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[Jurph]

Oh man, now I've got to post a .BMP from my mega-dormplex as well.  I'll be back in a little bit.
Anyone feel like creating the following files for the masses?

circle-9.bmp
circle-11.bmp
circle-13.bmp
...
circle-33.bmp

Having all of the odd-diameter circles come standard with the program (or better yet, a "draw circle of diameter X" function) would be incredibly useful.

Went ahead and filled my own request.  The Drop.io now has my Circle Pack (circle11 through circle45) and my Large Diagonal Hallways (4- and 5-wide) for your entertainment.  Are there other fundamental shapes that I'm forgetting?

EDITED TO ADD: can whoever moderates the drop.io kill the earlier versions?  I had the "dig" and "not-dig" inverted.  Oof.

[joelpt]

Hey all,

New version time!

The main feature of the new version is much improved playback speed and reliability. I believe everybody who has had to use large values for DelayMultiplier and KeyPressDuration in the past should no longer need to do so; Quickfort should now be able to playback at near full speed for everybody.

When 40d12 was released, I gave it a spin with Quickfort and was dismayed to see playback go completely off the rails on my first test run.

After some experimention I found that a combination of disabling the shift-key optimizations (e.g. using Shift+Right to move cursor right 10) and changing AHK's key-sending method to SendEvent got things working right in 40d12.

But even better, I found that QF would now playback perfectly in all recent versions of DF with DelayMultiplier set to 1 and KeyPressDuration set to -1 (no delay)! Since the shift-key optimizations are now disabled by default, QF does have to send more keypresses, and this does slow things down. But since we can send keys much faster now, I find that overall playback speed (duration) is about on par with the best times QF 1.0 could attain.

I then read Valdemar's post suggesting the use of ControlSend, so that players could switch windows during playback and QF would still send keys just to the DF window. I tried it and was happy to find that ControlSend worked nearly identically to SendEvent as described above, with the extra benefit of tolerating window switching.

So in this version, you can set the SendMode in options.txt. By default it it set to ControlSend and DisableSafetyAbort=1 has also been set; the combination of these two settings will permit you to switch windows while QF playback is going. However I should note that using the Ctrl/Shift/Alt/Win keys during playback is not advised and can still mess up playback sometimes. I implemented some special handling to try and compensate for this, but it only works about 90% of the time.

I didn't post about version 1.04 in this thread, so I'm including release notes for both 1.04 and 1.05 here. Thanks to Organ for noticing the lack of examples in the 1.04 package 

Code: [Select]

1.05 (2009 July 1)

* Big improvements to playback performance and reliability! Please update your options.txt.
* ControlSend send mode now makes window switching during playback possible (Valdemar);
  note pressing Alt/Ctrl/Shift/Win keys can still mess up playback sometimes
* DisableSafetyAbort now set by default since window switching is possible
* "Switch to DF window" mousetip now only shows once per run of QF

1.04 (2009 June 9)

* Added diagonal cursor movement optimization
* Fixed start() data from one blueprint carrying over to a subsequent blueprint w/o start()

Please let me know how this works for you -- especially you folks who've had to use very slow playback settings.

[joelpt]

I love quickfort, but couldn't you make an easier way to make blueprints? I hate using Excel cause the letters aren't perfect. The boxes are rectangular and end up confusing you, cause it makes gaps.

Check QF's readme.txt for a simple Excel macro you can use to automatically make the columns nice and uniformly narrow.  Makes reading and editing the blueprints sooo much easier.

I'd love if you made some sort of GUI where you just Click in, or dig in (like in DF with the keyboard) the blueprint, then save it. It saves having to do all that annoying key pressing in Excel, just to find out you missed a few spots.

Yeah that would be really cool, but it would be a lot of work, particularly if you wanted to represent all the different building phases. At this time though, I find Excel to be quite effective with the use of the aforementioned macro and other Excel tips (see readme.txt).

[joelpt]

EDITED TO ADD: can whoever moderates the drop.io kill the earlier versions?  I had the "dig" and "not-dig" inverted.  Oof.

Done.

What do you all think of including some of these contributions to the drop.io site in the Examples/ folder of future releases? I'm thinking stuff like the common shapes would be nice to have included.

[Sourlout]

Just wanted to drop a quick thanks.  Was playing with this tool last night and I absolutely love it.  Thanks for your effort!

[Veroule]

Since you mentioned D12, I thought I might suggest taking a look at the macro capabilities being added to DF.  The definition tags for them in the interface.txt is finialized as of D12.  The only macro specific change I have planned for D13 is to lower the repeat maximum from 1000 to 255.  It might be a nice addition to your utility to make it able to create the macro tags that a user could paste into the interface.txt.

[joelpt]

Since you mentioned D12, I thought I might suggest taking a look at the macro capabilities being added to DF.  The definition tags for them in the interface.txt is finialized as of D12.  The only macro specific change I have planned for D13 is to lower the repeat maximum from 1000 to 255.  It might be a nice addition to your utility to make it able to create the macro tags that a user could paste into the interface.txt.

I was thinking about that too. QF already has a sort-of approximation of macros via its Alt+T 'command prompt' and aliases. But it would be much nicer to have it run natively in DF.

Though why are you lowering the repeat maximum? If anything, an increase (or even removing any practical maximum) would seem preferable from my perspective; this could enable players to stick their most used QF blueprints into DF macros regardless of size.

[joelpt]

Though why are you lowering the repeat maximum? If anything, an increase (or even removing any practical maximum) would seem preferable from my perspective; this could enable players to stick their most used QF blueprints into DF macros regardless of size.

After thinking about this I'm guessing 'repeat maximum' isn't referring to the macro length limit. Never mind

[Angellus]

I would like to request someone to look at my 'living pods' macro I posted earlyer.
I am still experiencing problems with DF d12, ver. 1.05.

I follow this method:

start DF
start QF
Load Macro
<d>
place cursor (with keyboard)
<alt+d> or run

I always end up in the record screen for some reason :S

[joelpt]

1.06 is released. This is just a quick bug fix: the change to using ControlSend in 1.05 was causing the Z-up/down keys to not send properly (since they use modifier keys, which ControlSend seemingly cannot handle).

Code: [Select]

1.06 (2009 July 3)

* Fix KeyUpZ/KeyDownZ not working right when using ControlSend mode; QF will now
  simply switch to the DF window and send these keystrokes using SendInput as needed

http://sun2design.com/quickfort/Quickfort_1.06.zip

[Jurph]

What do you all think of including some of these contributions to the drop.io site in the Examples/ folder of future releases? I'm thinking stuff like the common shapes would be nice to have included.

You're welcome to use any of my contributions, and since you're doing the heavy lifting with the code, I'll be happy to chip in more simple shapes for folks who want a library to work from.  Maybe a selection of rhombuses (squares tipped on a 45 degree angle) since those currently require line-by-line designation?

[joelpt]

What do you all think of including some of these contributions to the drop.io site in the Examples/ folder of future releases? I'm thinking stuff like the common shapes would be nice to have included.

You're welcome to use any of my contributions, and since you're doing the heavy lifting with the code, I'll be happy to chip in more simple shapes for folks who want a library to work from.  Maybe a selection of rhombuses (squares tipped on a 45 degree angle) since those currently require line-by-line designation?

That'd be great. I think I'll look at the next version for potential inclusion of these common blueprints.

[joelpt]

New version 1.07! This version mainly fixes more issues resulting from 1.05's changes and other lingering bugs. QF should now work on all 40d versions of DF to 40d13.

I haven't looked into the non-English keyboard layout problem yet, because I know 40d12/13 have made some big changes in this area, with potentially more coming.

http://sun2design.com/quickfort/Quickfort_1.07.zip

Code: [Select]


1.07 (2009 July 21)

* "Safe" key-sending mode added in 1.06 now uses a slow version of SendPlay
  instead of SendInput; safe mode is also now used whenever a modifier key or
  capital letter needs to be sent (they don't work w/ ControlSend & SendEvent)
* Improvements to keeping DF window focused and accepting keystrokes
* With these changes Quickfort appears to be fully working on DF 40d-40d13
* Visualization (Alt+V) now returns cursor to where it was beforehand
* "Switch to the DF window" tip now only shown when DF isn't active at QF start



[Nalbir]

I am trying to make a auto-starcase but it messes up on the third floor, just goes to the bottom of the z axis and then does some weird last floor. Any idea's why its wrong?

Code: [Select]

#dig start(2;2;cursor at ud/down stairs)
u,d,u,#
d,i,d,#
j,d,j,#
#>,#
j,d,j,#
d,i,d,#
u,d,u,#
#>,#
u,d,u,#
d,i,d,#
j,d,j,#
#>,#
j,d,j,#
d,i,d,#
u,d,u,#
#>,#
#

[joelpt]

I am trying to make a auto-starcase but it messes up on the third floor, just goes to the bottom of the z axis and then does some weird last floor. Any idea's why its wrong?

It was a bug in Quickfort. I've uploaded a new version that should hopefully take care of this problem -- for good this time

Code: [Select]

1.08 (2009 July 30)

* Yet another fix for safe sending mode; now using Send to send these keys.
* Alt+T will no longer retain start() setting from a previous .csv file

http://sun2design.com/quickfort/Quickfort_1.08.zip


Also, regarding your stairs blueprint: you could just make your blueprint two z-levels tall, and then use QF's Alt+R repeat function to repeat those two levels down as many levels as you want:

Code: [Select]

#dig start(2;2;cursor at ud/down stairs)
u,d,u,#
d,i,d,#
j,d,j,#
#>,#
j,d,j,#
d,i,d,#
u,d,u,#
#