Adventure Game Studio

AGS Support => Advanced Technical Forum => Topic started by: Miori on Sat 21/02/2009 19:19:05

Title: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: Miori on Sat 21/02/2009 19:19:05
I used Resource Hackerâ,,¢ - Version 3.4.0 to change something in the Winsetupdialog in the Game.exe, so it looks more beatyful and is in german now. But now the game.exe show's this failure

Quote
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Adventure Game Studio
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You must create and save a game first in the AGS Editor before you can use
this engine.

If you have just downloaded AGS, you are probably running the wrong executable.
Run AGSEditor.exe to launch the editor.

(Unable to find 'ac2game.dat' in C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\Administrator\Desktop\Steuk-Demo)

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OK   
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There are many threads with some solutions. I renamed the Game.exe into ac2game.dat and put the acwin.exe in the gamefolder. It doesn't work. What can I do ???
Title: Re: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: Gilbert on Sat 21/02/2009 20:21:22
As far as I remember, executables hacked with Resource Hacker are not always usable.

I don't know the real reasons, but I guess it's something along the line of changing the sizes of different components in the file which prevents it from working (even when you are just editing the text, sometimes as the lengths of the new text are longer it may for example push the code part too far from the original location).

For the Game.exe generated by the AGS Editor, it's actually something like adding the game files to the end of acwin.exe and at the same time, I think there is some sort of address written in it to indicate where the actual data starts in the file.

So, if you hack the executable it may mess with the alignment of the data which render the file useless.

These are only my guesses and they may not be correct, but my experience with Resource Hacker is that, you should test the executable frequently after every sfew changes, and if you find it non-working, try to revert to the last version and consider changing it in some other ways that is less aggressive.
Title: Re: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: Miori on Sat 21/02/2009 21:48:40
This is my Setup:

(http://www.specky-online.de/traffic/Setup.PNG)

I changed the game.exe step by step, now i know the failure is because of the bitmap. If I import it correctly the game doesn't work anymore.

I tried to import a .png as bitmap. I only changed the .png to .bmp , but then the image is shown faulty, but the game works.
Title: Re: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: Pumaman on Sat 21/02/2009 22:19:10
Modifying the EXE using Resource Hacker is not supported, and not recommended.

I will not address any problems that you may have as a result of doing this.
Title: Re: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: Miori on Sat 21/02/2009 22:59:59
Without image it works without fault, I think I will take it without picture  :(

I understand that you don't wanna support such problems, but you should also understand, that i want a german setup for a german game.  And the most options are unnecessary for my game.

However thank you for your help everybody.
Title: Re: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: AdamM on Sat 21/02/2009 23:07:00
This is a point, CJ... surely a foreign-language game is no good without a setup program in that same language. Would it be difficult to allow customisation of winsetup.exe with regards to language?
Title: Re: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: Trent R on Sat 21/02/2009 23:32:27
I think the fact that its possible to use Resource Hacker or similar programs is enough. CJ doesn't need to offer support for them...

[Edit]: Sorry. I may have come off rude. I meant that I'd rather have CJ put his effort into the engine, rather than setup customization. Besides, look at AGDI's games. They come with a completely different launcher, and don't even bother with winsetup.


~Trent
Title: Re: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: AdamM on Sat 21/02/2009 23:33:28
That's not what I'm asking.
Title: Re: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: Pumaman on Sun 22/02/2009 00:17:40
Quote from: AdamM on Sat 21/02/2009 23:07:00
This is a point, CJ... surely a foreign-language game is no good without a setup program in that same language. Would it be difficult to allow customisation of winsetup.exe with regards to language?

Yes, that is a thing reasonable for people to want to do. However there's no easy way of making it properly customizable... it might be possible to simply add translation support for the text in the setup program, it that was something that people would use?
Title: Re: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: AdamM on Sun 22/02/2009 00:59:26
Well that seems like the major issue here; plus I don't see why people creating AGS games in languages other than English wouldn't see it as a boon to be able to translate the whole package.
Title: Re: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: subspark on Sun 22/02/2009 06:08:38
I have to agree. Sorry but having translation functionality in the editor comes with expectation that the setup program is also translated. In fact, I assumed this was already possible. No rush, of course, but please do put it on your expectedly long to-do list. I also like the idea of having custom images in the setup program. I'm sick of resource editors.

Thanks in advance, CJ.

Cheers,
Sparx.
Title: Re: Changed Winsetup, Game doesn't run anymore
Post by: GarageGothic on Tue 24/02/2009 10:55:48
I could definitely use a more customizable setup menu, but it's been mentioned several times before and it is obviously not one of CJ's top priorities. I think the easiest solution would probably be coding an external app that reads/writes directly to the .cfg file.