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Frogatto Portable 1.03 Development Test 3

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mjashby
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Frogatto Portable 1.03 Development Test 3

Application: Frogatto & Friends
Category: Games
Licence: Open Source
Description:
Developer's Description -"Frogatto & Friends is an old-school 2D platformer game, starring a certain quixotic frog. Give it a try! It's a big adventure with all the classic fun - you fight monsters, collect coins, talk to people, and buy new stuff. Also, Frogatto has a very flexible game engine you can use to make your own creations."

Download FrogattoPortable_1.03_Development_Test_3_English.paf.exe [96.6MB download / 19.6-112.1MB installed]
(MD5: 2e093454a6f69c9e3eb53315eff1986c)

Release Notes:

Development Test 3 (2011-04-26):

  • PA.c Format 2.0 compliance further improved following testing with the PA.c Development Kit.

Development Test 2 (2011-04-03)

  • PA.c Format 2.0 issues resolved.
  • Key User configuration and game progress files will now be saved to the Data Directory on exiting the game.
  • The installer now offers the option to omit the installation of Sound and Music files, which may reduce game enjoyment, but does save significant installation space (about 92MB!).

Development Test 1 (2011-03-22): Initial release

  • Regshot appeared clean and I couldn't find any folders/files written to the PCs I ran it on during initial testing.
  • Need to establish/know if any additional files are written to the App (Frogatto) folder under extended play.

Chris Morgan
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Important issues

There's nothing wrong with using Regshot to scan the app directory. My normal pattern when developing from a USB disk is to scan C:;X:\PortableApps\FrogattoPortable, and when developing from a non-USB disk, C:;X:. If you did that, you'd find you need these:

The directory App\Frogatto\data\level\stats
The files App\Frogatto\data\level\preferences.cfg and App\Frogatto\data\level\save.cfg.

There's also App\Frogatto\stderr.txt; after visiting a handful of rooms a few times, playing for 10 minutes or so, this is over 350KB... each time you enter a new room, at least some stuff is added to the file. Some more than others. In a long play, this could be troublesome. It's purged with every restart of the game, but it could be helpful to delete it after playing so the space is only used while playing the game. Also ask the developers to make some way of not enabling it (or some way of enabling it and disabling it by default).

For those that want to save space, the music and sounds directories in App\Frogatto can be removed; this will save over 92MB (cutting it down to about 22MB).

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1

mjashby
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Important Issues

Chris,

Thanks for your very helpful comments and guidance. I'll take a look at the points you've raised and update the Development Test soonest.

Mervyn

Chris Morgan
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Automated report:

PortableApps.com Format validation failed with 6 errors and 3 warnings.

Errors

  • File Other/Source/AppNamePortable.ini is missing
  • appinfo.ini: [License]:Shareable must be "true" or "false"
  • appinfo.ini: [License]:OpenSource must be "true" or "false"
  • appinfo.ini: [License]:Freeware must be "true" or "false"
  • appinfo.ini: [License]:CommercialUse must be "true" or "false"
  • appinfo.ini: [License]:EULAVersion is defined but neither Other/Source/EULA.rtf nor Other/Source/EULA.txt exists

Warnings

  • appinfo.ini: [SpecialPaths]:Plugins should be omitted if set to NONE
  • appinfo.ini: [Dependencies]:UsesJava should be omitted if set to false
  • appinfo.ini: [Dependencies]:UsesDotNetVersion should be omitted if empty

(Those values should be true, not TRUE; Other\Source\FrogattoPortable.ini should be called AppNamePortable.ini - see readme.txt.)

Additional notes: I see no point in having a pixel-scaled appicon_128.png and even less do I see the point of the 256x256 icon in appicon.ico. The 8-bit 48x48 icon is also wonky.

Also, you should tell the developers they need to include MSVCP90.dll (put in the Microsoft.VC90.CRT properly). (Edit: after putting that in - as the entire Microsoft.VC90.CRT directory - although depends doesn't complain of needing Microsoft.VC80.CRT, but Wine does and it won't run without it - fortunately the error messages in such cases are a lot more helpful in Wine than in Windows which just tells you that it failed to initialise the executable.)

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1

mjashby
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Thanks

Yes, I do mean that and very much appreciate the time you've taken on this. Some of the errors are clearly carelessness on my part in not taking personal testing far enough on this one. I should be able to start on Dev. Test 2 to tidy things up after a good night's sleep (It's now 11.00 p.m. UK time) and I've been testing and updating some of my earlier development work today.

Mervyn

mjashby
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Development Test 2

Now available, as above. Had some delays getting this uploaded to Sourceforge.

Numerous 'errors' in conforming to PA. 2.0 Format have been resolved. - I'd used a 'faulty' design template in Dev. Test 1 which I've now got rid of.

Existing users may want to save existing files to the Application's Data Directory prior to upgrading. These are the 'stats' Directory; and the 'preferences.cfg' and 'save.cfg' files all located in App\Frogatto\data\level.

Still haven't determined what to do about the stderr.txt file which gets renewed in the App\Frogatto Directory on each run of the game. This seems to be a standard 'feature' in many of the Open Source games I've looked at. Are there any examples out there which show how this has been handled previously by PA.c Developers when converting programs?

MJA

dboki89
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Leave in App

There is usually no need to transfer error logs and such from App to Data. Just leave them be, official apps deal with it the same way.
Regards

My posts are old and likely no longer relevant.

John T. Haller
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Move

There's really no extra effort or time to move them with PAL and it ensures you don't accidentally include the logs in a release.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

mjashby
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Thanks for helpful responses

As a general practice I think I'll opt to move these files to 'Data' in any further Development Tests for this, and any other base apps where this kind of logging takes place. It's possibly marginally better for end users to access files in the Data Directory than the Program Directory if they experience problems/errors that may need action (or if they simply want to check the actions that were logged during their last session).

MJA

mjashby
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Development Test 3

'Minor' Changes/Improvements as above.

MJA

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