OK, there are some definite display bugs, most notably the power selection pane is behind the background (thus you can't see the powers, but can mouse over them).
j
See if you can contact the Mids designers and not only get their blessing, but see if they will distribute it as well.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
OMG!!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! I used to be able to use Mids in Crossover but it broke about a year ago when I updated. It had similar graphics glitches so I'm used to it. Did I mention: Thank you!
slow, choppy, doesnt show the power names... BUT IT WORKS!!
Thanks a lot!!
@Prandi - Freedom
Arcs:
# 143959 - Freedom Phalanx, Arachnos Forces and the Deadly Virus.
I was all set today to log in and A offer $100 to anyone who'd make a Mac Mid's.. Or even start a collection to have a contest to get one built...
Because I am the type that has a build before I roll the char, so thank you, you've returned by ability to play and enjoy myself again...
And your amazing timing has saved me $100 too!!!
Wassabi Grav/Kin 50 (before badges/accolades were in game) Pinnacle
Miss Command Bots/Traps 50 Justice
*others left off due to space issues
Let me chime in and offer my heartfelt thanks for this!
Mids was a favorite pastime for me before I went over to Mac last year, and it's great to have it back.
Statesmonkey Sez: Lighten up! It's a game, for Lincoln's sake!
Also: Six years of casual play begins to look an awful lot like one year of hardcore play.
Thanks. Now I can find out what this program is about. Is it up-to-date? It shows Fitness as a Power Pool selection, but I have that as an Inherent power.
It still has Fitness as a Power Pool selection since some characters may still have it on their characters that way.
I know I still have a few characters that I haven't felt inclined to respec just to opt in to Inherent Fitness.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Quote:
Oh, ok. I just didn't know you could do that. I like your signature by the way.|
Originally Posted by Texas Justice
It still has Fitness as a Power Pool selection since some characters may still have it on their characters that way.
I know I still have a few characters that I haven't felt inclined to respec just to opt in to Inherent Fitness. |
On a different note. It now wants me to install an update, which is an .exe
I don't think that's going to work, does U Dark need to update the wrapper each time that Mid's updates? Or is there some trick you can use?
You'd have to ask a Mac person for that information. It's possible that U Dark would need to update the wrapper, but I know too little about Mac to be able to accurately answer that.
Since they just put out the update for I22, that's why it wants to update. It sees that there is a newer version available.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
So that means I can remove Mac Mids from my To Do list, right? 
Global @Diellan - 5M2M
Mids' Hero/Villain Designer Lead
Virtue Server
Redside: Lorenzo Mondavi
Blueside: Alex Rabinovich
Got a Mids suggestion? Want to report a Mids bug?
Quote:
Almost. There are a few things this does not solve:|
Originally Posted by Diellan_
So that means I can remove Mac Mids from my To Do list, right?
|
1 Updating doesn't work as it asks you to download an .exe. Now U_Dark or someone else needs to install Mids on a Windows machine, run the updater and then build a new Mac package. Either you making a new Mac version when Mids updates or making the updating run from inside Mids would be a nicer solution. Even just distributing the updated files in a zip instead of some installer executable might be sufficient.
2 This still has some graphics glitches. Some parts of the interface always show up as black. Making them impossible to see. I will post a screenshot. If you could change those parts to work like the parts that don't have these issues it would make things a lot easier. As it mostly looks ok, it would probably be some minor tweqking on your end and then a Mac user to test it. I'm willing to volunteer. See the screenshot and description I'll post later for details I'm not behind my computer right now.
3 There are some minor things, like if it could be downloaded and linked from the same places as the Windows version.
Below is a screenshot of what Mid's looks like on my Mac.
As you can see, the biggest problem with the graphics is that the powers don't show up. the labels like Name, Power, Origin and Primary Powerset do show up.
I can still use it, because if you hover over the powers, the popup will show what it is. It's the same if you select Hero instead of Villain.
Maybe you need to force a redraw after applying colours or something like that. I don't how you've coded it and It's been 8 years since I did something with .Net so I can't be of more help. It would be great if you could fix this problem and give a way to update Mid's without having to run an .exe.
Quote:
1. I don't know anything about how the wineskin wrapper works, but most of the time, I'm updating all of the dll files as well as the Mids executable itself (because the Devs keep coming up with entirely new mechanics), which is why I need to do a full install instead of an internal update.|
Originally Posted by RogerWilco
Almost. There are a few things this does not solve:
1 Updating doesn't work as it asks you to download an .exe. Now U_Dark or someone else needs to install Mids on a Windows machine, run the updater and then build a new Mac package. Either you making a new Mac version when Mids updates or making the updating run from inside Mids would be a nicer solution. Even just distributing the updated files in a zip instead of some installer executable might be sufficient. 2 This still has some graphics glitches. Some parts of the interface always show up as black. Making them impossible to see. I will post a screenshot. If you could change those parts to work like the parts that don't have these issues it would make things a lot easier. As it mostly looks ok, it would probably be some minor tweqking on your end and then a Mac user to test it. I'm willing to volunteer. See the screenshot and escription I'll post later for details I'm not behind my computer right now. 3 There are some minor things, like if it could be downloaded and linked from the same places as the Windows version. |
2. See below.
3. That could be arranged.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by RogerWilco
Below is a screenshot of what Mid's looks like on my Mac.
As you can see, the biggest problem with the graphics is that the powers don't show up. the labels like Name, Power, Origin and Primary Powerset do show up. I can still use it, because if you hover over the powers, the popup will show what it is. It's the same if you select Hero instead of Villain. Maybe you need to force a redraw after applying colours or something like that. I don't how you've coded it and It's been 8 years since I did something with .Net so I can't be of more help. It would be great if you could fix this problem and give a way to update Mid's without having to run an .exe. |
Global @Diellan - 5M2M
Mids' Hero/Villain Designer Lead
Virtue Server
Redside: Lorenzo Mondavi
Blueside: Alex Rabinovich
Got a Mids suggestion? Want to report a Mids bug?
If Mids is able to download and launch the updater by itself, it should be able to run completely within the wineskin container. I haven't tested this though, so I'm not completely sure.
If you're going to do a major rewrite, try to get rid of .NET entirely if you can. I know MS claims it helps with portability, but it's actually the complete opposite - most of the time, C-style code without .NET can be ported to other platforms somewhat easily, but with .NET porting is basically a rewrite anyhow (so it may as well be from the start).
And btw, I do know exactly how difficult that would be, I'm an iOS developer. 
It's a time investment for sure, but you may get that back in the form of decreased maintenance time later on. I do applaud you and all the previous Mids developers though because I myself lack the math skills to reverse-engineer a game like CoH, its thousands of enhancements and combinations of enhancements, toggles, and buffs, and design a completely accurate planner.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
Quote:
If you'd provide a .zip with the DLLs and the Mids executable, we could manually copy the new version into 'drive_c/Program Files/Titan Network/Mids Hero Designer' inside the Mac wrapper package. If that's what the updater does, then it would work to update the Mac wrapper this way.|
Originally Posted by Diellan_
1. I don't know anything about how the wineskin wrapper works, but most of the time, I'm updating all of the dll files as well as the Mids executable itself (because the Devs keep coming up with entirely new mechanics), which is why I need to do a full install instead of an internal update.
|
The Mac wrapper is basically an install of Mids + the Wine windows emulator + the settings to run Mids together in a bundle that makes Mac think it's an application. Inside it is a full directory structure that makes Mids think it's running on Windows.
Quote:
|
2. See below. 3. That could be arranged. 2. I didn't actually write that part of Mids at all - I think it's all legacy code from Mids himself (as opposed to me or St0n3y, the other guy who worked on Mids before me). I've been wanting to redo the graphics code, but it's a massive undertaking (and would probably require me to change from .Net 2.0 to a higher version if I want it to be efficient and pretty). |
It's likely a minor fix to make it work, but if you don't have a Mac to test on it's kind of hard to figure out what would fix it.
Would it be possible to make the code of Mid's available to me? I have a friend who works with VS.Net (what version would be needed?) and has a Mac. We might be able to figure out what the problem is, if you'd be comfortable with that? It's probably doing something that the Wine emulator isn't supporting completely, but given that essentially they're colored text labels with a pop-up on hover, it should be possible to make it work.
If we could find a way to do the updates by distributing a zip, and solve the graphics glitch, then you'd basically have a fully functional Mid's on the Mac.
Quote:
I think we can solve this without a rewrite of Mid's. Having to emulate .Net in the Wineskin wrapper might not be ideal, but basically it's what the CoX Mac client does as well.|
Originally Posted by CuppaManga
If Mids is able to download and launch the updater by itself, it should be able to run completely within the wineskin container. I haven't tested this though, so I'm not completely sure.
If you're going to do a major rewrite, try to get rid of .NET entirely if you can. I know MS claims it helps with portability, but it's actually the complete opposite - most of the time, C-style code without .NET can be ported to other platforms somewhat easily, but with .NET porting is basically a rewrite anyhow (so it may as well be from the start). And btw, I do know exactly how difficult that would be, I'm an iOS developer. It's a time investment for sure, but you may get that back in the form of decreased maintenance time later on. I do applaud you and all the previous Mids developers though because I myself lack the math skills to reverse-engineer a game like CoH and design a completely accurate planner. |
I don't know enough about Wine right now to make the wrapper understand it needs to run the installer. I might be able to figure that out given time though. The problem is that the update function now redirects to a HTML download and the OSX doesn't know what to do with MXDsetup1-954.exe. It might be possible to get it to run, by copying it into the .app and changing the wine settings. It depends on what the installer itself uses. If the installer in the end just replaces some files, and doesn't interact with the Registry or other Windows internals, then just having a zip with the files and a few lines of instruction on where to put them would work. Diellan_ could probably even do that on a Windows machine and then zip the result as the updated Mac version.
Diellan_ seems to be interested in providing a Mac version as long as the effort on his side is minimal. I'm trying to figure out if we do that based on the work U Dark has done. U Dark of course could also repeat whatever he did to make a new version. I haven't seen U Dark update things yet though and if it would be possible for Diellan_ to provide a Mac version directly, or just the updates, it would make things simpler and easy to keep the Mac version up-to-date with the Windows version.
I will play with the wine settings in the .app to see if it's possible to have it run the update installer as well.
I have managed to run the updater by doing the following:
1) Run the update function in Mid's Hero Designer and download the MXDSetup1-954.exe file
1) Go to MidsHeroDesigner.app
2) Right-click on it and select "Show Package Contents"
3) Open a second Finder window, go to wherever you've downloaded MXDSetup1-954.exe and drag it from there to drive_c/Program Files/Titan Network
4) Open Contents/Info.plist in the Property List Editor
5) Change the "Program Name and Path" from
/Program Files/Titan Network/Mids Hero Designer/Hero Designer.exe
to
/Program Files/Titan Network/MXDSetup1-954.exe
6) Save and close everything
7) Run MidsHeroDesigner.app, instead of Mid's it will now run the installer.
8) Click Next until it's Finished.
9) Right-click on MidsHeroDesigner.app and do "Show Package Contents" again.
4) Open Contents/Info.plist in the Property List Editor
5) Change the "Program Name and Path" from
/Program Files/Titan Network/MXDSetup1-954.exe
back to
/Program Files/Titan Network/Mids Hero Designer/Hero Designer.exe
This got me the new version of Mid's.
Apparently the update installer doesn't do anything fancy. This was easier than I thought.
I don't have a place to upload the new version to or I could zip it and provide it.
Quote:
Well, there are quite a few free services available. From a review of the 5 Best Free File Hosting Services on the SmashingApps website:|
Originally Posted by RogerWilco
I don't have a place to upload the new version to or I could zip it and provide it. |
File Savr - 10Gb upload limit - largest avaialble
File Dropper - 5 Gb upload limit
FileFactory - 300 Mb upload limit with unlimited downloads (no info on download limits on other sites)
FileDen - no upload or download limits listed
FileQube - 150Mb upload limit
Hope that helps.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Quote:
Oh I'm not expecting *that* much, just saying if they're going to do a rewrite anyhow they may as well ditch .net and make porting easier later on. More specifically, re-writing it from scratch in .net again would be kind of a waste. If they decide not to rewrite it, that's another matter. Nobody's really paying them for it, so whatever they choose to do with their time is up to them.
|
Originally Posted by RogerWilco
Diellan_ seems to be interested in providing a Mac version as long as the effort on his side is minimal. I'm trying to figure out if we do that based on the work U Dark has done. U Dark of course could also repeat whatever he did to make a new version. I haven't seen U Dark update things yet though and if it would be possible for Diellan_ to provide a Mac version directly, or just the updates, it would make things simpler and easy to keep the Mac version up-to-date with the Windows version.
|
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
A couple things:
1) I really wish the Mids controls were simple "here's a control with a pop-up on hover", etc. But what actually happens is that the entire screen is a single bitmap image, stitched together from controls and dynamically generated bitmaps, and it simply maps regions of the screen to figure what it is you're actually wanting to interact with. It's very klunky and fragile, which is why we periodically have really weird UI bugs. It also means that no amount of minor tweaking will allow it to be rebuilt or adapted to another system.
2) Yeah, the installer mostly just zips up the entire program as is. It has a registry key or two, plus it associates the save file extension, but that's it.
3) Mac support for Mids is something I've been wanting to do for a long time, but time is the big issue. When it comes to porting this to any other system, the biggest hurdle I face is that Mids was written entirely in VisualBasic.Net. I've been slowly but surely converting it to C#, of which I'm about 2/3rds of the way through, not counting the various controls and forms. Once it's in C#, I should be to rapidly convert the project to Mono, which is a cross-platform adaptation of .Net.
4) In terms of the code, it's 2/3rds C# and 1/3rd VB.Net (specifically, the MidsBase.dll and MidsControls.dll are new libraries written in C#, while the main exe code is in VB.Net). The project is Visual Studio 2010. The source code, alas, is not freely available, as part of the deal we made with Mids was that it would remain closed source.
Global @Diellan - 5M2M
Mids' Hero/Villain Designer Lead
Virtue Server
Redside: Lorenzo Mondavi
Blueside: Alex Rabinovich
Got a Mids suggestion? Want to report a Mids bug?
Good luck with the project. I hope you can manage to overcome Mono's limitations when working with other platforms (or so I heard).
If and when you decide on a native Mac version, PM me and I'll try to help. I work with iOS mostly, which is a little bit different from Mac, but the principles are similar enough that I might be able to help out a little.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
Quote:
Not to be a complete dumb-***, but I don't understand #4
|
Originally Posted by RogerWilco
I have managed to run the updater by doing the following:
1) Run the update function in Mid's Hero Designer and download the MXDSetup1-954.exe file 1) Go to MidsHeroDesigner.app 2) Right-click on it and select "Show Package Contents" 3) Open a second Finder window, go to wherever you've downloaded MXDSetup1-954.exe and drag it from there to drive_c/Program Files/Titan Network 4) Open Contents/Info.plist in the Property List Editor 5) Change the "Program Name and Path" from /Program Files/Titan Network/Mids Hero Designer/Hero Designer.exe to /Program Files/Titan Network/MXDSetup1-954.exe 6) Save and close everything 7) Run MidsHeroDesigner.app, instead of Mid's it will now run the installer. 8) Click Next until it's Finished. 9) Right-click on MidsHeroDesigner.app and do "Show Package Contents" again. 4) Open Contents/Info.plist in the Property List Editor 5) Change the "Program Name and Path" from /Program Files/Titan Network/MXDSetup1-954.exe back to /Program Files/Titan Network/Mids Hero Designer/Hero Designer.exe This got me the new version of Mid's. |
Quote:
Right-click: Open With -> Property List Editor.|
Originally Posted by Davpa_CoX
Not to be a complete dumb-***, but I don't understand #4
|
Usually this will be the default, and just double clicking on it will also do the trick, but people do weird things to their machines, so I explicitly mention which program should be used to edit it with the instructions I've provided.
Built it today. Runs and loads a forum post build, but not tested beyond that. Because it is wine, it is big (~200M zipped and ~500M as an .app). Most of the size is because of dotnet 2.0 used in Mids', so that can't be helped.
http://wortdrive.com/files/MidsHeroDesigner.zip
Plug for my Freedom Based SG: http://acmeheroes.nstars.org