An interesting idea

[shriuken154]

So I was playing around with winrar/7zip and I discovered you can extract the library exe file and lo and behold when you extract it it gives you all the .dll's required to play/run/develop with EE. Makes sense right? So I got curious and extracted the server.exe file and lo and behold I got 3 documents. A (I'm assuming) a resource (it was .rscs I think) file, some other miscellaneous one, and a text file.  Now I opened that text file and found some interesting things, mainly confusing jargon, but every once in a while I'd stumble upon a line saying

"C:\Windows\system32\*******.dll (or whatever that other extension for .dll's is, I think it's like .ocx or .oca)

now it is my theory (I'm a novice programmer so I do not know if this is possible) that if you change the "C:\Windows\system32" part to something different, like perhaps you personal directory at work (making this up but) somethin' like "H:\boss\my documents\EE\*******.dll" you could, in theory create a portable version of EE. Sounds good to me, I mean you don't actually have to install anything this way so no need to worry about administrator privileges or anything. Now my problem is that once I extract the .exe and make the changes so that it looks for the .dll's in a different location I can't reconstruct it back into a .exe to test my theory. If anyone could offer a solution/input/advice it'd be greatly appreciated. Thanks ^^

P.S. I don't know if this has been brought up before, if so please point me to where/how they did it.

[Robin]

Libraries require COM registration. If you have all the libraries automatically register to the client folder, as soon as the user deletes that folder they lose all their links.

Terrible idea which many people have done. This is one of the reasons I don't trust most Eclipse games.

[shriuken154]

So you're saying that it is possible to make a "portable" version of the client/server so it could be worked on on the go?

[IceCream Tuesday]

@shriuken154:

> So you're saying that it is possible to make a "portable" version of the client/server so it could be worked on on the go?

Laptop?

[Gwen]

umm i used to run eclipse offline all the time when I was scripting for it. as long as you run the server and client as local host it will be "portable" for you to work on it. You will still need to install the library files….

Are you asking if its possible to run a version that you dont have to register the library files?

[Adulese Games]

@[Pie:

> ICT link=topic=66208.msg713240#msg713240 date=1289948843]
> @shriuken154:
>
> > So you're saying that it is possible to make a "portable" version of the client/server so it could be worked on on the go?
>
> Laptop?


- Adulese

[shriuken154]

Basically run without having the .dll's or make it find the .dll's in a different location. Like on a flashdrive, that kind of portable

[Adulese Games]

Why don't you just have a laptop or hax to get admin? It not dat hard man. ;D

- Adulese

[shriuken154]

Well 'cause the laptop I do have has no battery and life, and this seems more. . . useful in my opinion, to be able to plug in anywhere and mess around with the game.

[IceCream Tuesday]

@shriuken154:

> Well 'cause the laptop I do have has no battery and life, and this seems more. . . useful in my opinion, to be able to plug in anywhere and mess around with the game.

www.google.com > New Laptop Battery

[shriuken154]

The laptop's ancient, I doubt it would even run the game efficiently, the new laptop battery is probably worth more than the laptop itself. So yeah and I really don't wanna buy a new laptop. . . which led me to this conclusion you can somehow make it look for the .dll's in a different location other than C:\Windows\system32

[IceCream Tuesday]

how about this concept.. buy an external.. put an OS on the external.. with all the required shit for your game.. and then just boot off the external.

[Chakkra]

That' your fault for giving him the idea! Don't hate.

[Robin]

@shriuken154:

> So you're saying that it is possible to make a "portable" version of the client/server so it could be worked on on the go?

Eclipse _is_ portable. You just need the library files installed. You asked if it's possible to just ship the dynamic-;ink libraries (DLLs). Yes, but it won't work because of how COM works.

[shriuken154]

Funny you should say buy an external hard drive. .  . I do have that. . . Okay and forgive me Robin, it has been over a year+ since I've last been on this site, let alone tried to program or do anything this intensive

EDIT:  Perhaps I had worded my question wrong, is it possible to recreate the server.exe that I had torn down to its essential files by winraring it?

[Robin]

I have no idea what you mean by that. If you've deleted files which the server requires then it won't work.

[shriuken154]

Like okay, if you run winrar you can "extract" the server.exe into a folder. In the folder is, what I'm assuming to be, the files that are "compiled" into the .exe. I'm wondering how to recompile the folder with those files into the .exe again.

[Robin]

Do you have any idea how compiling programs works?

[King-Kold]

@shriuken154:

> Like okay, if you run winrar you can "extract" the server.exe into a folder. In the folder is, what I'm assuming to be, the files that are "compiled" into the .exe. I'm wondering how to recompile the folder with those files into the .exe again.

That isn't quite how compiling works lol :). I haven't had my coffee yet today so please bear with me.

The files you extract from the archive can be divided into two main, very general groups - game files and source files. Your source files end with .BAS, .VBP and the form files (.FRM and .FRX), while your game files are everything else. Now, without getting really technical on you here, to make a new EXE, you have to have Visual Basic 6 (I know, it is older than the mountains of Norway, but that is why I am holding out for Origins.NET). Once you have that, you need to open the Client.vbp and Server.vbp. Those are the Visual Basic Project files. From there you just recompile into new executables (EXEs).

The game files will stay the same, with the EXE files drawing off of them when they're loaded by the running application. Extracting them with WinRAR does nothing except decompress all of those files out of a compressed file and put them in a specified directory. No actual compiling happens outside of the VB6 environment.

I hope this helps you :).

[shriuken154]

Yes it did, thank you :) haha yeah, when I initially set out I didn't think it would be that hard, but the more I got into it the more it seemed I needed to program it which is why I thought to ask you guys if you knew anything of how to do it. Haha well that's what I figured so thanks  :azn:

Thanks again for your guys' patience, it's much appreciated