New installer for testing

[Chris]

As many of you are probably aware, we had to ship a last minute tech-support card inside the dvd box of Darwinia, because of some reported problems with the Install Shield version we were using. The problem is quite rare and affects some WindowsXP installations with Service Pack 2, and appears as an error box saying "Error in Windows 16 bit subsystem". Suffice to say, we won't be using that installer again for the next batch of Darwinia CDs.

We have prepared a new Installer, which we need to be tested. This is open to everyone, not just registered beta testers, as we need it testing as far and as wide as possible. We've used Inno Setup this time around, which produces a much more professional looking installer than the old version of Install Shield we used.

In order to test this we've packaged up the v1.1 demo in the installer. You can download the test file here. Please download that file and install it, make sure everything works ok, test the uninstaller, etc etc. Report any problems as comments to this news article. Thanks for your help on this.

In other news
- There is a fantastic review of Darwinia at GameHeckler, awarding our game 8 out of 10. Click here to read it.
- And another review at Rebell.at, this time in German, scoring us 87%. Click here to read it. Can anyone translate it for us?

[coolsi]

Works fine for me, running XP with SP2 - I didn't have any trouble with the original installer on the CD though.

[Starfyre]

I'll get to translating the Rebell.at for you and I'll send it per mail, Chris
Installer works fine for me, by the way.

[Starfyre]

Cha-clink! And done.

Translated version of the Rebell.at interview:
http://web3.ewsg.net/darwinia/files/dar ... lated.html

Don't fan this everywhere or I'll be sued for copyright infringement or something equally weird (hehe). I mailed the author though and asked him if it was okay, so if we get the confirmation I'll tidy it up and add some of the graphics so it doesn't look crappy anymore the way it does now.

Enjoy.

[xander]

Cha-clink! And done.

Translated version of the Rebell.at interview:
http://web3.ewsg.net/darwinia/files/dar ... lated.html

Don't fan this everywhere or I'll be sued for copyright infringement or something equally weird (hehe).

Enjoy.

Nice.

xander

[vogelap]

We have prepared a new Installer, which we need to be tested.

The new demo installer and uninstaller worked fine for me on WinXP SP2.

[The GoldFish]

Hmm, that's interesting.

OK, originally I never had any problems with the installer.

Your new installer overwrote the stuff in my startmenu for the full version of the game (my bad though, but defaulting to putting things in Darwinia Demo might of been nice...), easily fixed by reinstalling the game... cept now I suffer from the doom of 'invalid subsystem'.

Neat, huh?

The new one works just dandy, by the by.

[Stewsburntmonkey]

Works fine for me on XP SP2. Never had a problem before though.

[The GoldFish]

I compatability moded _isdel.exe and the original worked fine again. No idea why it didn't happen at the start and does happen now. Really odd - you're lucky you spotted it before you sent the games out, really.

Again, the new one works without a hitch while the original whines!

[Iris]

We have prepared a new Installer, which we need to be tested. This is open to everyone, not just registered beta testers, as we need it testing as far and as wide as possible. We've used Inno Setup this time around, which produces a much more professional looking installer than the old version of Install Shield we used.

No problem in 3 PCs with XP + SP2, Korean version. The old one didn't have problems anyway.

In other news
- There is a fantastic review of Darwinia at GameHeckler, awarding our game 8 out of 10. Click here to read it

'...both mouse buttons for a special attack'? Never saw that in the manual, or so I think. Have to try that later. =)

p.s. 'Genre: Retro-strategy-psychotropic'. Gotta love that editor, he sure knows how to play with words. ^_^

[Bruce42]

Are the dat files still in the same place on the new CD? Just asking to see if this will break the linux installer.

[elDiablo]

Works fine for me. XP with SP2.

[miniMac]

- And another review at Rebell.at, this time in German, scoring us 87%. Click here to read it. Can anyone translate it for us?

I've found another german review at 4Players.de, you may find interesting.
The Site gives the game 86% and a gold award title. They also mentioned some negative points (among dozens of positive ones), like weak story and tutorial, or that the tanks are sometimes a little touchy. But overall the author has a very positive position to darwinia.
At the end he comments (and i fully agree), that he is wondering why there is no german publisher so far, because this game will be an enrichment to everyones portfolio.

miniMac

[Wyverncrest]

Worked fine on my XP/SP2 machine.

I do have a suggestion, though: If a user installs the demo and subsequently installs the full version to the same folder, the existing preferences file is not overwritten. When they start the full game for the first time, it will bypass the bootloader and go directly to the mines. At least, that's what happened when I was experimenting with this installer. I would recommend, therefore, that to minimize this possibility, the demo should be set with a different default folder than the full version

[Darksun]

Hmm, IIRC the default directory for the demo was C:\Games\Darwinia and for the fullver it was C:\Program Files\Darwinia