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ErikH2000
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We've got a problem with the Mac installation DMGs. Both the demo and full version DMGs install to the same directory. The full version DMG doesn't overwrite data files from the demo installation. After somebody installs the full version on top of the demo, they still see the demo. We've been solving this problem by having Mac people run a command from their terminal to delete the game directory with "rm -rf ~/.caravel/drod-2_0" and then reinstall the full version. Obviously, this is less than ideal because a bunch of folks have a fair bit of confusion to work through. Also, people are losing their demo progress and have to replay the first 3 levels.

Weston, the Mac maintainer, seems to be on vacation or laying at the bottom of a ravine of something. Not that I'm blaming him for being unavailable, but I'd really like to get this fixed soon to keep people happy.

So out of the Mac people here with some technical expertise, what do you think of the solution below?

1. Install the demo DMG on a clean machine.
2. Use those files to create a new DMG for the demo, but the new DMG will install to a different directory--"~/.caravel/drod-2_0-demo".

I'm not a Mac guy, so I could be missing something obvious. What do you think? Would that solve my problem?

-Erik

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01-10-2006 at 08:29 PM
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jcobleigh
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icon Re: Mac installation problem. (+1)  
I am not a Mac developer, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

As far as I know, your solution would solve part of the problem, in that people would not need to delete ~/.caravel/drod-2_0 if they install full DROD after installing demo DROD.

I don't think this will solve the problem of people losing their demo progress. What would be ideal is if full DROD noticed the demo directory, offered to import any players that it found, and then offered to delete ~/.caravel/drod-2_0-demo (to save disk space).
01-10-2006 at 08:46 PM
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ErikH2000
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jcobleigh wrote:
As far as I know, your solution would solve part of the problem, in that people would not need to delete ~/.caravel/drod-2_0 if they install full DROD after installing demo DROD.
Cool.
I don't think this will solve the problem of people losing their demo progress. What would be ideal is if full DROD noticed the demo directory, offered to import any players that it found, and then offered to delete ~/.caravel/drod-2_0-demo (to save disk space).
What I'm thinking is that if players have both installations available, anyone who is worried about losing demo progress can either do the export/import or ask me by e-mail for help with it. I agree it's not ideal, but I'm looking for a quick solution here.

-Erik

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01-10-2006 at 09:07 PM
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jcobleigh
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ErikH2000 wrote:
What I'm thinking is that if players have both installations available, anyone who is worried about losing demo progress can either do the export/import or ask me by e-mail for help with it. I agree it's not ideal, but I'm looking for a quick solution here.

Unfortunately, the typical Mac installation procedure is open the DMG file and drag the program to the Applications folder. Both demo DROD and full DROD share the same name, so both cannot coexist in a folder. If demo DROD were called "DROD Demo.app" and full DROD were called "DROD.app", this would allow both versions to coexist in the same directory.
01-10-2006 at 09:15 PM
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ErikH2000
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jcobleigh wrote:
Unfortunately, the typical Mac installation procedure is open the DMG file and drag the program to the Applications folder. Both demo DROD and full DROD share the same name, so both cannot coexist in a folder. If demo DROD were called "DROD Demo.app" and full DROD were called "DROD.app", this would allow both versions to coexist in the same directory.
But they would be in different directories. So as I'm proposing, the full version executable would go here (along with completely separate and redundant set of installation files):

~/.caravel/drod-2_0/DROD.app

..and the demo version executable would go here...

~/.caravel/drod-2_0-demo/DROD.app

Would that not work for importing/exporting between the two?

-Erik

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01-10-2006 at 09:53 PM
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jcobleigh
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ErikH2000 wrote:
But they would be in different directories. So as I'm proposing, the full version executable would go here (along with completely separate and redundant set of installation files):

~/.caravel/drod-2_0/DROD.app

..and the demo version executable would go here...

~/.caravel/drod-2_0-demo/DROD.app

On my machine, ~/.caravel/drod-2_0 contains DataPath.txt, data.dat, drod.err, drod.ini, drod2_0.dat, player.dat, and text.dat. These are the data files that are specific to me. There is another file called DROD.app (it's actually an application bundle containing multiple files, but most people won't see it that way, so it's easiest to think about it as a single file). This would correspond to an EXE file on Windows or an binary that has been chmoded 755 on Linux. I put DROD.app in the system-wide Applications folder on my OS X machine.

When I launched DROD.app, it created ~/.caravel/drod-2_0 and put the files needed to keep track of holds I downloaded, my progress through holds, etc. in ~/.caravel/drod-2_0. DROD.app did not get copied into ~/.caravel/drod-2_0, still exists in Applications, and contains things like libraries that DROD needs that you don't want to copy into everyone's home directory.

Also, if DROD.app were copied into ~/.caravel/drod-2_0, people wouldn't (easily) be able to run it, since directories starting with "." don't (normally) show up in Finder windows.

I think you need to make the change you proposed earlier (make Demo DROD create player data files in ~/.caravel/drod-2_0-demo) and, in addition, make the file packaged in the DMG be named "DROD Demo.app". That way, both .app programs can live in the same folder (so people can have both executables at the same time and have both in the same place) and these two executables won't be looking for data files in the same place (removing the need for people to type "rm -rf").

[Last edited by jcobleigh at 01-10-2006 10:13 PM]
01-10-2006 at 10:11 PM
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trick
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If there's a way of making the .app run the executable with command-line arguments, adding "demo" to the args (without the quotes :)) should make the demo use ~/.caravel/drod-2_0-demo in stead of ~/.caravel/drod-2_0. At least, this is the way the Linux version works (it also checks if the filename contains "demo", but I don't know if that code would work in the Mac version).

(Sorry for not saying this before, btw .. completely slipped my mind -_-)

- Gerry

[Last edited by trick at 01-10-2006 11:34 PM]
01-10-2006 at 11:31 PM
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ErikH2000
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trick wrote:
If there's a way of making the .app run the executable with command-line arguments, adding "demo" to the args (without the quotes :)) should make the demo use ~/.caravel/drod-2_0-demo in stead of ~/.caravel/drod-2_0. At least, this is the way the Linux version works (it also checks if the filename contains "demo", but I don't know if that code would work in the Mac version).
Hmmmm. Yeah, I like that better than drod.app, drod-demo.app if it's possible.

-Erik

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01-11-2006 at 01:43 AM
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ErikH2000
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jcobleigh wrote:
On my machine, ~/.caravel/drod-2_0 contains DataPath.txt, data.dat, drod.err, drod.ini, drod2_0.dat, player.dat, and text.dat. These are the data files that are specific to me. There is another file called DROD.app (it's actually an application bundle containing multiple files, but most people won't see it that way, so it's easiest to think about it as a single file). This would correspond to an EXE file on Windows or an binary that has been chmoded 755 on Linux. I put DROD.app in the system-wide Applications folder on my OS X machine.
Alright, thanks for setting me straight. That makes sense.

-Erik

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01-11-2006 at 01:45 AM
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Chaco
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Oh, so is this why I still couldn't find the full Journey to Rooted Hold thingie?

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01-11-2006 at 01:49 AM
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ErikH2000
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Yep, it's the same problem.

-Erik

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01-11-2006 at 02:11 AM
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Chaco
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Yeah, I just removed the directory. Finally, I can play the full version of the game, after I had paid for it about a week ago. Yay! :)

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[Last edited by Chaco at 01-11-2006 11:39 AM]
01-11-2006 at 11:39 AM
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ErikH2000
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Alright, I really want to get this fixed, because it's causing support problems and delaying some other things we have planned. Does anybody here know how to make DMGs? If you do, please send me an e-mail. I'd like to solve this today or tomorrow, and I'm willing to pay for some quick help.

-Erik

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01-11-2006 at 08:44 PM
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Remy
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If you're just looking to make a very simple DMG, just open Disk Utility (in Utilities), select "New Disk Image", pick the appropriate size, name it, and it should automatically mount and you can drag your data to it however you'd like.

If you want slightly richer disk images, I recommend DMGMaker.
01-16-2006 at 04:50 PM
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Remy
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Should I assume that this is resolved, given that a PR went out? :)
01-17-2006 at 03:30 PM
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ErikH2000
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Yeah, the Mac press release went out last night. Good to see MacWorld picked it up.

For now, I added instructions to the order e-mail that goes out to people after purchase. When Weston gets back, we'll fix the install file.

-Erik

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01-17-2006 at 10:27 PM
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leroy00
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MacWorld wrote:
... the first two DROD games are ready for download, with a third coming later this month.
Is MacWorld talking about TCB? Do they know something we don't?

-leroy

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01-18-2006 at 11:29 AM
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Oneiromancer
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The rest of the article indicates that they are referring to Perfection. I'm not sure if that is a misunderstanding or a miscommunication somewhere...I doubt it is intentional (but what do I know).

Game on,

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[Last edited by Oneiromancer at 01-18-2006 03:31 PM]
01-18-2006 at 03:31 PM
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leroy00
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Oneiromancer wrote:
The rest of the article indicates that they are referring to Perfection. I'm not sure if that is a misunderstanding or a miscommunication somewhere...I doubt it is intentional (but what do I know).

Game on,
Yeah, I read all of the (short) article; I just didn't make the connection between the first sentence and the last paragraph, like you did. Maybe they didn't understand that a new hold isn't the same as a new game, but the idea of expansion packs and campaigns is certainly not new to the gaming world. :blink

-leroy

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01-18-2006 at 03:43 PM
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Remy
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I'm actually on good terms with Peter Cohen, who wrote the article...I was equally confused, so he showed me the relevant parts of the PR- I'm guessing this might be the CD release of Perfection that was mentioned in the November newsletter?
01-19-2006 at 09:27 PM
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ErikH2000
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Remy wrote:
I'm actually on good terms with Peter Cohen, who wrote the article...
Cool! I hope you put in a good word for us. ;)
I was equally confused, so he showed me the relevant parts of the PR- I'm guessing this might be the CD release of Perfection that was mentioned in the November newsletter?
Well, the problem is that our press releases are behind the actual game releases a little bit. So this previous Monday we sent out a press release announcing availability of DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold and DROD: King Dugan's Dungeon for the Mac. I wanted to have a separate press release for Perfection that will go out this weekend. In our first press release the exact wording is that Perfection will be "announced" later this month. It's easy to interpret that as "released", I admit.

Also, since you bring it up, I plan to talk about availability of Perfection CDs in next month's Illumination.

-Erik

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01-20-2006 at 04:45 AM
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wmarkham
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Hi.

I'm back again. Changing the name of the executable works just fine. This does not mean that the user will ordinarily see the different name, because the actual executable is stored inside the application bundle, which is named separately. However, it does make sense to me to give the two different bundles different names, since users may want to switch between the two while exporting & importing. Also, the name "DROD" applies to all three of KDD, JtRH, and TCB. Perhaps the applications should be named:

DROD KDD
DROD JtRH
DROD TCB

(The .app extension is not normally visible to the user.) I would prefer, even, to write them out ("DROD: King Dugan's Dungeon") but I don't know how much trouble colons and apostrophes would cause, and I would prefer to simply avoid such trouble altogether.

Weston
01-23-2006 at 04:07 AM
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