From: Alex Young <alex@...>
Date: 2007-11-17T00:31:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Beginner needs help...

Caesar Salad wrote:
>> Is offering a separate interface that launches the executable with the
>> relevant modpack in place not an option?
>> Never thought of that. I'm not on my own in this project (actually, some other guy came up with most of the ideas, but he's no programmer, so he asked me for some advice... so I went on ressearching for a way to implement what he came up with).
> The thing is: currently, for AOE2, you can launch a graphic modpack 
> through an external program, in a temporary fashion. But only when the 
> game is not running (there are no workarounds for this, unless we hack 
> into the game's source code, which not only takes time, it's also 
> illegal). Anyway, what I thought of was to, if the player desired to 
> open a certain modpack, he/she would simply launch the game. It'd be 
> blocked, and my program would appear, giving the player the option to 
> choose what modpack he/she would like to use (in a list or something). 
> Once that was done, the game would then be launched, with the modpack 
> loaded.
> Also, there are AOE2 players that use Windows, and others that use Linux 
> (and a few who use Macs). So we intended to make this program available 
> for both OS.
In that case, you're probably going to want to just move the AOE2 
executable to one side and replace it with your program - the user won't 
notice the difference then.  I don't know of any cross-platform way to 
intercept an executable's launch.

>> If you can see the source to that program, it's probably worth taking a
>> look to see what the file format is.  To implement a reader in Ruby,
>> take a look at the bitstruct library - it's probably got everything
>> you'll need.
> Where can I get this library?
http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bit-struct/

> (BTW, where can I get a good Ruby library for graphical interface?)
TK, GTK, QT and Wx all have Ruby interfaces, among others.  Which to 
choose is a matter of personal taste, to a large degree.  There are good 
examples out there for GTK and QT, at the very least.  I've not looked 
into any others myself - search the archives for more discussion on this.

-- 
Alex