Terkhen's Personal Patch Pack

[Rubidium]

Extracting files into proper directory can be difficult (find a directory!). Compilation can be too much difficult.

So why let them work with highly experimental stuff? There is a reason why there is no installer for the nightlies. The group of people who have no clue of what they are doing are probably also downloading everything they can without having a clue what it is for, don't care about crashes etc. This is, usually, exactly the group of people that cause developers to believe their patch is stable/bug free; lots of downloads zero negative reactions.

[Terkhen]

adf88: I know that it is not that simple for normal users. Anyone that has been following this thread and reading my posts knows that I have been trying to solve the mentioned problem, but I was finally forced to remove compiled binaries completely. With that post I want to give users that are really interested in development and new patches a way of getting TPPP. The MinGW tutorial is in my opinion simple enough to allow anybody with a small amount of experience with Windows to follow, and if it they have any problem they can post their questions at the correct thread and the tutorial can be upgraded when we know which parts are not clear.

I know that I'm going to left some people that would report bugs and problems to the correct person without a TPPP binary, but judging by the received feedback, the number of downloads of TPPP and the number of issues TPPP had while binaries where available, they are a minority. Besides stopping TPPP releases completely, there are no more options than giving these few users the possibility of compiling a binary themselves.

[SirkoZ]

Tutorial on MinGW is indeed very nice and anyone should be able to compile OpenTTD following it point by point.

[DaleStan]

Compiling OpenTTD is really easy...

Most of game players have never used command line at all. They have icons, they click, they play. They are not interested in how the computers/operating systems works, the just want to have some fun and play a nice game.

If you can't follow step-by-step instructions, you have no business using a computer. Full stop.

Even I don't know or care how most parts of my computer work, at least not at any level beyond "it does what it's told." Unless it's a printer.

[adf88]

If you can't follow step-by-step instructions, you have no business using a computer.

Nonsense.
We (members of this discussion) are using computer for long time. And many things about computers are so natural to us, so we forgot about their existence, they are like gravity for us. We don't realize that someone can't know them. Following this step-by-step tutorial is not so easy as you think. You are not able to judge this, as long as you are not thinking like a beginner.
I'm hardly convinced that getting computer skills to be able to compile patched OTTD (using tutorials) is many times harder then getting skills to play OTTD and be interested in Terkhen's Patch Pack.

Besides, publishing binaries can save users time. You can make it once for all.

[Rubidium]

If you can't follow step-by-step instructions, you have no business using a computer.

Nonsense.
Besides, publishing binaries can save users time. You can make it once for all.

You can't make simply make ONE binary that works for all.

Besides that: in my 'opinion' writing a script/application to do something is very similar to writing a tutorial; a script is nothing more than a number of commands to execute (written in a language the computer understands), a tutorial is nothing more than a number of commands to execute (written in a language a user understands). Only computers are more likely to strictly follow the 'tutorial' than humans do.

Now... lets look at complexity: compiling OpenTTD/even installing the stuff needed to build it can, on various platforms, be done with a small number of commands (read tutorials). Even those commands can be put in a script (read tutorial). The oddball in this is Windows that has an incredibly complex way of installing its preferred compiler, although that can be installed by scripting (read tutorials). We 'once' had BuildOTTD which did *everything* that is in the tutorials for you. It broke a year ago, a few months ago someone published an updated (sub)binary of the whole thing. Anyhow... the computer can do the same job a human can do fairly effectively.

Then when we start looking at playing OpenTTD: the AIs are by far not as good/stable as humans, the scripts that run the AIs are incredibly more complex than for compiling OpenTTD. As such OpenTTD is more complex to run than compiling OpenTTD.

The major problem with compiling is that *if* you miss one step you're screwed and it is hard to help you, if you forget something in OpenTTD you can see that usually fairly clear in the savegame they can post. As such getting/asking for good help is easier for playing OpenTTD than compiling it. Also more tutorials exist for OpenTTD because more people write those.

[Terkhen]

Besides, publishing binaries can save users time. You can make it once for all.

I already said that I could provide win32 binaries without much effort. I doubt that it would take more than an hour of my time to get MinGW compiling OpenTTD, as I have already followed the tutorial other times and I know about compiling. After that, compiling a new binary of TPPP wouldn't take more than a few minutes. With this, I would be saving time to TPPP users.

Sadly, this is not an issue about saving time. The problem is that some TPPP users were annoying people working in projects for OpenTTD with problems that should have been reported to me. I know that these few users won't read anything (if they did, they would know my offer of reporting bugs here and letting me test them and reporting them to the correct place), so finally the only possible solution was to "force" these few users to read if they want access to the custom build. If someone knows a better solution to this problem, I would like to know it and be able to provide binaries to these users that haven't done anything wrong. Until then, I can only give them the option of compiling TPPP themselves, and help them if any problems or doubts arise.

Now that the matter of spending time came out, I want to note that compiling a binary is just the tip of the iceberg of the work that TPPP has behind. Testing new patches, checking if different patches can work together, updating patches and solving rejects takes me far more time than it would take for a complete beginner to set up MinGW and compile TPPP, since they only have to do that once. There is not many people willing to do this work, and that work is what I wanted to make available when I made TPPP public.

[Sensation Lover]

If someone knows a better solution to this problem, I would like to know it and be able to provide binaries to these users that haven't done anything wrong

how about if the users request you the binaries, and you decide to wich one provide it in P M (by the way it is possible to provide it by PM?) ...

If you think it's a good solution (and not waste your time), i'm the first one to request the latest TPPP version in binaries for windows XP...

thanks anyway

[Gremnon]

If someone knows a better solution to this problem, I would like to know it and be able to provide binaries to these users that haven't done anything wrong

how about if the users request you the binaries, and you decide to wich one provide it in P M (by the way it is possible to provide it by PM?) ...

If you think it's a good solution (and not waste your time), i'm the first one to request the latest TPPP version in binaries for windows XP...

thanks anyway

It is possible to. But, WinXP builds work on other windows versions too, except where the Win9x binaries are required.
Since you're using WinXP, follow the Compiling on MinGW tutorial exactly as it says to on the OTTD Wiki, and you'll have your own build in no time, and then you'll be able to compile this, or any patch, into OpenTTD whenever you want.
So simple even my three year old niece does it regularly, without help. With supervision, but without help.

[Sensation Lover]

So simple even my three year old niece does it regularly, without help. With supervision, but without help.

.... ....

Thx for advice. however, the post was adressed to terkhen

[Terkhen]

I don't have the intention of becoming a judge of the "worthiness" of users by a lot of motives. I don't have any criteria to know who is going to annoy someone with TPPP problems, so it wouldn't be useful. If I am going to give something to the community, everybody should have the same rights to it (I don't need to start any private club). I don't want to search the forums to see if one of these "chosen" users ignores my advice. Finally, getting my inbox spammed and having to answer all of these PMs would be a complete waste of my time.

You should give compilation a try. You shouldn't have any problem following the Compiling on MinGW tutorial step by step. If after reading it you have any doubts or problems you can check the Howto apply a patch / diff thread and after that post asking for help.

[adf88]

Sadly, this is not an issue about saving time. The problem is that some TPPP users were annoying people working in projects for OpenTTD with problems that should have been reported to me. I know that these few users won't read anything (if they did, they would know my offer of reporting bugs here and letting me test them and reporting them to the correct place), so finally the only possible solution was to "force" these few users to read if they want access to the custom build. If someone knows a better solution to this problem, I would like to know it and be able to provide binaries to these users that haven't done anything wrong

1) Password-protected archive, password hidden inside have-to-read manual. This should be even better then forcing to compile TPPP by yourself.
2) Crash reporting:

Code: Select all

try {
   /* Run the game */
} catch(...) {
   /* Show TPPP message and/or open TPPP web page */
   throw;
} 

[Benny]

Got a crash in 16755. My fault?

Code: Select all

Reason: Assertion failed at ..\src\signal.cpp:218: !_tbdset.IsIn(t1, d1)

Code: Select all

Tick 18049: settings changed
     Setting changed: vehicle.freight_trains : 100 -> 99

(...)  Continues evenly down to twelve here.

Tick 18646: settings changed
     Setting changed: vehicle.freight_trains : 13 -> 12
---- gamelog end ----

[Terkhen]

New version of TPPP uploaded to the TPPP development page.

r17788-v10: Added Conditional order "skip with certain probability" and New hotkeys. Updated Filter sign list and Rating in town label (v13). Removed Query land shortcut as it is now included in New hotkeys.

-----------------------

adf88:

1) I think it is easy enough to read between the lines of a long text to get just the info they want (in this case a password). I don't think it would be very useful.

2) I'm not going to work into a custom crash reporting function just because some users prefer to report bugs wherever they want (or worse... to not report them at all). I don't mind adding patches that I don't need to my patch pack as long as they are simple, but this wouldn't be as simple as you write it. Customizing crash reports in any way would make debugging even more complicated, and when you have a build with 19 patches debugging is already complex enough. Besides, I don't think that they would read the new message either.

Bennythen00b: Well... that's a lot of revisions. I remember vaguely some bug correction in trunk related to freight trains, but I'm not sure about that. To check the bug I need a savegame and information about how to reproduce it.

[Benny]

Played ten years on fastforward on the same savegame to reproduce it, but it didn't crash. I'll just continue to save often from now on, and update to the latest build of TPPP before starting next game.

[petert]

Btw, you can just patch it to latest trunk. I have patched and compiled, and it's working great.

[Benny]

Downloaded latest build and used it yesterday and today until now, and it worked fine. And then, after using loong time on a station I moved my cursor up to the save button, and when I was about to click "save", THE s*** CRASHED!!
No crash log provided.

*Will save even more often*

[Benny]

Managed to reproduce it. Just remove the two station pieces (the parking lots) shown in the pic, and try to pause the game. Happens each time I try it here. I have got quite a lot of newGRFs in there, hope you've got them all, or that they're not needed.

[petert]

You're using v08! Update to v10. There have been many bugfixes and compiling errors fixed.

[Benny]

Can't find any binaries for v9 or v10, and I can't be arsed to build it myself.