Announcing the POL Configurator!

[Yukiko]

I have made another update to the POL Configurator. The links in the original post have the update. This will be the case going forward unless specified otherwise. That way I am not repeating myself

This update checks for the file /config/servspecopt.local.cfg when loading the user's config files and if present reads reads that file in. When saving the settings, if /config/servspecopt.local.cfg is present, it will save the settings for servspecopt.cfg to the "local" file. Thank you Xeon for pointing out that servspecopt.local.cfg is an option for shard devs to use.

Also, on the advice of Turley, I have changed the delimiter for file specifications from '\' to '/' to avoid any RegEx, escape sequence or any other unforeseen special use cases of '\'.


Now I want to address one issue that has been brought up a few times in reference to the Configurator. That issue is that I should put it on GitHub as an open source project. My response to that is I most probably will. There are a couple of things holding me back.

The first one is easily addressed. There is still a little more code clean-up I want to do. I take pride in this little program because it was a major personal accomplishment for me. I finished it after rediscovering it on my hard drive and I finished it after having the stroke you are all probably tired of hearing about. So before I post it on a repo I'd like to make it as polished and shiny as I know how. I am sure a more skilled programmer could have done better but I still can't believe I wrote this. Yeah. I know that sounds silly but if you knew me you would not believe it either

The other thing is related to the first. This is, please pardon the metaphor, my baby, and it's hard to let her go and have other people fiddling with her inner parts. So give me a few months at the most and I'll put her in the POL tools repo and get Nando to add her to the Hosted Projects forum.

I am impressed by people such as Turley who can create programs such as UO Fiddler, which I am sure he is proud of, and then just hand them over freely. It's not the sharing of the executable programme that impresses me. It is being able to let go of the source code for others to modify what they've done.

I am sorry if this sounds silly and, as we say in America, "sappy". That is how I feel. So give me a little time and soon you too can learn Pascal and tweak and make changes and most likely improve upon my work.

[Yukiko]

Sorry Turley but I had to change the '/' characters back to '\'.

They were causing problems with executing eCompile. I have to enclose directory references in double quotes " in the event that a directory reference contains a space and for some reason doing that causes the '/' character to not be handled as if it is a '\' character. In all other places where I am not using double quotes the / worked fine.

The problem appears to be with the Windows batch file handler. As you know I write a batch file to do many of the operations so the user can see that everything was handled properly, eCompile functions are one example. At any rate those places where a batch file has to call an executable I need the double quotes around directory names and those quotes cause the issue.

The files have been re-updated and are available.

[Yukiko]

One more change I made. I added the large friendly "Use POL Root" button back to the eCompile configuration page. I have several different POL folders and I found that under certain circumstances the POL root was wrong in the eCompile directory settings. Specifically if I was starting a new test POL installation and using the individual browse buttons was annoying and unnecessary if I had the large friendly button there.

[Yukiko]

A new version is available. This version fixes two (2) bugs.

Fixed: illegal file name error message introduced when I added a check for servspecopt.local.cfg. If that file is present the Configurator will load that instead of servspecopt.cfg. The bug arose from either my misunderstanding of how 'if'/'then'/else' statements work outside the eScript environment or Pascal is quirky in the handling of them.

Fixed: The "Load My Config Files" button was enabled even though the user had not provided a valid POL directory location.

See the original post for the links.

[Yukiko]

A new version is available. This fixes some problems handling servers that have spaces in their directory names.
See original post for the download links.

[Yukiko]

There was an update to the MUL extractor to handle the larger gump art file. This is needed for the latest client updates. Any client after 7.0.58 would cause the extractor to report an error. The POL Configurator with the updated extractor is now available.

So grab the Configurator so you have that updated extractor.

[Yukiko]

A new version of the POL Configurator is available.

The new Accessible range setting has been added to the Game Play tab just below the Double-Click settings.

See the original post (OP) for the download links.

[Yukiko]

New version released, 1.7.0.0.
This reply is merely to flag this thread as unread to bring the new release to the attention of forum users.

[Yukiko]

Ooops!

In the recent update to the Configurator I accidentally compiled an interim version that had a soon to be finished new feature, Server Log-in Configuration settings, on the Server Settings tab. THIS FEATURE IS NOT WORKING yet. It will not save those settings to servers.cfg. So for now servers.cfg still needs to be edited manually. I have recompiled the Configurator without those settings on that page and updated the links in the original post.

Sorry for any confusion.

[Yukiko]

A new version of The POL Configurator is up. See the original post for details and the download link.

[Yukiko]

Bug fix release posted 2018-09-22. See original post for info and the download link.

[Yukiko]

I have completed version 3.0.0.0 of the POL Configurator.

This version adds servers.cfg and uoclient.cfg to the list of files it supports. There is also a UI redesign, a minor one but a redesign non-the-less. I expanded the interface on the right side. I moved the Test Launch POL and Run POL buttons to this area. In addition, there are now eight buttons you can assign to external programs or batch files. Naturally, these program assignments survive a restart of the Configurator and can be easily edited to reassign the buttons to a different program if you so desire. I also added Profiles to the Configurator for those of us who work on multiple POL servers. I cannot remember if that was in a previous release or not. So I am mentioning it here just in case. There are other new features such as detection of missing accounts.txt and missing pol.txt files and the ability to create them. But, the most important thing that has changed is the POL Configurator has a new icon!

Rather than posting new screenshots, I created a PDF of the instructions with pictures. There is also an ODT file of the same. You can find those in the Documentation folder inside of the ZIP file.

I hope you find it useful.

[boberski]

Nice one, I really ned to do something similar for linux...

[Yukiko]

I wish I knew more about the Linux OS because Lazarus is cross platform but the calls to external functions such as executing external programs are different. Also, the MUL extractor would not work without modifying the source because it is Windows specific. Can't you run the Configurator under Wine?

[Yukiko]

Version 3.0.3.0 is now available. Please see the original post for details of the issues that were fixed.

[Yukiko]

Yes, my friends, there is an updated version of the POL Configurator. See the original post (OP) for info and links to the updated files.

[Yukiko]

Small update. See OP for details.

[Yukiko]

Another update. See the OP for details.

[Yukiko]

See the original post for the new version, 3.1.0.0

[Yukiko]

This reply was to "bump" this thread because there has been an update to the POL Configurator's default pol cfg file.

However, I am going to explain here a little of how the Configurator works
On start-up it reads the default cfg files that are supplied with it. Those files are pol.cfg, combat.cfg, ecompile.cfg, servers.cfg, servspecopt.cfg, uoclient.cfg, and watch.cfg. In those default files are not only the default settings but I also have preserved the comments explaining the settings. As it reads in those files it stores the default settings internally. Once those files are loaded and the user has selected the POL and UO directories the Configurator checks for the presence of the seven (7) cfg files listed above. If any, or all, are missing, the user is prompted to allow the Configurator to use its default files and save them to the user's POL installation. If the user does not allow it to add the missing files to her POL installation then the Configurator will exit with a message explaining that it, the Configurator, needs those files to be present in order to operate properly. Some of those files may need to be present for POL to operate as well.

After the check to verify the presence of the files and the user's approval to replace any missing files, the user is notified that the default settings have been loaded and the user may use those settings as loaded, change them if they wish or load their pre-existing settings.

All of the previous information is contained in the documentation that comes with the program. This is the new information I wanted to convey to you. If the user chooses to load their settings, the Configurator will read those seven files from their POL installation and will change any of the default settings it stored from reading its default files to the settings that are in the user's cfg files. Because settings are added over the years to POL's cfg files, the user's files may be missing some of the newer settings but because I am striving to keep its default files up-to-date with new settings that are added, the Configurator will have those newer settings. When the user clicks the "Save Settings" button, the Configurator will add any missing newer settings to the user's cfg files along with the comments in the files which explain the purpose of each setting.

[Yukiko]

Another update to the Configurator. See the OP for details.

[Yukiko]

New bug fix version released. See the first post for the download links.

[Yukiko]

New setting, LoginServerTimeout, added to Login Settings page.

[Yukiko]

Version 3.7.0.0 released. See the original post for the links.