Alice Client 1.1 Beta

[Faruq]

Either people overlooked this in the General Skotos forum, or there is no interest in upgrading Alice. http://www.skotos.net/ubb/smile.gif

I've made some enhancements to Alice that would like people other than me to test. (It's always a bad idea to have the technical primes test their own code...) To this end, I'd like some brave souls to get the newest Alice from me.

Two major things got changed (and a few bugs got fixed): Log handling has been beefed up (append mode, name/date expansion and persistent settings) and macros have been added.

Here's the original message I posted in the other forum:

I finally have Alice 1.1 hammered into sufficiently stable shape to warrant some limited beta testing. Consider this a call for beta testers.
A qualified beta tester will have to know how to register an OCX (hint: regsvr32 alice.ocx) and will have to be willing to submit reports of their experiences, classifying them as follows.

FATAL BUG: Anything that prevents you from playing the game at all. This would include fatal crashes or things that somehow cause Kevorkian disconnects from Skotos' servers.

BUG: Anything that doesn't work as documented (for what little documentation you receive ).

CHANGE REQUEST: If something works in a way that really bugs you, submit a change request describing how the current mechanism causes problems for you and what you'd like to propose in its place.

ENHANCEMENT REQUEST: If you can think of a way to improve or add upon current functionality, pitch it to me. I'm glad to listen at least.

If you're interested in testing Alice 1.1, email me at mtr@ottawa.com and I will send you the Alice 1.1 OCX plus the currently limited documentation that will explain the changes.

[JeffC]

Originally posted by Faruq:
[B]
A qualified beta tester will have to know how to register an OCX (hint: regsvr32 alice.ocx) [B]

Maybe nobody knows how to do this, or even knows what you are talking about. I know I don't.

[John]

Originally posted by JeffC:
Maybe nobody knows how to do this, or even knows what you are talking about. I know I don't.



I have to aggree here...i used to do testing for Electronic arts porfeshanaly..and i have no idea what you mean...and i used to log bugs all the time...can you give us more detail?

[Faruq]

Originally posted by John:
I have to aggree here...i used to do testing for Electronic arts porfeshanaly..and i have no idea what you mean...and i used to log bugs all the time...can you give us more detail?

For OCXs (and other ActiveX entities) to work, the system has to know a) that they exist and b) where to find them. The process of doing this is called registration. A utility called REGSVR32 is used to do this manually in the absence of an installation package.

I'm currently setting up the beta package complete with instructions and documentation. I have just added documentation for this step (along with the utility itself for those who don't have it). But I do need beta testers who are not afraid to get their hands dirty while testing this. That means using COMMAND.COM (or CMD.EXE for the Windows NT/2000 crowd) and typing in a command line or two.

[Atama]

I helped Matt test the beta for the Java client, and I was happy to do so. All that he required was that I run his Java client (which wasn't any harder than running the regular client), and if there were any problems to email him. He guided us every step of the way. What you are suggesting sounds like we have to troubleshoot your client just to get it to work on our machines... That's a daunting task for someone who doesn't know what they're doing. Which none of us do, obviously. If it was simple, and we were told exactly how to do it, I'm sure that people would be willing to help. I certainly would love to help. But I've said bye-bye to my coding days, I don't like messing with stuff more complicated than HTML.

[Faruq]

Originally posted by Atama:
But I've said bye-bye to my coding days, I don't like messing with stuff more complicated than HTML.

Please don't misquote and/or misrepresent me. *NOWHERE* did I say *ANYTHING* about coding. HTML is about two orders of magnitude more complex than what I need of my beta testers.

I need people who are willing to type a command line in the DOS shell. That's all. If that's too much for you, then you're not a beta tester. It's that simple.

Those who are interested, and who know how to type basic DOS commands, can email me at the address above. I've assembled a beta package, complete with instructions, and have it ready to just mail out.

[Atama]

Ok, in that case I'll be sending you an email. I'd be glad to help you out. http://www.skotos.net/ubb/smile.gif

Just had a misunderstanding that I'm sure was shared by more than just me.

[Atama]

Running Faruq's beta right now. The macros are NICE. It's worth it to test this thing out, guys, so I'd recommend you offer to help out.

[Faruq]

Originally posted by Atama:
Running Faruq's beta right now. The macros are NICE. It's worth it to test this thing out, guys, so I'd recommend you offer to help out.

Thanks for the kind words. I just noticed an irritating thing with the macros, however.... Expect a beta 2 Real Soon Now. http://www.skotos.net/ubb/smile.gif