Posts by Dines

Hi all,

Until some years ago I used Clickteam products a lot, from KNP right across to MMF2.

In the past I found it was a struggle to create re-usable, modular events.

Has that improved at all now with Fusion 2.5?

If I remember rightly, you either had to copy local events across each frame, which was a pain, or you could use global events and object groups, but IIRC they sometimes messed up with Alterable Value/Text names giving you unreadable events.

You could trigger events using one-time loops, but carrying parameters and providing return values was a pain. I usually worked around it by inserting a series of objects and using their Alterable Values to hold parameters and return values, but it would quickly get clumsy.

Have there been any advances in this since MMF2, either with extensions, built-in improvements or maybe just your own suggestions (I may not have tried everything last time, you see).

MMF2 was a great tool, so if there's a low-fuss way to re-use and organise your events then I'd strongly consider upgrading to 2.5

Hi all,

Our office has 14 Windows 7 64-bit machines in it, all networked to a common server. Some of the staff prefer to leave their machines on overnight with documents ready for the following day - makes the machines 'perkier' the following morning.

What I'd like is a system which hibernates any machines which are still running at (say) 8pm at night, and wakes them again at 5am the following morning.

Easy to do with task scheduler and BIOS, but we need a solution which *only* wakes them up if they hibernated automatically. In other words, if I switch my PC off when I leave at 5:30pm, I don't want it waking up automatically at 5 in the morning.

If it were me, I'd build a client-side app to tell the server: 'Hey, it's late. I'm gonna hibernate. Wake me up in the morning.'
The server would log which of its babies had hibernated automatically that night and send them a Wake up on Lan call bright and early the following morning.

But I haven't coded things like that in years, so it'd probably just be cheaper to pay someone else to do it

Could you give me some quotes for something like this (or an alternative you may judge is better), either by replying to this thread or through PM, so I can get a rough idea and run it past the directors?

Thanks

Hi all,

I'm planning to use an old laptop as a low-power file server at home. What's the simplest way to make an app where two or more clients communicate?

I basically want to be able to ask my server about a few of its variables, and perhaps force a reboot, from any of the terminal machines at home (my wife's laptop, the desktop pc, etc).

In the old days I would have used something like MooClick, but I'm not sure what's available now. Do I really have to use LaceWing? Or is there a simpler option?

Kind regards,

Chris

Hi all,

What runtime and display settings are best for making an MMF Windows Standalone application load up as quickly as possible after the user requests it?

I'm not talking about methods to use in the events (like avoiding on-Start events) but actual settings which will reduce the overhead.

Thanks

I think all the existing extensions (VolInfo.mfx and 'Advanced Volume Information') all retrieve the serial for the partition (Volume Serial), which is redefined on format.

I suspect the backup system may reformat the drive before backing up to it, so I'm not sure the Volume Serial would be reliable enough.

I did Google solutions in C++ - they're trickier than you'd think.

The standard WIN32 functions know only the Volume Serial.
You can get the actual Drive Serial via WMI, but only if the driver wants to, it's an optional feature, like double-sided printing.
There's a third party DLL that'll do it, but I'd rather avoid that.
Other than that, the typical method tends to be to use WMI, and if WMI can't find the serial, check if the drive is IDE or SATA and use the appropriate call sequence for that.

A bit beyond me, to be honest. Maybe your search found better stuff?

Hi all,

How would I get a HDD's unique serial number? I don't want the volume number ideally, as that changes when the drive is formatted (apparently?), but rather the unique device serial number.

I know there used to be an object to do this in MMF1.5, but is there an equivalent in 2.0?

Alternatively, if there's a relatively simple C++ procedure for it, I can wrap it up in an extension.

I need it to build an app to help our office assistants at work, they keep messing up the backup drives, so I want to build an idiot-proof app to tell them 'you plugged the wrong drive in, foo!'

Thanks

Observe:

Please login to see this attachment.
See how the things you want relate to the anatomy of a triangle that you learned at school?

We've got the Hypotenuse (distance he'll be travelling), and the Angle.
We want the Opposite (Y Axis) and Adjacent (X Axis):

Now we apply SOH CAH TOA:

Sine(Angle) = Opposite / Hypotenuse
Cosine(Angle) = Adjacent / Hypotenuse

...So we can change that to:

Opposite = Sine(Angle) * Hypotenuse
Adjacent = Cosine(Angle) * Hypotenuse

...Which in terms of MMF becomes:

Y Position = Old Y Position + Sin(Angle) * Speed
X Position = Old Y Position + Cos(Angle) * Speed

You may need to swap Sine and Cosine around, I haven't used MMF in ages but I have a feeling those two have to be swapped in MMF due to the fact that the origin is in the top left, not bottom left like it would be on a graph.

You'll figure it out, I'm sure.

A while ago, there was a thread which mentioned the fact that MMF performs 'IS OVERLAPPING' tests by using the working position of the object on the left in comparison with the cached version of the object on the right.

You can see an example attached. Essentially, if you move two objects in the events, and want to compare whether their new positions overlap, it appears to be impossible. If we move Object A and Object B so that they overlap, MMF keeps records of their locations before and after moving (we'll call them 'Original' and 'New').

Object A overlaps Object B actually means 'does Object A (New) overlap Object B (Original)?'
Object B overlaps Object A actually means 'does Object B (New) overlap Object A (Original)?'

So you don't seem able to compare Object A (New) and Object B (New). You seem to have to wait until MMF finishes the frame, so the New position becomes the Original position.

Did anyone ever find a way around this?

It's got me stumped...

So if I just buy another HDD and install XP on it, will my new HDD's installation be able to see the old HDD? I recognise that they'll probably assign different letters to them (so my Toshiba drive may be C:\ to one operating system and D:\ to another), but so long as I can physically access the data in the new installation, it'll make dragging things between the two a doddle.

I know I won't be able to execute complex programs, because they'll look for registry values that don't exist, but if I can access word documents and bitmaps and just the raw files themselves, then I'll be happy.

Hi all,

Nothing to do with MMF at all, this, but I figure someone on this forum must know the answer, lol

My PC needs reformatting, so my plan is to buy a larger Hard Drive and maybe an SSD for the new operating system and dual-boot with my existing setup.

If I do that, can I still access the data on my original HDD? For instance, let's say I have XP on Drive C (we'll call it XPC) and I have another installation of XP on Drive D (XPD).

Can XPC see the files on Drive D? Similarly, can XPD see the files on Drive C? Suppose I have a data drive, Drive F. Would both XPC and XPD be able to access Drive F?

I need to have a current, working version of my computer to make sure that all the applications I bought years ago but lost the CDs for still work, among other things. I had a nightmare porting Paint Shop Pro X from my last PC to this one, I hate to think I'll have to do it again. I don't fancy buying an app I've already bought all over again.

What are your thoughts?

I might have Win 7 on the new installation, instead of XP, depending on how much money I have at the time.

Thanks Phi, I appreciate that. I'm on lunch right now so I've just looked through the source briefly on GitHub. Do you have to produce a different MFX file for Unicode support then? I imagined that MMF returned a flag when the extension initialized, so you could create maybe some kind of switch/case scenario if nothing else.

Since CT changed their website, I can't find the official extension SDK any more!

Never mind. Had to make it myself in the end. So I saved money, but got no sleep last night XD

Hi all,

Does anyone have any example source or suggestions on how to make an extension to work with both normal and unicode versions of MMF?

I'm not using EDIF with this one, so it really needs to be MMF's default SDK or preferably rSDK.

Thanks guys,

Chris

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Well that's what notepad thinks when it tries converting it into ASCII.

I've got the file format specification on my PC, but it's a bummer trying to crack it open in MMF. Please, Clickteam - make it modular already!!

Dragonguy: I've never used Paint.net, so I can't really compare the two.

Basically, when Gale is bad, it's very bad; but when it's good, it's excellent. It's not ideal for creating new pixel art from scratch, which is why I use PSPX for that. I hate Gale's colour selector, and the interface follows no paradigms known to man.

It's more like one of those tools into which you import things you've created in other apps because you plan to use just one or two functions from it.

Animating is one of those - The preview can be sped up and slowed down and zoomed as you wish, letting you preview the sprite at approximately the same screen size as it will appear in game, and with adjustments for the animation speed you intend to use. What's more, it updates in real time, so you can drag body parts around while watching the animation playing - helps you see when the adjustment you're making 'fits' with the animation as a whole. Other apps often have a delay between update on screen and update in the animation preview, so this benefit is often lost in those apps. That alone makes me love Gale.

Scrolling the image - Amazing how few graphics programs have this feature. You can basically wrap the imagine around inside its boundaries. This means you can make any tile seamless. First, you draw the tile however you want. Then wrap it half way along, so the left/right/bottom/top edges are now centralised in the screen and you can now draw across the edges of the tile. So you can make those edges appear seamless.

Those are literally the only two reasons I keep it on my hard drive. I've got other tools to do the rest, but for animating and tiles, I've never found anything to rival it.

I just wish the interface was a little more conventional.

These articles are old, but they never get old, if you know what I mean
It probably sounds a bit narcissistic posting my own articles, but apparently people have found them quite helpful:

Making a Pretty Game:
Please login to see this link.

Anyone Can Animate:
Please login to see this link.

Hi all,

I'm just testing the waters here to see how much someone would charge to develop a very straightforward extension for me. I haven't the time to work on it myself, and I suspect you guys would probably build it quicker than me anyway.

I need to be able to create, edit and retrieve data from windows shortcuts, specifying at least the following:
- Filename of shortcut
- Target file
- Icon file
- Icon number
- Comment
- Date Modified

Sphax' File-Folder Object can create them, but not edit existing ones or retrieve their content.

I'm trying to make a bespoke windows app to let me create 'post-it-notes' in my file folders. I know things like that exist, but none work *exactly* the way I'd like them to (you know the feeling, right?).

So yeah, let me know what you'd charge to do it. I'm happy to release the extension to the wider community once it's done.

- Chris

Hi all,

Is there an extension object to create a windows shortcut (*.LNK file)? Ideally with the option to add a description, icon, etc?

I'm sure I saw one for MMF1.5 years ago, but I'm not sure if there's one for 2.x...

I think generally a scripting method together with the click method wouldn't work. That's just a personal view, but I'm convinced that with better keystroke support and implementation of scripting concepts like functions and classes into the normal layout, it could be quicker than both. Imagine it as a kind of auto-complete, that's how I envision it. You type the object name and the function you want to call and MMF at once starts prompting possible objects, and each time you press enter to confirm the selection and move to the next step. Like this:

Types 'Gr...'
MMF presents 'Groovy Object' in a dropdown list.
Presses enter to confirm.
Types 'Fun...'
MMF presents 'Funky Condition' in a dropdown list.
Presses enter to confirm.
Types 'D...'
MMF presents 'Duck' and 'Duckling' in a dropdown list.
Uses arrow key to choose Duck and presses enter to confirm.
Types 'Q...'
MMF presents 'Quack' in a dropdown list.
Presses enter to confirm.

That's the gist of it anyway, it's certainly quicker than typing Groovy Object: Funky Condition > Duck: Quack or whatever other schema they may otherwise implement, and would use the same editor as the point and click version.

For pity's sake everyone, please get back on topic XD. Some of us actually want to know about Dark EDIF, you know

Can we have more control over menus? Presently, I think the SDKs tend to micromanage the menu systems (in my opinion anyway), which is a pity because it's an opportunity to really create a powerful interface for our extensions. Things like icons on our menus, for example, and greying options out depending on our properties, stuff like that.

It's an aspect of extension development which I think gets overlooked at present.