[NEW UPDATE] Thief Buddy (v2.0) Quicksave Utility [upd. 17 Feb 2023]

vfig on 29/1/2023 at 06:29

Quote Posted by FenPhoenix

can I assume that in the T2 source somewhere is some info on its structure? And did NewDark add anything?

you can assume that, though i dont know exactly where, as i have never looked. but mainr.bin (just like the bookr.bin for book buttons) is just a sequence of 16 bit integers providing rectangle coordinates: x0, y0, x1, y1 (where x0, y0 are the top left corner of the rectangle (inclusive), and x1, y1 the lower right corner (exclusive). for mainr.bin, there is one rect for each of the six buttons in order: new game, load game, options, credits, intro, quit. System.IO.BinaryReader.ReadInt16() is your friend here.

NewDark didnt change anything about the main menu, only the options menu for TG compatibility.

FenPhoenix on 29/1/2023 at 06:58

Thanks for the info, I'll try it out.

VoiceActor on 31/1/2023 at 15:26

Quote Posted by Twist

For quick saving and quitting, though, an Autohotkey script works. You basically just bind a single key (or combo) to quick save, wait a beat, then close the active window.

Since VoiceActor is using a dll to emulate key presses already, maybe he could incorporate something like this? Just optionally...

Hi Twist,

I see the idea here, but sorry, this feels rather cumbersome to me. I think the suggestion is to call the dll to do an Alt-S, measure for the successful save, then if successful, see if the windows process of thief.exe or thief2.exe is running, and force exit that process? The save-and-exit method is indeed do-able yes, but imho it still feels cumbersome to forceably close anything. There may be other essential tasks that the Thief application probably enacts to achieve a graceful exit. I therefore personally prefer the good ol' standard (albeit manual) of quicksaving before you end a game, then quickloading when you restart.

As for the wider discussion on some sort of injection into the Thief load processes themselves, I am wary again. All it takes is a small change or update, and these sorts of things can go awry with many frustrating consequences!! On top of all this, there are the efforts made by the FM designers to style their intro screens (no small task) and offer that 'feeling' they want to imbue. This bypass would surely feel rather disloyal to their efforts! :p In conclusion, these extra couple of steps of around 5 seconds are no issue to me personally even though I definitely liked the idea initially.

BTW Thief Buddy 1.2 is in the last stages of beta so hoping to release very soon all being well :)

Best ones all,
VA

VoiceActor on 2/2/2023 at 00:54

RELEASE NEWS!!

Hi good folks!

Just to let you know me and Fen have been collaborating together over the past week or two, and are now publishing out the updated versions of Thief Buddy and AngelLoader:

Thief Buddy v1.2 - is available here: (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1plHN_9b819QfpL0UQX6s2NBM3gb9yYGV)

AngelLoader 1.7.0 is available here: (https://github.com/FenPhoenix/AngelLoader/releases/download/v1.7.0/AngelLoader_v1.7.0.zip)

Both applications smoothly work in tandem with each other so get cracking and ENJOY!

Thief Buddy v1.2 has some new useful features, so please read the PDF in the same share, to get yourself fully acquainted. It does use a new backup method so please pay careful attention to the PDF notes regarding any previous save backups you may have made. This newer method is worth it for the better cause!

Have fun all :)

Best wishes,

VoiceActor and FenPhoenix

FenPhoenix on 2/2/2023 at 02:05

(might wanna update the first post :))

Hit Deity on 2/2/2023 at 03:45

Seriously gonna have to try these out, now that they're integrated. Thanks for the hard work you guys have done on this.

Congrats!

(I've been using AL for a little while now, but have been procrastinating on starting TB.)

VoiceActor on 2/2/2023 at 13:27

Quote Posted by FenPhoenix

(might wanna update the first post :))

Cheers - good point. Now done :)

Twist on 2/2/2023 at 16:48

Everything works great! Thank you!

@Hit Deity: The new version of TB and its integration with the latest version of AL makes it super easy to setup and use, so it's a good time to stop procrastinating. :thumb:

Dahenjo on 2/2/2023 at 16:50

This is great now! I liked the manual version but tbh wouldn't have used it much & wished it could be integrated into AngelLoader. Now you've done just that and many thanks to you & Fen!

A feature I'd love to see would be to optionally set a fixed number of quicksaves & then it overwrites the oldest. For myself 2 or 3 would be enough (similar to Dark Mod) and I'll use hard saves to preserve my major progress.

VoiceActor on 2/2/2023 at 17:34

Quote Posted by Dahenjo

Hi Dahenjo, glad you like the update, it's been fun getting it nice and tidy.

The next features (for v1.3) will be started around April - due to other stuff I'm doing at the moment.

I'll be working on the following areas - the first of which is your suggestion:

1. Limited saves - this has been requested before (not sure whether that was you first time round?) and yep - totally agree, you only need enough saves to get out of a glitch or doh-fail. In fact, I was just playing TSCv2 and got stuck in a doorway - no way to move out of it, and worse still, I had quicksaved at that point too! So I was v glad Buddy was running for the restore! Will definitely add this feature suggestion in the form of "Set limited backups to only N" where N will be something like 1 to 10 maybe?

2. I love the personalized sound on each save that Twist originally suggested. I'm coding that a bit further now into a random-pick playlist of sounds to keep it varied. Small idea I know, but it may be nice to have. I was thinking different FMs may want different packs of save-sounds to suit the mood! :)

3. The facility to compress your save backups folder if you wish - it does save drive space and has no real detrimental effect on backup/restore times.

4. A browse option for when you are in the Restorer full preview window, to move left and right across each save screenshot, rather than returning to thumbnails each time.

5. The facility to 'Remember this game" - this will zip archive your whole Thief Buddy quicksave backup set, your game generated screenshots, and finally your hard saves - all in one click, so you can store it away as a game 'memory' should you ever need to come back to it one day.

Best regs,
VoiceActor