yeah, this is exactly what I was thinking I'd do.
I'll probably port over a few, to get me started, but everything will be in two different folders/directories.

Not much of a problem really.
Maybe, down the road, an updated Mid's will be able to handle old/pre-I19 builds with Fitness Pool.
On the other hand, i may just do all my builds over from scratch when i respec out Fitness anyway, so a clean start isn't so bad. The main reason i keep old builds saved is that there's occasionally a bit of slotting i liked in the old build and i can go back and look at it. That and occasionally i look at a character's slotting and go, "What the hell was i thinking?!" Then i go look it up in Mids'... "Oh, right. Still not what i would do now."

Edit: Just for the record, i love Mids' for designing builds and really appreciate everyone's work in keeping it current.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Terminal Velocity View Post
*Hides in mids* *Wonders how long this will take with about 25 builds*
I wonder how long it will take for the 145 builds I have...


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by UberGuy View Post
First, let me thank you for your efforts. A lot.

Second, is there really no better way to handle this? I have tons of builds that I keep for every character for reference purposes. It doesn't make any sense to do what you're saying to those builds. This approach means that there's no way I can use the new version of Mid's to open those prior builds. I'll have to keep an old copy, and any time I happen to double click on one of those old builds, it'll load in the new Mids and fail. While I truly appreciate your efforts, that's a pretty sucky situation to face as a heavy user of the program.

It's hard to knock software that does as much as Mid's builder does when it's free, but I really wish you could do something other than offer us this work-around. I'm afraid it's not that helpful.
First off this post wasn't done lightly I've get 2 accounts and tons of builds.

Second, I've been working this issue for over a month. It's not a program error, it's a data error.

Think of it this way. Every saved build you have is a file version of the data chunk that you post for others to see and share builds. The level you take EACH of your powers, the level you place slots in them, and the enhancements you put into those slot or even empty slots all go into makeup that data chunk file. When you attempt to load data that is in error (I.E. Fitness Pool vs. Inherent Fitness) you get an error that corrupts the database as you are force the PROGRAM to read data that doesn't match the database.

The easiest thing to do to all your builds to make them viable is make a few clicks per build (removing Swift, Hurdle, Health and or Stamina and their slots) and save. This is ALL that is required to make the builds valid to the upcoming database.

Cheers


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Han Solo: [laughs] Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good BLASTER at your side, kid.

 

Posted

I really believe we can take care of this in a less painful way. I'll probably look into it tomorrow. (If you can fix it manually, you can fix it with code.)


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Energy_Aura View Post
The easiest thing to do to all your builds to make them viable is make a few clicks per build (removing Swift, Hurdle, Health and or Stamina and their slots) and save. This is ALL that is required to make the builds valid to the upcoming database.
I really think you're underestimating the effort this requires make sure a bunch of pre-I19 builds remain usable. In comparison, keeping an old install of the program looks far more viable. Based on a quick check of what it does while loading with Sysinternals Process Monitor, it looks like the program doesn't use the registry for settings, so at least the settings for the new install won't cross-talk with the old program. (I was worried, for example, that setting the new one to auto update would prompt me whenever I would load the old one, but it doesn't seem it would.)

And man, the people who don't find this on the forum would be in for a nasty surprise.

I'm not saying it's easy, but seems like you could (technically at least) identify legacy builds with the original Fitness pool and treat it differently than a build with the new inherent version. If you're saying you could do that but it's a PITA, I can't really argue with that - it just won't make me happy.

Here's hoping that DePr0grammer can work something out.

Just to mitigate my griping, I don't forget that you guys are heroes for getting the program to do anything new. Much like how people give the game devs crap, we beg for new and/or more user friendly stuff with Mid's because we dig using it so much.


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Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
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Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

 

Posted

While I understand that making a post I19 version work with both old and new data files may be to difficult it seems to me that your proposed workaround is really bad - because it results in a character build file that is absolutely no good. It won't reflect what the character currently looks like, so using it to plan future levels won't do you any good, and it won't reflect what the character would look like after dropping the fitness pool via a respec. The primary reason I would have for opening up a pre-i19 build would be for characters that picked up the fitness pool before i19, are still leveling and don't want to respec right away. Hacking my build file and then using a version of mids that DOESN'T accurately reflect my characters build is uselss to me in this case.

It seems to me that a far better workaround would be to recommend keeping both an old version of mids and a new one installed and walking folks through setting up different save file paths for each copy - that way people can move their old, pre-i19 builds to a different directory or set up the new version of mids to use a fresh directory, then use either version of mids depending on whether they wanted to edit a pre- or post- i19 build. If you put up an set of instructions on how to do this on the mids web page AND kept a copy of the old version available you would solve a lot of problems ahead of time. This workaround has the advantage of NOT screwing over someone who updated MIDS without realizing that their old data files would be unreadable - they could just download the old version and install that along with the new version.

Whatever you do you should definitely add a warning to the upgrade prompt if possible - letting folks automatically update to a new version without first warning them that their old data files will be unreadable is a truly bad idea.


Globals: @Midnight Mystique/@Magik13

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by DePr0grammer View Post
I really believe we can take care of this in a less painful way. I'll probably look into it tomorrow. (If you can fix it manually, you can fix it with code.)
I don't mean to undercut Energy_Aura's announcement, but DeProgrammer and I did some investigating and we believe that we can effectively modify the Mids software for Issue 19 to support Inherent Fitness without invalidating legacy build exports. We hope to be able to say with certainty one way or the other within the next day or two.

We'll keep you posted on the situation, and I apologize for the confusion.



.


 

Posted

Well, let me put it straight:

I18 Mids builds will load perfectly fine in I19 Mids. It'll take a bit of work between Energy Aura, DeProgrammer, and myself, but even if it means that I19 Mids will be late, that's what'll happen. High priority for me.

Mids builds saved with the unofficial patch have no guarantees. I'll look into it, but it might not work.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Diellan_ View Post
Well, let me put it straight:

I18 Mids builds will load perfectly fine in I19 Mids. It'll take a bit of work between Energy Aura, DeProgrammer, and myself, but even if it means that I19 Mids will be late, that's what'll happen. High priority for me.

Mids builds saved with the unofficial patch have no guarantees. I'll look into it, but it might not work.
Okay, i'm now even more impressed with the commitment of a group who put this sort of work into a freely distributed player resource for a game. That's dedication.


Dr. Todt's theme.
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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Santorican View Post
I wonder how long it will take for the 145 builds I have...
Probably not a great deal longer, comparatively, than it'll take me to convert the 137 odd builds I've got.

From the sounds of it though, it won't be needed. If I were to guess without knowing their database setup.. they may just be going to put Inherent Fitness in as a seperate database entry and detect/save both of them as completely different power pools/sets.
That solution adds to the size of the program and technically can be viewed as clutter but it provides optimal backwards compatability at an admittedly small cost in terms of file sizes.
Having done programming in several languages I don't envy them the task though...


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Terminal Velocity View Post
*Hides in mids* *Wonders how long this will take with about 25 builds*
I got 135 to rework.

*Headdesk* I'm gonna be at this a while, ain't I?

I'm starting to dread the work it's gonna take to use Issue19.

I got a question, do I have to save the new build with Fitness completely deleted, including the list of it on the side, replacing it with, say Leadership or some other placeholder, even if we're not taking anything in that pool?


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Posted

Thanks for the heads up, but I think I'll just write down my 2 important ones on paper (out of 160 something) and just let the rest fade into oblivion. I don't have the patience to go mod that many files.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by StarKitten View Post
Thanks for the heads up, but I think I'll just write down my 2 important ones on paper (out of 160 something) and just let the rest fade into oblivion. I don't have the patience to go mod that many files.
Little known fact: if you open a build file in a text editor, you'll see that it's actually in a nice human readable format with the build chunk at the bottom. EVEN IF everything goes completely horribly wrong and you can't import from the data chunk, you should still be able to import by copying that bit and doing the standard "import from forum post" function (most people don't realize that the import function can parse the human readable part of a Mids build without the data chunk, though it loses some data).


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