Usurper Board

I installed v0.21a and the game seems to be missing ANSI. The most notable is the classic splash screen this board uses as it's logo. I looked at the documentation and saw that USUTEXT.DAT is supposed to contain the majority of the games ANSI, but it's 0kb. Was the artwork pulled from the game at some point or am I doing something wrong? Thanks for any help you can give

Figured it out.

v0.21a creates the 0kb USUTEXT.DAT under the DATA sub folder. I went back and looked at older versions, saw that the file was normally in the root of the Usurper install. I took the USUTEXT.DAT from the 0.20e install and threw it in the root of my v0.21a install, seems to be working fine so far.

I've been kicking that problem off and on for the last couple days. Figures I would figure it out just after I make a forum post asking for help

i am glad that you solved it Tartarus

and I am glad that http://www.randm.ca did a port of Usurper. You are running the win32 version right?

/jd

rasputin wrote:i am glad that you solved it Tartarus

and I am glad that http://www.randm.ca did a port of Usurper. You are running the win32 version right?

/jd

yes, rick parrish, author of gamesrv and ftelnet [and other things] fixed/changed/ported Usurper to 16 and 32bit versions
i contacted him about this issue. it's probably better to notify rick than jakob

here's his links:
http://www.randm.ca/usurper.php
http://ftelnet.ca
http://www.gamesrv.ca/

I've had a few people report this problem now, but haven't been able to duplicate it. So if you could let me know if you're using the 16 or 32 bit EXEs, that might help narrow it down to a bug in the port, or an old bug that exists in both versions. I have a hunch it's in the port, since I'm not 100% certain the file locking stuff is correct.

Anyway, the problem is that USUTEXT.DAT belongs in the DATA directory, but since Usurper ships without a DATA directory (it's not created until you use EDITOR or EDITOR32 to reset the game), it ships with USUTEXT.DAT in the root directory. Then when USURPER or USURPER32 are run, it checks for USUTEXT.DAT in the root directory, and moves it to the DATA directory if necessary.

Unfortunately this happens after the splash screen is displayed, which means it is ALWAYS missing for the first run. Subsequent runs of USURPER or USURPER32 should have the USUTEXT.DAT file in the right place, and so the splash screen should be displayed normally. (Just tested here with both the 16 and 32 bit EXEs, and both work as intended.)

So a fix for the "missing on first run" would be to have the file moved when EDITOR or EDITOR32 is run...that should be simple enough. But that still leaves the problem that for some people a 0 byte file gets created, so an alternate solution may be to have the game shipped in a configured state. So the game is already reset, the DATA directory already exists, and USUTEXT.DAT is already in the right place.

ok, I know I haven't been here in awhile, but where is v0.21a at?