Duck and Cover

How often do people back their stuff up on to a seperate storage medium like floppies or cd-recordables? I'd run out of space on my hard drive and archived a load of files off to cd, uninstalled a load of demos and then ran Norton Cleansweep. Unfortunately cleansweep removed some program files it shouldn't have and when I re-booted my pc I couldn't access anything without doing a complete reinstallation. Unfortunately when I was archiving my urm 'stuff' I didn't bother backing up the map I had started working on, nor my saved games (as I only use cd-recordables, I didn't want to waste space with them). It's a little frustrating as I had done the majority of the tile work and now I'll have to start over. I've also lost my clips library which I had been building up, which is perhaps the greater set back.

To get onto the point of the post, I don't feel like recreating all the map from scratch, what do people think about clipping buildings from the campaign maps? Up to now I've prefered to do my own tile work (except the tents in Powercut which I could never get right), the map's set in an ruined pre-war settlement so I need lots of decayed buildings.

I clipped quite a few buildings for my map and then made modifications to them. You can change the door locations or gut the interior to make it different. Occasionally I'd take a building from the edges of a map that the player couldn't otherwise get into and use that in its entirety. You may as well take advantage of some of the already created landscapes too, there are alot of varieties in the random encounters.

Reformating is the pits. I have always hated it and im surprised I don't have nightmares about the stuff. My dad seems to actually LIKE doing it. I think he could sit around reformating and reinstalling stuff on computers all day long...

I hate that you lost your map and clips. I have not started work on a clip collection yet. Actually I haven't really figured it out yet but I now have a good idea of how to do it. Good luck getting your map up to par again. I know how it feels to lose a good portion of work :-(

You never need to reformat anything... deleting it all'll work jsut fine...

Jimmyjay86 wrote:I clipped quite a few buildings for my map and then made modifications to them. You can change the door locations or gut the interior to make it different. Occasionally I'd take a building from the edges of a map that the player couldn't otherwise get into and use that in its entirety. You may as well take advantage of some of the already created landscapes too, there are alot of varieties in the random encounters.

I tend to use existing buildings as place holders, I'll clip them and then virtually rebuild them from the ground up. Having the walls in place made it easier to set down the right number of floor tiles, having the right number of floor tiles made it easier to fit the roof tiles without finding that I couldn't line them up with the wall tiles.

Perhaps if I start this map over, I'll use some of the existing buildings more as they are. I'm not sure which are the worst to make, ruined buildings or new ones, especially when they're more than one story.

I sympathize w/those of you who have lost work. A while back I was given a new ISP software disc when my ISP was bought out. I installed it, and the software was too AOL-esque and so I uninstalled it. It corrupted one of the Windows files and my HD was no longer recognized, so I ended up having to restore my comp. Thankfully I had emailed Max a copy of The Fall of the Hub since my latest version at that point was over a week old. W/Max's help I "only" lost three days of intensive tile plunking. Funny thing was that I hadn't backed up the then-most current version of my demo, so whoever had dl'd it had more a current version of my own work than I myself did.

OTB

Wow -- timing is everything! I just put my new 120 GB hard drive in with Windows XP, but my dad and I can't figure out how to get the computer to dual-boot (one with WinME on the old 40 GB drive, one with WinXP and the new 120 GB drive). Fortunately, the old hard drive's contents are still intact, but since my maps/entities/etc. were saved in WinME (and, therefore, FAT32 instead of XP's NTFS), I dunno if I can just plop the files onto a CD-RW and make 'em work in WinXP (assuming I can get FOT to work on WinXP, something I'm not looking forward to...). So, my work on Revenge2 is stalled. A pity, too, 'cause I'm 95% done with the tiles...

Max-Violence wrote: I dunno if I can just plop the files onto a CD-RW and make 'em work in WinXP (assuming I can get FOT to work on WinXP, something I'm not looking forward to...). So, my work on Revenge2 is stalled. A pity, too, 'cause I'm 95% done with the tiles...

I don't see why it matters what OS the files were on. After all anyone can play a map created on a different version of Windows.

Max-Violence wrote:Wow -- timing is everything! I just put my new 120 GB hard drive in with Windows XP, but my dad and I can't figure out how to get the computer to dual-boot (one with WinME on the old 40 GB drive, one with WinXP and the new 120 GB drive).

Some people just have all the bad luck : ) 120GB drive, you're going to have fun when it becomes time to defrag that. : )

Max-Violence wrote:Fortunately, the old hard drive's contents are still intact, but since my maps/entities/etc. were saved in WinME (and, therefore, FAT32 instead of XP's NTFS), I dunno if I can just plop the files onto a CD-RW and make 'em work in WinXP (assuming I can get FOT to work on WinXP, something I'm not looking forward to...). So, my work on Revenge2 is stalled. A pity, too, 'cause I'm 95% done with the tiles...

As JJ86 says it shouldn't matter what the OS is, from reading other threads you're more likely to have problems just getting FOT to run, but I sympathize if you have any trouble opening your maps.

When I have enough money I'm going to buy a new system rather than upgrade the one I have, that way I can keep this one running with Windows 98 *gets on down on knees and gives thanks for W98 SE* .

requiem_for_a_starfury wrote:When I have enough money I'm going to buy a new system rather than upgrade the one I have, that way I can keep this one running with Windows 98 *gets on down on knees and gives thanks for W98 SE* .

I can relate to that. My old 400Mhz P2 is crammed full and has still been holding up but its due for a replacement this year. Its about 4-years old which is a pretty good life span. I am mainly holding out until a decent bug-free OS comes around.

Max-Violence wrote:Wow -- timing is everything! I just put my new 120 GB hard drive in with Windows XP, but my dad and I can't figure out how to get the computer to dual-boot (one with WinME on the old 40 GB drive, one with WinXP and the new 120 GB drive). Fortunately, the old hard drive's contents are still intact, but since my maps/entities/etc. were saved in WinME (and, therefore, FAT32 instead of XP's NTFS), I dunno if I can just plop the files onto a CD-RW and make 'em work in WinXP (assuming I can get FOT to work on WinXP, something I'm not looking forward to...). So, my work on Revenge2 is stalled. A pity, too, 'cause I'm 95% done with the tiles...

Did you check your jumper setting? I recently installed a 40gig slave drive (yay me) but I had to format everything on the drive...

Did you try setting the 120 up as a slave and copying everything over and then formatting the smaller one? hmmm...

Nah, I want the 120 to be the master, and yea, I checked the jumpers (well, my Dad did...), and no, it didn't even dawn on me that people with different file systems (not OS's, JJ86 *grin*) can use the same file.

I just hope I can get the dern game to work in the first place... unfortunately, I hear Splinter Cell calling my name *grin #2*

Ok, ok, I know the File Allocation Table is somewhat dependent of the OS version but c'mon its still related. But I don't think it would affect the transfer of files between the two. AFAIK, its just a way of storing information differently on the hard drive and doesn't affect information written to floppies or cds.

Whelp, I've installed FOT and patched it and unpacked all the .bos files I need and loaded my latest map in the Map Editor and...

Everything works!

*kisses his Windows XP CD*

Man, WinXP is freakin' sweet so far. My big impression was that XP made my cable modem work all by itself: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when I was usin' Win95 and even when I was on WinME, it took me about 2 hours or so to get the Internet "back." Worked "right outta da box" with XP!

My only hope is that all those XP Security Updates I just DL'd and installed actually work...