intfiction.org

Got this error when starting the 0.9.3 .exe (on Windows XP)

Was this a fresh download?

I'll be repackaging the Windows 0.9.3 since there seem to be some problems with it.

_________________
Grotesque: an interactive fiction library manager for Linux
PyIFBabel: a Treaty of Babel library for Python

Yep, downloaded yesterday.

*bump*

Yep, shameless bump. Just everyone's most well-known and possibly well-hated - but I did it anyway - way of asking the author Hey, what's up? How's it going? Had time to work on those remaning issued? It's ok if you hadn't, but I'd really like a heads up, because your program is so damn good.

Of course, having just spelled it out like that makes the "bump" superfluous, but hey. I woke up today with my default set as "verbose".

Thanks for the bump
Yes, I've *finally* been able to get back to work on Grotesque in the last couple of weeks. I'm doing a lot of work on the internals at the moment, trying to make the base a lot more stable and powerful, from which point I can continue to improve the interface. I've given myself the task of making my Treaty of Babel code a separately available package to other developers; to do this well has the implicit requirement of making the code full-featured and rock-solid. This will have some benefits for Grotesque. On the one hand, it will make the handling of story metadata more sane and easy to work with for me, resulting in a more stable application. For the user, it will (eventually) opening up much better possibilities for going crazy with organizing your library, such as the built-in ability to create blorbs and excellent iFiction file import/export. One other thing that this work did was make me realize that I somehow previously omitted AdvSys (.dat) games from my Treaty code. This has now been fixed. All that remains to work on is the blorb functionality and a couple remaining iFiction things, which I'll be working on this weekend.

The other big change that will come next, also not noticable by the user directly, is moving to storing your library in an actual database (SQLite), rather than the weird way I'm storing them now. This will make it *much* easier for me to implement features like tags and notes (both of which I plan on adding).

I'll fix a few bugs along the way and I'll hopefully squeeze in a small interface improvement or two while I'm at it (I'd really like to get that Unicode collating implemented so that author names are sorted properly).

Sad to say, though, that it might be a little while until the release.

I've set up a new web page for the project, which includes a development blog so I can occasionally show signs of life: http://grotesque.invergo.net
Rather than dealing with the clunky/complicated bug tracking system on Sourceforge, I'd prefer people from now on to either email me directly (see the Grotesque website) or contact me here. I'll work on finding a better alternative but until then, this will have to do.

_________________
Grotesque: an interactive fiction library manager for Linux
PyIFBabel: a Treaty of Babel library for Python

Very glad to hear it, all of it. Especially glad to know that you're working on storing the database in another way - it's a bit of a hassle remembering that if I want to back up my database, I have to remember to go to my \users\, instead of just backing up the Grotesque folder. Just, hey, make sure I don't lose the hundreds of entries I already have in my old database, ok? It was a lot of work to get them there.

I notice you didn't mention "no interpreter defined = the OS runs it with the associated program as normally". That is still on the list, right? For Apple II, Alan 2 and Windows games, that's the only way I'll have of running them from Grotesque.

Safely migrating to the new database without losing any data is a *top* priority, trust me!




It's still on my To-Do list but it might not make it into this release unfortunately, depending on how simple it is to implement!

_________________
Grotesque: an interactive fiction library manager for Linux
PyIFBabel: a Treaty of Babel library for Python

Hey there. Quick heads-up - for some reason, double-click on Windows, which worked before, doesn't seem to work anymore. Unfortunately I don't know why, and can only hope other people chime in with "I had that problem" or "I don't have that problem".

Suggestion, though - the ability to refresh a game's entry. I'm thinking specifically of cover images. Currently, if I want to edit the cover images - and I have lots of Spectrum games downloaded that I didn't bother getting the covers to, covers which I'm now considering adding - I have to delete the game's entry and add the game again. Bit of a nuisance, really, when a single button along the lines of "Refresh Cover Image" would suffice, heh?

Oh, and same goes for other information, like the game's actual file. Supposing I move a whole folder, I'd like to open each game's individual entry in Grotesque and change the path of the game, rather than - as I have to do now - delete the entry and make another one. Or suppose a new version of a game gets released. Sure, I can rename, say, "houdiniv2.zblorb" to "houdini.zblorb", but it'd make more sense to point the entry for "Houdini" at the latest version, rather than going around changing filenames.

Hm, strange. I'll look into this.



I'm in the process of changing how the cover art is handled, so it should be easier to change it in the Edit Story dialog. I just haven't decided exactly how I'll do it yet. But, yes, this is coming!



Yes, this is something you should be able to do from the Edit Story dialog as well. I'll add it.

I got some work done on Grotesque yesterday but it will still be a long process since I have to make some pretty big changes "under the hood". As (I think) I said before, this is all necessary, though, as some of the underlying design has been holding me back from adding new features. I guess that's the downside of free/open source software: its organic growth sometimes impedes or precludes good engineering... :/ (re: building an application on top of the work of someone else, and starting the project without any real goal in mind).

_________________
Grotesque: an interactive fiction library manager for Linux
PyIFBabel: a Treaty of Babel library for Python

Hey, new here, just been looking around for an IF file manager, and Grotesque looks awesome... it looks like the Windows version is still having issues, though?

I was thrown off at first, because the Windows download link at your site (http://grotesque.invergo.net/download/) seems to link to the GTK version: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/grotes ... tk3.tar.gz

I went to the sourceforge page, though, and downloaded http://sourceforge.net/projects/grotesq ... .3-win.zip

Clicked on grotesque.exe, and got the same error in groesque.exe.log that others have reported:



Windows 7 Home Premium, 64 bit.

_________________
Jordan Magnuson
www.necessarygames.com
www.twitter.com/JordanMagnuson
www.facebook.com/JordanMagnuson