Faster ways to Test

[bnewton81]

Is there any faster way to test an age? Rather than just dropping it into that jumble of other ages in the .dat file. I really hate testing ages for several reasons, but most of which is that it takes so freakin long. I also hate possibly losing age stuff in the dat file. I don't know if I'm ocd or what, but knowing that I may have useless files anywhere on my machine really, really bothers me. I like to keep my files as close to sterile as possible. At least highly ordered. If anyone has any suggestions or thoughts on this...

[I.Brattin]

No there is no other way to test ages. You have to drop it in to Uru.

[tachzusamm]

Here's how I do it:
Export:
1. Use this trick: http://forum.guildofwriters.org/viewtop ... 17&p=45270
2. Directly export to Uru/dat folder; avoids the need of copying files after export.
Uru start:
3. Rename the files Intro0.bik and Intro1.bik in your Uru installation avi folder to something else, e.g. add a .BAK extension; this way Uru starts faster because it skips the videos.
4. Assign a keybord shortcut for starting the Uru setup.exe (e.g. Ctrl-Alt-U); allows to start Uru in no time when export is done.
5. In Uru, enter "/autolink <agename>"; links you automatically to your age as soon as you land in Relto. Requires the OfflineKI installed.

[Luna]

I have noticed that with some small changes you do not have to restart uru. So you can link to your relto, copy-paste in the new files , link back. You could try this of you're only changing a texture or so, it will take some figuring out when it works and when not (you just stackdump, not a really huge crash).

[bnewton81]

Great! Very helpful. I will try all these things. Thanks guys. Blender 2.6 makes it much easier on me than 2.49 as far as letting me bookmark folders. God did I hate having to always redirect the save, and I was afraid to export directly to the dat folder because I wanted to know exactly what I was putting in it. As I get more familial with the process I'm sure I will be able to streamline it a bit. Thanks Tach for the excellent suggestions.

Did I hear about work being done on a test environment addon to blender? That would be monumental. To be able to see what ur lighting actually looks like or how much emit you need on each material.

[Jojon]

Personally I have a bit of an aversion to dropping the export, complete with texture cache and log, directly into the dat/, so I have a little batch file, that I can click, which copies over the relevant files from the particular project's "export" directory and also deletes the age's sav file. :7

[Sirius]

Speaking about batch...

That's not much, but here is the script for a batch that will launch Uru without having to run UruSetup. It is for Windows only (I'm sure there is a way to do that in Shell for Linux, but I don't know how).

Code: Select all

:: UruExplorer.exe.bat
:: will launch Uru without UruSetup
@echo OFF
:: Please enter your Uru directory in the next line
cd C:\Progra~1\Myst\Uru
UruExplorer.exe -iinit To_Dni
exit

Copy this in a blank file, then rename it so that it ends with ".bat".

You have to put your directory name at line 5. Please note that a folder of more than 7 letters MUST have a special syntax. For example, your directory path is:
C:\SomeFolder\Uru - Complete Chronicles
Line 5 will look like:
cd C:\SomeFo~1\Uru-Co~1
Quite weird but that's how it works.

I often have to modify Cyan's Ages, and that's truly a real pain to start Uru over and over.
And if you want to use Uru offline in hight resolution (using UruStarter from DI), this is a way to make sure UruSetup won't overwrite the config file (I won't explain fully how to do it here).

I hope this can be useful.

[bnewton81]

Well that was totally and completely over my head. =)

[Chacal]

What does the "-iinit To_Dni" parameter do?
Are there other parameters possible for Uruexplorer.exe?

[Sirius]

When you double click on UruExplorer.exe, it just starts UruSetup.exe. And once you click on the Play button of UruSetup, it calls UruExplorer, but with -iinit To_Dni as an argument (or whatever this is). So when you use this command in MS-DOS this doesn't make any difference for Uru.
I found that on another thread when trying to use Uru in a higher resolution.

And I just tried to find back this thread, and found you could use a simple shortcut instead of a batch file to do this !
So, forget what I said in my last post. Here is a better way:
Right click on UruExplorer.exe, click on Create shortcut (I guess that's how it is named). Then right-click on your newly created shortcut and go into Properties. In the Shortcut tab, replace:

Code: Select all

"YourDirectory\UruExplorer.exe"

in the first tab by

Code: Select all

"YourDirectory\UruExplorer.exe" -iinit To_Dni

And you don't have to bother with the way MS-DOS handles folder, your folder name can be of any length.


I guess there are other possible parameters, but I know none of them.