Power Swapper - The next generation.

[Cyborg]

Dear members of Dune2k.

Sometimes, the idea of trying something new comes to mind. You may be bored of your games after a while, and it's expensive to buy new ones.

Many of us know about something called game modifications. These are game fixes of varying types that edit the original game in one way or another. Perhaps they add some new units, or maybe they tweak the existing ones, or add some new technologies to research. In other words, game modifications may sprite up your game so that it lasts a little longer before you're completely fed up with it. You may end up liking a game modification better than the original game too! Just look at Counter Strike. That's a game modification for Half-Life.

Where do you get these mods? How do you apply them?

Sometimes, it's very hard to find game modifications, sometimes not. Dune2k offers mods for Emperor: Battle for Dune here. It even has its own modding community, found in this forum ( yes, I know you know that... ). This means it's easy to get hold of mods for Emperor. There is, however, one frightening question left. How do you apply them?

When downloading the mods, many of them come with, if any at all, terrible installation instructions. And it's dangerous to apply them if you should forget to back up some of the files. Many people stay away from mods just for that reason, and that it's too time consuming to hunt for mods and then find out how to apply them.

This is where my post starts to make a point. As some of you know, I released a free program just for the purpose of downloading/installing/uninstalling mods. But it wasn't very user friendly, and it didn't look very good either. To put things short, it was a flop. However, it worked, and I thought that I should fix all the problems and release a new, very user friendly, good looking, stream lined and easy to use program that would make it child's play to do all of the above mentioned tasks. The result is Power Swapper. It has the same name as the old one, but it's built on new technology, new graphics and new ideas.

To use it, you need no knowledge of mods at all. You only need to click the mouse a few times.

The features of Power Swapper:

* User friendly interface.

* Automatic recognition of your games. (Your games are added to the program, so that you can play them and install mods)

* Install/Uninstall mods with a single moust click.

* Integrated online browser where you can download mods using an integrated download manager. The Power Swapper server lets you download mods at about 450 - 600 kilobyte per second.

* Mod editor. (Mods are created as mod packs, which work similar to zip files. It makes it possible to store a whole mod in one file, along with automatically created install instructions)

* Search and sort your mods and games, and view mod and game play statistics.

To view screen shots, please click on these links:

Games list

Online browser

Downloads window

Mod tool

To download Power Swapper, click here.

NOTE:

Power Swapper is still in its beta stages, and things like icons will be improved. Power Swapper has its own update system, and you will be automatically notified of new updates if a newer version is out.

I'd appreciate if people report any strange occurances to me, either in an IM, or in an email sent to tallandcurly@gmail.com.

The majority of the mods lack proper information added to them. If decent information could be given to me, I could add it.

KNOWN BUGS:

* The server list in Power Swapper Online Browser doesn't update if you are very quick in and out of the browser.

* Not all games(actually, just a handful) are recognized by Power Swapper. To help out, click here.

[Cyborg]

Then perhaps you miss some dependencies, or have old files.

The installation program should have fixed that, but maybe not.

[erjin999]

Similar error, but a nice long error message.

Automation error

The specified module could not be found.

Its XP pro. Thats the second version of power swapper that doesnt work for me, will you help me get this one working, or will I have to wait for version 3 ?  ;) (Cybs advice to my complaint that I couldnt get version 1 to work was to wait for verison 2).

[Kiyouta]

Sounds like a poor programming job to me.

COM Automation should be kept to a minimum. Raw Win32 APIs should be used instead.

[Cyborg]

So, you really thought I wrote this in C or C++?

If I was insane, had no friends, and did no attend school, I would still have a very small chance of being able to finish it as a single programmer.

It's written in Visual Basic, where you still need good programming skills, but applications require less code, as you can refer to a vast number of libraries.

Visual Basic makes good use of COM objects, which you just have to live with. That's the downside to using Visual Basic.

These errors will be fixed one way or another. I don't know why you have problems with this application, since all referenced libraries should be included.

I will investigate this problem later tonight.

[erjin999]

Hey, thats cool Mr Cyborg dude.

[Cyborg]

If I appeared to be angry, that was unintentional.

[Kiyouta]

Lol sorry I didn't realise you wrote it. True what you say about C++ so naturally anyone with an imagination would have written it in VB. :P It is my experience that ActiveX objects tend to be slow, often yield unexpected results, and a large waste of memory. Even though its VB, Win32 APIs still seem to work better for me, and tho many of them seem to be unnessarily complicated, the great thing about VB is the number of code examples and class modules on the internet which makes things a lot easier.

(All this is coming from the guy who actually used the WScript.Shell object in a application... but we don't speak of that anymore :P)

All those having problems should make sure they have installed the Visual Basic 6 Run-time files. (Google it, download it from MS)

[Cyborg]

The ActiveX objects are faster than native VB code because the ActiveX objects are often written in C++.  :P

But it's true that API calls are even faster, but to remember them is a hobby for retards. I only use two optional ActiveX components in Power Swapper, and they are both included in the installer, and registered on the computer if needed. The program should not crash on any computer.

I'd like to look into this a bit more and get to the source of this crashing. None of my other friends have had the same kind of trouble.

Anyway, I've updated the installer a bit, so please try to reinstall.

For those of you who have the old version up and running, you will get an update message that will take you to the automatic updater.

[viktor1029]

I got an error when trying to connect to onlin downloader and I did installed Run-Time files from microsoft, but still it is: Run Time error "9"    Subscript out of range. Can someone tell me what is wrong with my Power Swapper?

[erjin999]

I dont think that its meant to anything else yet. Once the error is fixed, then it will do something else. Until then many people seems to be getting similar errors.

Has anyone out there sucessfully installed and run this program ? (Author excluded of course!)

Is there anything we can do to help Cyboman ?

[Cyborg]

Well, only a handful of people should be having that problem. All the people who got it working just aren't reporting anything.

I'm working on a new version, though, but it will only make Power Swapper more useable by everyone. It will not fix any of your problems, I think.

As I don't know why you encounter such problems, I have great difficulties fixing them. I will, though, investigate further.

[Beonid]

Mine's running fine, but with the Guardians of the sietch mod, Guild wars, ITDG and a few others, the mod doeesn't run.

[Cyborg]

Actually, a few of the mods don't run because there was something wrong with them. I managed to mix some non-patched mod files with some of the latest version (the version officially used), and the result is that Power Swapper can't read absolutely all mods. That will be fixed in the next release, along with a few other fixes. Please stay put.